Like\u00a0<\/span>Squid Game<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and <\/span>Twenty-Five Twenty-One, Netflix\u2019s<\/a> new Korean hit has <\/span>topped the streamer\u2019s television charts<\/span><\/a> and captured imaginations globally. <\/span>Extraordinary Attorney Woo <\/span>follows the titular Woo Young Woo, played by allistic actress Park Eun-bin (<\/span>The King\u2019s Affection<\/span>), an autistic lawyer who has recently been hired by the Hanbada law firm. The series takes the time to explore the challenges she faces while navigating an allistic world \u2013 well, <\/span>ish<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n When disability is represented in film and television, it is overwhelmingly for the benefit of able-bodied, neurotypical viewers. We are inspirational stories; objects of sympathy and pity. <\/span>Extraordinary Attorney Woo<\/span>, unfortunately, is no different. It gets <\/span>a lot <\/span><\/i>of things wrong in its approach to autism. But it does succeed in one particular area.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As a disabled viewer, what I find most relatable is how <\/span>the series <\/span>portrays ableism.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re all familiar with how prejudice is typically presented on-screen. It\u2019s overt and aggressive, showcasing the most extreme forms of right-wing ideology. By contrast, covert <\/span>discrimination, which is often much more prevalent, rarely features in TV shows and films.<\/span><\/p>\n By always centring the former, it <\/span>creates complacency for viewers. They come away thinking, \u2018I\u2019m not like that, so I can\u2019t be bigoted.\u2019 And it also makes them blind to the discrimination unfolding around them every day, from <\/span>systemic bigotry that has seen tens of thousands die within the UK\u2019s welfare system<\/a> to the casual discrimination disabled people face every day that props up all other forms of ableism: <\/span>t<\/span>he sly comments behind smiles, the exclusion of disabled voices from conversations about inclusivity, the resentment of colleagues regarding small accommodations, and now the complaints about remote work.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s this ableism that <\/span>Extraordinary Attorney Woo <\/span>brings to the forefront in a way few other shows do.<\/span><\/p>\n In episode 3, Woo Young- Wo is charged with defending Jeong-hun, an autistic man accused of murder. There is an immediate undertone. \u201cAre you assigning me this case because I\u2019m autistic?\u201d she asks.<\/span><\/p>\n The answer is yes.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s not an intended slight, but that\u2019s irrelevant. The fact that<\/span> his first instinct is to assign a case involving an autistic client to an autistic lawyer is ableism in action.<\/p>\n Later, Hanbada argues that Jeong-hun \u2013 who is on the more severe end of the autism spectrum \u2013 isn\u2019t always able to understand his own behaviour, <\/span>to which the prosecutor argues that Young Woo must be unfit to defend him given that he is also autistic. <\/span>Both examples demonstrate how readily able-bodied, neurotypical people perceive those on the disability spectrum as a homogenous group.<\/span><\/p>\n As a disabled person, it was meaningful to see something myself and other disabled people are all too familiar with tackled in a show which is widely watched by<\/span> able-bodied, neurotypical viewers.<\/span><\/p> It also demonstrates that light entertainment and the grim realities of life can co-exist without compromising one another. <\/span>Extraordinary Attorney Woo <\/span>is, fundamentally, a romantic comedy, but it doesn\u2019t suffer from showing at least some<\/em> of the realities of disabled and autistic life.<\/span><\/p>\n Not long after I became disabled, I remember discovering t<\/span>he<\/span> Golden Girls episodes <\/span>in which Dorothy tries to convince doctors to take her chronic fatigue seriously \u2013 much as I was at the time. As I watched her <\/span>defend herself in the face of callous medical professionals<\/span><\/a>, it felt like she was standing up for me \u2013 and it still succeeded in making me laugh.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It takes a delicate hand to highlight realistic struggles while keeping the tone light, and more often than not the episodes that tackle weightier topics feel separate from the general rhythm of a series. But those moments are seamlessly baked into <\/span>Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which makes it far more <\/span>representative of the real world, to a certain degree at least.<\/span><\/p>\n Inversely, the show also takes steps to ensure that it remains palatable to allistic audiences. When Jeong-hun\u2019s mother makes a comment about her hope that he will<\/span>\u00a0\u201cget better\u201d, Young Woo says nothing. She looks flustered but remains silent \u2013 as she does in the face of all discrimination. Instead, it is up to her able-bodied, neurotypical colleagues to defend her because we couldn\u2019t possibly <\/i>have a show about disability without giving able-bodied people something<\/em> to pat themselves on the back for.<\/span><\/p>\n Of all the unrealities in the show, Young Woo\u2019s colleagues being as supportive as they are is probably the least realistic. In reality, disabled people have to be their own advocates because no one else really cares.<\/span><\/p>\n It would be no different for Young Woo, and she\u2019s better placed than most to know her rights.<\/span><\/p>\n While Extraordinary Attorney Woo shows<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>some <\/span><\/i>of the <\/span>realities of disability, it stops short of unpacking how the <\/span>challenges that disabled people face in an able-bodied, neurotypical world could be addressed.<\/span><\/p>\n But its portrayal of <\/span>ableism chimes with my own experiences of <\/span>discrimination in a way that is rarely seen on-screen. Able-bodied, neurotypical viewers might not see it \u2013 the show does a lot to make sure they don\u2019t feel guilty \u2013 but the fact that it\u2019s there is important because if it\u2019s not part of the cultural conversation, how will we begin to recognise it in real life?<\/span><\/p>\n Extraordinary Attorney Woo is available to stream now on Netflix<\/a>. Check out our lists of the\u00a0best series on Netflix<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0best movies on Netflix<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 or see what else is on with our\u00a0TV Guide<\/a>. Visit our\u00a0Drama<\/a>\u00a0hub for all the latest news.<\/strong><\/p>\n The latest issue of Radio Times magazine is on sale now \u2013\u00a0subscribe now<\/a>\u00a0and get the next 12 issues for only \u00a31. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to the\u00a0Radio Times podcast<\/a> with Jane Garvey.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/body><\/html>\n By Geoffrey Bunting Published: Friday, 12 August 2022 at 12:00 am Did you know that 3.1 per cent of characters on television are disabled?\u00a0This is concerning when you consider that, in the UK, 21 per cent of working age adults and 42% of pension age adults are disabled. In children\u2019s television, that meagre representation drops […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":20182,"template":"","categories":[5],"acf":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/08\/netflixs-extraordinary-attorney-woo-is-breaking-the-mould-heres-why.png",1449,966,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/08\/netflixs-extraordinary-attorney-woo-is-breaking-the-mould-heres-why-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/08\/netflixs-extraordinary-attorney-woo-is-breaking-the-mould-heres-why-300x200.png",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/08\/netflixs-extraordinary-attorney-woo-is-breaking-the-mould-heres-why-768x512.png",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/08\/netflixs-extraordinary-attorney-woo-is-breaking-the-mould-heres-why-1024x683.png",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/08\/netflixs-extraordinary-attorney-woo-is-breaking-the-mould-heres-why.png",1449,966,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/56\/2022\/08\/netflixs-extraordinary-attorney-woo-is-breaking-the-mould-heres-why.png",1449,966,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Geoffrey Bunting Published: Friday, 12 August 2022 at 12:00 am Did you know that 3.1 per cent of characters on television are disabled?\u00a0This is concerning when you consider that, in the UK, 21 per cent of working age adults and 42% of pension age adults are disabled. In children\u2019s television, that meagre representation drops…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/20181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/3\/2022\/08\/Extraordinary-Attorney-Woo-Netflix-6cb79a6.png?quality=90&resize=620%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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