Thursday, October 20, 2011

Aspergers in Entertainment

So, how do you see entertainment and movies showing characters that are pointed out as having Aspergers Syndrome?  So far I've only really seen "Alphas" on the Syfy Channel, the movie "Adam," and I even looked at an episode of "Arthur" where a character had high functioning autism.  If there are any others, not counting
"South Park," what haven't I seen?

On "Alphas," a character named Gary is a high functioning autistic.  He shows very autistic traits.  He's like a few levels above "Rain Man" (another movie with an autistic).  Though he is high functioning he is not nearly as functioning as many of the aspies I know and even a number of Aspies say the same thing.  I think this show could make people very aware of what aspergers is and what high function autism is like, but many of these shows only show people that are lower functioning than most of us.

"Adam" is a romantic comedy involving an aspie that shows what aspergers is all about.  Again it shows and educates the audience.  However there is that problem of stereotyping us to be all like Adam or all like Gary.

Autism, as many of those reading know, is a spectrum disorder.  There are many more aspies that are, again, more functioning and less the media stereotype that is shown.  I like the fact that these shows and movies are out there, but we also need some where there are characters that are autistic and don't show it right away or so outwardly.  I do see shows with characters that have some of these traits and there are even shows where people have speculated that some of them were autistic, but this is never a major point and never brought up.

So in conclusion it's great that more people know about it, but the one key thing they must know is that most aspies typically are seen as regular people till they get to know them further and some of the signs just somewhat show.

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