Audio
Ming Luo: 'The Fundamentals of Caring' + 'In The Dark'
This episode: Ming Luo's experiences of being blind; disability representation in film The Fundamentals of Caring and TV's In the Dark.
Hey ReFramer!
You're now on episode 4, and it's time to re-introduce Robyn Lambird (they/them, she/her) to the series! Jason and Robyn chat all things inclusion, disability representation, and welcome Ming Luo (she/her) as their special guest. Ming brings an array of experiences with her, including lived experience of being blind.
The trio discuss the following media pieces:
The Fundamentals of Caring... Another Hollywood film that casts a non-disabled person as a character with disability. This time, though, they frame disability experiences in a much more realistic and light-hearted way. The story follows a young man with disability as he gets a new direct support person, and goes on his first road trip.
In The Dark... Suggested by Ming, this series is hilarious in the wrong (but so right) kind of way. The story follows a young woman (who happens to be blind), as she tries to uncover who murdered one of her friends. It's a great show, but once again, a non-disabled person is cast in the role.
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welcome to reframed the podcast about disability and media in this series we shine a light on how people with
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disability are represented on our screens why is this important because authentic representation matters
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media is powerful and more often than not they get it very very wrong my name is jason climo and i'll be your
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host join me my co-host and a wonderful selection of guests as we review analyze
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and score disability representation in tv and film [Music]
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welcome back to reframe the podcast about disability in media my name is jason climo and i'm your host about this
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series where we'll be analyzing how inclusive representation of people's disability is in some mainstream media
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and today we'll be talking about one tv show and one film today i also have my
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co-host robin lambert here did you want to say hello robin yeah hi guys so excited to be back um
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i'm actually really excited to analyze the media today um i found them super interesting
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and also excited as always for our guests so it's gonna be good i'm really excited you want to tell us a little
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about who who our guest is or even just tell us their name whatever yeah so um ming is our guest today um
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just a really awesome all-around person but really excited to hear about their um experiences and advocacy and what
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they think of the media that we are analyzing today and ming specifically chose out one of our pieces of media so
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let's just tell people what they are so the first one that we'll be analyzing just you and i is the fundamentals of
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caring uh the film and i think it's quite popular that one um and i think is it paul rudd is that
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his name yeah all right for rods in it i mean he's a bit of a draw card obviously because definitely with that comedy uh
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background i loved so much of it and obviously won't give away too much until we dive into it i love so much of it but
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they were just little bits that i was as always little bits that i was a bit like i think we could have done this a bit better yeah
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then we will introduce ming have a bit of a chat with me ask her some questions about her life we'll do our classic 20
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questions with her and then we'll jump into analyzing in the dark so ming actually chose in the
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dark i asked about a series that um she particularly felt connected to um so as
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a person with vision impairment she actually connected quite well with this uh series again won't give away too much
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until you give the overview and we analyze um but there's so much in that that i found
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so hilarious that i keep like rewinding it like just enjoying it too much that i
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wasn't being critical enough yeah wait let me go back how was that actually frame it was funny
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how was it so good yeah so anyway all right are you ready to get struck stadium yeah let's jump
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into it straight into analyzing our first piece of media which is obviously fundamentals of caring just
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a film did you want to give us a bit of an overview um so like you said earlier paul rudd is i guess the major celeb in
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this one the draw card but he plays a writer who has retired after a personal
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tragedy i'm not sure how much we want to spoil the movie but um
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so yeah and he ends up becoming a caregiver to this disabled teen and um
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i think it's really a story about friendship and about care regardless of
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disability like um so that was interesting for me but yeah they basically embark on this impromptu road
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trip which as you know having a disability can throw up some challenges
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yes but yeah their ability to cope is sort of tested along the way and it's just a really i think again an awesome
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story about friendship and about care um yeah yeah loved it i like like i said so many
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things that i loved just a few things that i wasn't really happy with number one primarily it always comes back to
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this with me i feel like i'm always on this bandwagon but it is so important is that the main character who was the character
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with disability was portrayed by a non-disabled person and i guess the big thing in this one too is
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that like it was big budget so if there was anything where they needed to like adjust the storyline or use any like
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it might have been awesome yeah and also awesome opportunity to have someone like paul rudd like you
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know making it that big like hollywood name film and then uplifting a person with disability like or an actor with
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disability into that you know same league so it was a missed opportunity i felt and also i
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just i don't remember a scene in the film where it was necessary to have a
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non-disabled person yeah you know there wasn't like a flashback to win for or anything like that because
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you know correct me if i i'm wrong and if i'm remembering it wrong but i'm pretty sure the character was disabled from birth so yeah yeah
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yeah exactly so i'm like just was confused i guess and it felt like they were just
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using like the star power basically to i i obviously for an able-bodied audience
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like it wouldn't be that clear but i feel like as a person with a disability and like lived
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experience of like mobility issues and stuff like you can tell when that performance isn't authentic
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um and as much as they got right and and as great as the portrayal was like there's just having that that lived
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experience just gives that level of authenticity i think to the portrayal of a character with a disability which yeah being in the
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community you can definitely pick up on definitely and like i think a lot of actors
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like i think a lot of actors non-disabled actors when they play a character with disability obviously do their research
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yeah but i just don't think that anything is ever going to compare to lived experience like the way that it
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translates it is genuine like you don't have to pretend like it's a genuine it just is the way that it is so um
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obviously there's an element of acting still because they're playing a character but it's yeah if you have a ability it's always going
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to be the most genuine representation possible so that was a very missed opportunity i felt so um the other thing i really
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wasn't that happy with was i feel like um there weren't any other characters with disability and i felt like that was
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a massive missed opportunity too um i feel like there was this whole narrative around
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the main character feeling so isolated and feeling different all of the time and
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obviously that was going to happen if you're not connected with your community so a big part of i guess like my
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identity as a person with disabilities obviously learning from and building those relationships with other people i think
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though on the other hand that we are quite privileged in that we are very well connected to a community both
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through the internet and and you know through my like myself like through a sporting environment but there are a lot
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of people that aren't connected within the community and they do feel very isolated and lonely and that they're
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living in experience that other people can't understand so i do think that it's also important to show that yeah so
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perhaps like they could have started off showing that he was isolated feeling that way because literally he wasn't leaving the house
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and then once he left the house and then maybe built that connection like yeah it might even have just been like a scene
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at the very end where it was just like him going to the shops or something and he just like bumped into
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someone he knows and it's also another person's disability like i just feel like that is such an important
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part because it is that narrative around like are people with disability feel isolated because they're like the only one and
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it's like no that's not true like it's like 20 15 to 20 of the population in most countries like so
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um i i feel like that was really important is there anything you felt like was done really well
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um yeah like i said i actually really yeah i really did enjoy this movie and i don't know if it's just because um you
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know personal experiences and stuff like that but i found the way that they handled sort of
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not having the carer pity him and and that being valued in the relationship but yeah also sort of showing the
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struggles and anxieties of having a disability and kind of just wanting to be able to do normal things like i think
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everyone assumes that when you have a disability especially like one that impacts your mobility like oh you must
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be really sad because you know you can't run up a mountain and it's like no that's that's not the case but i am
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really frustrated that like every time i drink soup i spill it all over myself like yeah so yeah and i think like for
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him the big thing was like he just wanted to stand to pee like and i think that's like
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yeah it's those little things that can build up and sometimes lead to this frustration it's not the fact that we can't do these like big grand gestures
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of like athleticism or whatever so yeah and often that stuff that's like can be
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overcome by like more inclusive mindsets or accessibility exactly so yeah that was one thing i loved the relationship
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between um trevor and ben so trevor's obviously the main character with disability and dance um the carer
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correctly forgot that the wrong way around um but i loved how like the caregiver
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was like not like you said not pitying yeah there was this one particular part
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where um he says something like it's something like other people with
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disability go out and do normal things yeah all day or something and i was like this
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is perfect because usually like it's it's narrated in such a different way like
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isn't shown that people with disability do go out and do normal yeah like it's such uh
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it's just not shown i guess like throwing in those like standard normal everyday
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and i know like in my experience in my family it's not like my parents have pushed me because they want me to be
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able body but they've you know just sort of helped me overcome some of those anxieties of like not taking a chance
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because you're not sure how a situation is going to turn out and you know it leads to having that independence and
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that confidence and i think that's great to sort of highlight that in a hilarious like funny movie so
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definitely and again like using that star power to build like yeah having that push about and like look
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there's so much that i think was done right about like framing and yeah in this it was just such a missed
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opportunity basically yeah passing and i think also this i'm going to bring it to language
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again and we know that we always kind of talk about how language is contextualized within a film um but there was some i mean like
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i think probably like uh like a warning to anyone who might go and watch the film after hearing us talk about this
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the r word is used in it there's parts of me that's kind of like i understand what they were trying to do
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and i'm pretty sure it was trevor the person with disability that used the language most of the
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english but there's you know there's other words that are used as well that are quite ableist and i'm kind of like
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how necessary was this to the storyline to show this i think it's such an interesting
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thing because i kind of argue with myself because i think it's important to show that disability can be ableist too
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and there's internalized ableism yeah like to take it to that next step and use that language because yeah
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i think if you use a language you've got to have a scene later on that explains in some way like gives the context of
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that language yeah actually it's inappropriate to use if you don't yeah the way the way that i saw it is i
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guess you know number one like he's in the beginning he's kind of portrayed as being a bit of an he is a teenager so he
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wouldn't be like clued on i guess to the world sorry sorry to interject but he does pretend to have like a neurological
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impairment that he doesn't actually have and i'm like yeah yeah why does this keep happening in films like i know it's just like to set that
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scene that he's like an i don't even think it was just that though i think it's it was sort of in a way
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portraying the frustration that teenagers with disabilities can have
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when the whole disability community is lumped in together and people have one perception of what it means to be
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disabled and that is that you have an intellectual impairment you have as well and that that i think that is a
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real frustration especially for young people and i did notice that the mom actually says don't use that word
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yes yes perfect so yeah i i sort of was again i was torn on
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it because i was like do we really need it but then i thought it was yeah it was actually an interesting way to portray
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that frustration you mean that it happened she said don't say that i must have yeah
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but that's perfect like again that's like the perfect way to show that yeah he can be an ableist even
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though he's a person with a disability but then yeah we make it clear that that's actually not appropriate to you know because i guess yeah every time
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that like ableist language is used in a film no matter the context my fear is that some people that watch it will take
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away that it's okay to say or in a certain context it's okay when obviously
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you know unless it's a reclaimed word and only have reclaimed it can use it um
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most of the time it's just not appropriate so yeah that's my main
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language that's why i always put it up i guess um last thing that i actually loved about this was the romance
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like that was awesome just to again portray a character that isn't this asexual naive
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like virgin that is you know a person with a disability like and again they managed to portray the anxieties that
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people with disabilities might have entering that being you know perceived as being different but also you know
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like it's just a cool friendship between him and and the girl that they pick up and like
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i just thought that was awesome yeah they did the whole like teen coming of age and yeah the person with disability
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really well like in certain in like in those certain situations i was literally just like you just watched that half an
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hour you would just literally be like oh yeah this is just like like a normal teenager like coming to grips with like
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working out that they're like sexually attracted to like a person yeah person like are they going to be interested in
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me or not and then obviously then you got to the scenes where where disability was then talked about as well
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but i thought they did it in such a great way and dismantled the whole idea because
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you know because he was young and because he was quite isolated of course he felt that
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this person was not going to be interested in you but that it happened
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she is and so i thought that was so powerful because obviously you know the
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the age group that it's directed at being that it is that like teen coming of age is teenagers like
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and so i thought that was so important to show that romance and break that down because yeah probably would have left
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people with disability would have left the cinema or off left you know watching that film feeling you know
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kind of excited that okay yeah empowered and something is empowered and then non-disabled people would probably have
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left being like okay yeah like these sorts of things are possible because i think there's a part where i don't know how i loved how it
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like came across but like the girl he's interested in which is selena gomez we should probably
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mention oh yeah thanks a joke about like if you can get it up or something oh yeah yeah and then
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he kind of just like plays that off straight away and he's just like they like have a joke about it i can't even
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remember how it is but she like asked him two questions yeah and then he answers one yeah once yeah to just sort
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of make it out like he can so um that was a very like teen way of going about talking about sex as well i
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felt yeah but yeah basically the idea of presenting people as sexual beings
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like disabled people as sexual beings and romantic beings very very important i was happy they did
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this so okay score time what did you give it um because obviously the character isn't
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authentically represented in the fact that there is a disabled actor i gave it a four out of
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five but everything else i pretty much yeah really enjoyed so cool i gave it a three and a half so
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again um but yeah and literally same reasons which i think you know we're all on that
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same wavelength around like inclusive casting is obviously very important and genuine representation is
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obviously very important and so you're always going to lose points for that if you definitely well and just again harping on but such
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a missed opportunity to elevate you know a actor with disabilities profile and
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using poor pride to mentor that person even like in their acting ability and just anyway all that
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but we bad on enough i think about fundamentals of caring i think now it's time to meet our very special guest
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for today so ming if you'd like to join us come say hello
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um we're very excited to have you um did you just want to start off by introducing yourself telling us a bit
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about what you do know you do a lot of advocacy work so maybe touch on that
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no worries um and thanks for inviting me it's so exciting to be here um talking about these films i was just like
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mentally con commenting on everything you go because i watched it and i did really
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and i was like yeah agreeing with everything um good film um so uh i mean i am
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23. i always forget i feel like i went past 22 i just stole caring
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shame um [Laughter]
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so i have a vision impairment i was born with retinitis pigmentosa um
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which basically means your retina starts degenerating over time um
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i was born in singapore and moved to australia with my family when i was nine um
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i did a bachelor of economics and commerce at uni and now i'm working at the department of finance in wa um but
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i'm doing nothing to do with finance i'm more in like the training space um professional development type thing um
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which is cool and i'm also currently just started doing my master's in public
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policy and i was meant to be in london for that but you know little virus had to get in the way
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are you gonna go you're still gonna get to go um i'm hoping so i'm crossing everything
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um i'm i was meant to go september but i'm looking at next academic year september
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and just hoping hoping hoping um that's my fingers for you yeah thank
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you thank you but the online learning is going all right at the moment so that's all good um and yes i have been
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in the advocacy space for quite a while now so i started when i was in high school my last year of high
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school i was introduced to the uh it was a
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youth um advocacy council for vision impairment
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and started with that and found it really interesting and so kind of just spiraled on into
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several projects and committees um but the one i've been on longest probably is the youth disability
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advocacy network um widen which uh works to advocate on behalf of
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all youths living with a disability across wa um and we've really grown
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i was with it from the start and we've grown so much over the past five years or so and um
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we started off doing stuff like um workshops and accessibility audits so more the educational side um and now
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we've got quite a few um projects funded um to do with
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self-advocacy and really empowering individuals to be able to advocate for some for
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themselves right which i think is really important absolutely
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that's awesome yeah really cool um is there a particular reason why you think this
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kind of work is important now like do you think we still have a way to go in terms of progressing that or
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oh yeah definitely um my biggest thing or yeah my biggest thing is social
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inclusion um just because i went through it myself as well going from uh not being in the community to being in the
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community and feeling the difference it makes so you know i want that for everyone to be
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able to have a group or to feel like they belong somewhere and a big part of that is
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uh just attitudes public attitudes and i know we've gotten a lot better um but
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there's still a long way to go and it's not always a thing that people consciously
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do and like i don't like people with disabilities or i don't talk about anything like that
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a lot of times a lot of the time it comes just out of ignorance and that's why i think
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advocacy work like educational stuff educating the public and things like that is so important because yeah it's
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one of the fundamental building blocks for changing attitudes um and it goes both
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ways as well you empower the public and you also empower the person with disabilities and
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yeah then hopefully you can make a better world i know i love like when you talk about
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this you bring it down to like and then hopefully the world just becomes really inclusive and beautiful
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no but it's very true and i think what you're talking about is unconscious biases because obviously people can be actively like
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ableist which is basically discriminating against people with disability but a lot of the time that's
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not the case anymore a lot of the things that we face now is to do with unconscious biases
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which is like ignorances towards people with disability and people don't even realize they're doing it so
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um you know other other disabled people do it to other disabled people it happens everywhere so
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um yeah and that's kind of what we're trying to tap into i guess with this podcast because media and representation
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dictates people's perceptions a lot of the time whether they realize it or not it's actually feeding that unconscious
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bias in their mind so if we can have more positive and realistic representations of people with
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disability will feed those uh people's perceptions in society
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and that society will keep progressing and becoming more inclusive so that's the idea here and then we're kind of
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just telling them what they did right or wrong really so i guess on that topic why do you
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think i've sort of probably ruined it already why do you personally think um
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representing people with disability in film and tv is so important and that can be in front of the camera and behind the
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camera as well yeah well obviously everything that you said
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sorry same as above but but it is true it is very important
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um and you know people with disabilities what make up 15 20 of the population so
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i think film and media should be representative of that as well you know it's not they should portray that it
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should be an accurate portrayal of the demographic in society
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um and it is also a very big important step to um it's probably a bad word to use but like
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normalizing disabilities i guess just bringing it more front and center all the time and it just breaks down the
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whole our disabilities is this kind of thing in the corner and you know we pay attention to it when we need to or
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whatever yeah it's like i think i got this from you robin one time when i was talking to you
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that you came up with this phrase i think and you might have heard it elsewhere but it's it's about disability being a
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normal part of human diversity so representing that because we are we exist and like you said we're i think
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we're one of the biggest marginalized communities in um most countries
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so why are we still being excluded everywhere really
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and then to sort of bring it back to your own personal experience do you think there are any specific barriers
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within um film and television either in front or behind of the camera um that people with vision impairment or
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who are blind sort of face that other people might not think about
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um i don't know too much about the tv and film industry but just
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i think it's um a very visual
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industry um obviously so in terms of acting um the biggest thing that probably comes
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to me is especially for people who are born blind things like facial expression um body
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languages stuff is probably something that's very difficult for them to grasp
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um so i see i understand the challenges there and also um i guess things with editing
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or video editing or whatever else goes on behind this thing
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is also quite difficult if you don't actually have the vision for it um i guess i guess even engaging with
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like media do you do you face any challenges that people might not be conscious of as a as an audience even um
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yeah well it's i thought this would be something fairly well known but it isn't so the other day um
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because i watched lucifer recently loved that show and i was recommending it to my friend
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and she was like oh yeah that's a show of that that that hunk right and i was like i guess so
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ah so you don't see it i was like no i just um because i just listened to the audio described track
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and i don't watch it at all and she was just like oh right i had to explain it to her
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so yeah so for me if the film is not audio described it's very hard to know what what's going on unless unless it's
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one of those like sitcoms where they're talking all the time and it's fairly easy to gauge what's happening
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but some films are terrible without lucifer being one of them i
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tried to watch season three when it first came out and it didn't have the audio track and i gave up after two
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episodes i was like i have no idea what's going on so is that a thing that happens like do you find that a lot of
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tv series and films don't have the audio track and then if they do do they often come out like after like is it a few
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weeks or a few months i think there's some legislation now that
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every um film or tv that's being produced has to come out with an audio track um i think at the same time when
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it's released um so it's it's yeah it's rare that i can't find one
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unless it tends to be the older ones yeah yeah that's fair
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cool well already i reckon let's dive straight into analyzing our second piece
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of media which is the one that you chose for us today and we're very grateful i'm so excited to hear your thoughts yeah
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i'm very excited to hear your thoughts um and so it is the tv series in the dark which you can watch on
27:43
stan i think there's one called into the dark so don't get confused like i almost did
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that it's called in the dark and it's quite yeah i'll let robin to tell us a bit about uh what happens
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yeah so it's this um american crime drama television series um and it's
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about this character called murphy who is a blind woman in her 20s and she's kind of just a little bit of a mess of a
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person to be honest like has a lot of issues going on um she basically only
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has two friends which is jess her her very understanding roommate and um tyson
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who's this this teenager who saved her from um a violent mugging um
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and yeah it's tyson uh she ends up stumbling across tyson and um you know presumes that he's
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dead and it's kind of this uh narrative of her trying to figure out what happened to a friend when the police
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don't really seem all that interested in solving that crime um but yeah it was super interesting i i
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personally really enjoyed the representation in this tv show so i'm super excited to hear what um ming has
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to say about it as a blind person so yes there's so much
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there's so much to dissect here especially since it's a series of two seasons now okay i'll start with the
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main character murphy um obviously points for the blind person being the main character but extra
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points for it being like a blindness is very much like a side thing the main focus is still with
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the plot which is it's a whole forensic in oh it's a whole like
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what do you call it investigation uh mystery solving kind of show
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um which i loved and then all the you know issues she faces as a blind person
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it kind of it kind of just is just seamlessly integrated into the film like she would just be going to the
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drugstore you'll see her using her cane fueling up all the bottles taking a sip
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which flavor it is it just kind of yeah it's not a focus but it's just there and it adds
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humor into it as well yeah me and jason were both saying like we had to keep going back to watch it because it was
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just so funny that we forgot like we were supposed to be analyzing it like i was just enjoying it so much that i was
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like oh wait i'm supposed to be like analyzing this character i love that scene where um i think it's
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one of the first episodes where she hooks up with this married man and then the wife comes back and then the man's
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like oh go hide hide hide and then she goes under the table and it's a glass table
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and the wife's like nice to see you again murphy and then she like taps the table and she's like it's glass isn't it
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so just things it makes it so funny and makes it just part of life type yeah you know um
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which is the other thing as well the character murphy is not any stereotypical portrayal of someone with
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this with a disability at all she's not doing it staying at home doing nothing type thing we're not in the traditional
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way anyway um and she's not like this perfect working really hard
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like role models she's a mess she's alcoholic smokes uh
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what one night stands every night type thing um
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so yeah it's just very your average person i think they did
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really good at breaking down the tropes that like people possibility especially like people who are blind like that the
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tropes that are often attached to them which is obviously yeah like you've said that they might often stay living their
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parents for ages or forever um or that they'll have like someone living in the
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home that's constantly like caring for them like she has this great relationship with her friend obviously that she lives with where they sort of
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like lean on each other and care for each other um and like you said she's not like this
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traditional either like needing care all the time or this perfect like role model person
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she's like a very complicated complex person the only thing i couldn't really work out is that like was she almost
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like not probably not a great word to use but spiraling and like doing these activities like anti-social activities
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because she was struggling with her blindness did you find that ming like what was
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your perception of that i think initially no but there was it's i think
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maybe in season two some of these issues were touched on a bit more um so
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they kind of explore on the side as well her dependency on her roommate chess we
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obviously just does everything kind of does everything for her because you know she's so nice um and murphy's a slob
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um and i don't know if any conclusions were really reached but it was more of a
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question that was posed you know does she really yeah jess can she really live independently on her own
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um and from my viewing that was one of the things that i really enjoyed it kind of
32:53
did a really good job of clapping back to some of the assumptions of the general able-bodied public whilst also
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perhaps yeah tackling these signs of internalized ableism or denial i think
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like that there's a couple of scenes there was one where she sort of when she came across the body of tyson she was
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like oh he smelled different and then then the the cop was like oh right yeah because your other senses are like
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heightened and she's like no that's not a thing i'm not daredevil like he just smelled different like it was so good
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and then like um yeah there was another one where she was like you know trying to you know she was saying she was going
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to try and solve the the murder and her roommate jess was like you can't do that and she's like why because i'm blind and
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she's like no because you didn't go to school for it and you can't even remember to like plug your phone in like
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so i thought it was like really good and then also sort of how they highlighted the importance of the relationship um
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between murphy and then the other blind character i think was the cop's daughter
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yeah the importance of having like role models and like sort of friendships
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within the community so i thought like it tackled those sides of things like in a really fun way
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definitely they also tackled like like in that relationship between murphy and chloe the pitying mindset as well as
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invasive questions because obviously you know we all get so many invasive questions from people on the street
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sometimes and it's frustrating and i think that was such a good thing to break down because there's a part where
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i think it's it's one of the cops someone is like asking is it wants to ask her um
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when she became blind and why and they said like can you tell me how and she's like how i lost my virginity and then
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she like starts telling that story and i'm like she just he's so like witty and fast and breaks
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down that like about like asking these invasive questions in such a funny way
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too yeah i loved it and i think even in that scene like the cop says oh like wow i'm
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so sorry for like how she actually did lose her sight and she's like please tell me like that's not how you treat
34:55
chloe like yes yeah like you've got to stop doing that yeah exactly and she says something like treat her like you
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know any other teenager like make her do chores and things like that so yeah it's like diminishing that whole pitying my
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mind set which i think is obviously so important because that's what we're here all to talk about
35:14
is anything else you really wanted to highlight me from from in the dark um
35:19
well yes this was one thing i actually did not like about it as much as everything else
35:24
is the assisted technology they portrayed so when she uses her phone and when she
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goes on the computer and stuff it's all she talks to it um and it sounds like she's using siri um just because there's
35:37
like that baby she talks to it and her phone does it i'm like no siri doesn't do all that stuff for you
35:45
it'd be nice if siri did do all that for you though yeah it's it's voice over um and it would have been really cool if
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they actually showed you know her using voiceover every now and then um
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and and because that's actually what people use and especially on the computer as well i remember there was one scene
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they i think they were trying to hack into the police's computer um and they just did tried to open all
36:10
these files with voice command or whatever it was a bit unrealistic for me
36:16
yeah but they're probably trying to make it like funny too i think still yeah yeah yeah
36:21
which is fine um yeah yeah explaining probably bugged me a little bit
36:26
yeah because it'd be nice if it was like that easy sort of thing but it's just not and i think this is probably one of
36:32
the things that again i always talk about this about like genuine casting and representation of people with
36:38
disabilities that the actress i don't believe is actually blind or visually impaired so um
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and i mean obviously there would have been different challenges that would come with actually genuinely casting
36:50
that role as as as a person with disability or a person who is blind or
36:55
with vision impairment but i think those sorts of things would have been so
37:01
much more genuine like the person would have had that on their phone already like they would have just had that experience they could have brought to
37:08
the show and made it way more genuine yeah i wonder what the reason because um
37:13
i believe her name is chloe the cub's daughter who's also blind she's genuinely blind yeah
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so i think she could have had some input but maybe there were some reasons why they didn't include that sort of stuff
37:26
so i i don't know i don't know and yeah i just think we've got to get out of this mindset that it's
37:32
too hard to you know use genuinely disabled people in disabled roles like it's like we've
37:38
just got to do it and you've got to just be accessible and inclusive enough in the casting in the filming in everything
37:46
like post editing everything to make it accessible and inclusive for them so that you can get that genuine representation like it has to be
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prioritized i think anyway enough of my ranting let's go to scores ming on
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the inclusive disability representation scale out of five what would you give in the dark
38:05
well i was actually pretty super impressed by this so i gave it a 4.5
38:10
good job nice right i am i gave it a four and uh i gave it a four out of five just because
38:16
of that you know i thought it might have been a good opportunity to highlight you know an actor with vision impairment as
38:22
always um but everything else yeah i really enjoyed about this and i'm so glad that ming brought it to my
38:27
attention yeah me too i'm exactly the same as you robin again i feel like we
38:33
are just way too in sync one day we're going to have a big just a big b
38:38
something up that we don't agree on i was a four point four out of five sorry um because i just do think that
38:47
this is such a good opportunity as it always is it's such a good opportunity to have that inclusive and
38:53
genuine representation and casting so missed opportunity there but i will keep
38:58
supporting the show because it is very good framing um and it's also hilarious so if you haven't seen this
39:05
you should um but that's about it from us today so thank you so much for joining me today
39:12
ming and robin especially you ming is our special guest giving us your insights allowing us to almost like
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delve into your brain and ask you all the questions about different things um and obviously special mention thank you
39:24
for putting us me and robin onto in the dark um
39:29
very excited to keep watching that show i'll need to watch season two because i'll be honest i watched uh up to the end of season one um and yeah for anyone
39:37
who followed along thank you so much as well for following us this episode um go check
39:43
out robin and ming's uh instagrams or i don't actually know me you're not on instagram facebook no i'm not buying
39:49
them on facebook yes yes you can go check them out there um and obviously if you'd like to keep the conversation
39:55
going we want to hear your thoughts about the fundamentals of caring and in the dark jump on our
40:01
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40:07
you or if you just prefer to email us with your big stories and different opinions
40:13
tell us uh everything then you can email us at hello reframepodcast.com
40:19
we really want these conversations to continue i say it every week but we really want these conversations to continue because we're not just here to
40:26
harp on we're here to invite other people into this conversation to get people to think about when they're
40:32
watching something how inclusive was that framed and and to go and google search when they see a character with disability if the actor or actress or
40:39
person who played that role was a person with disability and then hopefully as a society we can
40:46
start thinking more inclusively and then the people that make these things will then obviously become more inclusive as
40:51
well so that's our dream make a better world like being said make a better world
40:58
thank you again everyone and that's it bye thanks thanks for having me
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hello [Music]
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