Sketch image of Dr. Jeff Preston
The much-anticipated film adaptation of Jojo Moyes Me Before You is generating a lot of conversation within the accessibility community.
The film follows Louisa (Lou) Clark, a 26-year-old working-class girl who lands a position as a “care assistant” to an intelligent, wealthy, and bitter 35-year-old man named Will Traynor, who has spent the past two years as a quadriplegic after a traffic accident.
It is Will’s mother who hires Louisa, and she does so because she knows her son is miserable. She already employs a nurse to attend to his medical needs, but she hopes that somehow Louisa might boost his morale. And of course - since this is Hollywood - the two are destined to fall in love.
Hosts Mike Ross and Yin Brown joined Live from Studio 5’s disability and culture columnist, Dr. Jeff Preston, to discuss tropes surrounding personal support workers and their wards. They analyze the upcoming film, the “caregiver vs curmudgeon” story arc that it perpetuates, and how it treats disability on the whole.
Listen to Preston's analysis of Me Before You in the accessible AMI-player.