{"id":1480,"date":"2007-02-06T20:07:38","date_gmt":"2007-02-06T20:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1480"},"modified":"2007-02-06T20:07:38","modified_gmt":"2007-02-06T20:07:38","slug":"are_you_having","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1480","title":{"rendered":"Are You Having A Laugh?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought South Park was the only comedy that knew
\nhow to play on the average person’s discomfort and general cluelessness around
\npeople with disabilities. But then I saw a recent episode of Ricky Gervais’
\nExtras<\/a>. It was brilliant. One subplot highlights the media’s manipulative use of
\nstories involving people with disabilities. Another thread looks at some of the
\nmore uninformed reactions to the romantic partners of people with disabilities
\n(“That’s really nice of you,” says the show’s monumentally dense female lead to
\na woman who reveals she’s the fiancee of Warwick Davis<\/a>, a British actor and
\nlittle person). Gervais and writing partner Stephen Merchant pull off the difficult task of using disability themes to poke fun at the main characters while avoiding any overtones of condescension or exploitation. It’s reassuring to know that at least some in the media industry actually “get” disability issues. Some might argue that it would be nice to see disability-related comedy coming from people with disabilities themselves and I certainly agree with that sentiment. We need to keep working as a community to get our talent in front of and behind the camera. But in the meantime, I’m glad we have allies like Gervais and Merchant.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought South Park was the only comedy that knew how to play on the average person’s discomfort and general cluelessness around people with disabilities. But then I saw a recent episode of Ricky Gervais’ Extras. It was brilliant. One subplot highlights the media’s manipulative use of stories involving people with disabilities. Another thread looks […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-nS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}