SERIES REVIEW: Extraordinary Attorney Woo
A Look into Our Perception of Representation
Disclaimer: I try to use as much polite and PC language as possible, but I am not always up-to-date on the correct terms and phrases. If I use any inappropriate language, I apologize in advance and will make changes as needed in order to be as respectful as possible
My partner’s been watching a South Korean show on Netflix lately called The Extraordinary Attorney Woo, which is a show centered around the main character, Woo Young-Woo, who has a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (or ASD). I’m often hesitant to watch shows like that because of representation risks, but my partner—whose brother is on the more seriously disabled side of ASD—encouraged me to give it three episodes before making up my mind; there’s a reason for this, but I’ll get to that later. It’s worth saying though, that it’s possible that my mind was already made up after one.
NOTE: There are light plot spoilers throughout for the first 6 episodes, but I try to be very nonspecific. Bigger spoilers will be marked, but will be restricted to one episode or scene.
So, for starters, if I had started to watch this show on my own, I would have marked it as a dislike and turned it off after 5 minutes. Why? Because the first episode, somewhat falsely, feels like it’s perpetuating the “autistic savant” stereotype by immediately starting with, “There comes a day for every parent when they ask themselves, ‘could it be that my kid is special?’” This is in reference to the moment when the main character’s father discovers that his daughter is high-functioning and has an eidetic memory, after she spent the first 5 years of her life not speaking. It then goes on to suggest that she has read, memorized, and—the genuinely unreasonable part—understood her father’s legal textbooks from law school.
Now, if you don’t know the “autistic savant” stereotype, I confess that I am certainly not an expert at sensitivity reading, but I do know that it stems from older movies like Rain Man, which came out long before we had any real understanding of the autism spectrum. These films give off the impression that people with autism diagnoses have super powers that they’re hiding away because of their disability. There’s an interesting study you can read about harmful stereotyping of autism here. It’s well-known that the “autistic savant” and other stereotypes are extremely hurtful to the community, because they set an unfair standard that all autistic people should be a certain way and due to the spectrum-nature of the disorder, frankly, that’s just not the case. Most of the autistic people I know, simply put, don’t have any super powers or secret advantages; they just have a harder time in life and have often been ostracized for not fitting in or communicating well with everyone else. For example, my brother-in-law has one of those savant memories, but it only works when he’s interested in the subject and he only fixates on things like cartoons, so even if he is hyper-functional in some ways, that impressive memory is not usable in any functional way in society. So if we keep creating these shows that only show theoretical hyper-functionality while never showing the disability side of things, that isn’t very helpful (or even worse, if we make unintentionally autistic characters, and then spend the entire series making a mockery of them, like in The Big Bang Theory).
So with that out of the way, I will say up-front that I am sold on the show. While I do understand that some parents of autistic children, for example, might not like the show because it’s an optimized, somewhat fantastical version of what autism is really like, I would like to take a moment here to talk about that…
Who among us feel very realistically seen in popular media? The only character that has ever truly made me feel seen was the owner of a pirate brothel in a Dungeons & Dragons actual play… not exactly big budget Hollywood media. I don’t think big-name shows from Hollywood or streaming services like Netflix are exactly known for realistic representation and if we expect that from our media, all we’re really going to do is disappoint ourselves. Be it our bodies or faces or jobs or houses or whatever, having 100% accurate representation is just not a realistic thing to look for in capitalist media that only cares about making corporations money (despite the stupidity of that, ultimately). Media is often escapism and we like to see more optimized versions of ourselves, versions to strive towards. If you take the show with the grain of salt required, generally, for most media consumption and focus on what the show is trying to accomplish—shedding light on the autism spectrum and issues within Korean society—I think this show is very good. So let’s get into it properly, yes?
First of all, I will go on the record saying that Park Eun-bin does a spectacular job of portraying a more familiar socially awkward, hyper-fixated autistic person, from the perspective of both the upsides and downsides. Though she does indeed have a spectacular eidetic memory that allows her to remember law books flawlessly, she also struggles with things as simple as rotating doors. There are a lot of different details that are expressed: she seems always confused as to what to do with her arms, she is very awkward when it comes to looking at people in the eye, she’s very sound sensitive and has a trigger from screaming and physical violence, sometimes she can’t speak at first and then she might say everything very quickly all at once, sometimes she repeats what others say to her (echolalia), there’s a pattern of phrases she often uses when introducing herself… of course, the spectrum is vast, but the actor really does a wonderful job of portraying one version of the disorder. She’s extremely likeable and easy to empathize with, even when she’s doing things that you recognize can be viewed as rude or unkind. Young-woo never seems intentionally unkind, just oblivious to how others feel.
That said, generally speaking, the show is not without its flaws, but the things I’ve found questionable have been few and far between. Alongside the “autistic savant” stereotype and the unrealistic nature of a 5-year-old understanding law texts, there’s also a moment in the first episode when Young-woo is being triggered and the music used in the scene is, frankly, pretty inappropriate, because it feels like it’s making light of her situation. In episode 3, they hyper-dramatize the size of the autistic character and I honestly can’t find a good reason for them to have done so. It is a drama and it is Hollywoodized (so to speak) a bit, so of course not everything is going to be perfect. There’s also the question of romance, though I haven’t gotten far enough into the show to see how it’s dealt with. So by no means is the show perfect, but its bad sides are, in my opinion, far outweighed by the good.
What’s perhaps the most important, is that the show doesn’t avoid the rest of the spectrum, and this is why I find it forgivable for the occasional foible. Young-woo regularly explains to other people that autism is a spectrum and each case is different. We see this most crushingly portrayed in the aforementioned episode 3, which is just a mess of poor behavior from many characters due to lack of understanding, as it deals with someone who is on the more seriously disabled side of the spectrum. [some E03 spoilers here] Young-woo’s boss mistakenly thinks that Young-woo will be able to communicate with their autistic client because she is also autistic, but in fact, she is arguably worse at communicating with him due to the forceful and insensitive nature of her questioning. However, when asking her father what it was like communicating with her, she realizes that it’s nice for others to talk about mutual interests, so in order to get through to the client, she should try to engage with what interests him, resulting in the law firm performing a song from the client’s favorite show. This works wonderfully, but sadly, while they are ultimately able to glean the truth of the situation, it comes more from physical evidence and not from the client’s testimony, as he is declared mentally unfit to act as a witness. There is a devastating scene where Young-woo reads people’s reactions to the case online, most of them being full of hate and lamentations that the client’s brother died while he lived. [end spoilers] It’s a very brutal episode that shows a much more realistic and sad side of the spectrum, but one that does so with a great deal of care.
That said, throughout the course of the show, there are a lot of great examples of the struggles that autistic people face in regular life. Young-woo is constantly looked down upon: her boss can’t imagine why they hired an autistic woman at first; one of her co-workers who knew her from law school was clearly embittered and jealous about being less clever than a disabled person; another co-worker feels as though the company is being unfairly lenient towards her and treats her with even more undue competitive manipulation than he treats others… there’s a really heartbreaking scene at the end of the first episode where [light E01 spoiler] Young-woo is trapped by the rotating door and though a co-worker does summon the sympathy to help her, she bullies her in the process by saying, “what are you, stupid?” [end spoiler] There’s another moment where [light E01 spoiler] one of the paralegals, who had been kind to her in the morning, helps her learn the rotating door. It’s one of those subtle scenes, because you appreciate him for being kind and helping her, but at the same time, he still doesn’t even consider that she could be the attorney that he’s waiting for. [end spoiler] As the show goes on, we also see cruelty coming from good intentions: [light E02 spoiler] when Young-woo and her paralegal friend are out, they bump into one of his friends, who assumes Young-woo is more disabled than she is because of her physical mannerisms, and her efforts to be supportive end up coming across as deeply rude because of the misunderstanding. [end spoiler]
So when it comes to realistic portrayals of autism, Young-woo may be a bit of a fantasy version of someone with ASD, but it doesn’t hide any of the struggles along the way, nor does it mistakenly suggest that if you are hyper-functional in one way, that you are in every way. In fact, I think it does a great job of showing what disabled people can accomplish when given a genuine chance, and how much better of a world we live in when we are kind to one another. They don’t do her any favors by making her seem “normal in disguise,” by any means. [light E01 spoilers] When Young-woo first goes to court, she’s awkward, nervous, and she can’t talk. But she gets up and gives the court a brilliant little speech, apologizing for her awkwardness and explaining that she has ASD and asks for their patience with her. [end spoilers] It’s a beautiful moment that really brought a tear to my eyes—the world needs more of exactly what she asks for: simple understanding.
And ultimately, the show is filled with horrible moments that make you empathy cringe, while at the same time, it balances out with genuine good feelings. The warm and soft friendship that is surely leaning towards a romance has had me hesitating, but has so far blossomed very gently and slowly and hasn’t put me off yet. The story of how she became friends with the “crazy girl” in school was awful in its portrayal of bullying but very warm in how it played out. [light spoiler] Her somewhat cruel co-worker who attended law school with her asks her for a nickname, and you can tell this woman knows that she has been rude to Young-woo and is expecting something less kind than her own rather narcissistic suggestions, but Young-woo gives her a very warm nickname for having always been nice to her when others were not, doing things like opening drink bottles for her, which she struggles with. [end spoiler] Even the boss, whom I mentioned was very unimpressed with the company for hiring her, immediately changes his opinion after her detail-oriented focus brings her first case into a whole new light.
So ultimately, if you’re looking for perfect representation, frankly, I don’t think popular media is where you should be searching in general. But for a show that really shines a light on how little the general populace know about autism, done with a good deal of tenderness and care, I think they’ve done a very nice job. From what I’ve read, viewers have also been impressed with the call-outs the show makes towards negative aspects of (South) Korean society and culture, which are the same as many of the struggles we have in western society as well. I would hope that autistic viewers would watch the show and feel as though their situation has been well-cared for, but I am also only about 6 episodes into the season. I will update this if I feel the show takes a turn for the worse at any point, but ultimately, this show feels like a very lovely depiction of the autism spectrum and the difficulties and road blocks that come from how society treats those that don’t function in the same way as the general masses.
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