Re: Hereditary
Nov. 8th, 2019 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingNo, wait, I’m not done.
Although I wouldn’t call myself “neurotypical” by any stretch of the imagination, I’m allistic, and I can’t speak from the perspective of anyone on the autism spectrum. That being said, I still can’t get over how fucking furious this movie makes me.
Every semester I have a few students on the autism spectrum, some more “high-performing” than others. (I despise that expression, by the way; it’s extremely offensive to define someone by how successful they are at pretending to be allistic.) Although I’ve had friends on the spectrum, I’d never had the experience of working with people on the spectrum in a professional context, and I think it’s fair to say that I made some really shitty mistakes during my first year or two.
I’m not an activist or advocate, but I think the minimum level of decency you need to achieve as a human being is to at least try to understand people coming from different backgrounds. Unfortunately, the “resources” I found regarding students on the spectrum all treated them as a series of behavioral problems to be solved or contained, which was really upsetting, not to mention unhelpful and counterproductive. Meanwhile, a lot of the conversations coming from within various autism and Asperger communities are clearly in response to teachers and professors who have been borderline evil.
As American society and its institutions become more accommodating to neurodiversity, this lack of understanding and communication is a critical issue that needs to be addressed in a sensitive and nuanced way. At this point, even the most basic training for teachers and parents would be a massive improvement in the quality of life for everyone, and I think it would be enormously useful if we could move forward with the fundamental awareness that neurodiverse people, including people on the autism spectrum, are not monsters.
The way that Hereditary portrays qualities often associated with autism as horrible and monstrous is ridiculous and offensive to begin with. What’s even worse, however, is that the movie encourages the viewer to feel sympathy for the mother and concern for her mental health, even though she has clearly has done no research and has zero understanding of how to treat her daughter. When her daughter openly and repeatedly tells her what she wants and needs, for example, the mother pushes back and forces her to do the exact opposite, presumably for her own good. This ends up becoming the direct cause of the daughter’s gruesome death. The way that the narrative privileges the emotional state of an abusive mother over the literal life of her Autistic daughter reinforces every ignorant stereotype about autism that makes everyone involved so miserable in the first place.
I did not go into this movie expecting to be offended; I went into this movie looking forward to a creepy grandmother using her witch powers to summon demons and wreak havoc from beyond the grave. I wanted a spooky Gothic home drama, not another mindless repetition of the historically disastrous stereotype that “autistic people are literally possessed by demons.” I know it may seem like I’m overreaching here, but this isn’t something I usually pay attention to; for someone like me to notice this, let me assure you that it was really fucking noticeable.
I’m not saying that people can’t make whatever movies they want. A lot of awful people make movies, this is a true fact proven by science. To give an example that's frequently on my mind, one of the men who wrote the Detective Pikachu movie used to make jokes about how women who write fanfic are pathetic losers who really need to get raped. Disgusting men make movies produced and lauded by other disgusting men all the time. This is a fact of life. Whatever.
But what’s really fucked up is that so many “woke” movie critics have been celebrating Hereditary, which is why I watched it in the first place. Like, how can you be so sensitive to issues of race and class and gender but then tell everyone you know that you love a movie about how a thirteen-year-old autistic girl is Like That™ because she’s literally possessed by a demon? And how being Like That™ is a hereditary curse? And how the abusive mom is the real victim? What the fuck. What the actual fuck. How can any decent human being justify something like that as sensitive and progressive?
Fictional depictions of marginalized groups and performative wokeness aside, I guess what I’m really upset about is the idea that the safety and wellbeing of autistic people is somehow in opposition to the mental health of allistic people. These two concerns are deeply intersectional, and a solid and grounded respect for difference and diversity benefits everyone involved. How is this not blatantly obvious to anyone who cares about fairness and justice?
I mean, don’t get me wrong – I am all about witches and monsters and demonic possession. I eat that shit up, really I do, and it’s because I love these sorts of stories so much that I can say with confidence that reinforcing the idea that there is something deeply wrong and possibly even supernatural about people who aren’t 100% neurotypical is lazy and boring and not a particularly interesting or original premise for a horror movie.
Although I wouldn’t call myself “neurotypical” by any stretch of the imagination, I’m allistic, and I can’t speak from the perspective of anyone on the autism spectrum. That being said, I still can’t get over how fucking furious this movie makes me.
Every semester I have a few students on the autism spectrum, some more “high-performing” than others. (I despise that expression, by the way; it’s extremely offensive to define someone by how successful they are at pretending to be allistic.) Although I’ve had friends on the spectrum, I’d never had the experience of working with people on the spectrum in a professional context, and I think it’s fair to say that I made some really shitty mistakes during my first year or two.
I’m not an activist or advocate, but I think the minimum level of decency you need to achieve as a human being is to at least try to understand people coming from different backgrounds. Unfortunately, the “resources” I found regarding students on the spectrum all treated them as a series of behavioral problems to be solved or contained, which was really upsetting, not to mention unhelpful and counterproductive. Meanwhile, a lot of the conversations coming from within various autism and Asperger communities are clearly in response to teachers and professors who have been borderline evil.
As American society and its institutions become more accommodating to neurodiversity, this lack of understanding and communication is a critical issue that needs to be addressed in a sensitive and nuanced way. At this point, even the most basic training for teachers and parents would be a massive improvement in the quality of life for everyone, and I think it would be enormously useful if we could move forward with the fundamental awareness that neurodiverse people, including people on the autism spectrum, are not monsters.
The way that Hereditary portrays qualities often associated with autism as horrible and monstrous is ridiculous and offensive to begin with. What’s even worse, however, is that the movie encourages the viewer to feel sympathy for the mother and concern for her mental health, even though she has clearly has done no research and has zero understanding of how to treat her daughter. When her daughter openly and repeatedly tells her what she wants and needs, for example, the mother pushes back and forces her to do the exact opposite, presumably for her own good. This ends up becoming the direct cause of the daughter’s gruesome death. The way that the narrative privileges the emotional state of an abusive mother over the literal life of her Autistic daughter reinforces every ignorant stereotype about autism that makes everyone involved so miserable in the first place.
I did not go into this movie expecting to be offended; I went into this movie looking forward to a creepy grandmother using her witch powers to summon demons and wreak havoc from beyond the grave. I wanted a spooky Gothic home drama, not another mindless repetition of the historically disastrous stereotype that “autistic people are literally possessed by demons.” I know it may seem like I’m overreaching here, but this isn’t something I usually pay attention to; for someone like me to notice this, let me assure you that it was really fucking noticeable.
I’m not saying that people can’t make whatever movies they want. A lot of awful people make movies, this is a true fact proven by science. To give an example that's frequently on my mind, one of the men who wrote the Detective Pikachu movie used to make jokes about how women who write fanfic are pathetic losers who really need to get raped. Disgusting men make movies produced and lauded by other disgusting men all the time. This is a fact of life. Whatever.
But what’s really fucked up is that so many “woke” movie critics have been celebrating Hereditary, which is why I watched it in the first place. Like, how can you be so sensitive to issues of race and class and gender but then tell everyone you know that you love a movie about how a thirteen-year-old autistic girl is Like That™ because she’s literally possessed by a demon? And how being Like That™ is a hereditary curse? And how the abusive mom is the real victim? What the fuck. What the actual fuck. How can any decent human being justify something like that as sensitive and progressive?
Fictional depictions of marginalized groups and performative wokeness aside, I guess what I’m really upset about is the idea that the safety and wellbeing of autistic people is somehow in opposition to the mental health of allistic people. These two concerns are deeply intersectional, and a solid and grounded respect for difference and diversity benefits everyone involved. How is this not blatantly obvious to anyone who cares about fairness and justice?
I mean, don’t get me wrong – I am all about witches and monsters and demonic possession. I eat that shit up, really I do, and it’s because I love these sorts of stories so much that I can say with confidence that reinforcing the idea that there is something deeply wrong and possibly even supernatural about people who aren’t 100% neurotypical is lazy and boring and not a particularly interesting or original premise for a horror movie.
