‘Music’ film with nonverbal autistic lead, directed by Sia

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I don't care. Sia is still okay. Well her R&B phase at least. I don't care, that was a story she wanted to write, and that's how Hollywood casting works. Y'all don't even know Sia and want to cancel her over this misunderstanding crap. I'm autistic, and support Sia.

She's been blasted by the Australian media for casting an NT as a non-verbal autistic girl.

Funny nobody had a problem with casting NTs for "Temple", "The Accountant" and an NT to play the "Good Doctor" where all three characters were depicted by NTs playing characters who were non-verbal autistics as children?

So what's changed this time?

My best guess would be that perhaps what has changed is increased success by other civil rights movements (for ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+, etc.) in getting Hollywood to take representation issues seriously, thereby paving the way for the disability rights movement (of which the autistic rights movement is a part) to make similar demands and have at least some hope of being taken seriously.

I really wish the controversy wasn't so exclusively focused on the actress being NT. It's so much worse than that:
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Australian singer-songwriter Sia has revealed that the backlash over the 2021 movie Music — her feature directorial debut — preceded a particularly dark period of her life.

"I was suicidal and relapsed and went to rehab," Sia told the New York Times of dealing with the intense criticism she received for the musical film, including her decision to cast longtime collaborator (and non-autistic actress) Maddie Zielger as a child with autism.

Sia told the publication — which interviewed her as part of a larger profile on Kathy Griffin — that the comedian helped her get through the experience after the latter went through a similar wave of public scrutiny following an infamous 2017 photo of her holding a bloody mask meant to resemble former President Donald Trump's severed head. "She saved my life," Sia added.

A representative for Sia didn't immediately respond to EW's request for more information, though the hitmaker has long been open about her struggle with addiction.

Despite Music's success at the Golden Globes, the film grossed under $700,000 at the global box office and earned Razzie honors for Worst Director (Sia), Worst Actress (Hudson), and Worst Supporting Actress (Ziegler).

It’s been almost a year since Sia released her trash movie Music to furious uproar from autistic people, myself included, and now, the Australian pop star is addressing the most important controversy of the film. No, she is not addressing the absolutely dreadful portrayal wherein she neglected to cast an autistic actress in favor of Maddie Ziegler, who gave a performance equivalent to autistic minstrelsy, as autistic writer Matthew Rozsa said, that made me recoil not only in anger but also in embarrassment for Ziegler. Nor did she attempt to make amends for her outright Trump-ian tweets where she told one autistic person “maybe you’re just a bad actor,” or the fact she portrayed an incredibly harmful method of restraint that kills autistic people.

No, rather, after initially saying she had “listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility,” Sia and her good friend, self-proclaimed D-list celebrity with an F-list sense of humor Kathy Griffin, are here to address how Sia’s poor precious feelings were hurt by autistic people and how they sent her into a depressive spell.

But nowhere has Sia detailed an attempt to correct the egregious errors that plagued not just Music, but her promotion of the film. And at the same time, Griffin’s friendship is seen as the antidote to those big bad autistic meanies trying to steamroll poor defenceless Sia on our choo-choo trains and that all that was needed to ameliorate her hurt feelings was a girl’s night on the town with someone who lost all credibility when she took a picture with a decapitated Donald Trump head.

This is a fundamentally dishonest and disingenuous adventure that seeks to make Sia, a celebrity with limitless fame and an ungodly amount of money, into a victim by a historically marginalized community. The autistic community’s criticism of Sia was not about her as a person but rather a plea for her to recognize her power as a celebrity and the fact she had the ability to make a movie about autism and instead of listening to autistic people’s critiques, she simply chose to disregard those requests.

Much of this is due to the fact that society still either outright hates when autistic people push back on negative portrayals of them or do not expect autistic people to voice their concerns. Rather, they expect autistic people to either never respond and be happy with neurotypical people’s benevolent ableism, or they don’t think they will ever voice concerns.

That is why autistic people’s critiques of parents’ demeaning portrayals of autism are framed in the media as a “war” on daytime television rather than autistic people not tolerating autistic people having their privacy violated. It’s why parents call autistic people “murder hornets” when we object to a mother saying she wants to have power of attorney so that she can give her son a vasectomy.

In response to some of my tweets about Sia’s pity party, Griffin responded by saying Sia received “vicious attacks she received were because of kind of sexism, ageism and misogyny that you may be displaying yourself,” when almost none of the criticism from autistic people I heard (and I saw and heard plenty) was about the negative portrayals of autism. She then deflected to say that “many male actors/directors who’ve portrayed artistic characters through their own lenses. They won awards,” when if she knew anything about me, she’d know I hate portrayals of autism by neurotypical men ranging from Rain Man to Atypical specifically and have dragged them through the mud too.