There's a young boy who want to do what it was cut up from our surgery prosthetic picts burgery telling me I'm normal, but normal. They never really made me see they are always painting discriminated. But that seems like such a tremendously obvious thing to do, doesn't it. Disability sport presented by the people with disabilities. Only no one in the world had ever done anything like that before. It was revolutionary. I was looking at these kids and
they were in awe. They were like, We've never seen this before. We don't have a disabled actress who was an Oscar winner and who's on the cover of Vote. I quickly found like, when we have clients who go to jobs that are completely unrelated to disability, they would
consistently be asked to speak about their disabled experience. This industry that I'm in, the entertainment industry is wonderful in many ways and can achieve great things, but as also responsible for so much and the world and so many dangerous narratives, and it's responsible for so much A Raser. Yeah. Throughout the interviews for this series, one issue comes up
time and time again. Representation. The general consensus appears to be that in all parts of society, disabled people are represented inaccurately, offensively, or worst of all, they are ignored. In this episode, we're asking why representation matters and how we can achieve more accurate it and greater representation moving forward. I'm Sophie Morgan and this is equal to episode three. Accurate representation matters. How many the team behind this podcast
are exceptional and I use that word deliberately. They are the exception to the rule because when they made the Netflix documentary Rising Phoenix about the Paralympic Games, they insisted on using disabled talent both on and off screen. From day one, disabled people were put at the heart of the filmmaking process, Paralympians like us as Tatiana McFadden, who we heard from in the last episode, was one of
Rising Phoenix's producers. The researchers were disabled as well. Even the film's title track is a collaboration between composer Daniel Pemberton and Crip Hop Nation, a movement of disabled hip hop artists and musicians. Because due to the proactive approach taken over six of the Rising Phoenix working days were fulfilled by people with a disability, and in this podcast production. Over sixty of the people involved identify as disabled. Both
projects were designed by disabled people for disabled people. Don't fit into your perception, how dare you define me? I'm beyond what you see as perfect. Rising Phoenix made its stars into icons going into the film. Ellie Cole, an Australian Paris swimmer and wheelchair basketballer, had already won fifteen Paralympic medals about some Australia, and received the Order of Australia and been named Cosmopolitans two thousand and fifteen Sportswomen of the Year, but the film took her fame to
a whole new audience. I didn't really couldn't really comprehend just had big Rising Phoenix was going to be until probably the day it dropped on Netflix and I started getting hundreds upon hundreds of messages from people all over the world, including one David Beckham, which just blew my mind. But for me, I'm just very proud, like I said before, to be in a documentary that actively promoted the Paralympic movement.
I think the main basis of messages that I was getting was we didn't really understand the struggles that Paralympians go through. You know, we can't believe that there are so many financial struggles just for the Paralympic Games to be hosted. You know, this needs to ends. And so I think it was almost like a movement of people just crying out for a quality UM and I have seen a significant change in that over the last twelve months. Part of that change was the growing visibility of disabled
people in the media beyond the Games. In fact, Ellie broke the glass ceiling when she appeared on the cover of Australia's Women's Health magazine. I remember from me, you know, picking up my Women's Health magazine and seeing my self on a cover. I just had this like moment where I reflected on my entire life and how I'd almost
always been put in a bit of a corner. Um. It's almost like I was invisible, and then for me to be able to hold this magazine and see that like people with disabilities are all of a sudden everywhere, Paralympic athletes are all of a sudden everywhere. You know, people are so proud to UM own us is one of their own. Like I know Australia is very proud
of their Paralympic athletes. One of our major supermarketing chains is promoting the Olympic and Pilampic Games this month, and they have quite a few cardboard cutouts of the athletes all across their store. And four weeks ago, there was this little girl, she would have been about six years old. Um she also had one leg, and she was standing next to my um my supermarket poster and I remember seeing it and maybe tear up because I had never
had that as a child. And apparently this young girl like saw my clad out so that I had one leg, and she just screamed out, like, mom, there's a girl that looks exactly like I do. These examples prove the power of representation, that even the smallest amount of visibility and recognition can have a huge impact on individual people and the world. But right now, there is very little representation of disabled people in the media, let alone in
Hollywood itself. But there is someone who has managed to break through. Hello. My name is Jamia Dmill and I am an actor, a writer, a host, and an advocate. So lovely to see my favorite thing joining Jamila and me in this conversation is Shenaid Burke said, is a leading disability advocate who through education, advocacy, and design is changing the fashion industry. And there's also an exact could
producer on this podcast. So I've read that you say that you're an advocate first and all of those other things after. Yes, why is that? Why do you say that? Well,
I think that's by nature. I think I'm probably recognized still first and foremost as an actor, but I it's what It's my driving force in life, and it has been since I was nineteen, and it's really the only way that I can carry on in this industry because this industry that I'm in, the entertainment industry, is wonderful in many ways and can achieve great things truly on like a humane societal level, but it's also responsible for putting so much into the world and so many dangerous narratives,
and it's it's responsible for so much erasure um people with disabilities still treated as a mistake and anomaly that we should just ignore and pretend aren't there and then maybe they'll go away. And I think that it's been really interesting to straddle this industry with as being a public figure as well as having an invisible disability myself so I kind of straddle both of those worlds and recognize how often I try and bring it up, and how often no one wants to hear it from me.
They just want me to look nice on the cover of the magazine. And it really hurts my feelings because I grew up with much more visible disabilities and I was in crutches, on ZIMP frames, are in a wheelchairs, and and I remember just how lost and lonely I felt, and how I felt like I could never be loved or I could never be accepted, or I could never go out and have fun because I would never was never able to see that reflected back at me, you know, from any form of media, not in any magazines and
in the movies, they portray people with disabilities always as a sub story. There is a story arc for the non disabled person, and they are the tragedy that's weighing down the non disabled person. They're never just out getting piste and having a laugh, you know, They're never ever having an awkward sex scene that rarely able to be in comedy. It's just so because I remember how painful
that erasial was. I think it's why I fight for so many different types of representation, not just disability representation, but I feel as though it is the one that is the greatest emergency of us needing to address. So what would better representation look like? Well, currently the UN estimates that around one billion people worldwide live with a disability. That's about fifteen percent of us. But do we see
that fifteen percent reflected on our screens? And I just don't know how many more examples we need of finally accepting or like representing a minority and registering how it's not only good for society at large, it's also great for profit. You know, the Purple Pound does exist, and
there is money to be spent. People do want to see representation and Black Panther, Crazy, Rich Asians, Bridesmaids, Shrill, all these different shows that finally finally paid homage to these different groups who exist in the world everywhere, how well they did, and how it only made the world a better place to have that increased diversity. And so it is it is up to magazines and media figures to represent and show up. But do we see that
fifteen percent reflected on our screens? Janaid Burke, who we heard earlier advocates for the fashion industry to be more inclusive of disabled people. In her TED talk, she spoke about why design should include everyone and is now director of the design organization Tilting the Lens, which works to raise the baseline standards of accessibility in design. Her best selling book, Break the Mold asks what it means to be different in a world where you feel that you
don't belong. The research is really clear when we talk to this about representation, because you know, all speaking characters across the top movies of Titsan nineteen, only two point three had a disability and of the top TV network shows, only twelve of disabled characters who are within a minority
already or played by disabled actors. I mean when you look at statistics like that, reflecting also on the success of Crypt Camp, Rising Phoenix, Coda, Sound of Metal, some of which we have questions about how do we change this or is the change already happening and we just need to be patient for it to become more accelerated. Perhaps change is happening, just like Rising Phoenix, Crypt Camp
mentioned thereby, said Broke the Mold. The film even had a co director with a disability USA is Jim labret I was born with spider bifida. I've had a career in audio for over forty years, as first in theater and then in doing sound mixing, predominantly for documentaries in the San Francisco Bay area. But Jim's journey to success has not been straightforward. Here he tells ed about the challenges he's faced in the film industry. I found myself being really the only person that I knew with a
disability working in post production audio. Unfortunately, I mean fortunately, although I can't walk. I I grew up in a split level house just North New York City, and my bes on the top floor. So yeah, uh, and so I was really good at climbing stairs. And you know, when you're working in theater as a sound person, you have to be able to listen from different areas in the theater. So I was able to park my chair
and climb out and listen from different locations. UM and that gave me UM an incredible turning ground in regards to the aesthetics of sound. UM and I then wound up working for at an incredible facility in Berkeley, the Salience Film Center. So all produced the English patient and unbearable likeness of being and there was a great facility there and the Wheelshire access was very good. Um so I was able to work my way up there then
started my own business. Quip Camp explores Jim's childhood at a summer camp and how a group of friends became history making disability activists. The world always wants us to We live with that reality at the time. So many kids just like me, We're being sent to institute as it was just a continual struggle. Disabled people like myself are unable to use public transportations. We needed a civil
rights law of our own. Co directed with Nicole Newham and with Barack and Michelle Obama as executive producers, the film was nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards. Members of the Academy's Documentary Branch have chosen these nominees
for Best Documentary Feature, and they are Cript Camp. I don't like to kind of say, oh my gosh, you know, we broke down the walls and everything, but cript Camp was really well regarded and what it showed Hollywood was that there are authentic stories coming from the disabled community that people don't know about, and that very rich stories, and that also people with disabilities can make OSCAR nominated films, and I think that it and it's also good business,
so as we've seen with other communities that are marginalized, once we are able to be the people that are producers and directors and editors and writers, that we know where these stories are and they're unique and they're they're fresh, and they're new, and they're incredibly compelling that people want to see them. So I think that I've heard of kind of a crypt camp effect that I think helped open the door much wider than it had been just
cracked before. Jim spoke about wanting to see disability represented more widely in the film industry, with disabled actors cost in every kind of role. The world that I want to live in is one of which there is a performer who has a disability playing a role that wasn't written specifically for someone with that disability. My kind of joke about this is that I live for the day when I see a one armed barrista in the background of drama and that they are there because we are
part of the fabric of society. Keeley cat Wells is from the UK and based in l A. She is the founder of c Talent, an agency that represents disabled artists, athletes, and influences. She tells us about some of the barriers
that still persist in the industry. I quickly found like, when we have clients who go to jobs that are completely unrelated to disability, they would consistently be asked to speak about their disabled experience, and it was almost like people when they spoke to them, not disabled people, would
find the most interesting thing about them be disability. And whilst obviously it's incredibly important that we have those experts in disability, and we do some disability consulting as well, and we represent some disability subject matter experts, and that's incredibly important, but there is also a difference between those subject matter experts and also people who are experts in
acting in cinematography, and we mustn't confuse the two. I think it gets exhausting for disabled people to consistently be educating others on their lived experience or their access requirements. So I think as soon as we can get these some of these experts in subjects beyond disability, then we can both normalize the disabled experience and then break down
those barriers in in the employment process and beyond. Everyone is definitely open to having more conversations, but what I would like to see is more action taken from those conversations. Definitely seeing more and more organizations popping up that are
doing the work, which is amazing. But I still think we have this massive issue of pipeline and behind the camera representation, even though I think we're slowly slowly getting there with in front of the camera representation, but I would absolutely love to see this, you know, inequitable systems changed, and I would like to turn those doubts that people
have into questions. I still think people are very afraid to ask and to touch on disability just because they're not familiar with it, and it's um they're just scared. I think. So as soon as we can kind of take that fear away, then I think we can move move forward much quicker. But we're getting there slowly but surely. Organizations like Keeley's are changing the conversation around disability. But there are still long held and deeply entrenched stereotypes to confront,
and we don't need to look back far to find them. Historically, if we look at if we look back to you know, Captain Hook and the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the media's perception of disabled people. It's been a villains or of pity, and I think to bring that back to society and be like, no, that's not what disability is. This is what disability is, will be monumental to shift
perceptions in an inclusion. From books to films, TV and theater, negative portrayals of disability are tightly woven throughout our culture. Even some of our most iconic characters are made villainous by their physical or psychological impairments, whether it's Star Wars as Quadruple and Pute, Darth Vader, Shakespeare's poisonous Hunchback, Richard the Third, or the wheelchair user doctor Strange Love. As keenly mentioned, sometimes the representation of disabled people does more
harm than good. The late great comedian and journalist Stella Young, who happens to be a wheelchair user, in her claimed ted talk, describes those images you so often see of disabled people. This is what she says, and in the par as few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You know you may have seen images like this one. The only disability in life is a bad attitude mm hmm, or this one your excuse is invalid indeed, or this one before you
quit try. Yeah, you know, you might have seen the one the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there. They are what we call inspiration pawn and I use the term pawn deliberately because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of
non disabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person. Some ads are created to make the viewer cry, and Christina Malon, head of Inclusive Design at Wonderman Thompson, says, it's a real problem and to get that emotional gut reaction to keep your eyes on screen. But these ads do nothing for the disabled community. They actually hurt the disabled community.
So when we think about inspiration, we should think about people inspiring to act, not inspiring to cry an inspiration porn inspires people to cry and pity the community, and when that is one of the only kind of ads that is out there about disability, then it makes disability look like a negative experience. And like in any life experience, you have positive and negative ones, and that's dis ability. But it shouldn't just be the one that people see
that is inspiration born. So often we see disabled people represented in outdated tropes, the pitiful, the vulnerable, the weak, secondary character or the villain or superhuman. These tropes are harmful and if unchallenged, leave disabled people trapped. But what
about no representation whatsoever. Aaron Brown is the founder of one in four, a new disability coalition creating systemic change for representation and access in Hollywood, and also a partner at Management three sixty, one of Hollywood's biggest talent agencies. She told us about the personal cost of feeling unseen, woralthfully under represented, and, UM, I guess I've always been subconsciously aware of that, but my real awakening to that has been in the past couple of years about how
how missing it is um on screen. Um, something you internalize the disabled person is that you don't deserve to be portrayed on screen and my awakening is and how misguided that is. Aaron's story reveals just how much representation matters, and it can be especially powerful for children growing up with a disability seeing themselves on TV or in the media. This is r J. Mitty, one of the stars of hit American drama Breaking Bad and mass media with disability
wasn't really there. No one really talked about disabilities like I grew up talking about disabilities because my grandparents and and I having having a disability and all the people in my life from from physical to internal to to mental disabilities. Um so I always grew up around it. I never realized how to the majority of the world at the time, it was so abnormal. Um And know when when I was first started acting, I actually technically
don't see myself as disabled. Um I. And even with like cerebral policy, I don't see myself categorized as having a disability, even though I I do, um that you was. I never told him. I never told him, never told him. So my my my resume, I would submit, it would just have me. I didn't put cerebral policy. I didn't and and I didn't think it was relevant. It wasn't
like I it wasn't really relevant. Why why do you need to know something that really has It's not in the breakdown, it's not in this it's it's it's not relevant. And so if they were looking at me a little funny, right, and they were like, there's something like wrong with this kid, I would go, oh, by the way, I have cerebral policy. Uh, And that was just kind of nothing nothing. What do you what are you going to say? Oh, sorry, we're
not going to see you now. Since Breaking Bad FINALI are J has gone on to feature in multiple films and TV shows. And you know, I think everyone has a right to audition for a role, disabled or non disabled. You roll should not discriminate on on that. It should be about the character who that character is. Like, you know, it's not every character that should have CP, but it doesn't mean that the character can't have CP. Like it's these these nuances on just looking past the the the
shell and looking in the more depth characters. But now from the camera to the catwalk, what about representation in the fashion industry, Let's go back to che book. I never saw anybody who looked like me in spaces where beauty was the underlying narrative because our bodies were not considered to be beautiful. And it was such a joy to be able to enter into some of those spaces. But in time I really began to reflect, is the
system changing? Is it easier for disabled people to enter into the fashion industry based on the trajectory that I've been able to gain a build? Or did the system change for me? M And in some ways I think a bit of both, but more that it changed for me. But that's not enough, because there are so few of us who get to enter these rooms that we cannot be satisfied by our presence alone. So we cannot be
satisfied by visibility alone. And we can no longer settle for inaccurate depictions of disability and must hold to account those who fall back on outdated and damaging cliches. As Judy Human, star of Crip Camp, says, it's long past time for this cultural invisibility of disabled people to end. News outlets, Hollywood, and leading social media platforms must all work towards authentic inclusion. What's clear is that only by being in the room where the decisions are made and
power is broken. Can we guarantee accurate representation? So join us next time for episode four, where we will explore physical accessibility and how are inaccessible environments mean that too often disabled people's needs are not met. These podcasts have been made possible because of the support of Procter and Gamble. P and G share our ambition to create a more equal world, a world where everyone can have equal access and the opportunity to thrive. We are very grateful for
their partnership in making these conversations a reality. Of people with a direct involvement in the production of the podcast, including guests identify as disabled. Hi there, I'm shrunk, feel good, I am sobral palsy, and I'm a junior producer on this podcast. For me, representation both behind the microphone and behind the scenes are crucial for more on this story and vowing as well as to join the discussion, go too, It's too Wie dot world. This podcast was created by
Greg Nugent, co founder of Harder Than You Think. I'm Sophie Morgan, your host and executive producer. Fellow executive producers are Chanaid Burke, Greg Nugent, Barnaby Spurrier, Laura, i'ms, Mark Pritchard and Kimberly Dobrunner. Thank you to the I p C and Channel four for their support and use of archive material. Thanks to our podcast production partner, Stripped Media, and also to Seneca Women for their assistance with distributing
this show. If you want to follow the equal to story and join the conversation hashtag equal to, go to our website ht white E dot world, where you will also find the transcript and video versions of the podcast, along with subtitles and a BSL signed version in the coming days.