Sia's New Movie is Dangerous and Here's Why
Disclaimer- I am not an autistic creator and deferred to people with autism on all of the reasons why this movie is detrimental to the community. I would also like to add a trigger warning since I will be including one still from the movie.
If you are a person with social media, you have probably seen rumblings on the internet that the musician Sia has created a movie, and that this is movie is incredibly offensive and triggering to the autism community. She has been trending for saying offensive things, casting Maddie Ziegler instead of an actress with autism, and overall enforcing really horrible stereotypes the autistic community has been working to overcome.
On the surface, this movie seems like a positive thing; a young girl who is nonverbal and autistic is placed in the care of her sister when her mother dies. The sister is of course a partier and completely ill-equipped to handle a person with specific needs and has to learn to overcome her own issues to take care of her sister. If this movie had been done with an actual autistic actress, had anyone on the cast who was a consultant to make sure the things happening were accurate, and also not using horrific methods of calming down someone in the midst of an episode, this could have been an acceptable movie. All of those things coupled with the fact that Sia has given multiple upsetting interviews and said some pretty bad things on Twitter regarding her feelings (a non-autistic person) on the movie makes this whole thing a massive shit show and absolutely despicable. So, let’s break this down step by step.
The first thing that needs to be addressed is the fact that Sia is not autistic (neuro-typical) and uses a neuro-typical actress to be the character with autism. This is not how you create representation for the disability community and this is honestly very ableist. If you don’t know, ableism is “discrimination in favor of able-bodied people”, which really just means it is discrimination against those with disabilities. This can be seen in many forms from coddling and treating a disabled person like a child who is incapable of living life, to more severe things like abuse of disabled people. Sia’s movie shows all of these things. She cast Maddie Ziegler, a neuro-typical girl, and had her act in ways that reinforce non-verbal, autistic stereotypes. YouTuber Kristina Maione said it really well in one of her videos when she said “When you exclude people from a storyline that you made about them, that’s wrong.” I will link her video down below because she speaks with an autistic creator that I will continue to reference, but that is simply what it boils down to Sia made a movie about an autistic character, and then excluded actual autistic people and stories from the movie. Simply put, that is unacceptable.
The second thing to be addressed is that Sia apparently had an autistic actor cast for the role, but there was too much hassle and this actor was uncomfortable on the set. Autistic people are usually very sensitive to their surroundings and tend to have sensory processing issues, meaning that too many noises at once or certain feelings of certain clothing items can be overstimulating in a way neuro-typical people wouldn’t have. This is just the way their brains take in and process information, which isn’t a bad thing at all and usually is easily remedied. But the fact that Sia was making a movie about this very concept, that Ziegler's character uses music to calm down when in the middle of an episode and how she understands the world, but Sia cannot make these accommodations for an actual actor with autism? She can produce a movie about it, but she cannot make those real-life changes so an autistic actor could feel comfortable on her movie? How does that make any sense? Her movie is literally about a sister having to make those life changes in order to take care of her younger sister with autism but Sia somehow cannot manage to do that in real life. Sia also uses the terms “high and low functioning” which autistic creator Paige Layle explains has roots in Eugenics and were terms the Nazis used when trying to decide if they would get rid of a disabled person or not. So we need to cut these words from our vocabularies immediately.
Twitter. Sia’s thoughts on why she didn’t cast an autistic actor.
Another issue that has come up a lot amongst the autism community is that this movie is making the character with autism, Music, an inspiration for living her life and enjoying things. Autistic YouTuber Paige Lalyle called it “inspiration porn” in a video of hers. She also mentions that you can’t make a movie really that inspiring if it doesn’t even include the people you are making out to be so inspiring. She goes onto explain the inspiration issue that so many people with disabilities face: they are called inspirational and told they are such without actually doing anything except for living their lives. It gives the impression that they are so incredibly disabled that they can’t do anything so simply walking down the street or being out in their wheelchair on their own is somehow inspirational. I will link an article down below with some more information on this concept because it is important to learn about these things for all of us neuro-typical people.
Sia’s response to the criticism she received as soon as stills from the movie and the trailer were released was absolutely horrible. She told autism activists and autism people reaching out to there that they should watch her movie before they decide that it is so wrong. She said she did four years of research on how to bed portray her character Music but then still partnered with the organization Autism Speaks (a very polarizing group) and then also used terms for people with autism that the community generally isn’t fond of. They are ableist terms meant to put people in boxes that neuro-typical people can understand and make themselves feel comfortable with. She claims she cast an autistic actor but then she was uncomfortable so she fired her and hired Maddie Ziegler, but if she had done all of this research or just spoken to the actor, she could have found the best way for that actor to work well and feel comfortable. She plays into autistic stereotypes with the way she has Ziegler acting and portraying non-verbal people, and to top it all off, Sia did an interview with Variety where the interviewer compared the character Music to a wig that was an inanimate object that Sia was bringing life to by showing that autistic people are actually vibrant and have their own thoughts. The TikTok creator @actualyautistickatie has a wonderful video where she reacts to this clip and explains why it is so incredibly horrible and damaging to people who are autistic.
Let’s also not forget that Sia has made several comments that Ziegler was uncomfortable with the charter and how she was portraying her. She even told Sia she felt as though she was making fun of people with autism and Sia pushed her to continue doing what she was doing. The creator @actuallyautistickatie also brings up the point that Maddie is a child at only 14 years old, while Sia is a grown adult who should know better. Maddie is a child doing what she is told and acting a part she has agreed to play even though it makes her uncomfortable. Sia is an adult who claims to know autistic people she interacted with for research and that she did the research for four years and this is still what she came up with. There is also a moment where the sister of Music restrains her during an episode, which the autistic community is staunchly against because it can be so dangerous and detrimental to the person being restrained. Doctors have also spoken out against this method of calming someone down and yet Sia still chose to put it in the movie.
I am in no way an expert on this or any other issue regarding the autistic community. I talked to my sister (who is autistic) and deferred to autistic creators on all of these issues. I was able to see the issues with this movie as I hope you all are too and hopefully do not watch it for any reason. I have linked some amazing videos down below that autistic creators have made in response to this movie, as well as Sia’s interview with Variety that shows her true beliefs on disabled people. Under no circumstances should you watch this movie for any reason, and if you can, continue to speak out against it and how detrimental it is to people with autism.
Madey
Cover art by Avery Lynch
Sources:
Inspiration Porn- The Washington Post