Today our friend Dan Link joins us to watch The Elephant Man, a combination cripple biopic and creature feature about a severely deformed man in late 19th-century London who is recued from the circus by a renowned physician and subsequently embraced by high society. Throughout the episode, we discuss the hilarity and harmfulness of clinical language that describes disability, the significance of sound design in sustaining unease, the conflation of cripple courage and learned helplessness, and Lynchian first dates.

Follow Dan on Instagram @danashtreelane and on Letterboxd @damienkarras73

Find out more at http://cripplethreatpodcast.com