Autism in Literature and Media

[ElizabethR]

When I was in sixth grade, I read a book in class called A Corner of the Universe. It featured a young girl in a small town--so basically, every coming-of-age book ever. I really don't remember a lot of details about the plot, except for one element: the girl had an uncle with schizophrenia/autism.

When we read this book, we listened to the audio book. You could always tell when the uncle was talking because not only would the narrator change from a woman to a man, but the man's voice would be very...stereotypical, for lack of a better term. The actor seemed to be playing a five-year-old, not necessarily a nearly thirty-year-old man. Now, is it his fault? Probably not. The author wrote this character in such a way that the actor must've felt shoehorned into his performance. He must've felt that his choices were quite limited, given the script he was working with.

But here's the thing, and I'm going to go into spoilers here: this schizophrenic/autistic uncle kills himself after being rejected by a love interest.That's the biggest thing that still sticks out to me in my memory. I remember exactly what the narrator's voice sounded like when she read the line, "He hung himself. In the shed, behind Nana and Papa's."

A couple years ago, I myself was diagnosed with autism.

And recently, I found myself embroiled in a discussion about whether or not autism can be cured, or caused by vaccines. And that made me think about where people get these idea that autism is something bad, something that needs a cure--something so terrible, that you would rather risk allowing your child to contract deadly and preventable diseases than entertain the idea that they might be autistic. I began thinking about all of my past experiences with autism in popular media: The Big Bang Theory, The Good Doctor, Rain Man. And then I looked back at A Corner of the Universe. And I remembered how we used to laugh at the voice of the schizophrenic/autistic uncle. We laughed because he sounded like a cartoon. Like a caricature.

Sheldon Cooper is always the butt of the joke, or the annoyance that drives the plot, in The Big Bang Theory. Dustin Hoffman's character in Rain Man is basically a child in a man's body. And though Freddie Highmore's portrayal of Dr. Shawn Murphy in The Good Doctor is one of the most accurate portrayals of autism I've seen, people still coo and "awww" at him as if he's a child.

And the uncle in A Corner of the Universe hanged himself after a simple romantic rejection.

What does this say about autism? If you'd never met someone who actually had autism, and had only books ad media to work with, what sorts of things would you think about autistic people? That they are children? That they are smarter than everyone else by virtue of their diagnosis? That they are annoyances? That you always have to oblige them, or else they'll spiral out of control and harm themselves or someone else?

These are dangerous stereotypes, and paint an unfair picture of autism as it is in real life.

I'm currently working on a scholarly essay on this topic, and I want to see if my fellow readers/writers have seen these patterns as well. I would also like to talk about possible solutions for breaking down these stereotypes and stigmas about autism, as well as other types of neuro-diversity.

(And please, please, please, for the sake of civilized discussion, do NOT start a violent debate about the anti-vaccination movement or so-called "cures" in the replies. We're just here for an innocent conversation about autism as portrayed in literature and other fictional media. Thank you!)