Finding Yourself in Media

I remember last year on my birthday being in a hotel room in Anaheim, CA. My sister and I had just driven Daniel of The Aspie World in from L.A.X. and we were killing time before letting the poor guy get some sleep. We had a mutual friend named Alex who kept the conversations lively, though even he was ready to throw the lamp at us. Even then, they were polite, humoring us since we only ever saw each other once a year. 

One of the random conversations that came up involved autism. Daniel has Asperger’s and was in town for Vid Con to do all sorts of professional stuff. Autism wasn’t really something I thought about often, in large part because I never humored the idea. My mom once said that I might be autistic because of how obsessed with Pokémon I was as a child, but I took that might to be a clue that I wasn’t. Might is a 50-50 word that could go either way. 

However, my sister revealed to me that in some conversation she had with my mom, my childhood years came up. During my time in Texas, I apparently had been tested for autism. I would ask the question of why I didn’t remember it, but to be honest I remember so little of life before 2000 that I could’ve lived a double life and not know it. I wound up talking to my sister about if she thought I was autistic and slowly coming to that revelation. It was both something completely shocking but also obvious. With that said, nothing felt more autistic at that moment than the choice to talk to my sister about mental health when Daniel, an expert on the subject, was sitting right before me and suggesting that there are tests out there to understand where I fall on the spectrum.

Nine months later and I can’t say that I’ve had any tests that didn't involve free online surveys. The only thing that it’s really done is help me better understand a lot of my life. I had largely placed my problems under the umbrella term “anxiety,” because it was something more universal. I could recognize anxiety in people because we all had good and bad days. 

No hablo matemáticas

Autism felt different because I didn’t really see it in myself. To me, autistic people were these super-geniuses you read about approaching a blackboard and solving a complicated math problem. They start near the top left-hand corner and fill in seventeen lines of numeric equations before coming out with a very simple answer. To me, they were people who saw patterns and could solve them within minutes. 

You can blame movies or TV for this image, but if I was autistic, why was I so terrible at math? I struggled for hours a day in college just to barely not get a B in the class. I once even chose not to turn in an assignment for easy credit because I was too embarrassed to admit that I didn’t understand it. I rushed home and began studying what I was doing wrong. In the long run, it probably did me better, though I am sure turning that assignment might have done me better at covering that 2% I needed. Was I autistic if I couldn’t do the one thing that they were conveniently known for?

As you can guess, this just made me hyper-focused on figuring it out. Whenever I got bored at night, I would think of these trivial actions in my life and search for answers. What were signs of autism? Once you understand that, like everybody else, entertainment has a lousy track record with accurate representation, you can begin your journey of acceptance. Though I still will always cherish Rain Man (1988) as the first time I ever connected with someone on the spectrum, regardless of its actual accuracy.

It’s in the minor things that it suddenly began to click together. It was the need for routine, sensitivity to sounds, repetitive actions, social difficulties, and obsessions. There was something to understanding that when a situation became too overwhelming I tuned the world out. So many small things began to make sense. I haven’t done any proper research, but what I’ve discovered has given me clarity that I’ve largely lacked in my life up until 30.

When you look back at your life, you begin to understand how lost you sometimes were. Maybe you were able to survive day to day, but there are small things that you get worked up about. Why didn’t I do this or that better? You wonder why you got worked up over something that was so inconsequential. As much as it’s a part of life and understanding your own identity, the things that were informing my decisions were now made obvious. The reason I felt different wasn’t just anxiety. It was this sense that I was observing situations, too scared to start conversations. It was being socially unaware in ways that probably appeared off-putting, or how I shut out school when I didn’t understand it. 

Suddenly life has this bittersweet tarp over it. On one hand, you finally have a bigger answer for the moments you deeply questioned. It may not change any of what came before, but it serves as this deeper lesson going forward. You can look at your present actions and ask yourself how autism informs your daily life. Because of how little I thought about my condition as a negative in the past, I’m able to accept it easier. If anything, I can now use it better knowing what I need to do to be happy.

If there’s anyone that I “get” as having similar autism, it’s James Joyce. I have read three or four lists now of “celebrities with autism” and they all produce interesting answers in me. Some of them are obvious, but it seems in part encouraging that any of them used their O.C.D. natures to become timeless. Oh, Dan Harmon is autistic? That totally explains why Abed Nadir was one of my favorite characters. Still, I keep coming back to Joyce because of what people have said about him.

The most noteworthy comment is one that I believe on some very deep level. According to Applied Behavior Analysis: 

Ask any autism expert about James Joyce, and you’ll likely hear them argue that his writing itself is extreme evidence of Joyce possibly being autistic. After all, his two most famous works, “Ulysses” and “Finnegan’s Wake”, are brilliant, yet intentionally difficult to read and understand. As Joyce told Harper’s Magazine, “The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my work.” Some claim that this intentional approach to his work showed Joyce’s desire to distance himself from society, a very autistic thing to do. These same scholars also reference Joyce’s youth, during which he was extremely intelligent, but also suffered from a number of phobias and had trouble keeping friends.

I don’t know if it makes sense, but that kind of describes me. I am mostly attracted to the comments on his literary craft. It’s this idea of a writer wanting people to do nothing but read their work. I don’t think my style is all that complicated, but I do have so many smaller jokes that require you to know songs and historical events that I doubt anyone will find it and I’ll just forget about them in five years. I like the idea of making a traditional novel an interactive experience. With all of this said, I’ve only read Joyce’s “The Dead” and do find it a bit tedious, even if I do like the end result. If anything, being frustrated by Joyce gives me a sense of how people might feel about my writing at times, and that’s somehow reassuring.

Because of my recent revelation, I have been more attentive to looking for representation in media. My eye is still weak at finding great examples, but I also realize that the best way to do it is just looking for somebody that I recognize. It may lack any deeper conversation about how wide the spectrum goes, but it allows me to create empathy without judging someone for being even more socially dysfunctional. I've tried in literature with moderate success, notably in Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" and Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime." While I don't see myself in either, I again find these slivers that make me see something resembling of a three-dimensional depiction of people with obsessive personalities.

Float (2019)

I don’t know that I have found too many, though the ones that I consider fascinating both happen to be on Disney+ right now. No, it’s not any of the Disney princesses (though I think there’s a strong case for Frozen’s (2013) Elsa). It’s off in a different corner of the world, found in their Spark Shorts section. If there’s any interesting new programming being made on the streaming service, it’s here. I’m talking specifically about two shorts in particular: Bobby Rubio’s Float (2019) and Erica Milsom’s Loop (2020).

Both have been hailed as these shorts with accurate and sensitive depictions of autism, and I think it’s one of the few times that I’ve immediately recognized it in media. 

Float follows a father trying to get his daughter to stop floating around. She’s clearly different from everyone else because she lacks gravity. As it continues, he asks her “Why can’t you be normal?” before coming to a mutual understanding that he needs to make her feel comfortable in the world. She still floats, but because of his support, he’s able to make life easier for both of them.

Loop (2020)

Loop follows two people going on a journey in a canoe. The autistic character, Renee, is showing signs that the other one, Marcus, finds counterintuitive to the mission. She’s playing a soundboard on her phone, growing giddy as she replays it for the umpteenth time in a tunnel and being in awe at the echo. When Marcus snaps, Renee breaks down. She finds a secluded spot under the overturned canoe on the shore and hides in silence for a long period of time. It isn’t until Marcus comes to understand Renee’s struggle that they both have fun.

I want to just say that both shorts are great and reflect the strong animation program that Disney has going for them. However, there is a reason that I responded to Loop more than Float. To me, Float has enough ambiguity that while I tacked on autism, there is little to not suggest that the baby is different based on some other mental or even physical condition. It’s more a story about accepting your child for their flaws than strictly being on the spectrum.

Loop is easily the best Spark Shorts entry that Disney+ has produced so far, I think, because of its specificity. I am not entirely like Renee, but I see myself in Renee. It comes in her character traits, including her quiet nature, a love of being off in your own world and filling it with sounds that others might find annoying. It’s in the way she falls apart, hiding under a canoe. So much of it may seem inconsequential, but it explains a struggle that I recognize because there have been times that I have been there, needing space or not quite connecting with those around me. Loop does so with sympathy towards both parties, and Renee learns to grow just as much as Marcus. In just nine minutes, it manages to overwhelm with beautiful clarity that I haven’t seen elsewhere.

To me, Loop was one of the few times where I felt recognized in media for my autism. Sure, I have seen traits of myself in other characters, but not like this. I don’t know that I understand everything about it yet, nor am I likely to become an expert anytime soon. I just know that suddenly seeing something that paints autism in a positive light and have it look like you is very reassuring. In general, I have been rather sensitive to anyone mentioning the “A” word nowadays, though it’s mostly because I know the struggle of being young and confused. I hope that whoever is now will have a clearer path to a normal life.