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May. 5th, 2005 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kippurbirdApparently Autism and Aspeger's syndrome is still the in thing in Hollywood.
What was it? Tuesday night? There was a Law and Order Special Victims Unit and Law and Order Trial by Jury crossover. Angela Landsbury and Alfred Molina guest stared as a Mother and her son. The son was going around assaulting cleaning women and the mother was covering it up. Through out the course of the episode, I noticed that the son, was acting rather strange. I would have said Autistic, but they never mentioned it, so I figured that he was just "ecentric". At least they didn't mention it until well into the show. Then they found out that he was AS and that he might be misinterpiting the women's expressions as coming onto him. Alfred Molina actually played a very convincing AS person. However my mom had some qualms about the episodes. She said that now everyone was going to think that AS people are rapists and that the Refridgerator moms are the reason why AS people are AS, because Landsbury's character was very distant from her son, a typical Fridge mom description.
And I've been thinking about that. Are people that gulible as to think that now Autistic people are potential rapists and that it wasn't that this rapist just happened to be autistic? The answer I've been coming up with is, yes. People are that dumb. That's one of the reasons why a lot of them don't think that I'm autistic. Because I don't act like Rain Man, and he's the defintion of autism to the normal person out on the street. People seem to get their knowledge of disorders and thinks like that from TV and the movies and they think that it's right. I mean I've seen several depictions of Autistic people in the media. There was the kid from Mercury Rising. That was a terrible movie about Autism, but an excellent Bruce Willis film. Then there's Grissom, from CSI, who I'm conivnced is AS. There was an episode of Seven Days that had a fairly acurate portrayl of a person with autism and the same sort of gift as the kid in Mercury Rising. In Wiithout a Trace they had a missing kid with autism that was done fairly well, though I do have some qualms about some things, but they can't all be perfect.
In some ways these different types help expand the idea that there are different types of autism. But in some other ways it helps create more sterotypes. And people don't know which are correct and which are just the writer's fantasy.
What was it? Tuesday night? There was a Law and Order Special Victims Unit and Law and Order Trial by Jury crossover. Angela Landsbury and Alfred Molina guest stared as a Mother and her son. The son was going around assaulting cleaning women and the mother was covering it up. Through out the course of the episode, I noticed that the son, was acting rather strange. I would have said Autistic, but they never mentioned it, so I figured that he was just "ecentric". At least they didn't mention it until well into the show. Then they found out that he was AS and that he might be misinterpiting the women's expressions as coming onto him. Alfred Molina actually played a very convincing AS person. However my mom had some qualms about the episodes. She said that now everyone was going to think that AS people are rapists and that the Refridgerator moms are the reason why AS people are AS, because Landsbury's character was very distant from her son, a typical Fridge mom description.
And I've been thinking about that. Are people that gulible as to think that now Autistic people are potential rapists and that it wasn't that this rapist just happened to be autistic? The answer I've been coming up with is, yes. People are that dumb. That's one of the reasons why a lot of them don't think that I'm autistic. Because I don't act like Rain Man, and he's the defintion of autism to the normal person out on the street. People seem to get their knowledge of disorders and thinks like that from TV and the movies and they think that it's right. I mean I've seen several depictions of Autistic people in the media. There was the kid from Mercury Rising. That was a terrible movie about Autism, but an excellent Bruce Willis film. Then there's Grissom, from CSI, who I'm conivnced is AS. There was an episode of Seven Days that had a fairly acurate portrayl of a person with autism and the same sort of gift as the kid in Mercury Rising. In Wiithout a Trace they had a missing kid with autism that was done fairly well, though I do have some qualms about some things, but they can't all be perfect.
In some ways these different types help expand the idea that there are different types of autism. But in some other ways it helps create more sterotypes. And people don't know which are correct and which are just the writer's fantasy.
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Date: 2005-05-05 08:29 pm (UTC)I think there's some innate dread about the way a character, who is part of some group that is considered somehow not normal, will be portrayed by the gernal public. Some excellant portrayal could open minds and give insight to these types of people, but others just perpetuate stereotypes.