By Jill Escher
Humans have a long tradition of public shaming spectacles. Think of the public hanging of criminals, the burning of heretics at the stake, the guillotine-ing of aristocrats, the stoning of women accused of adultery.
But in our modern era the spectacles are more likely to take place online by outraged (or, more likely, mildly ruffled and anonymous) mobs who gleefully dogpile on hapless victims after the latest e-fatwa is announced by their leaders.
It only takes about 30 seconds of your time, provides a rush of sanctimonious satisfaction, and, best of all, it’s free! Can you say, “Cheap Thrills”?
Yes, the singer/filmmaker Sia is the latest casualty to succumb after committing a truly TERRIBLE SIN … an unforgiveable transgression of the Book of Neurodiversity … she cast an actor in the role of a girl with severe autism in her new film “Music” … and that actor was only pretending to be that character! OMG, shut the door! Daniel Day Lewis you are cancelled! Eddie Redmayne you too are cancelled! Dustin Hoffman, consider yourself cancelled! Every actor who has ever played someone beset by a condition they didn’t actually have, enjoy the gruel in Cancel Jail! (Goodbye Leonardo DiCaprio, and oh no, also Russell Crowe, I am sobbing….)
The attack on Sia by a vocal, unhinged minority is so preposterous that one would normally shrug it off with a “Oh, there go those-people-who-have-so-much-time-on-their-hands-they-attack-a-stupid-puzzle-piece,” but in reality this is much worse. This time, evil has triumphed.
Evil because the crusade to crucify Sia sends a diabolical message to every person in the performing arts: depict severe autism in your movie/film/play at your own peril. If you don’t do it exactly the way we want, you are toast. Transgress the Book of Neurodiversity in even the slightest manner and you will be pilloried, putting at risk months and years of creative effort and financial investment. Your reputation will be stained. Your artistic freedom squashed.
In other words, what artist would dare to tread on the subject matter of severe autism when a tidal wave of mindless insta-denunciation awaits them, at the merest stroke of a self-righteous Tweet?
For that’s what’s at stake here — banishment of depictions of severe autism. As the autistic writer Lucy Kross Wallace observed:
“It is one thing to suggest that casting actors with disabilities might produce more compelling performances, but it is quite another to foist these requirements upon every artist. In calling for Music’s cancellation, neurodiversity advocates cross the boundary from exercising their own liberty to infringing on that of others, including Sia’s autistic collaborators.”
What a tragedy for the autism community. Children with severe forms of autism have become a vast proportion of the population, about 1 to 1.5% of all children! Clearly they deserve more and more representation — in the news, on film, on TV, on stage, in print, everywhere. But the hair-trigger threat of Neuro-scorn will surely help keep severe autism firmly in its dark corner, orphaned, abandoned from the broader autism discourse, despite the monumental societal urgency.
As the mom of a nonverbal autistic teenage girl who seems, based on the trailer (I haven’t seen the film, it’s not yet out in the US, and I should add that for all I know I won’t like the film at all), very much like the lead character Music. How fabulous that a filmmaker chose to make a movie with a character like my darling Sophie, it’s happy dance time! People like Sophie are so dreadfully hidden from public view. So my feeling was, hurray for Sia for shining an oh-so-rare light!
But — according to the mob but also Autism Speaks, which tweeted in support of the mob — no happy dancing for me, because someone like my dear Sophie was not cast in the lead role.
Okaaaaaayyyy… say what? Let me tell you what would have happened if Sia had cast Sophie as Music. She would have wandered off the set, flung off her costume and headphones, flipped out at the lights and noise, fell asleep at the late hours, and failed at following a single directorial direction. In other words, disaster.
This point was conceded by the mob, which instead took the position that Sia should have cast a girl with high-functioning autism who had the cognitive-functional capacity to perform in the role. Sure, okay, I saw the lovely film “Keep the Change,” which, for example, cast actors with high-functioning autism in the lead roles, and to my mind it was triumphant.
But, really, we can acknowledge that actors with autism or other disabilities can do great work and should be among those considered for roles of all kinds without the disproportionate hysterics of demanding that every single autism character be played only by those who pass some sort of bizarre spectrum purity test? Or should a zealous mini-mob wield veto power because through some loony logic that I have been unable to fathom, they own the whole turf of “autism”?
Yesterday I am told Sia took down her Twitter account after enduring months of attacks. I am told she apologized to the mob (for what, I’m not sure).
We are all losers here. The autism community. Artists. Writers. Actors. The public. Creative expression. Free speech. Disability awareness. And of course Sia herself.
It cost exactly nothing for vindictive and self-absorbed Sia shamers to cast a dark shadow on her heartfelt endeavor over a mere triviality. This is not how reasonable people behave. Reasonable people may write a negative film review (have at it!) but they don’t launch a cancel crusade over something as innocuous as casting choices (right, Daniel, Eddie, Dustin, Leonardo, and Russell? or shall we demand your penance too?).
The frightening bottom line here, to borrow the words of a neurodiversity leader, is that Bullying Works.
Jill Escher is President of the National Council on Severe Autism.
Disclaimer: Blogposts on the NCSA blog represent the opinions of the individual authors and not necessarily the views or positions of the NCSA or its board of directors.