So not only do we have to do the normal stuff we do in order to help our kids keep progressing along (doing OK with that here lately) and keep our houses from disintegrating from the foundation up (total FAIL!), we also have to fight Terminators from the future.
I’m not kidding.
As if we didn’t have enough ignorant stereotypes to deal with as we attempt to get the general public to understand that autistic children are not withdrawn automatons who can help you win big in Vegas and organize your DVDs by how many degrees they are from Kevin Bacon, or some BS like that, it gets worse.
One of the new Terminators in The Sarah Connor Chronicles (languishing on FOX until it gets cancelled at the end of the season) – Cameron – was apparently diagnosed with ‘mild autism’ as part of one of the show’s storylines.
So to catch you up on this much of the show, she doesn’t understand social behavior and comes across as weird and awkward and not a fitter-inner (she’s posing as a high school student in this show – don’t ask), she has a perfect memory for every minute detail she sees, hears, touches, etc., she takes most everything literally, and she can break people in half using only her right ear.
OK, that last part is probably not regarded as a stereotypical autistic behavior, though neither is having a weird metal alloy endoskeleton and arriving in 2008 naked in a time bubble from a post-apocalyptic future, but I digress.
Let’s return to the main point: SHE’S A FREAKIN’ ROBOT!!!
What the hell is it with TV shows and autism these days!? It makes me miss the lame days of St. Elsewhere where the whole series ended up being some elaborate dream in an autistic teenager’s mind.
Don’t make me send my toddler over to your studio to kick your ass with his right ear.
THE STUPID! IT BURNSES!!!
Posts that hopefully are similar:
- Can We Throw Rain Man Down the Memory Hole?
- Different, Superhuman, or the Genetic Future?
- A Case for Kids Repeatedly Watching the Same TV Show
- The Unlikely, Inspiring Combination of Gatorade and Autism
- Autism Goes Super
- Be Aware – For Everyone
- Decision Against Alex Barton’s Teacher – At Least For Now
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Actually, there is another way of looking at this, although I cannot honestly believe I am saying that.
If you have never seen the original film that I am sure James Cameron wishes he had greater control of the rights to by now, then I can summarise by saying that what made the Terminator unit of the film frightening is not that one could hit him with a semi-trailer and he would still get up to try and kill you. What made him truly terrifying was the fact that, up to a certain point, he was designed to perfectly mimic all aspects of Human behaviour and do so to such perfection that even the people whose explicit job it is to protect his target from attacks are unable to notice him until it is too late.
The more recent feature film sequel Terminator: Salvation features a plot line in which an executed murderer is used by the Terminator’s designer to figure out how to meld a steel combat chassis with a flesh-and-blood creature. Up until the point where John Connor shows him all the metal endoskeleton sitting under his ripped-up flesh, he has no idea that he is anything other than a flesh-and-blood person.
This parallels, albeit weakly, the best accidental depiction of the autistic on film to date, in which the hero has no idea that he is an artificial being, designed by a ruthless corporation to perform tasks for its own purposes. Blade Runner takes it one step further by using the actions of the characters to tell the viewer that the “skin-jobs”/artificials/Replicants are more Human than the people who refuse to recognise that they have rights.
Hence, the storyline that an android designed to efficiently kill targets without question or judgement, living in the skin of a teenaged girl I might hasten to add, might seem autistic to an overworked and underpaid school counsellor or teacher, is far from implausible. Or even necessarily bad. The real question is how well the story itself is told. Mozart And The Whale is not offensive to me because it is about a pair of autistic adults. It is offensive to me because the characters are such walking stereotypes and the supports so harebrained that it makes me think people will watch it and think they will be able to spot autistic adults who are capable of living on their own from across the city. There’s a difference, in other words.
The actress I think you are describing, Summer Glau, was in a film and TV series where her character very strongly resembles an autistic young adult, the former of which I included in a list of what I consider the best portrayals. The man playing her elder brother did not do too bad a job at portraying an autistic adult, either.
I just wish they would quit it with the portrayal of the autistic as passive and gentle unless pushed. There is a very good reason why Blade Runner is miles ahead of any other portrayal that has happened before or since, all of which are on display whenever Brion James is on the screen.