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Scatmaster
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03 Feb 2012, 12:44 pm

Hi,

I'm new to this forum, but have felt passionately about the accurate representation of people with autism in fictional works, such as films and books, since these are really how the public learns about us. This seems to be a popular topic in media since the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Adam, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.... I am especially interested in how people feel about the portrayal of people on the ASD by actors who aren't. Did they do a good job, did they research successfully, or what could they have done better?

Sorry if this topic has been already discussed, but again I am new, and couldn't find any thread on it.


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MrXxx
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03 Feb 2012, 2:04 pm

You're right. It's been discussed many times, but it will come up again and again. If you didn't bring it up again, someone else would. It's a good topic anyway, so why not?

IMHO, most of the fictional representations are extreme. Rain Man is a particularly bad one. Dustin Hoffman himself admitted faking the entire role. He said himself that he knew next to nothing about Autism of any kind when he played the role.

Adam is the one fairly good exception to the rule in my opinion, for a couple of reasons. Although the character did display some extreme characteristics, it is the one role I've seen that is based on a real man with AS, and tells a realistic story about him. He's not totally disabled. He socializes to some extent, albeit awkwardly, and is a quite robotic in his speech, but some of us really are like that. Who knows how much like the real Adam he was in the movie? I particularly liked the fact that he was portrayed as capable of a relationship, even though it failed in the end (most of mine failed too, for some of the same reasons ~ I couldn't handle them).

Overall though, I find most Hollywood representations of AS in particular to be sadly under researched, and terrible. One of the worst things they do is portray the families as traumatized because of a child's AS. That pisses me off.


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aspie48
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04 Feb 2012, 8:34 pm

i find that they always do a textbook and severe case of aspergers. i makes us look worse than we are.