Why the new ‘Music’ Movie by Sia is so bad for autistic representation

Who’s Sia?

No idea.

See, I made a rhyme.

I’m sure I’m one of many people who only marginally heard of her until yesterday, when all hell broke loose on the Twitterverse and beyond (which is why I am aware of this, as I don’t regularly attend Twitter feuds).

I think I watched one of her videos once, several years ago, when she became a ‘sensation’ and everyone was singing her praises. I was ‘meh’ and moved on.

Which is why I cannot comment on her character or her artistry or her value as a producer of music, or of visual stories. I don’t care about that aspect at all because what she makes is not for me and I’m perfectly fine with that.

But there are people who love her and follow her, many in the autistic community as well, judging by the enormous collective sigh echoing in many autistic community groups I’m in.

These people are disappointed and hurt and in pain and they have a very legitimate reason for their disappointment.

I am not one of them because I don’t feel like this movie and Sia’s comments will affect the autistic communities in my home country, where we’re still fighting to even bring a bit of awareness on the fact that autism is not a curse, is not ‘curable’ and definitely not helped by ABA (but that’s another topic for another day).

I will also not watch this movie, nor recommend it to people, even though I love movies about dancing and would love to see more of them made with diverse bodies and diverse abilities.

But this article is about what’s wrong with the movie, Sia’s reactions to criticism, and why so many people are angry and making such a ‘big fuss’ about it.

It’s enough to read some tweets to understand why, but maybe you don’t have the time to do it or are completely Twitter illiterate, like myself (ten years later and still I have no idea how that user unfriendly website works — le sigh…). So I’ll sum it up for you.

The movie itself seems to have no actual synopsis or anything that would warrant the budget for a full movie. It’s apparently about two sisters, one of whom is autistic and ‘a burden’ for the other sister, who now ‘needs to take care of her non-speaking sibling’ (Autism Speaks narrative much?).

Citing from trivia section of the IMDB entry for this movie:

‘The film’s screenplay was co-written by Sia and children’s book author Dallas Clayton based on a one-page story that she had written in 2007. Sia decided to direct the film after creating the music video for “Chandelier” in 2014 in which, in her own words, she felt “a little bit braver” and “pretty good” at directing.’

I don’t know who wrote that little entry, but they were spicy, let’s call it spicy, not sarcastic. Because nowadays we’re salty instead of angry. Did they realize the irony? Did they write it like that on purpose, or did it just come out like that and they flew with it?

Either way, the whole movie is based on a one-page story. I don’t know how much magic you can fit into a single page, but I’m pretty sure it’s not enough for an entertaining movie with a story arc and character development and all that jazz. You know, the jazz that actually makes movies worth watching.

OK, so we have a disabled character who becomes a burden on an NT character, both played by NT actresses. Apparently an autistic dancer/actress had been initially cast for the ND role (the autistic sister), but was subsequently fired because she found the working conditions too difficult…

So instead of accommodations being made for her disability in this context, she was removed from the project for being too disabled to play a disabled character. Does that sound familiar? Do you know what that is?

It is called discrimination in the working environment and there are laws about that. But let’s let that slide and assume that the original actor quit on their own. Were there many more autistic actors/dancers available to try out for the role? Possibly, since so many have made their voices heard online.

Did they get to audition? Probably not (I’m not sure about this aspect), because the director’s favorite dancer was instead cast in the role as a ‘perfect fit’, even though she has not the slightest inkling of what being autistic means.

The trailer is a full minute of cringe, but I won’t judge her acting based on it because: 1) we are all different, we look different, we present differently to the outer world, some like to make eye contact, some don’t, some smile a lot, some don’t, 2) we mask, so we can even pretend to pretend to be autistic, as most people won’t know anyway.

The problem with casting an NT for an ND role is not only a lack of opportunity for autistic actors who try really hard to be good enough to play NT roles for most of their lives, as ND roles are just so few and mostly inaccessible to them, but also the perpetuation of stereotypes in mainstream media, where most NTs and NDs take their cues about life and other people in general.

What stereotypes? You know them too well: the aloof kid who likes to bang on things, rock from side to side, order things that they see, and scream instead of talk. Except this time in a hyperfeminine body and with an excessively creepy smile on her face.

We don’t need more stereotypes, we need people who know what it feels like to have your senses bombarded constantly by ‘normal’ noises, who jump at every car passing by on the street, who can’t concentrate because of the bright lights and the buzzing of electronics, who can’t follow a conversation because there are too many things overlapping in the internal monologue, all those sidetracks that every new word generates…

These people can act because they need to act for most of their lives. They need to act to survive, they suppress their true being in order to exist in society.

Yes, it leads to burnout after a while.

Yes, it makes it difficult to work in an environment where your disability is exposed and exploited in a very shallow way for monetary gain based on ‘inspiration porn’.

Yes, accommodations would be needed. You would make comments on what an ND person with certain sensitivities would rather do in certain situations, because you live with those sensitivities and know viscerally what it feels like.

You would ask for changes to be made in the story and the set because of how a similar ND person in the same situation would act. And that would be excellent! Because writers cannot read minds, nor can they inhabit bodies of people they have nothing in common with.

I wish the screenplay writing had involved an ND person who could have given feedback on various aspects throughout the writing process. Someone who could have given perspective. There are no excuses for not involving a non-verbal autistic person in the writing process for a movie that is essentially about a non-verbal autistic person.

Maybe then we would have skipped the whole scandal of having an NT actress playing an ND character, as it wouldn’t have been necessary to cast someone else. And even if it would have been necessary, and only NT actors had been found, we’d know that the story is authentic. It would be our story, a story that doesn’t just repeat stereotypes, it would be a day in the life of a person who feels and lives differently from the majority.

Unfortunately, people who use marginalized people to further their own products (Sia, in this case) do not listen to criticism coming from the minority they are exploiting. They don’t like their hypocrisy being revealed to the world and some even turn against the community they supposedly serve.

This is what happened here. Sia, instead of accepting that people are angry because she’s using them, lashed out against them. She took the criticism personally, even if it was about her work.

Any publicity is good publicity, right? Wrong, at least in my eyes and possibly the eyes of many autistics.

There is so much more to say, but I’m tired an will stop here. I hope that what I’ve presented has convinced you not to endorse the exploitation of marginalized people for the purposes of light entertainment, by watching this movie, in cinema or rented.

You could rather support the many people who write about being autistic or who are simply autistic writers. Here’s a list of blogs written by autistics, it will keep you entertained for many years to come. Many of them have also written books and probably also screenplays that may never see the light of day because projects like ‘Music’ take away resources and opportunities from autistic creators and actors who portray what it’s truly like to be autistic.

Update: here’s also a video discussing the same things from the different perspective of another autistic creator. Fun.

Maybe in the near future, if we all pitch in, we might see fully autistic-created productions that show the beauty of living in diversity of mind, body and spirit, rather than the drab uniformity of what is still considered ‘normal’.

I, for one, can’t wait for dream that to become reality.