Han's Garden

In this post I'm going to be dissecting the article "Cinema on the Spectrum: The Importance of Representation of Persons with Autism in a Post-COVID World" by Ananya Kapoor in Review of Disability Studies.

It's free to read at the link above since it's an open-access journal. It's in the section "Research Articles and Essays". It looks and behaves much more like a research article than an essay so I'm treating it as such.

I find this article extremely surface-level in its engagement with the topic and does not actually connect any of its core questions or theses. Heads-up: severe pedantry coming up.

The abstract posits 3 questions/theses:

Why representation of persons with autism in mainstream cinema can be important for their successful integration into society.

This need is exacerbated during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

The findings indicate that there are noticeable distinctions between the different types of representations.

This is done via "the analysis of landmark representations of autism in both Hollywood and the Indian Film Industry".

The introduction begins with a basic lay-out of of streaming during the early months COVID-19 pandemic. It also connects the importance of representation in the construction of knowledge with increased calls for inclusivity and diverse representation in the film industry.

Then it mentions the Clark doll studies which, in summary, showed that even at a young age, both black and white children indicate a positive bias towards white dolls over black dolls. However, Kapoor then asserts "If we were to now consider adding a quadriplegic doll to this mix, it would not be unreasonable to assume that a black, disabled doll would be chosen even less frequently by young participants." This claim is reasonable, but no sources are given to support it. Which is wild because negative attitudes in children towards disability have definitely been studied (E.g. Affecting teen attitudes through positive media portrayals of teens with autism spectrum disorder; Another step to school inclusion: Development and validation of the Children's Attitudes Toward Autism Questionnaire; Be kind to three-legged dogs: Children's literal interpretations of TV's moral lessons; Can Cartoons Which Depict Autistic Characters Improve Attitudes Towards Autistic Peers?; Children's Attitudes Toward Disabled Peers: A Self-Report Measure; Public Stigma of Autism Spectrum Disorder at School: Implicit Attitudes Matter. These are just pulled from my notes, there's probably better ones but my point is that there is a wide corpus of research to support the notion that disabled children experience stigma and the author doesn't reference any of it).

The methodology is severely lacking. It speaks of "film industries" but then also includes series. The inclusion criterion is that it must be from India or the USA, and that it has to have a theatrical release or have been aired on television or major streaming platform. But further than that, nothing is specified. In what time frame are movies chosen? What databases were searched? How prominent does autism have to be in the work chosen? There ones discussed in the article are Rain Man, The Good Doctor, Atypical, Athiran, My Name Is Khan, and Barfi!. There are several notable ones missing from this list. For India there is obviously Main Aisa Hi Hoon (remake of My Name Is Sam). For the US it's difficult to be exhaustive but prominent examples include Mozart and the Whale, Adam, and Sesame Street.

In the analysis of Rain Man, Kapoor says "In a telling scene from Rain Man, Charlie takes Raymond to a doctor to be evaluated. The doctor informs Charlie that Raymond is an “idiot savant"". This is not correct; Charlie goes to the facility where Raymond resides and is given this explanation by one of the doctors there.

It also says "This statement rings true to the extent that most persons with autism appear to have a functioning and layered consciousness, which they may be unable to express due to the disconnect between their mind and physical body." again completely unsourced and honestly almost gibberish.

For the claim "By focusing on the small minority of “autistic geniuses,” the media places this archetype on a pedestal, making it the “model neurominority”", she cites a fucking YouTube video which may be valid if this some kind of deep cut that hasn't reached mainstream academia yet but this claim has ample scholarship already discussing it (e.g. Recognizing Jake: Contending with Formulaic and spectacularized Representations of Autism in Film)

"Whether accurate or not, these images in media can have a profound impact on public perception of disability." is again completely uncited, the next claim also contains a reference that is not in the citation list so who knows where it comes from.

Emphasis mine: "A fitting example of such representation comes from the 2017 Netflix series Atypical. The show revolves around the personal and family life of Sam, a teenager with autism. Over the course of three seasons, the web series explores various themes which are prevalent in the lives of intellectually disabled children including - but not limited to counselling, sexuality, social integration and independent living." conflates autism and intellectual disability

"Films which did feature autistically-coded characters, such as Koi Mil Gaya (2003), did not outrightly acknowledge the condition." this is more of a pet peeve but the character Rohit is not autistic-coded, he has a cognitive disability. The resemblance to autism is purely because of the overlap in traits between his disability (as the writers of the movie construe cognitive disability) and autism

"2010’s My Name is Khan was the first mainstream Bollywood film to feature an autistic protagonist with Asperger’s Syndrome" autistic protagonist with Asperger's syndrome is sloppy phrasing

"It correctly represents some of the quirks observed in people on the spectrum such as constant fiddling or “stimming” (self-stimulating behaviors) and aversion to the color yellow" I know that they mean that the aversion to the color yellow is the kind of idiosyncratic thing often found in autistic people but the phrasing makes it seem like the specific aversion to yellow is an autism thing which it absolutely is not.

About Athiran is asserted "For an audience unfamiliar with autism, this kind of representation can lead to the development of dangerously faulty constructs." which is again asserted without any support.

About Barfi! is said "Unfortunately, this aesthetic did not lend to a realistic portrayal as the character’s autism diagnosis seemed inconsistent, and malleable according to the needs of the plot, hence reducing the character to a caricature." which is unfortunately an actual thing but is again asserted without any examples or support.

Other claims with no support are "audiences are left misinformed and are more likely to be insensitive to actual people with autism" and "In India, people who are uneducated about intellectual disabilities are extremely insensitive towards autistic people. They call them ‘pagal’ [crazy]. Such attitudes are extremely harmful and this is why media representation is vital in order to educate these masses"

The conclusion "Inaccurate representations of people with autism in mainstream media, such as savant, supernatural and quirky characters, do not represent the average person on the spectrum but instead serve the plot and stylistic choices of the film." comes out of nowhere. Stylistic choices and plot are not discussed anywhere before.

Then "By contrast, more realistic portrayals have the following characteristics: (1) they do not embellish the autistic character’s personality with traits which lie outside of what would typically be expected for dramatic effect; and (2) they serve as responsible templates for what a real person with autism may look like to an uninformed audience." gives no actual concretes or ties it back to any of the previous analysis. What is a "responsible template" for "a real person with autism"? How much embellishment is too much? A lot of autistic characters are exactly the right amount of embellishment for the cookie cutter bland TV drama they stem from. Why is "realism" the standard by which we apparently measure "good" portrayals?

"To conclude, though persons on the spectrum may not always be adept at communication, they earnestly wish, of course, like anyone else, to be parts of society." very weird out of pocket statement that seems more like it's giving oneself a pat on the back for speaking for the poor autistics who can't communicate

"Ultimately, more accurate representations, especially in this time of steadily increasing, socially-vigilant viewership, may provide a small but real benefit for many struggling to communicate their own wish for acceptance, and such portrayals could in turn contribute to the development of more inclusive communities in the real world." this is the closing line and is I guess the whole point of the paper. Unfortunately it is not supported by any of the analysis done in the paper or the scholarship it cites.

I commonly see the argument in regards to autistic representation, that "we need less of Sheldon Cooper and more of [high-masking, late-diagnosed, queer, hyper-empathy, etc.]"

with the implication that Sheldonesque autism has been represented enough and now it's time for other presentations to get the spotlight.

and while yes, representation of autism in fiction has historically been very limited in the sections of the autism spectrum it has represented, and yes, we desperately need more diversity of all kinds in autism representation...

...do you genuinely think that out of all the times Sheldonesque (or Rain Man-esque, or any other subsection of autism that is often bashed for being overrepresented) autism has portrayed, it has always been portrayed well? it has always been portrayed with respect for the kind of autism portrayed, with dignity towards the autistic people it represents?

it has fucking not. people with "stereotypical" autism presentations have received more time on the silver screen and the page and the telly and the vast, vast majority of it has not been good. we don't need less Sheldon Coopers, we need more Sheldon Coopers who are not bullied by the narrative in addition to the fact that we need more of not-Sheldon Cooper autism.

in this post I want to kind of, write down my thoughts about Miraheze as a wikifarm. when I first started out making my wiki on Miraheze, there wasn't a whole lot of information about Miraheze as a whole. most information I could find was reviews from people who had issues with individual wikis or users—run-of-the-mill wikidrama that you're gonna find everywhere. so if you're considering Miraheze to host your wiki (especially if you're moving away from Fandom), I hope this post can be helpful.

a bit of context about my "wiki journey": prior to starting my own wiki, I already had multiple years of experience editing wikiHow. It was mostly "basic" stuff like copy-editing, fixing broken links, etc. I didn't have any admin experience, and I didn't have any technical experience. It did give me a solid basis for understanding how wikis are structured (like the basics: templates, categories). I first started my wiki on Fandom because that was the only platform I was familiar with. Over the course of a couple of months I became more and more uncomfortable with the ethos of Fandom as a company. Additionally, I needed a platform that offered more control and flexibility than what Fandom offered. I imported my wiki to Miraheze in September 2021. This included a lot of stuff (templates, categories) from Fandom so I didn't have to truly start from scratch.

so onto the actual reviewing

Wiki requesting: you have to request a wiki on Miraheze and get it approved. As of writing this, the way this works is first an AI reviews your request and either approves it or sends it to a human for further review. They need to use an AI because they simply don't have enough human volunteers to manually review the enormous flood of requests they get. I feel like people are a bit intimidated by having to have their request "approved" but in my experience, it's not that deep. Just follow the instructions, use full sentences to explain what your wiki is about, and if you're not doing anything illegal then it's very likely to get approved

Dormancy policy: this is also something that scares people off. Miraheze has a policy that if your wiki is inactive for a long time, it will get turned into read-only mode and then eventually deleted. The important thing to notice is that any kind of edit resets the timer on this. If you just make an edit every couple of months (doesn't even have to be a constructive edit), you don't have to worry about your wiki being deleted.

Drama from other wikis: again this is something that I see a lot of people criticize but it's not something I personally have had any bad experience with. Yeah, there are shitty and toxic wikis. Miraheze has been trying to crack down on the worst examples (ones that just suck up moderation resources).

Getting help: Miraheze is like. 20% more technologically difficult than Fandom. There's less hand-holding and if you're completely new to wikis, this can be a bit of a learning curve. There's a Discord server for support and in my experience they've generally been pretty good at helping out with any kind of question or problem you may have. I'm not a mega computer person but like 90% of my problems I could solve by reading documentation (from Mediawiki, Miraheze, Fandom) and the other 10% were solved by volunteers from the Discord server. It's a learning experience like any other but it's not as massive as it's sometimes made out to be

Flexibility: you get basically a completely clean Mediawiki install. You can change permissions on who can read, edit, perform admin actions (e.g. so that people have to get approved to be able to edit), there are tons of extensions, tons of skins, you can modify it to look however you want. The only limit is your willingness to learn. My wiki is a bit more bare-bones, not a lot of custom stuff because I can make do without and I'm not super good at this, but even a basic wiki can look good with some extremely basic tweaks. You can also change the license, e.g. choose a non-commercial license so that Fandom can't re-use your content or choose a non-free license altogether.

Interconnectedness: there's not a whole lot of connection between wikis. This can be good or bad depending on what you want. I basically never interact with other wiki people, except on the Discord server every now and again. A lot of wikis are not really in tune with the runnings of Miraheze itself as in, few people participate in Miraheze elections or discussions, but I think that's kind of expected. Most people are just there to host their wiki and don't necessarily want to discuss the wiki platform itself.

Stability: Miraheze has weathered some tough waters but at this point in time, stability is good, the company is financially in a good place.

Hands-off approach: Miraheze leadership meddles very little with local wiki adminship. If you're not doing anything illegal or being a toxic cesspool of discourse, it's very unlikely they're going to intervene.

There have been hiccups in the past but overall I've had a very good experience with Miraheze and I'm very glad I made the switch away from Fandom.