By Jacinto Caballero-George
Over the years, neurodivergent representation has been stereotypical and harmful. Representing characters with ADHD as crazy and out of control and people with ASD as weird or a super genius. All of these things lead to people assuming this is what neurodivergent people are like, causing negative views of them. However, there is the occasional neurodivergent character that is accurate and views such people in a positive light. The main cause of this accurate portrayal is the actor themselves being autistic.
The arguably worst portrayal of an autistic person is in the movie Music. Not only did the company Autism Speaks, a company famously villainizing autism while finding a “cure” for it, have involvement in it, but the movie completely stereotypes the autistic character. Music, the main character, has autism and is portrayed as a person who is hard to work with and irrational because of their autism. Not only this, but it also has a bad portal of how to help autistic beings. In both mental breakdown scenes, Music is held down, trapped, and forced to calm down. And it works. However, actually doing this to an autistic person having a breakdown could actively traumatize them and make the breakdown worse.
A more famous inaccurate portrayal of an autistic person is Shuan Murphy in the show The Good Doctor. Lots of people say this is an accurate portrayal, however the majority of those people don’t have autism. Most autistic people believe this character is harmfully stereotypical. The character is obviously based on The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon rather than an actual person with autism. Lots of his “autistic traits,” like not understanding transgender people and being a genius, aren’t autistic traits. They are traits of the character Sheldon Cooper. Autistic people are much more likely to understand queerness with over 70% identifying as queer. And most autistic people have an average IQ rather than being smarter than most.
Neurodivergent characters played by neurotypical actors are almost always more accurate, such as Sara Eriksson from the show Young Royals portrayed by Frida Argento. Argento, as well as her character Sara, has autism and ADHD. Sara’s autism is portrayed by how she takes things seriously, not understanding certain social situations, and struggling to pick up the nuance in people’s words. Some say this is stereotypical and that her being portrayed as a bad person at times or her doing bad things is harmful, but these people are once again neurotypical. Her character doing bad things is almost always a product of people using her neurodivergence to manipulate her, which happens often to many autistic people. Like many autistic people when they are told what they are doing is rude and harmful, they acknowledge it and try to fix their actions.
In Netflix’s Heartbreak High, there is an autistic character, Quinni, played by Chloe Hayden. Hayden herself is autistic, and this portrayal is much more straightforward with almost everyone agreeing that her character is accurate. Grace, an autistic journalist says, “There’s a scene in the first season of Netflix’s Heartbreak High when Quinni, an autistic character played by Chloé Hayden, has a meltdown. I remember crying when I watched it because I had never seen someone cry the way I did. I felt seen and validated.” Her character was seen as a monumental moment in Australian representation of neurodivergent characters, and a large part of that is Quinni’s actor being autistic herself.
Of course, on rare occasions a neurotypical actor can accurately portray a neurodivergent character, like the character Abed Nadir from Community. However, the difference is an actual autistic person wrote and directed the character. Julia from Sesame Street is also very accurate. However, the character is written by and played by Stacy Gordon who works at an autism research center, and the character is largely based off her son who does have autism.
Often, neurodivergent people are misrepresented, and it continues to harm the community. If a neurodivergent character is to be portrayed on screen, for the least harmful and most accurate result the character should be played by a neurodivergent actor or directed or written by a neurodivergent person—preferably both. Until this is normalized, the media will continue to misrepresent and harm the neurodivergent community.
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