RE: The Last Movie You Watched
June 18, 2022 at 9:50 pm
(This post was last modified: June 18, 2022 at 9:58 pm by Rev. Rye.)
I'm still going to take on Mr. Wrong for the Deep Hurting Project tomorrow, but since Autism Pride Day is today, I figure I may as well do a little mini-entry in the project, this time, based around a short documentary called Autism Every Day.
If I were to tell you that I have autism and that this little piece of shit is from Autism Speaks, you can probably guess what I think of it. Much of it's basically, well, do you remember how Super-Nanny had these short montages of how dysfunctional a family and their kids are before the nannies come into the picture? It's basically all this over 13 minutes, except the parents are talking about autism and how it's ruined their lives. Not even the lives of the children, just theirs. There's no mention of them trying to understand their children, how, especially when everything is new, the world is a fucking sensory minefield, and things that adults and neurotypical kids can just get used to just lead to extreme reactions. Imagine being drafted into a sports game. You have no idea what's going on because nobody explained the rules to you. You might figure out the rules, but in the meanwhile, it's a pretty rough game, so sometimes, being on the field can get you hurt; either you get physically hurt or something happens that triggers a panic attack. It doesn't even have to be something that makes sense to neurotypicals, it just happens. This is what it was like for me being a child with autism, and these parents are like referees whose reaction to that one kid struggling to play the game or just having a panic attack is, at best, to wonder "what the Hell are we going to do with that kid?" At least my parents tried at times. And hopefully, this generation of autistic children are more likely to have parents who at least try and help their kids adapt to the world.
In this movie, the parents aren't trying to help understand their kids. At one point, a mother talks about bringing her autistic daughter to the park and having other parents judge her because she puts her daughter on a swing and her response is to have a meltdown. And despite asking for empathy and consideration for herself, she doesn't give any to her daughter. She doesn't seem to have figured out "Hmm, putting my autistic daughter on a swing triggers a meltdown. Maybe we should try something else that doesn't make her freak out." Another mom talks about special education and says the point of it is to segregate the disabled kids so they don't bother the normal ones. The closest thing they come to that is that one mother muses sadly on the fact that her autistic son will never marry or have kids. And I'm torn between pointing out that many kids with autism do grow up to have healthy family lives (having help at an early age is crucial), and saying "Given that starting up a family is time-and-resource consuming [and that after the big recession of 2008, the economic powers that be don't seem to be too interested in giving many in these kids' generations much access to said resources] and that we're pretty close to the point of no return with global warming anyway, good."
IN the movie's most damning scene, a mother talks about how she once sat in her car on the George Washington Bridge for 15 minutes contemplating driving her car off the bridge with her autistic daughter in it, and she says the only reason that she didn't do so, was because she had a normal child. And did I mention that said autistic child For the record, there is some crucial context missing from this clip. Apparently, the reason she even went to such a dark place is that professionals were suggesting that she send her daughter to a school where the conditions were so bad that this murder-suicide seemed like a good idea in comparison. And given that I know of places like the Judge Rotenberg Center who think electric torture is a good therapy choice, and that even Hellholes like the Motherfucking elan School decided to just take in regular autistic kids and subjected them to the same hellish practices that they were advertising for the worst of the worst of juvenile delinquents, this makes a depressing amount of sense. The mother in question, Alison Singer, regretted taking part in the documentary as well as ever being a part in Autism Speaks in the first place, even leaving to create her own charity, the Autism Science Foundation, which is significantly less shit than AS.
And, frustratingly, they don't even give the audience much of an idea of what autism is like. Not even in the sense of "autism is a stupefyingly broad spectrum, with intellectual ability ranging between severely mentally disabled and physicists whose achievements rival those of Einstein." I mean that even the limited vision of autism this doco is portraying is very nebulous. I referenced Supernanny in the beginning because the way they portray it is basically the worst features of those unruly kids and a baby who won't stop fucking crying. There are some instances of them saying positive things about their kids, but it's all too little, too late.
Hopefully, I'll be less heated when I watch Mr. Wrong tomorrow. I just have to deal with Ellen DeGeneres pretending to be straight and getting comedically abused by Bill Pullman for 90 minutes. And now, to watch something less anxiety-inducing, like Uncut Gems.
Also, I found that this movie is about as long as the first video of the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Here’s an interesting idea for a recut: score the video to that and cut away every so often to a guy doing this while the music’s playing.
If I were to tell you that I have autism and that this little piece of shit is from Autism Speaks, you can probably guess what I think of it. Much of it's basically, well, do you remember how Super-Nanny had these short montages of how dysfunctional a family and their kids are before the nannies come into the picture? It's basically all this over 13 minutes, except the parents are talking about autism and how it's ruined their lives. Not even the lives of the children, just theirs. There's no mention of them trying to understand their children, how, especially when everything is new, the world is a fucking sensory minefield, and things that adults and neurotypical kids can just get used to just lead to extreme reactions. Imagine being drafted into a sports game. You have no idea what's going on because nobody explained the rules to you. You might figure out the rules, but in the meanwhile, it's a pretty rough game, so sometimes, being on the field can get you hurt; either you get physically hurt or something happens that triggers a panic attack. It doesn't even have to be something that makes sense to neurotypicals, it just happens. This is what it was like for me being a child with autism, and these parents are like referees whose reaction to that one kid struggling to play the game or just having a panic attack is, at best, to wonder "what the Hell are we going to do with that kid?" At least my parents tried at times. And hopefully, this generation of autistic children are more likely to have parents who at least try and help their kids adapt to the world.
In this movie, the parents aren't trying to help understand their kids. At one point, a mother talks about bringing her autistic daughter to the park and having other parents judge her because she puts her daughter on a swing and her response is to have a meltdown. And despite asking for empathy and consideration for herself, she doesn't give any to her daughter. She doesn't seem to have figured out "Hmm, putting my autistic daughter on a swing triggers a meltdown. Maybe we should try something else that doesn't make her freak out." Another mom talks about special education and says the point of it is to segregate the disabled kids so they don't bother the normal ones. The closest thing they come to that is that one mother muses sadly on the fact that her autistic son will never marry or have kids. And I'm torn between pointing out that many kids with autism do grow up to have healthy family lives (having help at an early age is crucial), and saying "Given that starting up a family is time-and-resource consuming [and that after the big recession of 2008, the economic powers that be don't seem to be too interested in giving many in these kids' generations much access to said resources] and that we're pretty close to the point of no return with global warming anyway, good."
IN the movie's most damning scene, a mother talks about how she once sat in her car on the George Washington Bridge for 15 minutes contemplating driving her car off the bridge with her autistic daughter in it, and she says the only reason that she didn't do so, was because she had a normal child. And did I mention that said autistic child For the record, there is some crucial context missing from this clip. Apparently, the reason she even went to such a dark place is that professionals were suggesting that she send her daughter to a school where the conditions were so bad that this murder-suicide seemed like a good idea in comparison. And given that I know of places like the Judge Rotenberg Center who think electric torture is a good therapy choice, and that even Hellholes like the Motherfucking elan School decided to just take in regular autistic kids and subjected them to the same hellish practices that they were advertising for the worst of the worst of juvenile delinquents, this makes a depressing amount of sense. The mother in question, Alison Singer, regretted taking part in the documentary as well as ever being a part in Autism Speaks in the first place, even leaving to create her own charity, the Autism Science Foundation, which is significantly less shit than AS.
And, frustratingly, they don't even give the audience much of an idea of what autism is like. Not even in the sense of "autism is a stupefyingly broad spectrum, with intellectual ability ranging between severely mentally disabled and physicists whose achievements rival those of Einstein." I mean that even the limited vision of autism this doco is portraying is very nebulous. I referenced Supernanny in the beginning because the way they portray it is basically the worst features of those unruly kids and a baby who won't stop fucking crying. There are some instances of them saying positive things about their kids, but it's all too little, too late.
Hopefully, I'll be less heated when I watch Mr. Wrong tomorrow. I just have to deal with Ellen DeGeneres pretending to be straight and getting comedically abused by Bill Pullman for 90 minutes. And now, to watch something less anxiety-inducing, like Uncut Gems.
Also, I found that this movie is about as long as the first video of the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto. Here’s an interesting idea for a recut: score the video to that and cut away every so often to a guy doing this while the music’s playing.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.