(March 4, 2021 at 11:31 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Okay, on the whole controversy with Music, the controversy is much bigger than just "ZOMG! THEY CAST A NEUROTYPICAL GIRL TO PLAY AN AUTISTIC GIRL! DOUBLEPLUSUNGOOD! DOUBLEPLUSUNMOVIE!" I haven't seen it yet, but I do fully intend to watch it when I can for the Deep Hurting Project. Personally, I have autism, I don't believe it's necessarily bad for a neurotypical person to play someone on the spectrum per se. But I believe that if you go that route, and given that, from what I can recall, Sia wanted to do so all along, since as far back as I can find on Wikipedia's history pages, Maddie Ziegler seems to have been ALWAYS intended for that role, you need to have others who actually are on the spectrum working as consultants to make sure they get it right. And, frankly, I'm not convinced that was the case
Not only am I on the Spectrum, but I've known many others who were (on the higher and lower-functioning ends of the spectrum). And looking at these mannerisms Maddie Ziegler is putting into her dance, frankly, I'm not seeing any of them reflected in it. What I see are two things: 1) the schoolyard bullies who taunted me for being weird for reasons they almost certainly couldn't comprehend, and 2) the Upper-Class Twit of the Year skit from Monty Python.
Of course that one gets a pass from me since that's more about making fun of rich idiots so insulated in their own little worlds they can barely function outside of it, which I think is a worthy goal. When they're doing the exact same shit in what's supposed to be a legitimate drama about autism, it's little short of galling. To be fair, I don't exactly fault Ziegler for this, since there was apparently one point in filming where she broke down in tears because she was afraid what she was doing could be seen as making fun of autistic people. Also, I can't help but notice the flashing lights in that music number, and while I personally don't have photosensitive epilepsy, many on the spectrum do. I'm not even going to touch on the fact that she's a white girl wearing bronzer and headphones that look like cornrows.
Also, did the version you watched include a scene where Music has a meltdown and Zu and Ebo try to calm her by pinning her to the ground? Just for the record, in real life, that shit is DEADLY. And when I say deadly, I mean that very literally. Here's one case of a boy who died as a direct result of that method. To be fair, Sia couldn't possibly have known about that particular case when it was being shot, since it happened during post-production. But then again, Corey Foster and Faith Finley were two other cases who died the same exact way long before filming started. To be fair, she said she was going to remove that scene, but apparently that didn't happen.
And, for the record, I actually tend to be a bit more lenient on portrayals of autism in media specifically because I know autism is a stupefyingly broad spectrum that can cover every extreme from the profoundly impaired to even physicists whose contributions to the discipline rival Einstein's, but shit like this is hard to defend, and it doesn't look like when I actually get around to watching it, there'll be some details that totally redeem and justify it, especially since, even if you take out all the shit I talked about, it seems to just be one of those "wild young adult has to learn responsibility by taking care of a disadvantaged/disabled kid and everybody's supposed to be inspired by the story of overcoming it all even if the kid in question has so little personality they may as well be a housepet" movies.
And speaking of the Deep Hurting Project, I'm off to supplement my recent review of Gallowwalkers with a takedown of Dorbees: Making Decisions.
Yes, the role of Music was specifically written for Maddie. Whether Sia acknowledges that or not, it's obvious. This isn't a jobs program for autistic people. This is a business. Anyone else doing those dances and faces would just be seen as a cheap knock off of Maddie because that's been her gimmick for 6 years now. That dance with those faces you posted was when the character Music was sleeping. In her sleep she is not super autistic. She moves and dances and is free. The faces don't really represent autism I don't think. She's just doing her gimmick like she's done the past 6 years in Sia videos by making weird artistic faces. It's just her thing. Sia got 2.3 billion views in her Chandelier video by casting Maddie to make funny faces, so clearly it's a formula that works so she's kept using Maddie doing a variation of the same thing over the years.
Maddie's skin is darker than the average white girl thanks to being part Italian, and so what if they put some makeup on her to match better with the orange outfit? What the hell? That's what makeup is for, right? It changes your appearance. They weren't trying to portray her as being black or half black. White people can have whatever hair style they want. No one owns hair styles and that's an incredibly silly idea, and it's anti-feminist to tell women how they can and can not present themselves fashion wise. I don't have an issue with the strobe lights either. If that was Sia's vision in her head, I can understand her not wanting to sacrifice her vision to make everyone happy. She had a vision about what she wanted to do and she stayed true to it.
Some extremely autistic people do make the faces that Maddie makes in the film (when she's awake and not dancing in her dream world). If people have a problem with that being portrayed, it says more about them than Sia. Why do autistic faces make them uncomfortable? Are they uncomfortable with how extremely autistic people act in real life? Is that what's really making them uncomfortable?
I don't really care if the restraint thing is not the best way to go in real life. It was filmed several years ago so I don't think they could have just taken it out and filmed new scenes in its' place. What is the real harm done anyways by keeping it in? It's neither here nor there to the average person watching the film how extremely autistic people are to be dealt with during a freak out. If someone is a caretaker for a person like that, they will have been trained how to handle those situations better and are likely not going to be relying on this movie for training, so I don't see actual harm being done in the real world here.
I don't care any more about what autistic people have to say about the movie than what anyone else has to say. Unless they are extremely autistic, they don't really have much of anything in common with the character in the movie. I'm autistic myself, but I don't relate to the character just because she also has autism.
The songs were all fantastic and the choreography was top notch as you would expect from a Sia and Maddie project. If you want everything to be 100 percent realistic, good luck getting that with any film ever made. If people want complete realism, maybe watching a documentary would be better suited for them.