This is really surprising to me, considering the entire sum of his character is "A scientific genius with the emotional depth of a paper plate. Everybody hates him but he's too self-absorbed and dense to realize it, so it's ok." I can't understand what's positive about this. And with the level of cluelessness out there regarding autism (I've had to educate a lot of people), I expect such a high profile media portrayal to have a large effect on common preconceptions.
Because at least it's better than "all autistic people are totally worthless drains to society who need to be cured of their traits." This is the common perception, as far as I can tell. At the very least, most people don't know anything about the "spectrum" and seem to be heavily into the "well, you have it or you don't" territory, where "have it" is "low-functioning never-learned-to-speak autism" and anything in between is just lack of trying, poor mothering (see "refrigerator mother" theory, which my mother used to believe in) and social callousness on the part of the sufferer.
It is, at the very least, a semi-human face on a collection of symptoms which is usually ignored.
I don't get why you'd adopt him as a portrayal of autism. He only misunderstands social norms when the writers want to make a joke. Seems to make perfectly good eye contact to me. Speaks as if he obviously wishes to be heard. He's just a self-obsessed prick. A narcissist.
And take a look at the shows/books where people are intentionally portraying autism.
The Mysterious Case of the Dog in the Night Time,
Mozart and the Whale,
Born on a Blue Day, and so on. The autistic folks I've spoken to about these things were downright offended by their lack of depth and "dishonesty," despite the last
having been written by an autistic person.
Weird social behaviors? Check. Sensory stuff? Check. Obsessive information-gathering? Check. Doesn't seem to care much about other people's opinions or feelings? Check.
Now, let's pretend that you have a lot of trouble with socializing, and you see the above behaviors. You may not think "self-absorbed prick," because you can't figure out his motivations. But there is a motivation that makes sense to you, because that is your motivation--the motivation called "he has no idea what he's doing or why it's inappropriate, just like me, and just like me, everyone makes fun of him."
Of course, these same people also attempted to appropriate Doctor Gregory House, so your mileage may vary wildly.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16180081 times)