Autistic Hedgehog

I haven’t seen either movie, though I’ve seen bits and pieces of Rain Main (hooray, TV syndication?). But I have reservations about both of them.

It’s true that, back when it first came out, Rain Man was actually a positive thing for autism awareness, and Temple Grandin is (obviously) based on a real person, so that ought to be positive as well. But real understanding of autism hasn’t come. Instead, people with autism are generally broken into Rain Mans and Temple Grandins, and the lack of other media representation than those two images of autism has been harmful. Instead of being the positive force they could have been, I feel like both movies help contribute to the lack of nuance in popular views of autism.

This isn’t really the fault of the movies themselves, per se. The fault lies in media itself. Rarely do autistic characters appear unless they’re in stories dealing solely with their issues, and usually then from the perspective of their “poor, burdened” families. On the rare occasions that I have seen autistic characters in media in ways that aren’t all about Issues, they’re either stereotypes, or not canonically acknowledged as autistic. 

That makes it very difficult for such movies to have a positive impact and they often end up having a negative one, however inadvertently. But again, it’s less a problem with the movies themselves as it is with society, and it’s a problem that has to stop. But because of those problems, I can’t help but have reservations about Rain Man and Temple Grandin, because I know what will most likely come of ignorant people seeing them: more ignorance. 

(This is also, incidentally, another reason why I’m writing a book with an autistic main character. I want a chance to get a very different representation of autistics out into the mainstream media and well, if you want a job done right, often you’ve got to do it yourself.)