Autistic persons reject pigeonholing in ‘Neurotypical’ on PBS
29/07/2013
John Crook
Channel Serf
Filmmaker Adam Larsen — whose acclaimed one-hour documentary Neurotypical makes its national broadcast premiere tonight on the PBS series POV — grew up in western North Carolina, where his father has worked in the field of autism for 20 years. Given that upbringing, it’s not surprising that Larsen became strongly irritated by what he perceived to be a social double standard when it comes to persons living with autism.
“(There was) either a pervasive need to make people into a rendition of something ‘normal,’ or a tendency to sensationalize the extremes of autism,” he explains. “Documentaries at the time were either clinical, focused on cause and cure, or dramatic, looking at the ‘tragedy’ of autism or the brilliance of the savant.”
In contrast, Neurotypical — which takes its title from the term many autistics use to refer to so-called “normal” people — explores the experiences of people with this neurological condition largely from the perspective of the autistic persons themselves.
The exception is Violet, the high-energy 4-year-old who is going through a rough patch with her family as the film opens because her lagging communication skills make it difficult for her to express her wishes clearly, often triggering frustrated temper tantrums. The rest of her family generally copes well with Violet’s bad days, but her parents are confronting a thorny question faced by anyone with a special-needs child, namely, which part, if any, medication should play in the child’s treatment.
Shy 14-year-old Nicholas, meanwhile, is wrestling with the usual angst that any teenager must deal with, but his feelings of alienation are magnified by his autism, which leaves him feeling lonely and unable to relate to his classmates, especially girls. He’s still in the process of figuring out a skill set that will help him understand and interact with people whose neurological wiring is simply different from his own.
Nicholas certainly isn’t the only autistic person to find dating a daunting proposition, however. Some major components of human courtship, such as flirting, rely heavily on non-verbal cues that a person with autism may not pick up on. John, a long-haired adult whose casual conversational style doesn’t even hint at his Asperger’s diagnosis, reveals that he has come up with an easy trick to gauge whether his date is receptive to a goodnight kiss. He simply touches her hair and comments on its softness. If the woman pulls back from the gesture, he doesn’t go for the kiss.
But then John, like many in his neurological boat, adamantly refuses to view his autism as a disability. Instead, interacting with Neurotypicals becomes a kind of game. For example, he has developed a reputation among friends as an excellent listener simply by waiting until a speaker pauses in his conversation, then repeating the last three or four words the other person has said, to indicate fascination. “They’ll go on for hours, and they will talk about you as if you were the greatest thing next to the iPhone,” he says, laughing.
Katie, in her 20s, also laughs when recounting how she had to train herself to participate in small talk with others. When she was younger, she confesses, she thought she was surrounded by idiots who had nothing of interest to say because they seemed so interested in trivial things like the weather. Now that she understands what’s behind that social convention, she happily engages when someone wants to chat.
Wolf, a middle-aged autism advocate, admits that he is perfectly happy without being part of a physically intimate relationship because he is extremely sensitive when it comes to touching. Like Nicholas, however, high school senior Maddi admits she would love to experience a full-blown relationship, adding wryly, “Just because Temple Grandin doesn’t do it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”
Maddi also reflects on how she was excited to learn hear that Grey’s Anatomy was going to add an autistic character to the cast, until she noticed that the character seemed to exist mainly to teach the Neurotypicals around her how lucky they all where. What Maddi wanted to see on TV instead was an autistic character exploring a full range of human experiences, because that’s what she wants from her own life, too. Like so many of the people spotlighted in this engaging and surprisingly funny hour, Maddi doesn’t see herself as damaged or diminished, simply different.