More Bad News For The Autistic Community

[wanderer03]

This is why I'd rather just isolate. The NT world doesn't want me around, so I chose an outsider's profession: truck driving. It's perfectly acceptable to be an outlier in this world.

 

[ChurchTheArtist]

Re: The Gattaca Clip

The woman who tells him to be realistic at the dinner table - is she supposed to be his mother? She doesn't look anywhere old enough to be, unless she is also on the proverbial spectrum (many, if not most, of us look much younger than we actually are), and this is the film-maker's way of saying (or hinting) that people who are will still exist in this world and won't be discriminated against.

That is his mother, yes. He was supposed to be a teenager in that shot. Forget what they look like; it's a standard length movie and that was a 20 second shot in a "growing up" sequence in the beginning so if the ages look a little off it's because they used the parents from the birth years with added makeup. There was no need to do crazy aging because the parents only existed for 5 minutes in the intro "growing up" sequence. Not a detail to get caught on. Remember, it's a movie from the 90s, they didn't have age changing CG like the stuff used in Ant Man.

Unfortunately your question comes from an angle where you may have misunderstood the premise of the movie. It's not about autism. It's a statement on how people treat others who may or may not have any disability. Though it is an under acclaimed film which was met with much disappointment in rating, it is a personal favorite of mine representing good science fiction. It isn't based around lazer guns and aliens nor is it in the slightest bit a thrilling movie. It's a fictional exaggeration of political/social behaviors where people think the diagnosis makes the person. This is the key premise. I linked it because it is about how having a diagnosis will often lead other people to treat you like you are that diagnosis, instead of being someone with the diagnosis. It isn't about autism at all, it's about imperfection and how society views it.

For instance: we are under careful watch ever since they correlate violent crimes such as school shooters with depression and other psychosis. They think "Well if this guy has blank disability and it made him shoot all these people then we should investigate to see if others with blank disability will be a potential threat. If so, we will eliminate them before the crime." It was an underlying message in Captain America Winter Soldier as well. Preventing the crime before it was committed. Headlines like the OP here is causing such beliefs over time. If people keep attributing genetic abnormalities as prophecy then the movie Gattaca will be less than fiction in a few decades.

I know Gattaca isn't a popular movie but if you can comprehend the depth of its message and the inspiration behind its lead character, it's a great movie to watch. I'm re-watching it right now actually.

 

[Bellatrix]

Actually, I liked Gattaca too, and I have it at home on DVD, and yes, having a diagnosis often leads people into thinking you are that diagnosis. I don't think of myself as "being autistic", but rather as someone who has the condition, because I am so much more than just Asperger's Syndrome. I see no good reason to allow myself to be defined by it, it's just a nuisance as far as I'm concerned.