alright, newleafexplorer, my friend. i get that you are trying to do A Thing here. but…as an actual autistic person, and one whose special interests include that boobies cannibalism guy, i’d really appreciate if you’d do some more thinking before jumping straight to calling for everyone to stop supporting him.
now, i’m gonna touch on your summaries of what he said. there are some valid criticisms of it that i disagree with some, but that have merit.
i’m gonna copy/paste in the relevant bits, because i know none of y’all are clicking links
BEGIN BREAKDOWN OF BEN C QUOTES
[on researching the physicality of Frankenstein’s Creature] “We talked a lot about about what we were doing as far as the world that influenced Danny and Nick in terms of wanting to do this project. We went to two extraordinary schools for autistic children and there is an element of the movement that reflects that but also as Jonny was saying it’s an evolution of a man who is fully formed so it’s an evolution with a fully grown body, it’s as if a man is born again as an elephant. Sort of backwards. It’s about not knowing anything about what they’ve got but being capable of doing much more than a child so it was about how to stagger that progression and having certain barriers to being fully evolved with certain autistic movements.”
breaking this down: basically, benedict is rambling because he was filming sherlock, rehearsing a play, and recording a radio play all at once, so it’s hard to know what he’s actually trying to fucking say. it comes down to “we borrowed stim and stim-looking movements for our depiction of the creature.”
saying he “compared autistic kids to frankenstein’s monster” pulls it so far out of context it becomes an actual lie. the creature is struggling with his humanity and whether or not he is human. that hits home pretty hard with me. making him look more autistic makes him more relatable to me, because i also struggle with looking sufficiently human. i can definitely see why people would dislike it, but it’s definitely different from literally comparing kids to monsters.
I think it’s a really dangerous thing to toy with [labeling fictional characters as autistic]. People talk about me doing that quite a lot and that being a good thing for people who are on the spectrum, which is great. But I don’t go into a job going, ‘Is this autism? Is this Asperger’s? Is this some other form of slight learning difficulty or disability?’ I’m very wary of that, because I’ve met people with those conditions. It’s a real struggle all the time. Then these people pop up in my work and they’re sort of brilliant, and they on some levels almost offer false hope for the people who are going through the reality of it.
now, this second one is really controversial, even among the autistic ben c fans. hilariously enough, i think some of the reaction may be because, being autistic, many of us suck at looking at things from the perspective of someone else with different experiences.
we’re all thinking as if benedict is talking about autistic people making autistic headcanons. he is almost definitely not talking about those people. he has very little awareness of those people.
he’s talking about the people who label every oddball genius “mildly autistic” just because they are quirky and smart. now, autistic people do this for perfectly legit reasons and you can stop me when you lower me into the cold, hard ground. when allistic people do this, it IS shit, because it’s giving us a stereotype. “you have asperger’s? oh yeah, like rainman!” (throws toothpicks on floor) “HOW MANY?”
benedict is talking about that. benedict is talking about the parents who assume their autistic child will look like sheldon from big bang. yes, his phrasing makes it glaringly obvious that he doesn’t really have conversations with many people in the autism activism movement. many people have not. at one point, you and i had no idea that autism was not a disability. it’s hardly a crucifiable offense.
END BREAKDOWN OF THE BEN C QUOTES
i have seen the imitation game. i don’t care what benedict says, that movie was about a sad gay autistic man. the behaviors, the reactions, it was all there. that was the best, most accurate, least offensive portrayal of an autistic character i have seen, ever. like shit i’m gonna stop supporting him! he plays characters i can see myself in. nobody else does that.
also, i like his weird face. sue me.
i’m sure your intention wasn’t to upset anyone! but seeing me used to reduce this dude i really admire into some kinda one-dimensional target really hurts. it feels like i’m being told that by liking this guy, i’m failing my people.
i know you’ve got the best intentions, but please be careful when you pull words out of context or summarize them too succinctly! words have power and consequences!
