Stereotypical Aspie Responses

Post Reply New Topic

In movies about people with ASD or feature a character with ASD I tend to notice stereotypical "aspie" responses to things people (usually neurotypicals) say. For instance, here is one I notice a lot:

Person 1: I feel so sorry for you
Person with ASD: Why? You did nothing wrong to me.

Post stereotypical aspie responses that you've picked up on in movies.

Have NEVER seen a movie with any aspie characters in the first place.

Dont know if I could find a DVD of such a movie even if my life depended on it.

Meet the Literals in The Amanda Show, they family took every idiom literal and when one of the friends told Leslie she could say that again so she said "Hey your vase broke" again.

Also in another The Amanda Show skit called The Girls Room, Debbie is also literal so she hands Amber a gift and she tells her "Oh you shouldn't have" and Debbie tries to take the gift back.

I notice every time a character is literal and doesn't understand jokes or sarcasm, they are portrayed as stupid and not very bright and this was days before autism got real popular in entertainment.

Those folks could be interpreted as being "aspie", but they werent actually identified on the show as having aspergers.

Same with current shows.

Parenthood is the only TV show I know of that has characters actually identified as having aspergers. But there other shows with characters that seem aspie but are never actually id'd as such (like "Brick" in "The Middle", and Sheldon Cooper in the BBT).

There's a slew of them here, some identified as such and some so obvious:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/1 ... in-Film-TV
(also a fair number more mentioned in the comments)
Google and ye shall find more.

And then there was this one, for some odd reason a favorite of mine in the 80's:
http://www.tv.com/topics/general-tv-dis ... 433450484/

Sonya Cross in The Bridge.

I watched it in Polish so my translation might not be accurate (and it was some time ago so I might not remember correctly) but there was a scene like this:

She went to a bar because she got horny and wanted sex partner. She started acting with body language to get a guy interested. A guy went up to her and asked:
-Do you want a drink?
-No. - she answered.
The guy got hurt and tried to walk away.
-Wait. Why did you go away? I only said I don't want a drink...
-What do you want then?
-I want to have sex.

It reminds me of one of my common mistakes. Whenever I guy asks me "Wanna drink some coffee with me?" I answer "I don't like coffee." and it takes me a while to realize it was not what he actually asked for and coffee was only excuse to meeting me so my answer "I don't like coffee." actually means "I don't want to met with you and my not liking coffee is my excuse" according to his imagination.

Yeah, dating was awkward until I found someone as awkward as myself. Also, it took me years before I realized that when a boss or manager asks you, "how's it going" or "how ya' doing" ...they don't want to know how you are; they want a precise status on all your open projects, or at least enough so that they feel they're doing their job.

“Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast, I would catch it.” – Drax

No he is not autistic, and that literal take is attributed to his species in the Marvel Cinimatic Universe, but my husband teased me about doing similar things with language.

No they weren't, I think they did it for comedy and now today people are using ASD in entertainment and no longer portraying them as dumb like they used to before ASD got real popular before lot of people even knew about it. I don't think any of those people were ever meant to have it in the first place such as Kenan for example in the movie Good Burger and in the All That Good Burger skits and in Kenan & Kel. I also wondered if Oskar had it too in Hey Arnold and he was portrayed as being lazy and not bright and having no respect for women because he thinks they should all take care of their husbands being their mother and their husbands sit at home and do nothing. I always thought Pepper Ann was aspie like and she was very smart despite being literal sometimes and being naive so that TV show was ahead in the late 90's.

I do sometimes wonder if any of these characters are ever based on real people and they didn't realize they were on the spectrum so it's told from a NT's perspective of them. But I never took it personally because it was all done for entertainment.


I don't watch that many TV shows today to even remember a typical aspie responses such as in Bones or Parenthood and I only saw two episodes of The Bridge and couldn't notice anything ASD about her.

Oh my gosh!! When we were watching that movie my husband and I both said Drax came from Planet Autism!

Loved that movie, BTW.

Person: Can I ask you a question?
Stereotypical Aspie: You just have.
Person: Can I ask you another question?
Stereotypical Aspie: That's number 2.