Serafina Paladino reviews Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer’s recent edited volume Autism in Film and Television: On the Island to discuss the contemporary representation of Autism on our screens.
Reconceptualizing “Accurate” Autism Representation
Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer (2022) open their edited volume Autism in Film and Television: On the Island by clarifying that while these 19 chapters fall outside the scope of Disability Studies, each contributor prioritized supporting neurodiversity in their work to oppose ableist discourse on Autism. This volume does not present Autism as a defect, but as an integral part of the human condition that scholars can explore through visual culture (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 19). The editors take this stance in the volume’s two-part preface by discarding the notion of an “accurate representation” of autism on-screen (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 5). The following chapters complement the introduction by demonstrating that the spectrum is too vast to be molded into one universal experience. According to Pomerance, viewers should not denounce common autistic tropes because having an Autistic character who is socially awkward and clumsy is easier for a filmmaker to convey than their inner neurodivergent monologue (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 5). From an artist’s point of view, Autistic traits in film and television must be external, not internal (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 7-8). Hence, the volume does not shy away from covering the controversial depiction of autism in the film Rain Man (1988), discussed in Chapters 3 and 15, alongside the fan-favorite autistic character Abed Nadir from the sitcom Community in Chapter 12, offering readers a wide breadth of what Autism has looked like on-screen in the last several decades.
Theory, Disability Studies, and the Spectrum
This collection is versatile, with many genres to select from. In terms of theory, it reminded me of Mark Osteen’s (2008) introduction to Autism and Representation, which is one of the first edited volumes I read when I began researching Autism from within the humanities. Osteen’s writing is essential for a survey on neurodivergent archetypes in media because he emphasizes how Autistic characters rarely have any agency compared to the neurotypical protagonists of a narrative (Osteen, p. 30-31). Although the focus of Autism in Film and Television is not solely placed on disability studies, it would have been intriguing to see this volume’s methodology interact with David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder’s (2000) seminal book in the field Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Mitchell and Snyder’s theory provides a comprehensive framework for how disability has been used as a literary device to preserve normalcy, where disabled characters must either be cured or defeated by the narrative’s end. Rain Man is a blatant example of narrative prosthesis that concludes with the autistic protagonist being institutionalized. As an autistic researcher, I found the volume’s in-depth discussion on the film to be disheartening, especially in the year that it was published. Surely as media and film scholars, we can move past this harmful stereotype and analyze texts that express genuine thoughts and feelings on the spectrum. This conversation could include anything from fan paratexts to social media to account for new developments in Autistic communication on/offline.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Removing “Non-Autistic” Conventions
There are infinite possibilities for viewing visual culture through a neurodiverse lens, but the scholarship must first catch up. Palmer notes that the chapters in this book are “divided in a way that conventional (rational, neurotypical) wisdom would not discern” which underscores the editors’ intent to do away with “non-autistic” conventions when writing about the spectrum (Pomerance and Palmer 2022, p. 28). I must applaud Pomerance and Palmer’s editorial decisions when arranging this book because I often come across medical literature that is written about autistic people, but it is not for them. Autism in Film and Television brings a neurodivergent presence to the forefront of its pages. Readers are made conscious that the neurotypical majority can no longer speak for autistic people under the guise of what is and what is not “normal.”
Recommendations
For this reason, I would recommend this book to undergraduate and graduate students who are looking to familiarize themselves with the neurodiversity movement so that they can identify how autistic thought is not a disorder but a perspective for textual analysis. Scholars in fan studies will find the chapters on media franchises Star Trek and Stranger Things to be helpful for learning about the intersection between Autism and fandom since many neurodivergent people play active roles in these fan spaces by writing fan fiction or cosplaying. For the seasoned scholar in Disability Studies, even though this book does not engage fully with theory in this discipline, Chapter 9 does highlight how women and feminine-presenting people are frequently overlooked when being diagnosed with Autism because they do not show the same symptoms as their male peers. The author of this chapter, Daniel Varndell, stresses that this diagnostic disparity results in autistic characters on-screen seldom being women, which illustrates how disability and medicine affect popular culture (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 131).
Watching Films “Autistically”
The editors state that the goal of this book is to promote “nonjudgemental neurodiversity” which draws from Stuart Murray’s (2008) work in Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination where he champions neurodivergence as a part of the self and not as an imperfection to conceal (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 19). By celebrating human diversity in this way, the volume’s contributors have the opportunity to evaluate canonically autistic characters like Raymond Babbitt as well as autistic-coded characters like the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes discussed in Chapter 6, whose neurodivergence is attributed to him by fans. Disability does not stop a narrative from unfolding both in canon and in fandom. Nonjudgemental neurodiversity lends itself well to what Osteen defines in Chapter 17 as watching films “autistically” (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 253). Osteen observes that his autistic son, Cameron, can find joy in rewatching his favorite movie, Mary Poppins (1964) time and time again. When the scholar follows his son’s viewing patterns, he discovers an Autistic presence in the film that he had previously failed to see from his neurotypical perspective. What Osteen first believed to be his son exhibiting repetitive behaviors, which are a symptom of autism as a disorder, was in actuality, how his son chooses to engage with the world as an Autistic person. Watching Autistically, Osteen concludes, “can make us better critics and, more importantly, better human beings” because we can consider different interpretations from neurodivergent people who are disparagingly ignored (Pomerance and Palmer, p. 254). I propose that by watching autistically, scholars can relieve their vocabulary of words like “accurate” and “authentic” when examining autism in fiction. Instead, we can ask what the autistic community thinks of their depiction on-screen.
Overall, Autism in Film and Television is an interdisciplinary guide that combines essays on film theory, fan studies, and disability studies so that regardless of what a reader specializes in, they will come away with new insight into autism and the autistic viewer.
About the Author
Serafina Paladino is a first-year PhD student at the University of California, Riverside in the Department of English. As an autistic academic, their research offers a neurodiverse lens on the intersection between disability, digital media, and fandom. They are currently examining autism and its representation in the science fiction genre through depictions of the alien and cyborg other.
References
Mitchell, David T. and Sharon L. Snyder. 2000. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the
Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: University Of Michigan Press.
Murray, Stuart. 2008. Representing Autism Culture, Narrative, Fascination. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Osteen, Mark, ed. 2008. Autism and Representation. London: Routledge.
Pomerance, Murray and R. Barton Palmer, eds. 2022. Autism in Film and Television: On the
Island. Austin: University of Texas Press.
