Stimming = evil?

Post Reply New Topic

While hatching their evil plans, movie and cartoon villains are typically shown rubbing their hands, or wringing them, or pressing the fingertips of both hands together like Mr. Burns. These are all stimming behaviors. Does this mean that consciously or subconsciously, the villains are portrayed as Aspies?

Let's not forget that one trait of people on the spectrum is a difficulty in empathizing with others. This is certainly useful if you're bent on wholesale destruction.

Before autism was discovered to be a developmental disorder it was originally thought to be mental illness. Typically villains were thought to be insane, and so a certain villain stereotype was created from it I'm guessing. This is just a theory. Maybe in some way we did inspire it considering many famous eccentric people like inventors and artists who may have been on the spectrum were considered mentally ill. So you end up with this evil quirky insane genius type villain.

Good catch. And we also have Capt. Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) from The Caine Mutiny who is rotating marbles with his fingers and palm.

To counter this, we need abundant examples of average and/or constructive people who also stim. And we might start with that professional poker players like to fiddle with their chips.

Interesting, but it's specific to a few certain kinds of stimming. I.e. I've never seen a cartoon or movie villain jumping up and down and hand-flapping (while manically laughing like Mozart in "Amadeus").

Are these actually stimming behaviours?

This is from a humorous section in a newspaper, close to 200 years ago! I think it does have some basis in fact as the philosopher Jeremy Bentham did very much march to his own drummer.

“ . . . Mr. Bentham, author of the “Panopticon,” and sundry other light and amusing books, never sits at the table above a certain number of minutes; when the proper time has elapsed, he rises up, walks out into the middle of the room, and, clasping his hands together behind his back, ducks his head down several times, and runs around the room, repeating without ceasing, the same operation; and this he calls performing a vibration.”
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=83 ... tham&hl=en
The Public Ledger, and Newfoundland General Advertiser, May 13, 1828, page 4. <-- PLEASE NOTICE DATE [!] [!]

Glad you liked it!

The standard gesture for villains is steepling - putting fingers together like the steeple of a house. From what I've heard, NTs tend to do this gesture when feeling confident. So doing it constantly makes you look arrogant, which is why movie villains tend to do it.