Elsa, "Into the Unknown" Power of Not Being Normal

When Disney released Frozen in 2013, it was more than just a family-friendly box office hit. It created a firestorm about the stories we tell and the characters we value. And Elsa, the central character, became an instant icon of the Disney canon. While the Snow Queen of the original Hans Christen Anderson tale was a villain, Elsa in Frozen makes a powerful journey from shutting people out because she feared how she affected them to opening up to those she loves and accepting her inner nature. Even in the conception of the film, “Let It Go” transformed from a villain song to an empowerment anthem worthy of celebration. (Not to mention the go-to song for so many toddlers it created feelings of overkill on James Cameron’s Titanic-levels.) And in the end, the true villains were the fear and demonization of the different.

A lot has been said about Elsa as a character. A rare Disney female character without a love interest. A rare Disney female character who is defined by her relationship with family, particularly the women. An even rarer Disney female queen who isn’t some kind of evil. Many people have taken Elsa to heart as a personal heroine and power media figure. Google “Elsa Frozen thinkpieces” and there will be a bazillion articles about her being a stand in for the LGBTQ experience. I understand and respect that take, although the original didn’t affect me in some profound way upon its release.

The 2019 sequel though? That hit me to the core of my very being.

The last time a film did that to me was the 2016 Pixar movie Finding Dory. Like Finding Dory, I spent the entirety of Frozen 2 with tears streaking my face. Like Finding Dory, it spoke to my experience as an autistic person. And like Finding Dory, I felt the immediate urge to write about the millions of feels I had about what this movie meant to me.

So like Elsa, let us journey “Into the Unknown” together. (And of course, spoilers here on out.)

I'm a Complex Human Being, Dammit! or Identity- vs Person-First Language

Of all the things making up human beings, I'd say a strong identity is the most important. Psychologist Erik Erikson agrees, making that the crucial stage in his theory of psychosocial development. Erikson argues that while adolescents are growing and changing into physical adults, they have to grapple with what social roles they'll take and how they'll define themselves in the world. This leads to someone either developing a strong sense of self or causing major uncertainty of where they fit in, known as "role confusion", that could lead to an "identity crisis" of who they are. All of this is dependent on if that person is encouraged or discouraged by their family, peers, and society at large allowing them to explore different possible identities and accepting their conclusion.

I bring this up because there's a lot of controversy over what people call those on the autism spectrum. Autism is a neurological condition that affects social development, making Erikson's psychosocial development model a lot more complicated over how to recognize autism being a part of one's identity. It could be said autism as a concept is in the adolescent years of "identity vs role confusion", as people argue over whether it should be considered an social identity (aka "identity-first") or something separate from one's overall characteristics (aka "person-first").

Again, I would like to reiterate that my feelings on my use of language concerning autism are my own and I won't dictate what others should do. I'm only using these posts on autism language to express why I feel that way I do and why I do what I do. I'm not gonna tell anyone how they should talk about autism because it's not my place to do so and I don't want people angry with me over it. This is just how I personally feel.

With that in mind, let me explain why I prefer "autistic people" over "people with autism".

Watching Myself On Screen, or The Current State of Autism in the Media

When I was young and was unaware of my autism diagnosis, I only knew about autism through a Baby-sitters Club book. The book, entitled Kristy and the Secret of Susan, was about one of the titular "baby-sitters" taking on a non-verbal autistic charge and I honestly don't remember much about it, except that the main character Kristy decides to leave her autistic charge Susan alone after unsuccessfully trying to force her to integrate with other kids. I didn't much care much for the book at the time despite being a big Baby-sitters Club fan, and I'm sure if I read it now I'd be appalled at how the characters were written and treated. Either way, I didn't have a reference point as to what autism was because I didn't really have that much exposure to it in media. I had characters that I liked and related to, but none that felt especially representative of me as an autistic girl.

I think it's safe to say that the days of autism being a non-entity in pop culture are coming to an end. Since diagnoses have risen in the last twenty years, movies and television have slowly come to recognize and insert autistic people as characters. Various television shows like Girl Meets World, Sesame Street, Parenthood, and Community have featured characters explicitly stated or implied to be on the autism spectrum. The 2016 crime thriller "The Accountant", starring Ben Affleck as an autistic accountant was a unexpected box office hit and is green-lighted for a sequel. And this August, Netflix will premiere a dramedy about an autistic teenager looking for love called "Atypical":

It looks as though we're getting to a place where there is real case for meaningful autism representation. So why do I feel that we could do better in portraying autism as a whole?

The "Normal" Versus The "Worthy" Autistic - A Response to "The Autism Matrix"

My autism seems to be a shock to anyone I meet. When I tell people I'm autistic, the most common response I get is "Really? I never would've guessed!" I want to believe that it comes from a well-meaning place of surprise, but I can't shake the feeling that it's slightly condescending to me. Autism affects people in different ways and yet we as a society seem to only accept a narrow affect as being truly autistic - you must either be a "quirky" personality easily fixated on certain subjects and have little to no understanding of basic social interactions or be completely non-verbal completely isolating yourself from people with little to no control over your physical actions. I'm neither of these things and seem to project a certain sense of "normal" where only the most attentive would identify something is notably different about me. That doesn't mean that my diagnosis is invalid, but rather I don't easily appear to be what people seem to think autism looks like.

Case in point, the Autism Society of San Francisco president Jill Escher recently wrote a piece for The Times of Israel (a Jewish Times subsidiary) attempting to make identifying how autism affects people "easier" rather than relying on problematic "functioning labels". In it, she maps out via a "matrix" where different autistic people would be based on things like IQ, social skills, verbal language, support needs, and more. The article has since been taken down from the Jewish Times from what I can assume was a barrage of angry comments disagreeing with Escher, but it still can be viewed on the Autism Society of San Francisco website here. There are lots of reasons why people find this "matrix" format troubling (my favorite pieces on it are written by my friend Christine and prominent parent advocate Shannon Des Roches Rosa), but I want to talk about one particular criticism that affects me greatly: the notion of the "worthy" and "needy" autistic.

Autistic Language: What "Functioning" Even Mean?

It seems to be universally agreed that what makes humans different from other animals is our language. All animals communicate, but human language goes beyond non-verbal methods like body language and physical gestures to using spoken and written words. Unlike physical communication, words have the most value in how people communicate our thoughts, actions, feelings, and ideas. We have all decided that above everything else, words matter the most.

It's with this concept in mind that I want to talk about the language surrounding autism. There's lots of ways to describe autism and how it affects people and as many different viewpoints on how autism is discussed in language and tone. I don't want to get into the various tones of autism discussion because I know that'll cause nasty fights that I want to avoid at all costs. But I do want to talk about certain terms used and what they mean in how autism is seen by the world. This will take a couple of posts as there's a lot to go into, so bear with me and my thoughts.

Please note that these posts only reflect my personal views on autism language. I'm not going to dictate how other people should talk about autism because A) I'm not the boss of everyone, and B) people can get really angry when they're told what to do. I just want to explain how I feel about these terms and I hope that I can be respected for feeling that way. I won't tell you what to do or feel, so please do me the courtesy of not telling me what to do or feel.

Got that?

Good. 

Now let's talk "functioning" labels.

Fishy Feels - How "Finding Dory" Does Disability Right

A few weeks ago, I wrote about disability in the media (or rather how disability is portrayed as a tragedy by media). In it, I said that stories about disability are mostly about how a disabled person affects others, and how all involved parties "struggle" with it and have to "persevere". And I wrote that the remedy to this is to tell stories from the disabled character's perspective and promote it like whoa.

I honestly didn't think that I'd see that kind of story would be done so soon. Nor would that story be hugely successful. And nor that that story would come from, of all places, Pixar.

My first thought upon hearing "Finding Nemo" would spawn a sequel called "Finding Dory" was the same as everyone else's - "Really? A sequel? Can't Hollywood come up with anything original?" It doesn't help that most sequels to movies tend to do nothing but spout the same story as the original without the original's magic and with nothing new to say. Even Pixar isn't immune to this rule: the sequels for "Cars" and "Monsters Inc." fell flat in comparison to their predecessors. And whenever a sequel happens to be good, it's because it expands on the first film and has its own story to tell.

"Finding Dory" succeeds for those reasons indeed, but it does something more. It tells of living with a disability and all the complications and strengths within it. And it did something that very few movies do - it made me profoundly relate to it and sob by the closing credits.

Why? To explain, there will be spoilers from here on out.

Me Before "Me Before You", Or Disability Doesn't Always Need to be Tragic

I'm not a big fan of sappy romantic dramas. While I will admit to being among the many who sobbed at the end "The Notebook" when I first saw it as a teenager, stories of people falling in love while something "greater" than themselves try to keep them from being together just feels tired to me. There aren't many ways to make this Romeo and Juliet narrative new and innovative, and the onslaught of these films in recent years (more often than not adapted from Nicholas Sparks books) just reinforce how tired this trope has become.

The recent entry into this genre, "Me Before You", initially looks the same. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, but will their love survive something neither of them can control? And like its contemporaries, it received mixed reviews upon release. But what makes this film different from its boring, tepid ilk is the "tragic" thing that complicates the boring couple's love:

The boy is a recent quadriplegic, and the girl is trying to prevent him from pursuing assisted suicide through the power of love.

*le sigh*

Help Me - I'm Becoming an Autistic Adult!

Come May, it'll be a year since I graduated from USC with my Masters of Social Work. A full year since I left the confines of school and was thrown headfirst into the wider world to fend for myself. Now as I have mentioned before, I got pretty lucky as far of my transition post-grad school into working life in a pretty inclusive environment with some helpful strategies to ease my new responsibilities of bill paying, budgeting, and schedule management, among other things. And all of this wasn't just sprung upon me unexpectedly upon graduation - my parents spent years teaching me various life skills such as cooking, health care, and managing my money (which I was horrible at until I realized my pay check was gonna cover my rent and other bills previously paid for by my parents). I had also been living on my own for the past four years and thus had to work out how to care for myself outside parental supervision and care. And I knew how to work out bus routes from college before getting my driver's license at age 23. So I guess I was more prepared to adjust to adulthood than I previously thought I was.

But many autistic people aren't so prepared for that adjustment. In fact, becoming an autistic adult is fraught with challenges. And that's largely because autistic people face a world that is not built for nor ready to accept their needs and wants.

There's No One "Right" Brain in Neurodiversity

Growing up autistic in a non-autistic world often meant feeling perpetually alone. Once I knew I was different, I felt separate from everyone else and nothing would ever make me like anyone else.  I felt no one would ever understand me, much less help me shed my shitty self-esteem. If no one else was like me, how could anyone "get" me? And no matter what I was ever told by anyone, I felt that being autistic was akin to being lesser. Being autistic meant being more trouble to everyone else. And worst of all, being autistic was wrong.

In other words, I really, really wish I knew about neurodiversity a lot sooner than I did.