Excerpts from a review of Sia's film Music, by @lukebuckmaster:

"There is no question that an #autistic actor would have given the film greater authenticity, which it really needs."

theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/…
Maddie Ziegler "is not on the #autism spectrum herself. When the trailer landed last November it went down like a lead balloon, drawing ire from the #disability community for not casting the real deal, and for appearing to have what some saw as an ableist gaze."
"...Sia fired back with since-deleted Tweets... she insisted, for instance, that she had originally cast an #autistic person in the lead role – never mind that interview in which she claimed to have written the movie specifically for Zeigler. It all felt a bit icky."
On straight up copying Rain Man:

"In Sia’s film, as in Barry Levinson’s 1988 road movie, the #autistic characters feel more like dramatic tools to improve the circumstances of neurotypical people, rather than fully-fledged humans who think, feel and act on their own terms."
"...outlandish musical numbers, [whisk] us to a surreal bright orange set for a message about how 'in my dreams my body does not control me'. This dangerously tilts the film in the direction of a pity narrative – which it largely, thankfully, avoids."
Kate Hudson's Zu "has a big 'whatcha lookin’ at?' type personality and – borrowing the words of her kindly new potential love interest Ebo (Leslie Odom Jr) – a 'dark girl vibe going on'."

(I can't even... 🤦‍♀️ Would y'all like a side of racism with your ableism?)
"By the time the closing credits roll, one gets the unfortunate sense that several people involved – ie Ziegler, Hudson, Odom, maybe even Sia – would like this film to be washed off their CVs with a high-powered hose."

Oof.
Links to more reviews (they seem to be mostly negative so far):

amp.smh.com.au/culture/movies…

perthnow.com.au/community-news…

timeout.com/movies/music
"...the singer urged people to see her film before judging it.

...the film is now out in the world to be judged for what it is: an overlong Sia music video that uses its #autistic character Music as a prop to further the stories of the neurotypical characters." - Perth Now
"Having the narrative flow interrupted by an album’s worth of Sia music videos gets old very quickly and these sequences are not a replacement for giving Music a genuine point of view.

She is ultimately sidelined in favour of a stock-standard story about Zu..." - Perth Now
"If Sia had really wanted to make a film for the #autism community, she could have funded #autistic creators to do just that." - Perth Now (Lucy Rutherford)

perthnow.com.au/community-news…
The dance scenes were "...designed to suggest the over-stimulation faced by Music – yet aren’t these breakout moments, with their hectic choreography, bright costumes and dazzling lighting, super-exclusionary of the very community the film is trying to represent?" - Time Out

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More from @Adriana_Edu

22 Jan
Your daily reminder that it's never okay to accuse someone of faking a #disability.

It's not your job. And you're probably wrong, because invisible disabilities exist.

"I get it, I don’t 'look' handicapped, but what does that even mean?!" - Paralympic athlete Jessica Long (1/4)
"My worst experience to date was an older couple that followed me around a grocery store and kept making comments because they wanted the handicap spot I took and said that I didn’t need it. I even explained I had two prosthetic legs and they told me I was a liar." (2/4)
"I think people are afraid to ask questions because society says it’s rude, but a lot of times that translates to shame around the topic of disabilities." (3/4)
Read 5 tweets
21 Jan
Alt text of #AmandaGorman's response, when asked by WaPo about her first political memory.

@TheAmandaGorman: "No one’s ever asked me that before! My first political memory? I would say it wouldn’t be anything like being at a protest or anything like that." (1/4)
"It would be: When I was really young my mother would read me my Miranda Rights and make sure I knew them. My mom was not playing around."

#AmandaGorman (2/4)
"When you are a Black child growing up in America, our parents have to have what’s called ‘the talk’ with us. Except it’s not about the birds and the bees and our changing bodies, it’s about the potential destruction of our bodies."

#AmandaGorman (3/4)
Read 4 tweets
20 Jan
"I don’t look at my #disability as a weakness... It’s made me the performer that I am and the storyteller that I strive to be. When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds, when you have to be highly concerned about pronunciation..."

...it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.”

"She is also the first person to announce her intention to run for president in 2036, the first election cycle in which she’ll be old enough to do so."

latimes.com/entertainment-…
It looks like @TheAmandaGorman is also neurodivergent? Very cool! Looking for further confirmation now.

Read 5 tweets
18 Jan
An interview in which she defends the act of lying on top of an #autistic kid to calm them down - published on the exact same day that we learned about an autistic teen who died from the use of this exact same technique.

And she describes it as powerful.

amp.nine.com.au/article/5fe5b2…
"That scene was so important to me, because of all the people staring... I felt compelled to put it in..."

"I just thought that was so powerful, and scary, really scary for the caregiver who has to have those kinds of thoughts."

amp.nine.com.au/article/5fe5b2…
For comparison's sake:

Police "restrained him face down on the pavement of the shopping center's parking lot, putting immense pressure on his back..."

cnn.com/2021/01/15/us/…
Read 12 tweets

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