An Analysis of Autism through Media Representation

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Next Generation series is designed to give student voices an opportunity to contribute to the ongoing conversation within the field of General Semantics and in the pages of ETC. High-school students, college undergraduates, and students in graduate programs are encouraged to submit their work. Media representation practically never accurately portrays social groups as they actually are in reality. These social groups can be specific to certain races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, occupations, or even medical issues; although some groups are easier and simpler to represent more truthfully, many prove difficult to depict without worrying about political correctness and overall accuracy. Autism, although technically a psychiatric diagnosis, forms a community of diverse people with a myriad of distinct lives and characteristics. Autistic people are a unique social group; there are some who are diagnosed that lead nearly typical lives with few challenges and others who are severely impacted and experience vast challenges. With so many different types of autism diagnoses and huge numbers of people living with autism, it would be impossible to perfectly depict each aspect of autism through television and film characters. Although not every autism characteristic or every autistic person's story can be shown through media representation, it is media's responsibility to at least attempt to make their portrayals as accurate as possible. Television and film are limited in what they choose to illustrate and highlight about autism in their programs: it is not their fault that autism has such a wide range of characteristics and types that can be difficult to fully cover, but they still exhibit too few aspects of autism to be considered representative. In contemporary media, there are four different categories of autistic characters presented: the magical/savant, the "different"/quirky individual, the character with undiag-nosed/unlabeled behaviors, and the autistic person whose portrayal is more realistic or even based on a real-life person. Autism Criteria and Characteristics Before media representation of autism can be analyzed, it is important to understand what exactly autism is. Autism was discovered by Leo Kanner in 1943; it is now labeled "as a spectrum disorder, meaning that there is a continuum" of severity, as well as a "syndrome, meaning that it encompasses a wide variety of traits" (Strate 2006, p. 112). According to the University of Washington's Web site, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is broken down in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition (DSM-5) into four criteria. The first criterion is "persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across contexts, not accounted for by general developmental delays, and manifest by 3 of 3 symptoms" (Carpenter 2013, p. 1). The first symptom is "deficits in social-emotional reciprocity; ranging from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back and forth conversation through reduced sharing of interests, emotions, and affect and response to total lack of initiation in social interactions" (Carpenter 2013, p. 1). Examples of this first symptom include not sharing, literally or figuratively, not "show[ing] pleasure in social interactions, failure to offer comfort to others, indifference/aversion to physical contact and affection" (Carpenter 2013, P. 2). The second symptom is "deficits in nonverbal behaviors used for social interaction," which can include impairments with eye contact and/or understanding socially correct body postures--such as looking at the speaker--as well as abnormal volume and patterns of speech and/or "impairment in the use of facial expressions" (Carpenter 2013, p. 2). The third symptom that the autistic person must exhibit for the first criterion of diagnosis is "deficits in developing and maintaining relationships, appropriate to developmental level (beyond those with caregivers)" (Carpenter 2013, p. …