Fictional characters with AS

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The part played by Julianne Moore in "The Hours".

The girl played by Allie Sheedy in "The Breakfast Club"

Brundle in "The Fly" by Cronenberg.

Symbolically, Holly Hunter's role in "The Piano"

James Spader's character in "Bad Influence" , and his brother in that film

Dumb and Dumber

Inspector Clousseau in "The Pink Panther"

Alec Guinness as "The Man in the White Suit"

Julianne Moore's role in "Safe" by Todd Haynes

Jonathan Pryce in "Brazil"

Almost the entire Addams Family, especially in the second film, " Addams Family Values".

Jim Carrey's character in "The Mask"
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Yes, I was also wondering about that recently! I think I have to watch that movie again, to be sure.

Don´t know about Holly Hunter´s role in "The Piano". There was so much non-verbal stuff in that film, I missed much of what was going on when I first saw it...(though now I know). There were just so many subtle non-verbal cues going on, which her character seemed to be picking up, and giving off....much better than me, watching it...so I would say no to that one, though she certainly was different.

What I thought though was that it matched what a fair few AS women have posted about on WP in the past, including myself, that we are able to pick up non-verbal very well, almost hyper-sensitively, whenever/so long as we don't have to relate/respond to/process verbal communication at the same time.

It rang a bell in that respect.
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However, her character was responding to verbal language, as well as non-verbal language; i.e., she was processing everything, just not responding verbally. As I said, the first time I saw the film I was in the dark. When it became obvious, I finally thought- "oh, they are in love...when did THAT happen?"

But, what you say does ring a small bell, for me. It might explain why the language of dance- (my field, and longest-running interest)- makes so much sense to me, both in communicating through dance, as well as watching/processing it. It was that way ever since I saw my first ballet, at age 6.

I'm going to say L from Deathnote, and Near was definitely on the spectrum, probably HFA.

Dumb and Dumber?
Seriously?

I'm surprised that, despite the fact that I'm fairly certain it was never intended to be, nobody finds that Dr. Manhattan of Watchmen an allusion to an autistic personality.

Think about it.

What about Lola from CatDog, if you aren't familiar with the character I'm speaking of here's an image:

http://catdog1st.tripod.com/pics/Lola.jpg

She really was into science, and tried to do a documentary on CatDog at one point. I think they even had a joke, where they went back to when Lola was born, and she popped out of the egg and started reading about science and I was like "That's so Aspie!"

Yes definitely! I seem to remember someone posting one of the scenes from that movie here to express their aspie feelings. The one at the freaky camp where the girl (I forget her name) tries to smile. That girl is the most aspie, I'd say.

Also, someone mentioned the Joker from The Dark Knight but it sort of got buried between posts. I'd have to aggree that on some level, his thinking is very aspie-like. He feels no connection to people and perhaps is willing to kill for fun because he lacks some theory of mind. I remember a time in my childhood when I was obsessed with making booby traps to the extent that people got hurt (no seriously, I had some sense of responsibility) but all I could think of was how well the trap worked and how cool it looked. This is sort of how I imagine the Joker thinks. Very experimental, playing with peoples' reactions. I think of the Joker as "aspie gone bad". I get the sense he wasn't always so reckless, but at some point he stopped caring as he couldn't connect with anyone properly.

The girl's name is Wenesday. I remember that when she smiled, the mean girl who was being obnoxious towards her the whole time said "I'm scared!", lol.

Joker seems to have a "theory of mind" (perhaps a werong theory, but a theory nevertheless) - his actions are nothing more than a giant psychological expriment.

Iron Man? Joker? Can't say either resemble the idea in the least. It doesn't appear to be much more that a tossing of the popular character of the week into the mix. No dice.

But come on people, I looked through the thread, and I don't see even one mention of who is perhaps the most important autistic individual of all time. Many of these characters owe him for their very existence.


I'm talking about Tommy Westphall.

and every time you watch television, you are looking into his imagination.

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~kwgow/crossovers.html

I have another theory about fictional characters with AS...(an archetypal theory). I´ve been wondering about this for a long time, that´s why I thought I´d post it here.

First off, does anybody notice how many of us relate to characters like Spock and Data? This, due to their logical ways, mostly. Also: do any other science fiction fans out there notice- as do I- the very common theme, which comes up over and over again, of the "logical" creature trying to take over, and rule the world? In the 70´s, this fear was often portrayed as the humanoid-computer trying to take over the power of humans: (or sometimes it was illustrated as whole societies that were "evil", which were based on logic, no emotion, and the humans were watched over very carefully). It seems like there´s a whole history of evil androids, robots, extraterrestrials and other "logical" creatures that try to "take over"- (I believe that someone on this thread even mentioned "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"). As this theme comes up again and again, it seems, to me, to be illustrating a very important psychological fear. It´s almost as if the thing that´s being "threatened" by these so-called "logical" humanoids are those very things that people ( NTs?) use to define themselves. It seems that in our society, most people separate emotion from logic, believing them to work against each other- (something which I always thought was odd, but hey). So, with this thinking in mind, the humans fight doggedly against the "rational", desperately trying to keep their "emotion", and that which they feel makes them "human". (Okay, Spock and Data are basically more harmless versions of this same archetype; notice however, how neither of them run the show. The Starship Enterprise is commanded by the more "neurotypical" Capt. Kirk).

As this theme seems to illustrate some dark, indefinable psychological fear; could this be a reason for the fear against people with autism? Could it be the reason for the "cure-at-all-costs" mentally that some people seem to have? Could this be the reason why some use words like "lacking in empathy and imagination"?

I don´t mean to pit anyone against each other here, I realize I´m talking about archetypes, symbols, patterns, etc., and making some generalizations. I guess, like always, I´m trying to understand the "rest of the world", and maybe am not doing a very good job of it. It´s just that I find it interesting that that theme comes up so often.

Any thoughts???

I don't know if this has been said, but maybe spongebob squarepants?
Or quite possibly Peter Parker, from spiderman.

I said this in the tv/movies section, but it bears repeating. Basically I firmly believe that Jirarudan from the second Pokémon movie (the Collector with the airship and the fixation on Lugia) is somewhere on the spectrum. Here's my points (copied from the other thread. Of course there're going to be spoilers, but the movie's almost ten years old in Japan).

-He's driven by his obsessions to the point of shutting out everything else around him
-He talks all the time, in very odd ways (he's almost narrating his own actions at some points), but only speaks to a human once...
-...and when he does, she's screaming at him, obviously furious, and he replies to her words alone, the tone seeming to go completely over his head
-He seems to have very little empathy or understanding of other creatures
-He has a rigid adherence to what he deems to be obvious rules and expects others to follow them to the letter (it doesn't even occur to him that letting the kids out of the cage would be a Bad Idea, because it's unthinkable to him that they would be so rude as to damage anything in his gallery...a mistake that costs him everything)
-He's disturbingly smart (we get that he's intelligent from the movie, but a sketch sheet used in production identifies him as having "frightening scientific knowledge")
-He has sensory issues (This is just a theory, but that outfit...in tropical islands...in the middle of summer...and according to that same sketch, he wears a long-sleeved shirt under it)
-He has an inability to connect with the world outside his ship (this is more obvious in his image song, but basically it comes down to that that's his world and nothing else matters to him but his collection, his ship, and his disconnection from society)
-He interprets the legend literally without considering that it may have alternate meanings, which is pretty much what gets him in the whole mess in the first place.

Of course, his level of delusion goes beyond autism, but it's certainly very strongly there.

I don't think anyone has mentioned the Creature from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein yet.