Angel Dixon - 'Raising Dion'

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coming up on reframed along with this week's special guest andrew dixon today

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we'll be discussing raising dion this is what true disability is because i was this is it now no impairment or no

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experience of disability is the same great character really you know stealing the show as many people have said i did

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not see a ramp how did this child get in this building [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 very wonderful stephanie dao with me as my co-host along with this

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week's special guest angel dixon today we'll be discussing raising dion but before we do let's say hello to angel

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and learn a bit more about her so welcome to the podcast angel did you just want to start off by telling everyone a bit about you and what you do

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hello thank you for having me i'm very excited to be here with my two

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favorite content creators uh yay that you finally were able to come on so

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what happens when you have a baby there's no time for anything yes so well i guess that leads me to

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my intro i am a mum um first and foremost that's where i'm

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at at the moment i've stepped back from a lot of my work um where i was at prior to that was i was

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like lucky enough to be the ceo of attitude foundation and to work with

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the wonderfully passionate and incredibly intelligent and wonderful people there

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um and i am still an active board member and

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we get to do a lot of fun things there i guess my personal history is i am a person with disability

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i've spent the last decade or so kind of unraveling this phenomenon of disability

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um it started as kind of like a way to answer my own questions um

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and then i traveled the world and met a bunch of really interesting people and realized that

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the things that i was experiencing were also being experienced by an entire community of people

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um and i i needed to figure out a way to solve that so i just

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work in random ways seemingly random but to me it makes sense um

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to create any kind of impact where i can um obviously i've found myself at attitude

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foundation because i feel that media is one of our most powerful tools for changing attitude particularly in the age that

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we're we're in um i've done everything from

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modeling with jason on fashion runways um to now i've done a deep dive into into

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research and i'm really hoping that um that i can make some impact in that area

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you mentioned you're a new parent yourself um what kind of or have you experienced any

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kind of attitudinal or accessibility barriers that have come with that along

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the way i mean parenthood's a very um a big transition for anyone but have you found anything more specific to your

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situation um it was really interesting when i

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was first pregnant um i was actually really concerned so my my

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impairment is static i really don't have to interact with medical environments terribly often

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i prepared myself for the fact that i was going to have to do that when i was pregnant

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um and unfortunately um everything was still the same

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so doctors either acknowledged too much

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um disability and and impairment or they went the other way and they didn't acknowledge it at all there was really

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no middle ground um to the point where actually when i went and i had my first blood test to

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to find out that i was pregnant i had to go to a new gp and i sat down literally just to get the

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results of my blood test like they knew that i was there for that and they looked at my arm and said what

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do you do for that that needs to that's a problem that needs to be fixed

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and i'm like i'm just here to get my results i just [Music]

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said that please god no not today

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so that was the start of my my parenting journey yeah um

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and again i mean i i feel that i was very lucky as far as i came in to this world of

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parenting um with my eyes wide open i understood what

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was going to to be the barriers for me and i was i've been able to have a bit of a head start

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i think um it still doesn't make it any easier

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certainly i understood that when i was using my chair and i had a baby strapped to me that was going to be considerably

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harder than when it's just me just gently trying to get through the world

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um [Music] there's this wonderful thing called a lap baby that i have used this it's been

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incredible um certainly helps for when you're sitting eating dinner and a baby's gotta

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you know be on you or are you just going for a wheel around the block um he's not gonna

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fall out of my chair um but i found that all of the same batteries that

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existed for me before um became an even bigger barrier for me

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with a baby i was lucky enough to chat to some of our board members who are people with disability and who have had children

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before and that was really helpful in the lead-up to preparing for this um there's someone who has

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an impairment that's very similar to mine and so that was really reassuring going in that would be hard because like i

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remember like when i acquired my impairment i you know that first stage

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of like isolation of like nobody is like understanding what i've i'm going through right now and then you connect

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with your community and you realize actually a lot of people do and you learn a lot about it and learn enough

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wonderful people like i was lucky to learn from you um it'd be interesting like that like that must have been tricky to like go back

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to sort of yeah it's healing yeah it's funny and i guess it's

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it's kind of like what we talk about about simulations how they're not okay

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um and sorry i i will explain simulation for people that are listening um so when

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we take a person who has typical mobility and we put them in a wheelchair for example

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to try and teach sensitivity or empathy or whatever it is we're trying

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to teach with that um it actually backfires and i have seen

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this over and over and over again because i'm invited to speak at all these events where they do things like

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this and i have seen people who have gone into experiencing no disability to instant

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disability and i've seen them break down in front of me because they've got no coping

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skills no one has prepared them for what they're about to experience

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they then go home and they think oh my god i'm so glad that i'm not a person with disability how horrible must that

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person's life be yeah and it just perpetuates all the things that we don't need perpetuated yes

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um yeah and so i guess coming into this i feel that i am lucky for that reason that i

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did have a bit of a heads up but even for a person with disability

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having to relive it it has been challenging again and not from

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not from an impairment perspective not from a diagnosis perspective it's purely that disability that i experience when i

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hit barriers and yeah parenting is great already hard

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enough isn't that the importance of

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representation by you know it's if you don't see you know you know your own experience

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but if something changes and you don't see that reflected out in society or on screen or something you're you're kind

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of back to square one like a little bit you're kind of like you know what do i do with this even the

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other day i um very different but i hurt my knee and

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while i use a wheelchair i still have to like stand up and you know wait there to

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be able to get dressed over morning and things like that and when i couldn't stand on my knee i'm like wait

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what what do i do now now like this is what true disability is

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this is it now but that's it it's like you know the more different experiences we see out in the world around us the

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more of a you know more well-rounded picture we have of our own experience and how we can maybe cope with things

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and deal with things so yeah exactly and it's i love the way you describe that that

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like it's like no oh i was fine before like this is disability

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that's exactly how it feels and yeah and i feel like that's such an internalized

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perspective right that's an internalized non-disabled perspective because it's like that's a very i guess function

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um and we all have that and i feel like the biggest barrier for me was all the things that i'd internalized like the

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preparation that i put in to preparing for having a baby and the stress

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that came with that yeah could have just been halved at least or

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just gone back to a regular a regular level yeah um

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if i'd have had i don't know even a website that i could go to and go okay

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one-handed parenting let's do this it looks like exactly send me a podcast

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idea maybe we'll talk about it later um and yes there are some you know

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there's like eliza holland there's a few great people out there who are making some really great content around this

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stuff but we also don't need it to be like mums

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find it hard enough to shower on their own i just wanted something easily consumable that was in front of me that

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i could go dot points oh this is an excellent product i will buy this yeah and also like you probably didn't

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feel like oh i'm just gonna you know give you know a lot i'm just gonna hit eliza up and be like hey can you give me

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all your tips today because it's like she's also got a whole life going on exactly like it's got to deal with

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so yeah and and i guess it there is a

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there's that whole point of diversity right no impairment or no experience of disability is the

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same so then when i come to have a conversation with someone who has an experience i can go yeah

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part of that relates to me but not all of it so i still need to go and do some research to try and find

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you know those those bits that are that will work for me um

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so so the research is necessary anyway we've got off topic but yes there were barriers

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i guess sort of touching on barriers you were one of the first people to teach me about the social model of disability and

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i feel like we probably haven't spent enough time on this podcast really like drilling home that point so i wanted to

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hand to you to really drill a home for us please models are

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literally just a way to conceptualize what already exists so we were seeing these things pop up we documented them

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this is just a way for us to measure them it's a way to turn them all black and white

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social model is the closest thing that i feel we have to have the power to counter

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the really damaging and limiting perspectives we have on disability at the moment

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social model is in no way the end-all be-be-end-all of everything there are

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definitely gaps um but it's the closest thing we've got we can move into things like inclusive

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design universal design and all those kinds of things that we can make work within a model and that certainly comes

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into the social model of disability framework and that's really where i sit

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as far as my my work and what i i guess believe will take us further on the journey to

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inclusion rather than backwards like all the other stuff um

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but i feel like what we've been trying to do with the models is turn something

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that is incredibly complex and nuanced into something that's not

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at attitude foundation what we tried to do when we were trying to create this podcast what we were trying to do when

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we created our documentary series was to try and open

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blast everything open to try and create working environments so within the confines of making media

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not just what we're seeing on screen or what we're consuming but behind the scenes we wanted to

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blow open the way that people currently work on creating things not media we

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weren't you know we were trying to conceptualize a new way of working because

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it's not black and white there is no model that we can use to work from we actually need to start using common

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sense and asking people how they want to work yes

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um so i'm not the right person to ask because i do have a very open mind when it comes

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to all of these things i can't make these things black and white for anyone even though they desperately want them

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to be that's that's the point that people need to take away from a lot of this is these

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things are not black and white you can't be all of this or all of this like there needs to be that

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um synergy between all of these models because we're not just like one thing you know

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as a person we're lots of lots of many things going on so i think

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for me that's a huge takeaway and kind of what we want to um you know touch on more with

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representation in screen and fill into all of the media um so i guess that brings us to

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usually our final question for you guys is why you know what is it the representation

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does for audience members what why do you think it's so important that we see more of these experiences and nuances on

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screen there is a there is a existing issue that we have not just in media but

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within perceptions of disability which is that it's either negative or positive that's what contributes to this

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polarized understanding of disability that's what contributes to certainly my own conceptualization of who i am you

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know what disability looks like in me um

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and it feels like like this polar opposite thing going on that you kind of go one or the other and

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i'm sick of it so i guess i'm for holistic

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yeah representation and honest representation yeah and the i this is a

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topic that comes up when we discuss the social model of disability a lot too that disability can't

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always and a lot of people with disability don't always want to

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separate disability from themselves

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and i'm one of those people it's actually informed a lot of who i am and i don't want to remove that i

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actually feel like i'm a better person for it um i can certainly say that sometimes i

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wish i didn't have my impairment um sometimes it would be easier because i live in a world that isn't made for me

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so we're ready to go and analyze rising dion steph can you just give us the the rundown so raising dion is a

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netflix series that tells the story of a widowed mother and her young son dion who around his eighth birthday learns

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that he has powers beyond anyone's comprehension as they learn the origins of dion's

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powers his mother nicole must work hard to keep dion's powers a secret for fear of of

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course exploitation one person that does learn of dion's powers early on however is his

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self-appointed best friend esperanza a young sassy girl in dion's class who

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happens to use a motorized wheelchair so i think we know a little bit about

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your experience watching raising tea on angel but do you want to kick us off what were your thoughts on the series

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the first season of raising dion there's a lot that i'll say about it but

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in those early episodes

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esperanza was was experiencing disability she was being

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left out she was being an afterthought

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you actually couldn't obviously see

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the accessibility features for her um she would just turn up

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on the screen and i'd go i've literally just seen the stairs at the front of that school i

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did not see a ramp how did this child get in this building

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you know like yeah and

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and so i'm like i'm looking at it i'm going this is horrible i can't watch the rest of this i'm i'm i'm not going to

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finish this series and and we experienced this during the

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making of our documentary series at attitude foundation because it was a documentary series

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perspective shift on experience because it was a documentary series

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we had to show the early beginnings of people's stories and a lot

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of those were really tough and were really hard and we knew that people without disability

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were going to view those things a lot more negatively and in a very damaging

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way than what we were and so trying to navigate that was

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really tough particularly with a production agency who had a very kind of solid idea of where they wanted

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to go with a story arc and all that sort of stuff but as people with disability as board

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members were all going no no like pump the brakes this

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this is going to come off really badly and we can't be perpetuating these things because people aren't going to

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see this as a series they're going to see it as one episode and

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if we don't resolve this there and then they're going to walk away with an even

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more perpetuated idea of the existing things that are already in their brain yep

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um so as media makers it's it's really challenging and i

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i don't know where i sit with this but i feel like raising dion

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did it well i think that's the important thing like we're all we're all learning people with

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disabilities are learning filmmakers are learning society is learning slowly but we're getting there um

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as you said filmmakers media makers it's such a fine line you don't wanna and i do this in my own work where we've seen

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we know what works on film we've seen the tropes that you know have

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been done over and over again and audiences are used to seeing that and it is really hard because you do

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when you are creating something you do sometimes find yourself just falling into that because that's what's been

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done that's what you're used to seeing but it's about checking yourself and it's about

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making sure that you know you may be showing like the barriers and like some of the negative stuff because you don't

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want to ignore that that's real stuff that's a real experience but you for me i'm always like looking for the the

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other side of the coin as well the flip side the okay yeah this is the negative experience part of the experience but

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where is the the opposite the positive the the beneficial side of the experience as well because

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you know disability as you said yourself like for me i i don't disability has brought so much

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to my life it's given me incredible opportunities and experiences that i don't think i would have had otherwise

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um but with that you get the barriers and the and the attitudinal barriers and all of that so

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it's for me it's about both sides of the coin you know um and i think that's the very very fine line that filmmakers and

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media makers have to have to walk along nowadays but you know but it can be done it can be done well as you said early on

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i got the feeling that they were going to create some parallel between race and that of disability

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i just had that kind of vibe don't ask me how but i just did

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um and when they started using the word abilities i was just cringing every time

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even though it was just it wasn't even around disability it was just

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on the line of superhero stuff but you kind of also got the vibe that they were drawing parallels there as well and i'm

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like oh i don't know if i can get on board with this that's where i was like is this what

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this is about are we comparing yeah gone got like superhero powers with

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disabilities yeah are we doing the paralympic advertising all over again is that what we're doing i'm getting the

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ick it's just um there there is something that you both

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need to know about me in the very early stages of my activism after spending a lot of time with some

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people in san francisco i referred to myself once as an abilities crusader

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wow yeah so you know that's your superhero name right there part of the it's part of the journey

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the journey i cringe i have no idea

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part of the journey part of the journey um so

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i loved and i hated the realities that they showed of racism

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i thought they did that brilliantly um they brought it in

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slowly which is obviously the vibe that i was picking up on initially and then they really

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brought it home with some very deep conversations around race and and what life is like for a person of

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color um and i i felt that i had personally never seen

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that on screen not in that way before and as a person

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you know that isn't a person of color it certainly

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it brought me along on the journey and man that that hit me um

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again i'll talk about the fact that esperanza just kept turning up in the apartment building and at school

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and i couldn't actually visually see ramps or elevators

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um [Music] this this part got me as well because as you said before like there were

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stairs at the school and magically she's inside but they didn't show how she got inside and they even went to the like so

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far as to say oh she has a a wheelchair van or like she has a van that she is

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but in i don't know if it came later but in the early season you never saw her

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getting in and out of the car you saw her in the car but you know like the process of how

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her most likely very heavy wheelchair magically got inside the car so

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it's just things like that it's it yeah how many times have we seen just magically wheelchairs appear

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on the third floor of a walk up like that doesn't that doesn't happen but and then like

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the strange part is like one part that i really like love is that esperanza is really good well like at certain times

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really good at like advocating for herself and being like yeah like so for example i love the part

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like in the early season like early episodes of the first season where she's like this fort isn't accessible and then

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they fix it and that's acceptable and it's like so strange that it's like they've gone to that point which is

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great and i love to see it but it's like we've not actually seen the accessibility of the actual i guess

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set and show and like the world i think that goes back to that storytelling piece that steph was

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talking about i think it's people are in this phase at the moment

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of where we're fine we understand that we need different representation we need to start working towards this more

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holistic approach but we've still got to merge it somehow with existing understandings of how we

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put things on screen and so things like establishing shots where you would see kids walking into a

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school up a flight of stairs they just don't take that into consideration where they go oh actually

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there's one kid here because apparently only one kid who used a wheelchair goes to school

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um um there's one kid here that we need to you

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know include in this very basic because it only needs to be basic it just needs to be the same as

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what we would do in any other i have the best example of this i watched i don't

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know if either of you ever watched virgin river on netflix now there is no mention of

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disability or anything in that show however one of the main locations of the show is

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this place called jack's bar and the establishing shot used for this bar has a mass has a big ramp out the front to

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get in the front door now no other mention of disability but i look at that establishing shot i'm like i could go to

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jack's bar i could go there and that that that's how simple it has to be yeah it doesn't need to be

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anything more than that yeah i feel like there's like one like elephant in the room problematic part that like we're

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definitely going to spend some energy on and i'm just going to bring it up which is the part where dion lifts esperanza

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out of her chair again i don't know how this was perceived by a person without disability but as a person with

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disability a lot of the representation in this

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series is very covert or very subtle

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um [Music] which i like i actually like that there are just some minor tweaks

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that they've made to an existing story and

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and it's made a huge difference in this there was absolutely no there was no conversation about what dion was

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about to do it was all done in silence and she was

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lifted out of her chair without her consent hovering in the air and then dion

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started making her legs move and so i'm going oh my god he's making her walk

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no one said anything and it wasn't really obvious that that was what was happening i mean i don't know if a

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person without disability would do that in the same way i thought maybe it would just look like she was like kind of

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flailing to try and get down that's what i actually thought it was was he actually moving her legs yeah he

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was trying to make her wall yeah oh okay yeah that's yeah

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and and he actually said that so then yeah he brought her back down because she started saying what are you doing like

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get me down he put her back in her chair and then

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he she said what what did you think you were doing and he said i wanted you to walk

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um if i was in a chair i would want to fly and that was sort of how

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the discussion went and then she left and i absolutely love that that's how they left it

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i hate it and love it because i hate that it wasn't resolved in the moment because

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who knows how people without disability were viewing that and if they'd have turned it off at that point who knows

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what they've you know taken away they haven't learned a lesson

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but then they actually don't bring esperanza back in for like another two episodes two or

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three episodes um they actually leave dion to do the work

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which i love because so often as people with disability we're left to be

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the people to guide everyone else well we're left to be i have actually been on stage in a room full of people without

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disability at an event that was only talking about disability

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and i've sat on stage and i've gone i am tired i don't want to have to keep being

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the person to teach you that's not my job here my job is to have

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conversations yes so we can start new understandings of disability but actually sitting here and actually

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giving you black and white here's what you do here's what you don't do is not what i feel my role should be

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because it's exhausting because you have to do it over and over again and things

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don't change that way anyway i could talk about that a long time um

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and so i loved that dion was left to do the work and dion felt terrible he went and he spoke to his mum he spoke

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to several people and they weren't really deep conversations they were things like

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he so someone actually said to him how long have you known this girl and you don't actually know

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i didn't love the wording here but you don't know why she's in the chair um

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as a resolution for people we talk about people who use chairs

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because it's a tool it's not part of us um

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and and dion actually said i don't but i don't think of that as esperanza i

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think of her i just think of her as esperanza like i don't and and i liked that it was a subtle way

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of saying that he sees her and he sees her

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with all of disability not without because a lot of the time people will say oh i don't see the chair or i don't

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see your cane or i don't see how you know i just see you as a person and yeah

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it's like it's like whitewashing it's like when people say yeah i don't see cow yeah and it's like

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a fundamental part of it this is part of our identity guys like yeah like

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so i really i i really did like that and i liked the resolution i liked that

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eventually esperanza was ready to forgive and they were able to move forward from

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it and i actually have a note here where she um

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she didn't even need to say anything um

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dion actually said i know now that i didn't respect esperanza's values and all he said to her was i'm sorry for

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fixing you when i know you aren't broken for trying to fix you when i know you aren't broken and that was it

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i think it was a really interesting way to show that um that child-like innocence and how

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how i guess like the way disability is sort of talked about like that you know that people

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have to be fixed or cured or something like that that can you know like this kid dion is

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just seeing him you know esperanza as his best friend but the world is telling him that

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the the wheelchair is an issue that she needs to be fixed and so he has this child-like innocence of like

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you know that's how he interprets that information that he's getting from the

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world around him um and i know i i remember i had an experience with that when i was really probably dion's age

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and i remember a bunch of my friends heard about this operation that fixed

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arthritis or something like that and they were like you know oh we're gonna raise money and we're gonna get you this

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operation or something and it's like actually no that that's you know like and it's all well-meaning and it's all

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again that child-like innocence but it but i think you made a good point like it's interesting how the show dealt with

34:04

that and showed that esperanza was um you know she she just left she was

34:10

angry at that moment that was you know dion disrespecting her not asking consent or you know any of that like if

34:18

she wanted to fly like she would have asked dion you can make me fly right let me fly

34:23

let's do it i think that's a really great angle to view it i hadn't seen it

34:29

in that way um it the the actual experience reminded me of i tell this story a lot jason you

34:36

would know this story i was at sydney airport once and i was using my chair and a person was walking in the opposite

34:43

direction to me like in quite a hurry and i just i remember seeing them

34:48

because they were in a hurry and i was like oh my person said hurry and i just kind of kept going and then

34:54

all of a sudden that same person was behind me pushing my chair

35:01

because i this stuff i can see handles on the back of your chair um i've had people who are

35:08

always wheelchair users that say to me just take the handles off your chair and i'm like yeah but then i wouldn't be

35:13

able to do anything like sometimes i stand up and i can you know i need to push my chair

35:19

and also like i shouldn't have to take handles off my chair so that's just so someone else not tempted to be like i'm

35:25

going to grab that like just not like don't grab it there's no sign of saying please push

35:31

because and so i then i said to them what are

35:37

you doing and they were like don't worry i was going this way anyway and i'm like no you weren't it literally worked don't

35:43

lie look at this savior complex and i hate it and go away

35:48

um and it makes them feel good i guess it it made me giggle afterwards because i

35:54

it's quite literally like picking someone up off their legs and running away with them

36:00

yeah that's that's exactly what it is it's like don't worry i'm going this way anyway and just kidding i'll carry you

36:06

okay it's literally the superman like oh you know like the old lady crossing the

36:11

street don't worry ma'am i'll pick you up and carry you like yeah it's like the cars can just wait like yeah i can

36:17

just go at my own pace or if i like want a hand or need a hand i'll ask

36:22

yeah or i can go really fast in my chair yeah like if i wanted to go fast i could i could

36:29

go faster than you literally anyway downhill exactly

36:34

anyway it just made me thought of that experience i agree completely with that like analysis of that scene though or

36:41

that whole experience it's not just a scene because it did kind of go over like three episodes because at the time i was like

36:47

holy what's happening no no and then i when i realized that esperanza was like put me the down this is

36:54

not okay and that she could then just go away and like be in her emotions and i was like okay next episode she's gonna

37:01

come back like i was expecting next episode she's gonna come back and back yeah this is why you can't do that yeah

37:06

but she didn't have to do that and she could just go and be in her feels about it and not have to like talk to you it's

37:12

interesting though because you didn't get the vibe you didn't get the vibe that she was off in her own feels you

37:18

just got the vibe that she was like that was really rude i'm leaving and

37:24

that she didn't even think too much about it which i love right i was like yeah but it was it was dion that stayed on it

37:30

it was dion that was you know stewing on it and being curious about and asking questions

37:36

and doing the work as you said yeah that often people with disabilities have to do so it was a nice it was a nice flip

37:44

yeah and i think you know just like the really obvious thing that we always talk about is genuine casting

37:49

so it's great to see that esperanza was played by an actual person with disability which is good um

37:55

and [Music] i've seen a lot as well talking about like dion's own experiences of disability and how he learnt from

38:03

esperanza to like unpack ableism and i don't know is this too big of a can of

38:08

worms to open up right now that's a that's a big candle i i saw the same thing when i was doing a bit of

38:13

research you know they kept talking about um obviously esperanza but and

38:19

also dion's experience of chronic asthma and adhd i think as well

38:25

um so yeah it's um yeah i'd love to know actually

38:32

because all that i saw in terms of like the authenticity behind the scenes was esperanza being played by sam

38:39

haney um you know authentic representation on screen i'd like to know if there was

38:45

writers behind the scene that brought that first-hand experience to the writing to the writing team because i

38:51

didn't see i was going to say in my little researching i couldn't find anything on

38:56

like a writing team or like you know and even like a producer or director or anyone behind the scenes

39:03

it's interesting so i get i got the vibe i've actually written that here in my notes i got the vibe that there would

39:09

have to be someone with disability or with a child with disability in the writers

39:18

i loved the way in season one that i don't know if you noticed or if

39:26

if you got this vibe as well but the esperanza's character was really the

39:33

only consistent non-changing character in that series every other character

39:39

seemed to learn something or grow in some way but the change with esperanza was

39:46

everyone's perspective of her so she always stayed the same at the end

39:52

she was still this kind of like i hate to use the word but she was this really resilient character

40:00

um who was consistent and who was kind of helping guide everyone else right up

40:06

until the end and nothing changed except our view of her and every other cast member's view of her which is what we

40:14

want out of life um so i found it actually really cool

40:19

that they managed to do that in one season um as much as i didn't love the

40:25

journey to getting there when it was resolved i could see why they did it um

40:31

and then with season two i guess the thing that made me

40:37

think that there was someone in the writing mix was that there was so much parent perspective

40:44

there was so much of even just subtle things with language about like powered people

40:49

and um oh what else is there so i'm gonna jump

40:55

in because i feel like possibly what's happening is um that sammy haney i think i'm pronouncing

41:01

that correctly so the actress who plays esperanza um i feel like her and her dad did a lot of

41:08

like advocating for themselves which is like okay i actually think is

41:13

not great because like the interviews that i sort of read were you know they were talking about it

41:19

in like a you know i guess positive way but there were incidences

41:24

or you know moments where they were saying like oh it was really great on set when when we realized that you know

41:30

the the van wasn't going to be great for sammy that they just went and got a new one and i was like

41:36

yeah but why wouldn't then they just hadn't they thought beforehand why did it like okay to a point where you were

41:41

like oh hey guys this band's not going to work in two hours later you got a new one which is like good quick resolution

41:46

whatever but like better than that is actually not inclusive

41:51

yeah because like you start to advocate for yourself on set and like sammy's job was really to just go and be an actress

41:56

rather than to actually advocate for herself which is something that you and i know a little bit a little bit about jason

42:03

i think that's why i always notice stuff like that in interviews and why i do research because i'm like oh my god i'm

42:08

tired of having to do this all the time like on set it's interesting that because in my research netflix origi

42:15

like they put the call out for a young sassy girl in a wheelchair so it's like okay well

42:21

you've made you've made the point that you're going to include disability you know in this role so

42:29

where is the authentic authenticity in terms of the writing for this character where where is that coming from what was

42:35

the reasoning behind making this character um use a wheelchair what was

42:41

where was that where was that going kind of thing what was the plan for that so i guess that's kind of

42:48

that brings me to talking about attitude foundation because

42:53

when we decided that we were going to try and blow whatever working on a set looked like

42:59

open then we came up with this values and inclusion document

43:05

or policy really to try and help replicate whatever

43:10

we put in place during the development of our series over and over again because

43:18

it it needs to be documented somehow that we need to create some kind of change within the way we work and so i

43:25

guess at attitude what we're trying to do is create accessible content so meaning what we consume as the end

43:31

result that needs to be accessible to everyone um

43:36

we've got to make sure that accessibility is there from the get-go

43:44

from behind the scenes so we did things like when we knew

43:50

that we were going to have people who required quiet rooms

43:56

or you know any kind of accessibility feature instead of us

44:03

saying what do you need which we did anyway because of course everyone has their own unique

44:10

you know needs um the question that we always ask everyone is what do you need to participate and we ask that at the

44:16

top of everything but we certainly don't do that to ensure that we have the required accessibility options

44:23

for them if they want to participate so we always had screen readers

44:30

sorry teleprompters we always made sure that their set was accessible we always made

44:35

sure that there were all of these options so that whoever we cast was able to get going as

44:41

quickly as they could and it was done in an inclusive way because

44:48

inclusion isn't accessibility and accessibility isn't inclusion

44:54

you know inclusion brings into it social barriers inclusion brings into it

44:59

financial capacity it brings in everything and so we really

45:05

we need to make things inclusive not just accessible because accessibility can still be a barrier

45:12

um at times if it's not implemented in the right way yeah

45:17

so yeah when i watched an interview with with sami's family and

45:22

they were talking about ensuring accessibility behind the scenes and that it did sound like a bit of an afterthought i was like okay here we go

45:30

yeah this is this is a bit of a problem

45:37

okay i think it's time for us to give our scores out of five on the inclusive disability representation scale for

45:43

raising dion i really thought about it kick us off [Laughter]

45:49

um so i am giving raising dion a four out of five i'm taking off half a

45:56

point for exactly what we talked about before the lack of sort of you know esperanza

46:04

disappearing randomly in places like i wanna see just you know and again super simple doesn't have to be the point of

46:11

an episode like just super simple you know like background sort of stuff where you see her coming out of the

46:17

school or the car or whatever um and the other the other thing was um you know obviously netflix good on

46:24

them for like making this role um giving this role to a wheelchair user that's awesome but

46:31

if you're going to do that you have to put in the effort and the planning to actually make it accessible and

46:38

inclusive throughout and not be like oh yeah no you didn't think about that until you turned up on set or oh wait

46:45

this is how characters would react to this and not this oh okay yeah so just you know got to put

46:52

in the effort so but overall include you know authentic representation um you

46:57

know great character really you know stealing the show as many people have said um so

47:03

yeah four out of five for me yeah i was a three and a half like literally for the exact same reasons i think like one

47:10

other positive thing i don't think we spent a lot of time talking about is i didn't feel like esperanza's disability

47:15

was like a plot tool in any way which is often used when disabled i think it was it was it

47:21

was okay the very last line esperanza had in season one where she said i know

47:28

what it looks like when people don't see you and she was completely used

47:35

yeah yeah that's true that's true and

47:41

self-appointed label but yeah yeah yeah well so when she said

47:48

you can break that down so when esperanza was talking about it herself personally in her own journey

47:55

that was fine um because that's personal representation like that's yep but when

48:02

it was used almost weaponized in the

48:07

the final bit of season one i was like and then i think like the other thing i

48:12

took points off was the whole like really issues only disabled character like is she there any person with

48:17

disability at this whole school or like in dion's life like are we are we is this all we're doing

48:23

here okay so yeah for me it was three and a half out of five if netflix is hearing this i want you to

48:29

know that i appreciate what you're doing and good job well done um

48:35

however there needs to be significant room for improvement because any kind of exclusion in any way is not okay

48:42

and so i want to do representation and then inclusion so like representation let's

48:50

give it a four because i think it was actually really good inclusion of what we know because we

48:56

don't know a lot about behind the scenes but we kind of get the vibe that there wasn't a lot of stuff going on i'm

49:03

giving them a two yeah because well done for listening to a family and actually having them

49:10

participate in a way they felt comfortable go you but man there's room for improvement yeah like

49:17

shouldn't have been necessary so what does that average out to be that's like a three yeah yeah like okay

49:23

like a three yeah like a three out of five okay it's in the middle too see that's comfy

49:31

oh my god too funny well thank you so much everyone for joining along this week and obviously thank you angel for

49:37

your time it's been absolutely amazing chatting to you and thank you steph as well for being my wonderful co-host

49:43

we want to hear all your thoughts so if you followed along and you have your own idr score or you have your own thoughts

49:48

or you feel like we've missed something in terms of how we analyzed raising deon um we want you to jump on our social

49:54

media if you search reframe podcasts or podcast reframed will come up we're on facebook instagram and twitter we also

50:01

have an email account so if you want to email us you can definitely do that as well it's hello reframepodcast.com

50:08

um and like i said just let us know all your thoughts um and if you want to say hello to angel definitely jump on and

50:14

say hello to angel um and lastly really just wanna before we sign off say a big thank you to the

50:20

community broadcasting foundation as well for helping to fund this series other than that i think that's all we've

50:26

got for you this week and we will see you again next week with another fabulous episode of reframed

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[Music] hello

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[Music]

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[Music]

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[Music] [Applause] you