Autistic Daily

Adam

We’ve mentioned how television is picking up on the trend to display autistic characters on primetime.

Now, BBC News magazine has touched on the fact that autism is often portrayed in the most optimistic of ways.

Brilliance and savant skills make for good ratings from the audience, but these roles rarely give the reality of how difficulty the disorder can be for those affected.

And stereotypes fail to show those on the spectrum can have diverse abilities, not just in math or other quantitative areas.

“By far, the majority of people with autism do not have any kind of savant ability,” said Dr Stuart Murray professor of contemporary literature and film at the University of Leeds and author of the book Representing Autism.

Dr. Murray says the films tend to focus on two types of story lines:

* the disability provides some kind of incredible skill or quality that “makes up” for the negative, or
* the person finds a way to “rise above” adversity

“It’s a very sexy way of looking at autism,” says Jonathan Kaufman, president of Disability Works in the US and technical consultant for Adam, a movie in which an Asperger’s man falls in love.

Sexy sells, even if it’s for a disability. But are your everyday autistic individuals in society paying a price because they can’t live up the Hollywood standards in real life?

Read the entire article at news.bbc.co.uk.

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The Mirror

A 21 year old man is expected to be the next great hit on Britain’s reality talent show, X Factor.

Scott James stunned the judges with his voice and renditions of “You Raise Me Up.”

Scott said he Asperger’s was so bad, he stayed at home as a recluse for seven years.

Judge Dannii Minogue said, “He came on stage and told us he hadn’t left the house for seven years because of his Asperger’s and being picked on.”

“Then he started singing. You will not believe his performance.”

Scott is being compared to Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle, who was a quirky, but talented character.

via mirror.co.uk

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Just as we were talking about autism’s growing popularity on television, yet another primetime television series will feature the spectrum on its show.

Fox’s Mental stars Chris Vance, who plays a psychiatrist named Dr. Gallagher that comes into a Los Angeles hospital with some wildly unorthodox ways (hint: he got naked during the first episode to better connect and gain the trust of a psychotic patient).

This Friday, July 24th at 9/8 Central on Fox, Dr. Gallagher tries to help a young autistic girl who has witnessed a horrible crime.

It will be interesting to see how autism is portrayed on Mental, but the blogger at autisable.com predicts the show will be both heartfelt and respectable of the syndrome.

“I have been watching this show since it’s first episode. I find it to be funny and intriguing. The topics that have been covered so far are handled with care. The main characters interact in a similar way that characters on a soap opera do. I love my daytime shows, so this is a compliment, not an insult.”

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Redbook magazine is featuring 3 installments of a day in the life of a mother of three with an autistic son as she tries to seek treatment, help, and advice for him.

Nicole Kalkowski and her husband have discovered their son, Ryan, has regressive autism. Ryan appeared to be developing normally until about 17 months, when his autistic symptoms surfaced.

“Living With Autism” can currently be found in the July issue of Redbook.

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macleans.ca

Macleans in Canada has written an article on the seemingly rising popularity of displaying autism and Asperger’s characters on screen.

From Dr. Gregory House diagnosing a medical disease in a boy with autism and unable to communicate, to Dr. Temperance Brennan on Bones, the autism spectrum is flooding primetime television.

What exactly is the appeal of these characters that draws writers to them?

From Macleans:

“Within the limited formats of episodic TV and genre fiction there’s a limit to the physically challenged’s bag of dramatic tricks—the blind hero who’s more at home than the villains in a darkened room, for instance, has been a pulp fiction staple for decades. Neurological quirks, however, have endless possibilities for writers.”

“Wonder workers are always welcome in popular media, but superhero skills are not the entire source of the autistic characters’ appeal. We also love them for their lack of social skills. We, at least those of us without autistic relatives, can laugh when Christopher Boone, in the midst of a harrowing journey alone to his mother’s house, barks like a dog at fellow passengers who come too close to him, or when House is unspeakably rude to some pompous hospital administrator.”

Regardless of why we and television producers can’t get enough of these “quirky” characters, the biggest question is: What effect will bringing autism to the forefront of primetime do for those on the spectrum?

Will employers soon learn to recognize these individuals immediately and learn to accept their differences versus viewing them as problem employees? Will co-workers brush the once seemingly rude and frightening office guy as “just like that weirdo on television,” coming to an understanding of his behavior?

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