Autistic Hedgehog

I am so glad I found this blog. Being an Aspie myself, I relate a lot to these submissions. If it isn't too much, I'm curious about your thoughts on films like Temple Grandin and Rain Man (I've seen the former, but not the latter and there's a reason I prefer not to). How do you think they have impacted society's awareness and thoughts on autism, positively or negatively?

zeefsterface

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.)

Posted 2 years ago

6 notes

autism, actually autistic, actuallyautistic, ableism, autistic characters, autism in media, Temple Grandin, Rain Main, ask, asks,

Since We’re on the Topic of Autistic Characters Anyway

As we’re talking about this as it is, I thought I’d ask y'all something.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working pretty hard, doing world and foundation building for a science fiction novel starring an autistic main character. Though I do want to address the nature of the way society treats neurodivergence, it’s not meant to be a novel just about the Issues of being autistic, and is in fact supposed to be entertaining space opera. Because it really gets tiresome only seeing canonically autistic characters when it’s all about Issues (and/or stereotypes).

It’s meant for an adult audience (because fuck the idea that autism only occurs in children) and while I’m hoping to keep it from being too magic-tech (like Star Wars) I want to keep the science light enough to appeal to readers who don’t normally enjoy science fiction. Though at the same time I want it to have enough science that only the nerdiest of nerdcore will think there’s not enough. But I’m digressing.

My point is, seeing some of the views of autistic characters and representation in media, how do y'all feel about this? My character is female and actually has a job I don’t think would be, stereotypically, expected of an autistic character. Do some of you still feel uncomfortable with the idea of her being explicitly autistic, or would it bother you less since I am, myself, autistic?

Posted 2 years ago

25 notes

autism, actually autistic, actuallyautistic, autistic characters, autism in media, science fiction, writing, writer, novels,

Re: autistic characters, I prefer them when the writers didn't write them as autistic, because usually characters written to be autistic are very stereotypical (and also mostly male characters).

msemmaclair

Posted 2 years ago

3 notes

autism, actually autistic, actuallyautistic, autistic characters, autism in media, stereotypes, ask, asks,

I prefer characters that are obliquely autistic -- where the medium doesn't say it explicitly and leaves the viewer to their own conclusions. I get anxious when a character is described as autistic, because so many of those portrayals are all about *how hard it is to deal with autistics* or about *magic autistics* instead of being interesting stories about interesting people.

ms-glik

I think that’s a little bit of a double-edged sword, as it often is with a character of any kind of minority status. Because people will make assumptions, like how if a character of color isn’t in some way explicitly stated as such, white readers will assume the character is white.

At the same time, there are stereotypes and other problems to deal with when a character is explicitly autistic. Currently I think media representation is largely a lose-lose situation; either the representation is loaded with stereotypes, or it’s not explicit and therefore it’s questionable whether it truly counts as representation.

Posted 2 years ago

5 notes

autism, actually autistic, actuallyautistic, autistic characters, media representation, autism in media, ask, asks,

Re: autistic characters - To be honest, I quite like seeing autistic characters (although obviously I get annoyed if they're just perpetuating stereotypes). I don't know, I guess I like being able to relate to them. :)

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