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BBC Audio Interview: Autism and Literature

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mmaestro
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05 Oct 2007, 10:49 am

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Autism has become a popular theme in literature, largely because of Mark Hadden's remarkably successful book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Some questions have been raised about whether it's right to use a serious illness in this way, to depict children who have it as mysterious creatures with strange talents. Michael Blasden has written about his own autistic son, Joe: The Only Boy in the World, and he's with me. Simon Baron-Cohen runs the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University...


It's actually a really good, balanced interview. Both interviewees state clearly that they're not interested in cures, and talk about the condition (although mostly focusing on the more severe cases of autism), and how the increasing prevailance of autism in movies and literature is increasing public awareness of the condition.


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Macbeth
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05 Oct 2007, 4:50 pm

mmaestro wrote:
Feed link. Direct download of file (mp3, 4MB)

Quote:
Autism has become a popular theme in literature, largely because of Mark Hadden's remarkably successful book, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Some questions have been raised about whether it's right to use a serious illness in this way, to depict children who have it as mysterious creatures with strange talents. Michael Blasden has written about his own autistic son, Joe: The Only Boy in the World, and he's with me. Simon Baron-Cohen runs the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University...


It's actually a really good, balanced interview. Both interviewees state clearly that they're not interested in cures, and talk about the condition (although mostly focusing on the more severe cases of autism), and how the increasing prevailance of autism in movies and literature is increasing public awareness of the condition.


As opposed to portraying autistics as useless mongs? Why is it now a positive thing to have people with physical disabilities conquering the odds, being the hero, all that s**t.. but for some reason if you do the same with an autistic kid its automatically exploiting them? PC bollocks, that is. Let there be autistic heroes who ARENT emotionless freaks who only save the day because they can calculate things they dont actually understand. Us autistics who DO understand what we know should be represented as well.


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