Friday, July 24, 2009

Asperger's in pop culture

I have a confession to make: I don't watch much TV. Not much of anything made later than 1999 anyway (the year MST3K, the finest television show ever made, aired its last episode). I'm a crusty curmudgeon like that. I've never seen an episode of Bones or House; I'm too busy watching Quantum Leap and tut-tutting about how they don't make shows like that anymore, no siree. So I when I read this article in Maclean's about the growing prevalance of characters with AS in television, movies and books, I was somewhat surprised. Before I go any further, I should mention that, though I haven't seen some of the shows mentioned in the article, I've heard about them, and I am familiar with other shows, movies, and books featuring characters with AS and I have a general feel for how it is portrayed in pop culture, so I'm going by that. Don't hesitate to call me out on anything that I get wrong.

Seeing as how Rainman was the only autistic character in mainstrem film and television for over a decade, I suppose I should be pleased by this sudden widespread awareness and acknowledgement of ASD (autism spectrum disorders). And in a way I am. But I'd be happier about it if the characters had more than one dimension.

Now I don't have a problem with stereotypes of AS as such. I invoke them all the time, and they do have some truth in them. The problem rather, is that every heavily stereotyped TV, film, and book character means one less opportunity to create a deeper, more realistic portrayal of people with AS; moreover, it gives a superficial and sometimes even false idea of what it is like to have it.

For example, the article describes the extreme giftedness of many of the aspie (and ambiguously aspie) characters:
Christopher Boone knows every prime number up to 7,057; another autistic hero from teen fiction, 16-year-old Simon Lynch of Ryne Douglas Pearson’s Simple Simon, has mathematical abilities great enough to crack a NSA security code. Bones Brennan is a brilliant forensic anthropologist, trained in four martial arts, and a bestselling novelist who speaks Japanese; Zack Addy has an IQ north of 163, a photographic memory and two doctorates. House is, roughly speaking, more intelligent than the rest of his medical team combined. On the ABC series Boston Legal, it is Jerry Espenson’s Asperger’s that provides the attention to detail that makes him a master of financial law. Lisbeth Salander, 24, had a horrific childhood, but emerged as a brilliant computer hacker.
There is a little truth in that. There are aspies out there with genius IQ's and multiple doctorates and the ability to figure out the square root of 145,161 faster than a calculator. But there are also a lot of aspies out there, probably the majority of us in fact, who are everything from above-average but not genius to below average. And even those who possess genius IQ's and rare gifts are not guaranteed of success. For every person with an ASD and a genius IQ who is a doctor or lawyer or a Silicone Valley millionaire, there is probably another one who's underemployed because he lacks social skills to the point where no one finds it quirky and charming anymore, or he has bizarre mannerisms, or his gifts simply aren't in demand.

It is only hinted at in the article, but something else I've noticed about popular depictions of AS is that the characters' personalities seem to consist almost entirely of whatever autistic traits the writers found interesting, without any consideration as to how autistic traits manifest themselves differently in different people and the interaction between autistic traits and other personality traits. Come to think of it, it seems like the characters don't even have personality traits that don't come straight from the diagnositic checklist. Just give the character a couple of compelling quirks, some blunt dialogue, a chronic distaste for the vast majority of people, a single-minded pursuit of some goal, and the emotional range of Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels, then tack on about 50 IQ points, and you're done. As much as I enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, I came away from the book hoping that no one who read it would get the idea that it was an accurate representation of Asperger's. The story's hero, Christopher Boone, is so cold, so strangely detached from the people in his life, so oblivious to the emotional impact of the events in the book, it's almost disturbing. And, for most of us anyway, entirely inaccurate. It's as though Mark Haddon simply read somewhere that a classic trait of AS is lack of emotional reciprocity and never even bothered to find out whether that meant a lack of all but primal emotions in general (it doesn't) or difficulty in understanding and expressing the more complex emotions that we do, in fact, feel, including strong emotional attachment to people. And then there is Christopher's complete lack of humour, which anyone who has spent any time with actual aspies for more than ten minutes knows is completely at odds with reality. (For the record, my husband, who also has AS, is, in addition to being a caring guy, also one of the funniest people I've ever met).

The writer of the Maclean's goes on to describe another novel with an aspie protaganist, this one female:

In one of her [Elinor Lipman's-ed.] earlier novels, The Pursuit of Alice Thrift (2003), when a female autistic doctor finally scores a boyfriend, she is hilariously clinical about their first kiss. “When he leaned in for the actual compression of lips, my arms went up and circled his neck, causing a lingering farewell and inducing a near-reluctance to part that was unanticipated.” One (female) reviewer wrote that, in the touchy-feely world of women’s lit, it was refreshing to have a heroine “as in touch with her emotions as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.”

"Actual compression of lips?" Seriously? I know she was going for humour here, but I have to wonder if people actually believe we think like that. Not all portrayals are that awful, of course, and some are pretty cool, but still, we're not all the blunt, ballsy geek grrls of the movies and books (though some of course are, and awesome ones at that). We're just as likely to resemble the gentle, feminine, quirky Luna Lovegood as we are Lisbeth Salander, the tenacious computer hacker with the dragon tattoo. We're just as likely to be into things like art and poetry as we are computer programs and molecular biology. Many aspie women are emotional, caring, and intuitive, and the ways in which those aspects of our femininity interact with our autistic traits are complex. Probably too complex, I'll admit, to portray accurately in a TV show or movie whose focus is on other things, but complex enough to make a compelling character study.

And finally there's that whole I-tell-it-like-it-is-and-I-don't-give-a-damn-what-you-think aura that some (though definitely not all) characters with AS have. It makes for good comedy, but it isn't how many of us really are. As we are growing up, we do tend to say uncomfortable truths and opinions and say them bluntly, but by the time we reach adulthood most of us have learned (sometimes the hard way) not to. Sometimes we even overcompensate by becoming quiet, shy, and eager to please people who'd love to tell it like it is once and awhile but don't. And not only do we eventually learn to pick up on what others think of us, but many of us care about it a great deal, sometimes going to great lengths to try to be liked. If we find ourselves alone, more often than not it isn't because we dislike people, but because they dislike us, or because being whispered about, laughed at, picked on, and treated condescendingly has taken too great a toll. Many people with Asperger's experience the same desire to be with people and be liked by people as anyone else would, and yet find interacting with them to be mentally draining and uncomfortable. It's a paradox that can cause intense pain, to the point where some aspies have taken their own lives. And yet not only is that aspect of AS rarely shown, but many of the characters are actually portrayed as being perfectly happy being alone.

I don't mind one bit if we keep the archetypal blunt, humourless, left-brained loner geniuses. In the right hands, they make for great TV, movies, and books. But I hope we stop calling them aspies, and instead start introducing characters who actually feel like real people-people who happen to have Asperger's Syndrome.

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