I want to talk movies & TV

Hamish Linklater as Father Paul / John Pruitt in MIDNIGHT MASS (2021) Episode 5: Gospel

In that final AA scene — "the meeting," as Father Paul calls it — when everything that has been brewing all season long is now out in the open, the conversation erupts. Father Paul tries to get Riley to admit his jealousy over the fact that he can take a life, drink their blood, and not feel remorse, while Riley is plagued with guilt for killing the girl in the car crash. Linklater accelerates the rhythm of this situation and shouts at his costar, a moment that made it into the final cut of the show.  Flanagan remembers it more as an explosion. "That only ever happened once that way," he says. "It knocked Zach back so much. To be sitting there with the same two actors in the same location and what is relatively the same lighting for a week, going through these long scenes, and to be able to surprise each other like that, that's really awesome to see."

but while we recognise the parasocial nature of getting overly attached to strangers online , i'm not sure people realise this is what happens on a regular basis towards visibly disabled people in their real lives. being easier to spot in a crowd makes people notice you more often and remember you more strongly. people also mistake the information of "this person has a disability" as intimate shared information. perhaps they recognise it as the vulnerable information that it is. and so visibly disabled people are often treated by neighbours or distant acquaintances or strangers as someone they know. maybe even someone they're entitled to talk to familiarly or ask about.

in actuality they don't know anything private about this random disabled person. i bet most people, abled or disabled would be unable to tell the disabilities someone has just by looking at their visual symptoms. neither did they really notice the disabled person or learn anything about them that they would usually strive to learn about someone they're getting to know. you don't know what that visibly disabled person likes or dislikes, believes in, advocates for, spends their time doing.

visibly disabled people know it wasn't any aspect of their personhood that stuck in the mind of some stranger, but rather understand that they are being seen as a human shaped disability. and visibly disabled people haven't made any decision to confide in strangers, just like you don't "share" the information that you can walk on two legs, or have four limbs, or no scars, or the ability to speak and hear by existing in public, disabled people aren't "sharing" their scars or limb difference or anything else by existing in public.

“Thank you Rue, let her memory be a blessing,” hits me hard because I hope that there’s people out there who realize how precious life can be and how easy and random it is for it to end. I operate from a know it all perspective so I always think people know everything just like me like (fentanyl bad, duh) but I’m thinking of all the young people who see themselves as invincible and will watch the show and realize a random pill can kill you.