Audio
Carly Findlay: 'Malory Towers'
ReFramed takes on Enid Blyton - the TV adaptation of her Malory Towers discussed with author and activist Carly Findlay.
This week, we welcome Carly Findlay - a passionate activist, author, and speaker. She also works as Access and Inclusion Coordinator at Melbourne Fringe.
Carly joins Robyn & Jason to review Malory Towers, a BBC show that can be viewed on ABC iView in Australia. Not only is Malory Towers an Enid Blyton adaptation full of nostalgia, it also features Beth Bradfield - an actress with facial difference.
Tune in to learn what our ReFramers thought about the portrayal of facial difference in the series, as well as Carly's insights into representation, ableism and barriers for people with disability.
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coming up on reframed along with this week's special guest carly finlay today we'll be discussing mallory towers
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i live in melbourne of course and i like to eat cheese
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how perfect like that would be the moment where it could have gone wrong and it just didn't because often we're the villain we're the scary character we
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are the tragedy i'm like i relate on a spiritual level
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[Music]
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welcome back to reframed the podcast that reframes how disability is portrayed in film and tv
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i'm your host jason climo and today i have the wonderful robin lambert with me is my co-host
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along with this week's special guest carly finlay today we'll be discussing mallory towers but before we do let's
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say hello to carly and learn a bit more about them welcome to the podcast carly did you just want to start off by telling us a
Carlys background
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bit about you and what you do hello yes i'm carly findlay and i am coming to you from aurundry country here in naam um
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i am very grateful for aboriginal people for telling their stories on this land for
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thousands and thousands of years since the beginning of time and as an author i always like to give a
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shout out to an aboriginal writer um and given this is a disabled themed
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podcast with disabled hosts and guests i want to give a shout out to a disabled
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writer an aboriginal writer so you should look the work up of gail kennedy or look up the work of gail kennedy um
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gail is an amazing aboriginal elder she lives on the
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urination um on gadigal land and she um writes uh
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lots of young adult books um some graphic novels and she's got a novel called a me
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ant-man and fleabag and she also has a um memoir coming out and she's
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incredible and she's also in growing up disabled in australia which i've edited um so i am a writer a speaker here at
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activist and arts worker and a lot of my work is around disability and facial
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difference and appearance diversity so my writing for the media has often been
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around the media representation of disability has been around
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calling out you know bad headlines which is a regular thing
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um also calling out ableist stuff that happens even though i hate sport i've written like i reckon i've written three
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proper articles on sport i think maybe because they also can't find anyone else to
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write as well you know like you know a non-disabled um person's roller decks if
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we go back to the 90s is really quite small when it comes to looking up disability contacts it seems yeah um so
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often i've had to comment on stuff that seems a bit out of my field of enjoyment like sport
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um i also um do a little bit of radio and
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some tv and i work at melbourne fringe as access advisor and that means that i
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advise artists on how to make their shows accessible work with deaf and disabled artists on putting on their
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shows and advise our staff on how to make the organization more accessible and making
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sure that we embed accessibility in everything we do um aside from the work i do i like i live
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in melbourne of course and i like to eat cheese
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you like cheese um i've never met please i don't me i i've never met a cheese i don't like
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um i also started roller skating um in lockdown number two uh we've had six
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lockdowns in melbourne i started rollerskating lockdown number two and i've been skating for nearly
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probably nearly just over 18 months um and i'm not very good at it but i can go
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forward very well i can go backward a little bit i can fall easily and i haven't been
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saved very good at falling and the other day i don't bruise very
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easily um i don't well i i don't know if i bruise very easily because my skin condition means that i'm always red and
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you can't see my bruises but the other day i did fall and my wrist guard protected me but i had a massive bruise
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on my wrist from where it dug in and i was very proud of that
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um battle scars so i brought that i also i also really like wearing colorful clothes um
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and as a bit of a political statement as well i feel like people don't expect disabled people to dress well or
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to want to take pride in our appearance um and so i wear what i want to wear and enjoy it and um
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are we allowed to swear on this podcast oh great um and so on twitter most days
Black Lives Matter
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i do a outfit photo and i say i wore this today and felt fabulous because
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i do i do feel fabulous and it's also not expected of someone like me to feel that way and as a result of that
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hilariously in 2020 when the black lives matter movement happened um you know what not happened
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it was still you know it was present well before that but when it kind of came to a head particularly in australia
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there was a big push to put more black people people of color on the covers of magazines and i am a person of color my
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mum is um from south africa she's a black woman and my dad's english and so
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i sort of facetiously tweeted hey can someone please put me on the cover of vogue because everyone was doing this
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vogue challenge and someone who was good at photoshop did that for me and then i said um hey very like call me and then
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they did they emailed me they messaged me on instagram actually and they said hey carly can you please write for our
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feature um that we're doing on black lives matter in the august issue and i
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thought that lockdown might be over by then and i have some glamorous photoshoot but
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i just i just had to submit that um that cover that someone made for me and then write an article so that's good it's
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pretty awesome i like right it can happen like i like how things if you just literally put it out there it can
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happen manifesting yeah i mean i don't believe in that woo boy but i might well you know when it
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happens um yeah i've done i've published two books as well um say hello and which is
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a memoir which came out three years ago and growing up disabled in australia which is a anthology and it has 46
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stories of people who are disabled from australia um some are um intellectually
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disabled some are deaf some are um migrants there are actually quite a few gender
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diverse and non-binary and trans people in the book there are very few white men in the book which is i really wanted to
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center voices that we don't hear from um yeah and actually i my memory popped
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up from facebook the other day i did the drum as some um promo for the book and i know that both
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of you are white people in wheelchairs but i said that i would like to talk
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about how disability is not just white people in wheelchairs because we only really see them
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um on the drum which is a good accurate observation when we look at their guest list um and
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then the white people in wheelchairs got annoyed at me for being with this racist
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not great um you spoke a little bit in that awesome rap of all the things that you've done
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um about having to write a little bit out of your lane um about things that you're not necessarily interested in and obviously that shows that there's some
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struggles for disabled people to get published which is obviously a big feat for anyone to get published but do you
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think there's still quite a lot of barriers for disabled people to get published and to tell their own stories
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absolutely i mean i i feel like there are there are articles about disability that are
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written about disabled people with no input from disabled people so stuff on the ndis often has people
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who work in the sector who has parents um you know there's books that are published about how hard it is to be a
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parent of a disabled child um those stories are all given preference over disabled people's
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stories and one of the things i find interesting particularly in the speaking field like in the kind of story telling
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field like oral kind of stories is that it's very hard for disabled people to get paid because we're not valued um and
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so i've often felt like um really i have my privilege in that i
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have a speaking agent who can um guarantee that i get a good amount of money but then there are other people on
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that panel who often don't get paid and they say yes because they need to get the exposure and the practice and all
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that but then it's just not fair when there are people who are doing the same thing as i'm doing and they're not
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getting paid um i had a situation where i spoke at an event for medical practitioners
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and it's always really hard when you fight back around that we don't have a budget statement
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um and then they they come back with a budget um but then it's always really
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awkward because you're then the one getting paid and you kind of put yourself out there and put them out by demanding payment and um two people on
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the panel were there in the capacity their job there was a politician and there was also a doctor so they were
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doing literally their day job and speaking and there was me and another woman who had
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come as our freelance capacity in our freelance capacity and i made a um you
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know made a friend out of that woman and i spoke to her afterwards on her podcast and i said to her you know i'll fare
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quietly hey did you get paid for that and she said no and she said i just don't know how to get experience without getting paid
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and i said i feel really awful that i you know that you didn't get paid and it's just so unequal because these men
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were getting paid in their capacity and i was getting paid because i had to fight for it but she wasn't and i ended
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up um getting that day actually i ended up having a um getting an email from someone who said hey can you speak at an
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event and i happen to be clashing with an event i'd already said yes to so i passed that on and i think that's really
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important if you can't do something if you feel like you know someone else isn't getting paid you go speak up and
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say hey you know this person should be paid as well and we see it particularly with intellectually disabled people as
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well that and they're not paid for the same thing that um non-intellectually disabled people are
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paid for yeah and like i think we've just got to call it up for what it is and that it's exploitation like you have
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us there in a professional capacity to give out whether it's like reliving experiences or you know sharing insight
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it's why is that any different to somebody who's getting up and talking about like at that medical conference about like a
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new drug like it's not different exactly whether as a professional speaker to give our experience into education
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and it's kind of like waiting around for a good opportunity or um one thing i get really excited about and
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um i know that robin you know emily yeah um and you know i speak with her
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mum a lot and um you know she said to me it's because of my campaigning for not working for
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free that she's helped to get emily yeah a lot of paperwork you know at such a young age and it's great and i just
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think the more we say yes to working for free the more that that impacts the whole the whole community
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because people seek me as homogeneous and it's like well carly said yes so robin's going to say yes so jason's
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going to say yes i think it also like just diminishes the labor that goes into those things as well like telling our
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stories and educating um i don't think people realize how much work goes into that into creating that yeah
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yeah exactly and also um you know don't pay someone who is coming from their own
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lived experience less money than someone who is like um university educated or
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you know or has you know years in a particular field like our lived experience is valuable so yeah i think
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in terms of not being able to tell a story there's definitely a barrier but also being paid to tell a story it's a
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barrier as well and just the last question i wanted to ask is very relevant to what we're talking about today on reframed is why
Inclusion on Screen
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do you think inclusion on screen is important and also why do you think it's important for disabled people to be able
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to control their own narratives when they're represented um well when i grew up all i saw on tv was
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a current affair talking about disabled dog bludgers quote unquote and also
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paralympians i know you're a proud no offense
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but neither of those applied to me like i couldn't do sport as a kid and you know i couldn't be out in the in the sun
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and the heat and and so there was no kind of possibility for me and there's no
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relatability because i thought the disability looked a certain way i thought well you know people were either bludging from the government or
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you know winning gold medals at the paralympics and there was no in between and so it wasn't until i saw people on
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tv talking about disability and i remember would have been
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probably in the mid 2000s i happened to see stella young on no limits and i didn't identify as being disabled then
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um but i saw her and everything she talked about about discrimination i was like
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yes this this applies to me and was finding out about the social model and seeing different people who are um
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different you know even though our diagnoses are different we still have these similar experiences around barriers around identity around like
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disabled joy even and so all of that helps so to see a wide variety of disabled people on
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onscreen helps um you know i think in dylan orcott's australian in the year speech and last night on q a he also
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said he wants to see a wide variety of people on screens and you know represented everywhere because that's
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really really important to have that incidental representation um one of the i think one of my most proud
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moments is when i did the media for say hello i got to do a few
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um big tv shows i did studio 10 and the project and
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abc 7 30. and on the pro when i did the project a mum of a little boy with
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igthiosis at the time he that that's a skin condition i have ethiosis at the time the little boy was like four and
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she sent me a photo of him watching me on tv and said mum that's carly she's got um skin like me i'm just like wow
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that's that's so impactful and you know someone to see themselves on tv to see what's possible
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it doesn't necessarily mean that person has to be on tv when they grow up to see that positive representation because
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there's so much negative representation we have shows like embarrassing bodies and medical incredible and you know
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awful storylines around disability and tragedy and eugenics and you know
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um in tv so that is really important i think the second part of the question
Controlling Our Narratives
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was about why disabled people should be able to control our own narratives yeah because we need to control our own
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narratives because nothing about us without us like if you're talking about disability we need to be present but
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also um one of the things that happens a lot with reporting on ichthyosis um and
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probably other rare conditions as well is that we're really dehumanized we're always dehumanized so this week there's
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been an article about a little baby with ichthyosis that's been described she's been described as a turtle because
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her skin is so hard and you see this like snakeskin woman mermaid baby like there's never a
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there's never a human headline and um sorry to put a darren hinch kind of call
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for me i met him at the airport once actually um
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yeah there's never that kind of humanization of of a disabled person and
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one of the issues i think is that parents are really quick to tell their child's story to raise awareness and
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that's really really problematic and often i'm the only person calling this out in the ichthyosis community not so
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much in the wider disability community but in the ethiosis community and um it doesn't win me any favors that you know
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i got blocked by the mother of that baby for calling out the bad article with the
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um but it doesn't do us any favor as a community because again the homogenization
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the perception of homogenization as a community means that someone reads this article about
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ethiosis or sees that program and they're like well um everyone with ethiosis is like that
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and i know everything now um there's a show called embarrassing bodies which often gets rotated on tv and i've never
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watched the show but i have an opinion on the show and i believe i can have a pin because of the because of the title
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you know oh god yeah and and also because they've got people with ethiosis so every time i
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hear about this show because people are like oh carly watch embarrassing bodies tonight and i'll say no people have argued with me that i should watch it to
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be more informed i said well the title sets the sets the theme like it sets the tone for
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the content but every time that's on because it gets repeated so much i get
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particularly when we could travel a bit more and um we're working out of the home i haven't really been approached in
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the last year thank god but i'll be on the tram and someone will be like oh i saw you on tv last night and i said oh
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on you can't ask that and they'll say oh no no it was like on embarrassing bodies and because people with ichthyosis look
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the same they just assume that i was on this show and then they argue with me like you've got a sister did you live in
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the uk and i'm like no i'm an only child and i have a british passport but i didn't live in the uk and it just like thought
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it was time to convince people that it wasn't me and so that's really damaging so our own narratives are important because we have to be in control of our
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story and also like when kids are put out there on the internet like it's forever and imagine imagine that little
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baby reading that you know her skin was described like a turtle or you know her parents were devastated
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when they had it right imagine that i think that's the importance of diversity too because i think you know for parents
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their experience is valid their lived experience and they should have space to be able to talk about that in whatever
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way they see fit but we need something to balance that right like we need disabled stories to tell about how
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growing up and your own perception of your disability changes and and things like that and then also you know how the
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parents perspective will change as that child gets older and does more things and whatever yeah yeah but also like if
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we saw more like characters with ethiosis like in shows or in films like those parents would possibly i would
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hope be less like oh my god i was devastated yeah because they've seen it they've like got
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a better understanding yeah and it's represented out there and it's not something that's like oh my god this is
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so scary yeah and i definitely had that from new parents um but then you know like shows still continue to cast us in
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a really bad light like i think the x-files was one of the shows that had echiosis in a while ago and it was just
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like you know the person was kind of a freak of nature you know um it's never in a positive light but
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i think we are chipping away at it maybe slowly more widely with disability but not so
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much with existence yeah there's a lot of work to be done but
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we need to celebrate the small little wins we have along the way don't we yeah yeah so just to finish off where can um
Carlys Social Media
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people find you to engage your services or support you like do you want them to follow you on social media yeah i mean i'm at carly findlay c-a-r-l-y
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f-i-n-d-l-y at um on twitter on instagram and um
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kylie finlay oam on facebook and linkedin i think that's my linkedin
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um and also i have a blog which is kyliefindmy.com today you say hello is
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at um oh i had the book sitting next to me now but i i'm in the middle of packing
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um so they're not there um say hello is available in paperback and ebook and audiobook if you like the sound of my
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voice now you could buy the audiobook
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disabilities are in those formats using those formats as well um and it's also grown up disables also on print on
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demand and you can print it in um big for big font braille other formats as well um and again audio
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book my husband who uh i wouldn't say he's my biggest fan in
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terms of like my work he took my book came out um in january 2019 and
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on january the 29th 29th the 24th this year he just finished
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it
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oh no no i'm just reading slowly that's probably that's probably the only book he's read since
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i've been with him in light yet i took him oh my god i love that
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yeah yeah we're very different granted if he wrote a book i probably
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would take her just to read it should have been some kind of star wars connotation or something hey opposites
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are trapped
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well it's been so good getting to know you but let's jump straight into uh analyzing mallory towers robin can you
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give us the right sure so it's an adaptation of a children's book by enid blyton called mallory towers um
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interestingly to point out i think the book was written post world war ii not very diverse
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needless to say so they've made a real effort um with this adaptation to just be more diverse in general with
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ethnicity um and interestingly to us as a character with facial difference um but basically
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it just follows daryl rivers who's the main character adventurous little tomboy who's going off um from her home to all
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girls boarding school and the sort of adventures that she gets up to uh in that process
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love it i think she's isn't she described as a tomboy with a ridiculous bob yeah i think so yeah
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i'm like i relate on a spiritual level
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i love that but yes obviously there's a character of facial difference and i want to throw to you carly straight away
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just to give us a bit of a rundown of how you felt the portrayal was yeah so
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in 2020 during lockdown maybe number one um we've had a lot i think that's maybe
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the second time [Laughter] [Music]
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um yeah so and i feel like currently we're still in a bit of a self-imposed lockdown if we don't get coped because
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the pandemic isn't over just because we're over it anyway sorry um in the
22:57
lockdown i was like looking for stuff to watch i just felt like um all of my work had disappeared but then i was you know
23:04
like a duck underwater you know i'm trying to keep my work the work that i had or make
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more work and i wasn't actually doing anything um relaxing on a weekend and so
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i put out a call on my social media hey what should i watch for streaming and a whole heap of people were like watch
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mallory towers and i thought oh i haven't like heard of that since i was a kid i used to read anna blatant books a
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lot and i know she was super problematic then um yeah so but i i was like wow okay great
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and i love that people were telling me because they obviously know that i value good representation and the reason they
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were telling me is because beth bradfield plays gene and beth has a facial difference so they
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were telling me that from a facial difference representation perspective it was really great it was really well
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done so disability is really wide it's like got a big umbrella it is a being umbrella and under it has a lot of
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different types of um impairments i guess and while people with facial differences might not
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identify as disabled or people with facial differences um i do there are other people that do i feel like we do
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experience the same types of barriers that most disabled people feel and
24:15
when i first realized the social model of disability which is that society um should change not my body well not my
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face that was when i realized i was disabled like when i was in my mid-20s and so
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um i think seeing facial difference represented in terms of disability is important but also seeing facial
24:36
difference on tv is really important because often we're the villain where the scary character we are the um
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tragedy that um you know like is burnt or you know um come the facial difference comes
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about because of a tragedy um or where cast is the villain or the um
24:56
the evil character and so beth in um maori towers it's none of
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these things she's not a hero she's not a villain she's just an incredible you know
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herself or you know as the character and one of the things that i really loved is they actually don't mention that she's
25:13
got a facial difference in the show so i've watched the first series and the second series is coming to australia i
25:18
think it has been filmed and i think it's out on the bbc but not yet the abc
25:23
um and the character you know beth is and i really don't i love this term but just
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like everyone else um and she is um you know not
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questioned about her facial difference and i feel like curiosity is natural but also when there
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is an example of curiosity like in the media or in real life it's like you always have to be that teachable moment
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so if an audience member um saw a character with a facial difference
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and another character interacts with them and we're like well how did you get your facial difference
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then it would give that audience member the permission to ask in real life you know so it was kind of none of that it
26:08
sort of set the tone about how we want people to behave around us you know
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there's no need to ask why we have a facial difference often we don't get this way it happens and
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um you know i i was really lucky to interview beth actually for
26:25
the abc i interviewed beth in late 2020
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and i pitched it to the abc because i was so excited that there's finally a character with a facial difference that was
26:38
represented well and um it was just such a great conversation and she talked about how
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she wanted she wants to be a role model for young women with and without facial differences and that um
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you know she um she really values just being
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uh a character where her facial difference is incidental to that yeah yeah i think that's the big thing
27:03
is like you know as soon as um daryl was getting on the train and we see gene
27:09
and she goes to sit down and had i don't know if the two of you felt the same but i just have always when they're like
27:15
introduced just waiting for that i'm waiting for that i've got this anticipation like inside of me and it's
27:20
like no they're not building up and i'm like are they gonna mention it is she gonna be like what happened to your face or something really up yeah yeah
27:26
yeah and none of that and then they were just like it's literally like this is gene they've done it she's a good egg and i was like that was
27:33
it yeah moving right along i was like wow yeah and they they just got on with it and i was stuck that was just really
27:40
that was just really great and i really and it was just so great like that incidental representation that's what we need we don't need a big deal just that
Representation
27:47
exactly yeah like we don't need the spotlight like it doesn't need to be shown on like the disability it's like
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showcase the person yeah because you know gene realistically is just getting on with it and it's like everybody else
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can too you don't need to make a huge deal yeah i love that i think i think it really shows like the interaction as you
28:06
said when she got on the train and um there was just that friendship from the
28:11
start it really demonstrates to children to young viewers how we want to be
28:16
um engaged with yeah and so if they do see someone with a facial difference you know on the train they won't have a
28:23
tantrum like i've had experiences of with children on the train you know yeah
28:28
um yeah i think it's so important to have it in children's shows to like get
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that representation started early and to start forming those perceptions when people are young and perhaps even when
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they haven't had you know their parents ideas put on them yet as well yes yeah yeah absolutely and they can
28:44
form their own decision about how to engage and also like um often sorry often parents say oh don't
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look don't look don't stare don't ask questions and you know that can be good in a way when we want to be
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inconspicuous but also not great because it shows that they shouldn't look at us so i think that yeah really sets the
29:05
tone of how to engage like you said jason i was just like i watched quite a few episodes just to get a feel for the
29:10
show and i was just waiting like for for something to happen where i was gonna be like um and there was i think there was one
29:16
point where one of the characters gets slapped and she's looking in a mirror and she's going on about a bruise to
29:22
jane and she's like look at this big mark on my face and i thought oh this could be like the moment she's like
29:28
they've picked the character with facial difference and she just like totally blew it off like just sarcastic like oh yeah you think it's a big deal go to the
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teacher then whatever and i was like how perfect like that would be the moment where it could have gone wrong and it
29:39
just didn't yeah and then yeah i kept watching and it was just all the way through it was just kids being kids
29:44
getting up to the things that they do and it wasn't pointed out at all all that yeah so much mischief
29:52
it was great i think um one of the only things like i would say it's not like a huge negative
29:58
but um it's something that you know as we progress and get more and more you know positive representation the
30:05
next conversation is going to be all about like okay there's more than one disabled person at
30:11
that school surely so that was the only thing that i sort of really did think was
30:16
you know if that if we were going to give them like a five out of five on the idr scale or something i would be like i would
30:23
want to have seen like multiple disabled characters like at least two yeah i
30:28
think that that that's often an issue isn't it where you can't have too many um of anything
30:37
you can't have too much diversity it might be too confronting but you can have a lot of non-disabled white people
30:44
yeah honestly honestly they're like just one from this bucket and one from this
31:00
but then maybe if they had a whole range of people with disability the characters
31:06
then that would that have pushed it into the special school realm perhaps yeah and that's the thing as
31:12
well like because you bring this up quite a lot jason and i i definitely agree like surely disabled people at
31:18
some point get disabled friends or you'd hope so they become part of that community but my experience growing up i
31:23
was the only disabled kid in all three schools that i went to you know for a majority of the time so i think like
31:29
just to play devil's advocate like that often is the experience um yeah but it would be nice to see
31:34
those characters grow as seasons go on and to see them really invest in their own community and find a space there
31:41
and i think we've talked about like i think it was when we were talking about a quiet place part two or something like it where we said
31:46
it would have been nice just to see like a supplementary character or like somebody like who was a wheelchair user
31:52
get eaten by an alien or something like it doesn't it's not necessarily like another like core key character but it's
31:58
just showcasing that like this is not the only person yeah with this experience there's really only
32:04
ever one and and they're often a supporting cast role as well like yeah
32:09
um did you watch the bold type no i didn't i love the bulb type and
32:15
it's about working in magazines and it's pretty it was pretty woke i don't know whether that's a right term to use
32:23
has that been cancelled yet i don't know i don't know it was diverse and they had lots of great issues um like a bit protesty as
32:30
well but all in all there was really only one disabled character and um
32:36
and as a support you know so yeah and that's like you know similar to
32:42
that um and just like that the new sex and the city series ali stroker was in
32:47
she was in the other one as well she was in the box oh there you go there you go there's only one disabled
32:52
person in hollywood i guess was she like a boss ass yes
32:58
yeah okay well there you go she's like obviously getting caught disabled people get timecast too
33:03
[Laughter] i mean it was cool to see her like in a powerful position that's important as
33:09
well to show that like people with disability can like climb the corporate ladder and be the boss but
33:15
she was only in it for like i think five minutes tops in in just like that so i
33:20
was kind of like this is a step but it's not like many steps
33:26
we could do more um the only other thing i like we often do sometimes carly is do a little bit of
33:32
research about what happened behind the scenes the only thing i really found was um i saw an interview where they'd said
33:39
that their casting process was really open um they didn't actually have like too many
33:45
predetermined ideas or kind of characteristics for any of the characters so i thought that was like a
33:50
really interesting thing to point out because that's not often the way that casting like i would say that i've never heard
33:57
that before ever for a show or anything really um usually they have like a very
34:03
strong idea of who's going to be what and they've picked they're like one disabled person and that this is what
34:08
it's going to be and this is what they're going to do um and i thought that was like a really kind of interesting
34:14
thing to point out which you know hopefully some other people in the industry might start adapting so beth
34:19
couldn't played anyone yeah yeah i mean it could have been daryl
34:25
that had you know the facial difference yeah that's what i mean yeah so that's what's really interesting i guess
34:31
probably then the only like disappointing thing going back to the fact that there is only one person with facial difference or an experience of
34:37
disability you know it is kind of disappointing that if it was so open that it wasn't
34:43
there wasn't more representation yeah and that that might have been that there's like actually barriers to opportunity as well which is a whole
34:50
other conversation well i think unless anybody else has
Conclusion
34:57
anything super important they want to share about mallory towers it might be time to give out pause on the idr scale
35:04
yeah i i would probably give it a four and a half yeah yeah i said the same yeah again
35:10
again it would be nice to just sort of uh explore the idea of having you know those characters be invested in a
35:17
community that they could they could find and identify with um but yeah i think they'd really
35:22
from the original text they'd really just tried to make it as diverse as possible so they have kind of picked a little bit of everything so i understand
35:29
why that might not have been the case uh yeah i thought it was yeah i think if you looked at it yeah like as general diversity you'd
35:36
probably say that it's almost a five um yeah but you know when we're looking at disability representation i'd agree it's
35:41
a four and a half out of five for me as well it was so good and it was so wholesome
35:48
and if we're ever in lockdown again just watch it i mean watch it it was a really nice thing to watch
35:55
and like such a nice like not to diminish it but like a nice easy watch too and that's what we need sometimes
36:01
it's like to escape the stressful and actually in the same interview they were talking
36:06
about like escapism as well and i was like yes that's exactly what i felt when i was watching it like i was like ah
36:11
take me back to the school when i talked with beth for the interview one of the things i asked is
36:17
if she's friends um with the girls that she filmed with and she is like
36:22
yeah it was just really lovely that they all became friends on screen and off screen and i think that seemed to be the same with um the girls from the
36:29
babysitters club as well which was also released around that time also has some good disability representation in the
36:35
second series perfect well that's it for this week everyone thank you so much for joining us carly and obviously thank you robin
36:42
as always thank you everyone at home for following along as well um let us know your thoughts about what we discussed um
36:50
if you have any comments or anything you wanted to talk to carly about you can flick them through to us as well um
36:56
or if you've got your own idr score that you would like to share for mallory towers you can find us on social media
37:02
we're on facebook instagram and twitter so if you search reframed podcast or
37:07
podcast reframed you will find us we also have an email address if that's more suitable for you and you'd prefer
37:14
to send your feedback through that way it's hello at reframepodcast.com um again i just want to say thank you to
37:21
everyone but lastly i do want to say a really big thank you to the community broadcasting foundation for helping to
37:26
fund this series and that's it and we will see you again next week with another fantastic episode
37:32
of reframed thank you everyone bye
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[Music]
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[Music]
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so
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[Applause] you