300, 150, & 94: History and Autism Go to the Movies
March 31, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
“Have you seen it?”
My students kept asking me this a few weeks ago, when the movie 300 came out. “It’s the Spartans, Dr. Chew!”
After pointing out to them that, aside from the occasional Netflix rental, the only movies I see in the theater are children’s movies with Charlie (the last one we saw was Charlotte’s Web), I asked them the rather didactic questions that are to be expected of a Classics professor regarding the Hollywoodization of ancient Greek history and specifically of the Spartans against the Persians: Was it filmed in Greece? How was the Spartans’ milataristic culture depicted?
“Uh, I think the scenery was mostly computer-animated,” said a student. “It was really violent,” said another. “Rodrigo Santoro did not look like himself!” someone protested. “All those piercings!” “It was based on a comic book,” someone else added. “It was great,” said another student.
“I guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD,” was my conclusion as I turned to the board and started to conjugate a verb in the aorist tense. “Then we can watch it in class!” I heard.
Such is the dilemma of the Classics professor faced with the graphic novelization and popularization of the ancient world: Sure, the Spartans did not have American accents and were not all so buff, and ancient depictions of the Persians (this is King Darius of Persia) suggest they had long hair and beards, rather than shaved heads and multiple facial piercings. On the other hand, a Classicist is always too ready to bemoan the contemporary lack of interest in the ancient world, Latin, and classical Greece: Why not appreciate any attention focused on ancient Greek history, however comic-bookish the presentation? Who knows but some adolescent will see King Leonidas standing tall with his shield on the plain of Thermopylae while the (digitally engineered) ranks of the Persian army advance and leave the theater thinking, Got to learn how to say “come back with your shield or upon it” in ancient Greek………… Or maybe to get the real version of the story via the Historia of Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century B.C. and is known as the “father of history.”
The purpose of history, as Herodotus writes at the beginning of the Historia, is to preserve “from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and [to prevent] the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the Barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and withal to put on record what were their grounds of feuds.” The purpose of history, according to Herodotus, is to prevent “the things that happened among men” (ta genomena ex anthropon) from fading away and losing their color (exitela). History preserves and reminds us of what happened in the past so that what happened might not be forgotten; might not lose its renown, its claim to fame (the Greek kleos) and become aklea—-without repute; silent; forgotten. To Herodotus, history preserves the past for the sake of the present and for those alive today.
This is not what “history” means in the new Autism Speaks video, A World Where……. Here, autism is to become a “word for history books.” Mark Roithmayr, Autism Speaks president, has also said that “……with a clear need, desperate urgency and the strength of volunteers and committed supporters, we can change history. The March of Dimes did it with polio and Autism Speaks can do it for autism.” To consign autism to the history books would be to create (as also stated in A World Where……) “a world where no family has to live with autism”; a world where autism can be said to be eradicated, non-existent, “something that people used to have,” because a cure has been found. If you can make autism “history,” the new video suggests, autism can be something school children read about in books, rather than something that some of those school children (1 in 150; 1 in 94 if you are in New Jersey) have.
I noted the sweeping and absolutist tone of the notion of “a world where no family has to live with autism” on Friday; I would add that, in general, the tone and the language of the new video are sweeping and absolutist. The video consists of sepia-toned images of autistic children and their parents (some from the Autism Every Day video) with some facts about autism and the aforementioned statements superimposed. Autism Every Day presents a rather disorderly narrative of parents’ accounts of the difficulties of their every day life raising their autistic children. Parents and children are shown in their homes and neighborhoods, engaging in routine activities of daily life (eating, having a diaper changed, seeing grandma); parents were asked not to fix their hair, clean their houses, etc., by the director; parents spoke about “dark and uncomfortable truths about living with autism” with their children present.
A World Where…… simply presents images, facts, and music without excessive comment, save for such statements as creating “a world where no family has to live with autism” and making autism “a word for the history books.” While Autism Every Day creates, via interviews with parents as they alternately struggle and hug their children, a fragmented narrative of how hard it is simply to get through a single day if not an hour, the new A World Where…… video simply presents one image after another, one fact or statement after another—one simple message to this effect: We want a world where there is no autism.
As a commenter on the post The Kind of World I Hope For observed, the video both asks that others not judge children with autism and their parents, while also stating that autism must become a “word for history books.” The A World Where…… video makes two somewhat contradictory statements, simultaneously pleading for an ignorant public not to judge an autistic child behaving badly or his beleagered parent, while pronouncing a judgement on autism—let us do away with it—-that is stern and, yes, absolute.
The message of A World Where……, while not one that I espouse, will be widely broadcast due to the not insignificant resources of Autism Speaks. It will be the first of April tomorrow and, April being Autism Awareness Month, the new video will no doubt be even more widely seen: Who knows but at least all those who do not live with autism every day, or who still think so wrongly that autism is a “mental health” disorder, or that autistic persons are retarded, will learn something new (if not entirely accurate) about autism.
Such is the dilemma of the autism mother faced with a representation of autistic persons (like her own child) and of parents of autistic child (like herself) that her own experience does not cohere with: Sure, life raising an autistic child is not easy and yes, the numbers for the prevalence rate of autism have gone up, in no small part because we understand autism better and thus can better identify it. But ought I not simply to appreciate any attention focused on autism, especially when there is fundraising for research on autism involved, however sepia-toned the presentation, however alarmist, however hopeless, the tone?—- Just as I, being a Classics professor in a technological age, ought not to show a little more appreciation for the 300 movie for just getting Greek history out into the public discourse?
Maybe I ought to, but I still cannot help thinking that when you get your history from comic books—from graphic novels—something gets lost in translation. Truth—what really happened as Herodotus sought to relate—gets distorted.
If the videos Autism Every Day and A World Where…… were the only thing you knew about autism, how “true” would your understanding of autism be—-or rather, how much truth would be lost, and not even given a chance to get into a history book?
Perhaps I should find out that footage I have of my brother about to plunge a bayonet into his chest whilst intoning the words “with my shield or on it”
I thought to myself at the time, I hope you know what you are doing Marcus, that thing looks sharp.
As for 300, from the trailers, the whole thing looks like a cartoon not a serious movie and all that bullet time just makes me sea sick.
Mind you standing against the tidal wave of Autism speaks I think I know how those Spartans felt
I thought there was some possibility that the ancient Persians, or some of them, might have worn false beards, much the way it was discovered that some ancient Egyptians apparently wore wigs.
I’ve heard that movie is more comic book than history, and find the… dilution… of history with colorful and entertaining lies upsetting at times but always sad.
Perhaps doubly unfortunately, when dealing with supposed autistic advocacy organizations like Autism Speaks (which does not speak for me), we aren’t lamenting the loss of culture and knowledge from the distant past or the distortion of the lives of some ancient hero. The lives and knowledge so affected are being lived today by real people.
While I’d like to see their efforts countered more effectively, the fact that they exist helps me to better appreciate people such as yourself. You say some things and hold some ideas that I don’t particularly agree with, but even so, you don’t dismiss or demean me or those like me, and that goes a long way toward helping me to respect your decisions and read and research to learn more about why they might not, necessarily, be bad.
Zaecus—It really helps me to know what you think and I especially appreciate knowing what you disagree with—-I’ve learned more than a lot, and changed (I hope), in the course of writing here online. I’ll continue to look into whether the Persians really had those beards.
laurentius, that would be some footage to see…..
The first things that the notions of a “world without autism” and of autism being consigned to the history-books made me think of were, respectively, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s staged “conference” about a world without Israel, and the Nazi regime’s intentions to open a museum of the soon-to-be-extincted Jewish culture using confiscated artifacts.
That visceral reaction — and don’t immediately roll your eyes at what you *think* is gratuitous, overblown, or unwarranted — is in part because of who I am.
I am a first-generation American Jew whose parents’ families were lucky enough to get out of Germany and Austria, respectively, in 1938 and 1939 (but most of whose great-aunts and -uncles and their families, and two of whose great-grandparents, were not so lucky and were murdered by the Nazis).
I am also the third of at least four generations of neurologically atypical individuals in my family. My father’s father was an arithmetic savant; my father, a retired English professor, was a hyperlexic child; I have Asperger’s syndrome; and I have an autistic son and a daughter in the broader phenotype.
What bothers me about the notions of “A World Where…” is, as Kristina identified, the absolutism. Autism as 100% bad. Four legs good, two legs baaaad.
If it were “A world where…” we have eliminated the *handicaps* faced by autistic people, I could be — and *would* be — totally supportive.
The problem is the tacit assumption in this, and so much cure-autism rhetoric, that autism is *only* impairment and defect, that autism and *handicaps due to autism* are one and the same thing.
When you are in the midst of dealing with severe handicaps, it’s very hard to see anything else. Many parents whose families’ lives are turned upside down by their autistic child’s handicaps feel validated by “Autism Every Day”.
But what they will discover, as their children’s handicaps are mitigated and circumvented, is that there is more to autism than smeared poop and meltdowns brought on by inability to communicate.
And more and more of them will see such improvements, as our understanding of autism *and our ability to identify and solve specific problems within autism, rather than treat it as a monolithic “enemy”*, improves.
Educational approaches are improving. And parents, and increasing numbers of clinicians (even if not the most virulent crusaders for one or another single cause or “cure”) are coming to realize that legitimate biomedical interventions that address physiological disorders *secondary* to autism, such as gastrointestinal disorders, are just that: reasonable medical countermeasures to specific physiological disorders. If your kid’s gut hurts and he can’t tell you and he can’t get relief from it, hell yes it’s going to be a contributing factor to maladaptive behavior or to thwarted ability to attend or to learn.
The net result is that more and more kids are going to arrive at a stage where they are *able and yet still autistic*. The gross handicaps they were faced with earlier in life will have been dealt with. But as their parents will discover, the way they think, feel, sense, and relate to others is *still* different. Not different in a bad way, intrinsically, but different.
They will discover the parts of autism for which it is morally incumbent upon the *society* to change, rather than upon the individual.
And they will join — and *are* joining — autistic self-advocates in pushing for the necessary changes in societal attitudes and expectations.
If you follow the “conventional wisdom” on this, you might conclude that it’s only parents of so-called “high functioning” kids who think that way, and that this whole line of thought is irrelevant for parents of more severely handicapped kids.
That couldn’t be more wrong — precisely because the odds are increasingly greater that those severely handicapped kids will grow up into significantly less handicapped outcomes. As unlikely as that may seem at present in one’s own individual case.
It just makes sense to realize that working to mitigate handicaps, and working to secure rights and respect, are not mutually exclusive, *and that over the progression of an autistic lifespan, it is likely that both kinds of activism will be necessary*.
They shouldn’t be placed at odds with one another.
The key is to “think in parts” (like the DSM says folks like us do anyway
). Autism is *not* a monolith. It is not a monolithic “enemy”. It’s not going to turn out to have a blanket, silver-bullet “cure”. Its different parts require different responses.
We can work to mitigate and circumvent the handicaps *and at the same time* appreciate and support — and force the society to make way for — the subtler differences that will remain after the obvious handicaps are dealt with, and that are disadvantageous only because the society does not accommodate them and acknowledge their validity.
*That* is what autistic self-advocacy and pro-neurodiversity are all about.
If there is a wave of attention to autism being launched, then the thing to do is probably to ride it and get the message out there that it is possible to see autistic people as different, not broken. I heard, for instance, that schools in Toronto were screening (or arranging to screen) The Boy Inside (http://www.theboyinside.com/), a documentary about AS from the point of view of the person in question and his family.
As I see it, autistic people are just as likely to be cool, engaging people as non-autistic people. Sooner or later the rest of the world in going to catch on to that fact. If enough people look at it, they will figure it out. Any time now there will be a sitcom with an autistic character. From that point on, things should start getting easier.
As much as I like Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro, I don’t think I can stomach this movie.
In regards to the new AS video, it looks like a pretty superficial marketing piece. It is not powerful, it doesn’t change people’s perspectives on anything in particular.
Mr Schwarz
Thank you for your contribution.
My son was diagnosed near 3.5 years ago with atypical autism with a prognosis of a full autism, more in the moderated to severe range.
After a systematic and controlled and rational search for concomitant medical problems (CMP), we (in an effort of parents plus doctors) found a lot of them, and we are treating these CMP.Surely, my son´s life is much much better because of all these and many “symptoms” of ASDUsed under the DSMIV to diagnose ASD) disappeared under proper treatment of CMP. However, we think that he is and will be different all his life because his genetics is different. What we think we have detected and treating to heal are the consequence of this different genetics expression with environment ( widely considered) that produced in him a range of CMP.
I have always thought that a true international movement pro-acceptance (I live outside USA, in South America) can´t be present without parents of autistic children or without autistic teens and adults. Hope we can find more about what we can agree and to work about the disagreements.
Sincerely
María Luján Ferreira
Leila, I’ve been thinking the video is perhaps a first step in an all-out autism awareness “campaign” (there goes the militaristic rhetoric again) for April as it is autism awareness month. I was struck by the similiarities between the video and what Suzanne Wright presented on the Larry King show—-it starts to feel rather as if these are just re-usings, recyclings, of the same material and message in different packaging. And the message is more of the same, indeed.
Phil, that was a powerful comment—I had the same reaction as you when I first read the words about putting autism “in the history books”—-implying a simultaneous wiping out and rewriting of history.
VAB, thank you for the link—and for your words.
My son (3.5 yo) has autism and I expect to be homeschooling him for many years to come, especially in the areas of Greek and Latin. I studied both as an undergrad. In regard to “300″, as Victor Davis Hanson said, the Greeks themselves were impressionistic (lower case i) in their frescos and pottery art, so this graphic-novel-turned-film models the Greek way of telling their own story.
Thanks for the great site and I will try to get caught up on your posts!
Autism is not one but many things. Some people with the label function independently and very well. Others live quite circumscribed lives. Still others fall somewhere in between. My two children (17 and 15 years old) have almost no independence. I could not love them more if they did not have autism, and I am thankful they are the center of my life. Still I feel it would be better for them if they were people with independence able to control their lives in many different ways.