It must be annoying to hear another person complain about representation in media. I get it, trust me, I hate talking about it as much as people hate listening to it, arguably even more because people hate listening to it. Representation is important though, it matters to people, it used to not matter to me because I internalized my ableism thanks to years in a school system that tried its best but was still not as accommodating as I needed it to be in hindsight. In recent years I have been better at accepting, accommodating and adapting with my Autism, I have found comics and graphic novels to be a good alternative to traditional novels, I'm finding new stim-toys that I enjoy, and I'm doing what I can to educate people about autism.
I think ultimately, the answer I can give is "No, but yes, but absolutely not, but kind of, but really I don't know" and that is sadly the straightest answer I think you'll get from me. The media representation of autistic, and really most other neurodivergent people, has never been particularly favourable, with one end of the spectrum being cases like Forrest Gump and Rain Man, the character who is not very smart except for one or two very specific interests, typically some form of mathematics or science, not socially bright, usually needing someone beside them to get them through life, you may also notice that these characters tend to be on the scrawnier, beanpole-ier side of physical builds. This kind portrayal is usually offensive to those in autistic communities, but on the other end of the spectrum, you get things like Music. The problem is, those are cases where the characters are confirmed, or heavily implied to be on the spectrum, it really is sad when the best representation autistic people have comes from characters who are not canonically autistic.
I did a blog last year where I talked about characters that I related to, and the sad thing is that not a single one was canonically autistic, but they had so many traits and characteristics of Autistic Spectrum Disorder that, canon or not, they resonated with me, and some of them have resonated with other people as well. It really does make me question why autistic traits can be given to characters who are not officially autistic. I have to wonder if the creators of these characters were undiagnosed or knew undiagnosed people, which would not surprise me because... well something you may notice about "Hollywood Autistic" characters is that a good number of them are white men. Media does not reflect reality, it reflects ones perception and opinions of reality, and the perception really does seem to be that only certain people get autism, and sadly, people are not helping the perception.
Something that really bothers me is the "Cutie-fication" of autism, largely because it plays on another big stereotype of autistic people, infantilization. It really does feel like a lot of people want to focus on the "cuter" parts of autism, you know the plushie collecting and the stimming and hyper-fixations and the like, rather than the uncomfortable parts. The parts like not being able to sleep because every piece of physical stimuli is causing you agony, emotional outbursts and the mountains of unfinished projects that you never got around to finishing because your hyper-fixation lasted less time than you anticipated and now you're obsessed with something completely different. If I were to hazard a guess, I would assume that this is a response to all the "Autism is evil and a disease" rhetoric that groups like Autism Speaks have been spreading over the years. So instead, let's focus on aspects of autism that are not that harmful, adorable even, stuff like the ability to build Minecraft mega-builds in an hour or "Autism Nests", because we don't want people to associate Autism with the bad stuff.
It's kind of a horribly imbalanced scale, because in media representation, Autism representation is terrible, and I haven't even listed the worst examples, I don't even want to dignify Music or The Good Doctor, but on the other side is people going too far in the opposite direction. It reminds me, on some level, about portrayals of disabled people, how they're often made to be super competent despite their disability as some kind of inspiration, or on another hand are made to be bad guys because of their disability. I remember one journalist being mad at Detective Pikachu because the antagonist of that movie was a disabled man in a wheelchair, and his entire plot revolved around him being a disabled man in a wheelchair. I think to me, the problem lies in the fact that for disabled people, including neurodivergent people, there really is no in-between, it's either one end of the character spectrum or the other, with very little in between. Sure wheelchair users have Joe Swanson, Professor X or that episode of Little Clowns of Happytown, but they also have Elijah Price from Unbreakable. It's either, "this character might as well not be disabled" or "This character's arc entirely revolves around being disabled".
I guess the deeper issue here is that media representation of all disabilities is kind of awful, so I guess the next question is "what do we do?", and the answer to that is really simple. People like to think that getting into media creation is difficult, and yes it can be, if you're aiming to be a Steven Spielberg. The thing lots of people don't really talk about is how much media is created by independent, underground and smaller creators, we all like to dog on Kevin Smith but he was an independent film creator when he made Clerks. I want to give this advice to everyone who says things like "Hollywood should tell this story" or "There should be more of these characters", tell those stories and create those characters yourself. It's kind of harsh advice, I get it, but it is the truth, you can't just wait until business folk decide that this super-niche story is worth telling.
To wrap this up, I guess it is only fair if I do my part and point you all into some directions of autistic creators. My go to recommendation for autistic and neurodivergent content creators is usually Animation reviewer TheMysteriousMrEnter, and as he is the first person I learned about Autism Speaks from, I think his video is a good place to start. YouTube user I'm Autistic, Now What? also has a video about Autism Speaks, and a video about Hollywood's representation of autism, full disclosure I haven't watched these videos, but that latter video came upon my feed and seeing the title gave me the inspiration to write this. Paige Layle also has a video about Autism Speaks, PhantomStrider has a video about busting myths about autism, and to wrap this up, Amethyst Schaber also has a video about Autism Speaks, yes it is a very popular topic amongst autistic people. This is by no means a complete list, but it should be a good start. I think proper education is always the first step in fighting any adversary, and while the media might not represent autistic people very well, we can at least do our part to change that.
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