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Television series to understand autism

2021-07-26T14:10:26.740Z


Television incorporates more and more characters who move away from stereotypes and make visible a disorder that had been abused by fiction


On April 5 of this year, Josh Thomas, the creator of

Please Like Me

, made his autism public.

She had suspected it for a while, she said, but it wasn't until she started filming

Everything is going to be fine

that she decided to get diagnosed.

Everything is going to be fine

(Movistar +) is his second series as a screenwriter, director and protagonist.

And it is also a revolutionary fiction for how it treats autism.

Why?

Because it is the first to include a character with autism played by an actress with autism.

She is Kayla Cromer, and the character she plays, Matilda, is a teenager who always says what she thinks - there is no social filter - and does not understand why others do not.

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Thomas (Blackwater, Australia, 34 years old), who said he felt "relieved" upon receiving the diagnosis, is convinced that "the next barrier to break down in television fiction is that of neurodiversity", and in the case of autism spectrum (ASD), it seems that not only he is taking it seriously.

More and more series that, without dealing with the subject, incorporate a character within the spectrum.

Take

The White Lotus

, the latest HBO premiere.

The son of the wealthy Mossbachers, Quinn (Fred Hechinger) is more than just a video game addict who doesn't seem to live on this planet.

Although autism is not directly mentioned, its stereotypes are discussed.

That is, while Robia Rashid builds a small miracle in

Atypical

(Netflix), a deep and enjoyable hybrid of drama and comedy and in many ways didactic about what it means to live with a person with non-severe autism, in

Parenthood

(on Amazon Prime Video ) it is taken for granted that education is complicated for different reasons and that among them may be the fact that your child is diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, as happens to the character played by Peter Krause. "The spectrum is very wide and varied, but the characters that we have seen so far on television, no," Josh Thomas wrote on his Instagram profile.

And is that true? It was until not too long ago. That is to say, while

The Big Bang Theory

exploited the comic vision of a character with gifted Asperger syndrome, Sheldon Cooper, and

The Good Doctor

or

The Bridge

did the same, instrumentalizing some of the characteristics of that type of mild autism often related to a superior intelligence –– and an obsession taken to the extreme––, the simple and direct

Love on the Spectrum

(Netflix) followed couples with autism in their day-to-day lives, and also on their first dates, and let them talk about their obsessions - –Their safe place in the world–– without judging them. It was, in fact, watching that series that Thomas decided to ask for a diagnosis.

Thomas is today the first head of a series diagnosed with autism in history, and his production very subtly exposes the main features of the disorder.

Traits that are seen very clearly in, for example, Julia, the character with autism who

Sesame Street

joined its squad in 2017.

In one of the episodes, Julia has to cut her hair.

But he is afraid.

You don't know what it is exactly.

So Coco and her friends improvise a hairdresser and pretend to cut her hair, explaining in detail everything they will do.

In another, it is the characters themselves who learn to play ball the way Julia does, which is nothing conventional.

Julia is unique. As is Pablo, the first protagonist with ASD in a series of preschool cartoons, which Clan premiered last week. Surely there are scenes in it similar to those in

Todo va a va bien

. Like that moment when Nicholas, the character Thomas plays, needs a hug because his father just died, and his sister Matilda doesn't want to give it to him because she doesn't like hugs. "And what do you do when you want to hug someone?" Asks Thomas. "I dance," she says. So they dance. Fortunately, how far is Dustin Hoffmann in, for many, the only portrait of non-severe autism that existed,

Rain Man

, knowing exactly how many chopsticks fall to the ground at the right time to do so.

Keir Gilchrist in an instant from the third season of 'Atypical'

Five examples

Atypical

.

Sam Gardner (Keir Gilchrist) has autism.

He can talk for hours about penguins, but he can't smile.

Unless you give him a percentage.

You can tell him: "Smile 30% less" and he will, because he trusts you.

Sam doesn't know how the world works.

She goes everywhere with a notebook and takes notes on the dos and don'ts.

It does not support changes.

You don't know you can hurt others by speaking your mind all the time, but you can't help doing it.

The thing starts when he decides that the time has come to go out with a girl.

Image of 'Everything will be fine'.

Everything is going to be fine.

His father just died and Nicholas (Josh Thomas), a thirty-something who does whatever he wants to do all the time, must take care of his two teenage stepsisters.

One of them is Matilda (Kayla Cromer), a girl with autism in love with one of the most popular boys in high school, whom she does not leave alone.

He finds it funny the way she approaches him all the time, and she thinks it's because she likes him, right?

Matilda has no friends and sometimes accidentally annoys her sister because she tells things she shouldn't and doing so destroys her a bit.

Image from 'Parenthood' Chris Haston / NBC Universal, Inc.

Parenthood

.

The Bravermans are a macro-family.

Four grown brothers with their respective families.

Children of all ages with all kinds of problems.

Almost an instruction manual for different types of parents.

Among them, those of Max (Max Burkholder), an eight-year-old boy with Asperger's syndrome.

The treatment of the disorder is that of fitting by the parents, and the traits shown were for the first time –– the series is from 2010–– from the customary giftedness to focus on problems of communication and mutual understanding.

Image from 'Young Sheldon'.

Young Sheldon.

The

spin-off

of

The Big Bang Theory

reconstructs, in situation comedy mode, the childhood of the genius, and shows an Asperger syndrome never treated as such –– because of the time it portrays, although in its adult version it is not mentioned either– - and focused on the superior intelligence of the character.

The lack of empathy, obsessions and manias, and literalism appear, but little else, and always with an instrumental purpose.

Although from the third season, with the appearance of Dr. Sturgis, the treatment of the disorder, while exploiting its comic condition, becomes more empathetic.

Image from 'Love on the Spectrum'.

Love on the Spectrum.

A reality show

Australian starring people with autism trying to find the love of their life.

They are seen in their homes, with their train collections and their very strange pets, and also sharing a life together in their very own way when they decide to get married.

The brutal honesty of what they tell –– there is, in no case, any kind of pretense, they are like children who have grown up only on the outside–– makes this miniseries a little gem and a good way to begin to understand what it consists of. autism spectrum disorder.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-07-26

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