Music (2021) stars Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom JR, and Maddie Ziegler.
Music, the debut film by Sia, a pop singer/songwriter/director, is a musical film about a young autistic girl, who is suddenly put into the care of her older sister who is struggling with sobriety. It comes out this Friday, February 12th, in theaters and on demand, and it's certainly not a film for actually autistic people, like myself.
It's a musical, draped in big, powerful musical numbers, and brighter colors. It's loud and exciting, it's sensory overload. Music is the name of the young autistic girl in the film, played by Maddie Ziegler - a dancer who isn't autistic. Kate Hudson, an actress known for many pictures but most notably to me - Almost Famous (2000), which ironically enough is a film about music, plays the older sister. Music is autistic, which means she has autism, a "...developmental disorder characterized by difficulties with social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior." In simpler terms, it means she has sensory issues, for her it's largely in sound, and so she wears noise-cancelling headphones to drown out the noise from the world around her with music. I also do the same. She's also non-verbal, which I am not, but is possible on the autism spectrum.
Maddie Ziegler isn't autistic and it is one of the biggest criticisms against the film, along with the fact that Sia originally had an autistic actress, but the work environment she was put under was too much for her, an autistic person, and so instead of maker a safer work environment for her, she was replaced with Maddie. It's not a film made by autistic people. Lastly, that for a film about an autistic young women, it's not a safe sensory experience, but Sia did announce that a warning label will appear at the start. The problem I have with Music - and many other films and tv shows just like it, is that it's not an autistic person telling a story of their own experiences. I am lucky to have created this spot, this outlet for myself, (and other people if they wish), to speak about my own experiences, thoughts, and feelings. It is one of many that now exist in this digital, super-connected age. In the past, I don't know if I would've been able to create this space and talk about being autistic, and as for film and TV making, that's a much harder industry for an autistic person to break into and tell their own experience in their own words, which makes this movie all the more problematic.
For me, being on the autism spectrum is yes, having sensory issues such as problems with noise - which is comforted by music, but it's more than that. It's problems with food textures, the weight of dishware and clothes, fabric textures, loud sounds such as radio, TV, and crowds, forks & knives hitting against each other, bright, flashing lights, and more. Besides sensory issues, it's not understanding social cues naturally, it's having special interests (currently some of mine are rock music, sweaters, otters, beat poetry, and scooby doo), it's being too blunt, too honest, it's people-pleasing, it's meltdowns (sensory overload) sometimes as well, and many more things that have such a huge affect on my entire life.
Being autistic is something that varies for every person on the autism spectrum, and what I've known by consuming media over the years with autistic characters such as Atypical (2017-), Please Stand By (2017), and The Good Doctor (2017), is that it never gets it right completely. Is it a fault of autism being a spectrum and therefore it is impossible to convey every experience into one form of media, or it is more of the fault of the non-autistic director & writers relying on stereotypes, and not the full reality, taking up space that could have been given to an autistic person? I don't know, I can't answer that, but what I do know, is that we simply need more stories about autistic people created by autistic people. Music might have had good intentions, but it missed the mark. It's another movie about autism, without actually autistic people on the screen.
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