Do you feel well represented by movies etc?

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In movies, TV series or whatever, I never feel well represented. They always make a caricature or, at least, a very superficial image of an aspie. A generic and two-dimensional creature. For you, what is missing?

they make a generic caricature of everything nowadays so.

Yup. Agree.
I am a white cis-hetero male, apart from being an aspie, and even as white cis-hetero male I feel the representations are all generic caricatures.

It's a flaw of the media though. Representation is necessarily caricature, beginning in psychological literature - and by the time you reach sitcoms, it's the audience's fault if they still get upset.

I feel most closely represented by Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin,
both of whom are overweight doofusses married to hot wives.

Last edited by Fnord on 21 May 2019, 7:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Autistic women are virtually non-existent, so I wouldn't know.

And always have

Well I don't know many movies about aspergers women who have proceeded to do nothing worthy of note with their life....so no I guess not.

Definitely not. It's very rare that i feel close to a fictional character.

Not at all, but IMO, it's also ironic that Hollywood wants to become more diverse than ever.

I thought Please Stand By with Dakota Fanning was one of the better portrayals of autism on film.

To answer the OP's question, I would say no because it seems like most autistic characters in movie/TV specialize in STEM, while I do not (neither do most autistics I know).

Yes. Nowadays they like to write the protagonist as an everyman, not like the old days when the protagonist would be exceptionally tallented. Not that there's anything wrong with the old way, it gave the audience something to marvel at. The new way makes the protognist relatable.

It helps that a lot of the protoganists are white and male, like me. It doesn't help that many of them are in their 20s. The older I get, the less I'll be represented by movies.

Lets see...

I'm a (mostly) white American male. Those guys are always portayed as confident and being right about everything they do, which is not me.

I'm from the Deep South, and unless I'm played by somebody like Tom Hanks or Rue MacClanahan, us Southerners are always portayed as racist and/or stupid, which is not me (even though some people obviously think I'm stupid).

I am homosexual. Us gay guys are always portayed as either hypersexual perverts, or vulnerable 'sissies' needing a hag to stand up for us. I am neither.

I have Aspergers. Us Aspies are usually portayed as little geniuses who can solve rubix cubes in seconds or hack government security computers, or we are portayed as being too slow, quiet, and 'innocent' to live. I am none of these things.


So yeah, I don't feel well represented by the media.

Australians in movies are always made to look cooler than Australians in real life lol

Nope. I've never felt represented period.

I think ideas are represented, but unless it is a documentary, it is not going to be anything but a representation, a caricature. Even documentaries, because time is recorded and then re-edited into something that people can hopefully connect with, are metaphoric. Biopics, if you see a movie about someone, it is never ever accurate, and they never have been accurate. Liberties are always taken, more so in the golden age of films.

People of color are not represented very well. I think that is changing. There is an effort. For the longest time I've found it mildly offensive that if a film needed super tough heavies, it would almost always be a large black man. Take Tim Burton's Batman for instance. They are in the tower and who shows up and gives Batman a proper fight? A large black man. How many times is that the case? They are bad ass. Some might be consider it to be a compliment, just like a beautiful woman, a Marilyn Monroe type cast in a role would be considered a compliment. They are just stereotypes. I think things are changing. I remember a time when the notion of a gay black man was considered as realistic as a unicorn. Seriously. Back in the 1970s the notion was the topic of jokes. Being gay was a white person's issue and it use to be confused with pedophilia. Ignorance.

Well, that is one way of looking at it. One point of view. These are just my ramblings and tangents. By the way, I am not big, black, gay, or a pedophile. I am on the spectrum though, and the people I see on television and in movies will never represent me. I still often enjoy them. The best I can say is aspects that reflect me are represented, and they are not always autistic, but as a whole I am not represented. I'm okay with that.

I hope I did not get too off topic.