Cinema Autisma Outline
What is Autism?
There have been varying terms for autism over the years. Some of the words that are commonly heard
are “Asperger’s”, “Autism Spectrum”, “On the Spectrum”, “High Functioning Autism”. These can all be
various ways to describe someone who has an Autistic Spectrum Disorder or ASD. The Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual is a reference used by Psychologists and updated after much peer-reviewed work.
The latest, 2013 edition, can be found here1 and it details the requirements for a clinical diagnosis of
an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. It is worth noting that there are many that probably do have an ASD
but “function” in society so are not likely to have a clinical diagnosis. It can be complex.

Thinking in Pictures
What it would be like if you had to translate everything that was said to you so that your mind could
understand it?
One of the most famous insights into the autistic mind came from the publication “Thinking in
Pictures” by Temple Grandin. Grandin suffered from autism but was a highly visual thinker who put
those incredible skills to advance use and went on to design most of the cattle-processing machinery
in use in the USA today. It is no mistake that she chose to call the book by this title.

The conduit for this translation process, in the autistic mind, can be highly visual. In The HBO
dramatization of Temple Grandin’s life a lot of edits are used where something is said to her and an
image is superimposed on the screen to emphasise how difficult the non-literal is for her way of
thinking. One example being a character says they were, “Up with the Rooster this morning” and an
image of the Rooster pops in her head / on the screen. Taking things literally is a common trait of
people with an ASD. For the higher functioning learning the difference between metaphor and literal

becomes more developed through life. As does the use of social interaction. It amounts to the same
thing whether they have become better at it or better at masking the difficulties they have, living with
an ASD in a neuro-typical world.
Another attribute given to people with an ASD is that they can be very passionate and single minded
about what interests them. With a clear “picture in their mind” of how something should look, or
could be – it is very difficult to get them to waiver from their single-minded track. Additionally, the
memory and attention to detail can be above average with someone on the Autistic Spectrum. This
can be very suitable to certain professions.

Autism portrayed in cinema

Before discussing how cinema has portrayed people with an ASD over the years it is worth noting the
chronology in understanding of the condition, particularly concerning higher functioning Autism,
know previously as Aspergers.2 More detail can be found in this link 3but the awareness that Autism
could also be “mild” yet still part of the Spectrum was not wildly available in English until after 1981
and specifically 1991 when Uta Frith translated Professor Asperger’s work. Following on from this was
the first appearance in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1994. It is around this time that we see
defined portrayals of Autism in Cinema. There are also more specific examples of “clinical autism”
before this time, an obvious one being Dustin Hoffman’s portrayal in “Rain Man”. Here is a reasonable
list 4 of the more obvious ones which include examples where -though not specifically explained in the
movie as Autistic – we would say they have “Autistic traits” A notable popular example being “Forest
Gump”. The selection is wide as obviously people have existed with this condition and people have
come across this in life and therefore these traits have been reflected in Cinema. As all personality
types have. Even a 1960’s Elvis Presley movie features a character with clearly autistic traits (Change
of Habit-1969). A more tenuous example would be the Rock Opera “Tommy” Dir. Ken Russel’s 1974
film. Though taken from an original album by The Who mostly written by Pete Townshend. The
themes clearly echo around what it is like to be autistic with the device of being Deaf Dumb and Blind
very much used as artistic licence.5 Pete Townshend has gone on record as saying he thought the
band’s bass player John Entwistle had Aspergers whilst Roger Daltrey said the same of the original
drummer, Keith Moon – it would not be a stretch to say these themes influenced Townshend’s work.
In turn when watching early interviews of Townshend in the 1960’s , one can see behaviour that could
be interpreted as “autistic”6.

Cinema and people with Autism

Referring to the HBO biopic of “Temple Grandin” and also the recent documentary “Life, Animated”
we can see that the appeal of TV and Cinema is very strong to the autistic mind. The repetition, the
formulaic story lines and the common themes of people who are outsiders or special in some way. In
“Life, Animated” the subject, Owen Suskind, comes out of his Autistic shell through the interpretation
of Disney Movies. It is a compelling documentary.
Looking back at the earlier described themes of the overlaying of images to portray what
Temple Grandin is thinking. In one scene, as Grandin – played by Clare Danes – comes to a farm gate
– she starts repeating the phrase, in a strange accent, “Should we open the gate” – Her parents do not
get this, though clearly used to her behaviour. Overlaid we see a clip of a TV show, a favourite of
Grandin’s, where the character says the same phrase. It is this point that what is real in the world and
Grandin’s processing connect. So movies can be a great tool for the Autistic mind to understand and
interpret the world in their own space and time. It is also very helpful for Autistic people to understand
the narratives of social interaction and use them in their own life. It is this aspect that is explored to
great effect in “Life, Animated”
It is not a huge leap, therefore, to expect the higher functioning to want to make their own
movies or act in them. As suggested, acting, can be a behaviour that comes as second nature to an
autistic person who works hard to fit into a neurotypical world. Just the law of averages would suggest
that there are many actors who have an ASD, some, such as Paddy Considine7 and Daryl Hannah8
admit to having had a diagnosis. And for some, such as Dan Akroyd,9 the diagnosis has come later in
life yet he reflects on how this was problematic and how it fuelled his creativity.
Behind the camera, there are even measures to harness the innate technical abilities and
attention to detail that many on the spectrum possess. 10 Dan Harmon, creator of the hit TV show
Community had created a character with Asperger’s, Abed, and during this time he researched the
character and Autism Spectrum Disorders he came to the conclusion that he, himself had an ASD. For
anyone who has seen the documentary “Harmontown”, based on a period in his life, it would be easy
to see the autistic traits in his behaviour.

From behind the camera there are many directors that could fit the mould. In the same way
that people can look at the written work of historical people and approximate their level of IQ – it is
not unreasonable to see the work of certain directors and suggest that they have “autistic traits” or
that their film-making would demonstrate that – even though there is an absence of an official
diagnosis. Some Directors who are lauded by many cinephiles are very unpopular with neurotypical
people. You can find a lot of criticism about movies by Wes Anderson, for example, which underlie the
clearly “autistic traits” that the characters and plot in his films have.11
When you spend time on website forums for people on the autistic spectrum, notably
“Wrong Planet”12 in these discussions the following names come up repeatedly and it is not
unreasonable to see a pattern between their working styles and the movies they make. Additionally
experts on Autism would see common traits when watching interviews with the characters. Steven
Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson. Other names that have come up in the
discussion include Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Alfred Hitchcock and James
Cameron – though, of these only Hitchcock would tick most of the boxes.

1 https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/diagnosis/dsm-5-diagnostic-criteria

2 The word autism first took its modern sense in 1938 when Hans Asperger of the Vienna University Hospital adopted Bleuler’s
terminology “autistic psychopaths” in a lecture in German about child psychology. Asperger was investigating a form of ASD now known as
Asperger syndrome, though for various reasons it was not widely recognized as a separate diagnosis until 1981.

3 https://www.autismuk.com/home-page/history-of-autism/hans-asperger-definition/

4 https://www.autism.com/news_movies

5 **Current list of ASD movies for use**

6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZTdEhGDd0s

7 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/8440399/Paddy-Considine-Knowing-I-have-Aspergers-is-a-relief.html

8 http://www.nowtolove.com.au/celebrity/celeb-news/daryl-hannah-my-battle-with-autism-9323

9 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2521032/Dan-Aykroyd-I-Aspergers–symptoms-included-obsessed-ghosts.html

10 http://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/cracking-code-autistic-community-making-moves-hollywood/

11 http://newpartisan.squarespace.com/home/wes-anderson-and-the-aesthetics-of-autism.html

12 http://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=4103675