Sia's Autism Movie is Terrible & Insulting | Cynical Reviews

sponsored by raikon [Music] oh oh no oh no speaking of music you can listen to music with raycon's premium wireless earbuds these ad segways are getting increasingly desperate i know they offer up to six hours of battery life excellent levels of noise isolation added bass and quick and easy connectivity via bluetooth they fit comfortably in your ears due to their slick discrete design which also helps hold them in place when you get lost in the moment i use them regularly when out on walks listening to musical podcasts and even sometimes during my twitch streams and if you go to byraycon.com cynical reviews you can get a special code that will give you 15 off your order and by doing so you'll help support the channel that's by raycon.com cynical reviews link in the description the road to hell they say is paved with good intentions music is one of the biggest oofs i've ever seen an admittedly well-intentioned attempt to portray autism on screen in a positive light it misfired so badly that you will cringe so hard that your teeth will get sucked back into your sphincter not only is it a bad movie but it's also incredibly misguided horrifically insensitive and even somewhat dangerous that might sound like an exaggeration but unfortunately it isn't this is going to be an interesting one written and directed by sia who if you don't know is an australian pop musician most famous for her song chandelier and for wearing wigs that make her look like ongo gablogian music was originally filmed back in 2017 and finally released straight to vod services this february after a limited theatrical run in australia and it's the cinematic equivalent of an overdue stillbirth being absolutely slated by professional critics the general audience and especially by members of the autistic community the film claims to honor the movie where they had to digitally remove all of the cgi characters buttholes because somebody thought it was a good idea to include them in the first place was better received than this movie and we're gonna talk about why music tells the story of recovering alcoholic and drug dealer zoo played by kate hudson who after the death of their grandmother suddenly becomes the sole guardian of her non-verbal autistic younger sister music played by maddie ziegler quick aside if you're a parent who chooses to name their child music you should probably be put on some sort of list and then never allowed into anything ever being out of her depth zoo develops a relationship with her neighbor ibo who teaches her how to manage music in a catastrophically wrong fashion but we'll get to that predictably the two get together by the end despite having no chemistry and zoo embraces her role as music's caretaker while music learns to express herself through singing the plot isn't worth going through in detail except where it becomes relevant to the controversies surrounding the movie which is why we're really here but even ignoring them it's not a good movie it's boring it drags longer than its short runtime would suggest it has horrible pacing and does too much of that awful handheld shaky cam thing i hate so much a fair few plot points make no sense or are poorly established its characters are poorly written and the performances are only decent at best it does very little to explore its serious themes and handles them very poorly god knows why this was nominated for two golden globes it didn't win any and the golden globes are a joke but still of course the shadow hanging over all this was the casting of the non-autistic maddie ziegler to play an autistic character a decision that led to widespread criticism from the autistic community after the trailer dropped back in november the issue of representation in media is an extremely complex one that i can't possibly go over within the scope of this video but seeing themselves represented appropriately in media is important to many members of historically marginalized communities especially given the somewhat mixed record of this up to this point and a great many people on the autism spectrum were very unhappy with this casting seeing it as yet another example of a missed opportunity for representation asking why an autistic actress was not chosen for the role and accusing seer of ableism now the sensible thing would have been for sia to do a press release through a pr agency or do an interview or anything vaguely professional instead she took the worst possible approach and responded to dissatisfied people directly on twitter and with every reply the whole she kept digging for herself kept getting deeper she claimed that she did originally work with a non-verbal actress but that she found the experience too stressful and that casting someone at her level of functioning would be cruel she thought casting maddie would be more compassionate and best lovingly represent the community [ __ ] she seems like someone who's quite prone to emotion i cry at like um masterchef junior um so and when she was immediately called out on this feeble excuse by both autistic actors and autism advocacy groups her responses became increasingly defensive and hostile [ __ ] [ __ ] you have not i can't do it i'm sorry i can't do an australian accent [ __ ] [ __ ] you have no [ __ ] idea because you weren't there and haven't seen the movie good [ __ ] [ __ ] why don't you watch my film before you judge it fury oh that's [ __ ] cringe seal what are you doing several autistic actors myself included responded to these tweets we all said we could have acted in it on short notice these excuses are just that excuses the fact of the matter is zero effort was made to include anyone who is actually autistic hashtag nothing about us without us maybe you're just a bad actor or sia no no what are you doing this is some amy's baking company levels of bad pr that this movie is for them um and if we can try and keep our egos out of it that would be great she also used the excuse that she cast neuro atypical and trans people in the film and not as [ __ ] prostitutes or drug addicts a statement that garnered its own backlash and gives off this kind of energy if you kick every latino out of this country then who is going to be cleaning your toilet donald trump oh that's not in the sense that no you know what i mean she did later apologize and delete not only these tweets but also her entire twitter account although interviews she gave in the months after this show that she hasn't really learned that much i don't accept that she couldn't have found a good enough actress somewhere on the spectrum and the excuse becomes less credible when you learn more about her relationship with maddie describing it as close doesn't quite cut it starting with chandelier maddie has appeared in many of sears music videos and sia has said that she didn't want to make anything that didn't involve maddie because i can't do a project without her i don't want to i wouldn't make art if it didn't include her their relationship has gone beyond mere friendship and into more of a mother-daughter dynamic with sia considering maddie her muse and maddie ziegler my little dancing news sports surrogate daughter she's also expressed the desire to save maddie from the influence of other adults such as abby lee miller on dance moms the show where maddie first garnered attention and to protect her by creating roles for her i want to work with her till the day i die i actually just keep writing projects for her so that i can keep her safe she convinced maddie to turn down a role that she thought would be bad for her career which like most of her statements ended up being very ironic even recently though she was offered a part in a film and i i felt that the the film wasn't good enough for her and so i called melissa and i was just please don't do this like this isn't good for her career it's not good for her long-term credibility this is not a good like co-star to be in a movie with um they even quarantine together in the same house and have had a lot of sleepovers where they sleep in the same bed in fact i've got like about a thousand t-shirts that i had made that just say bonus mum and it's all i wear what the [ __ ] let's be honest that's pretty weird and it explains why sia lashed out on twitter in defense of maddie and why she defaulted to casting maddie after the first actress didn't work out that i love i absolutely love i want it it's everything she's even openly admitted that her decision was made out of nepotism i realized it wasn't ableism i mean it is ableism i i'm i guess as well but it's actually nepotism and since she's declared that she doesn't want to do anything without maddie i'm strongly inclined to believe that she wanted to cast her all along but had to create an excuse to do so well she's now um i've actually written a movie for her so she's done with the music videos so i haven't just really decided written a movie script yes now i don't blame maddie for any of this she was 14 years old at the time clearly under the influence of a close maternal figure and woefully underprepared to play this character although naive she seems to have had the best of intentions and even expressed reservations about it and maddie arrived and she was living across the road from me at the time and i could see something was wrong with her she was pale and she was just unlike herself and i'd known her since she was 11 and she was 14 now and i was like honey what's wrong is there something wrong and she just burst into tears and she just said i don't want anyone to think that i'm making fun of them and i was like oh honey like i won't let that happen i was like i promise i won't let that happen [ __ ] hell see her if you have to even have this conversation you're probably doing something wrong and also you can have final cut if i said if there's anything in there that makes you feel uncomfortable then you can have final cut but she's a young teenager and you're a mother figure to her so regardless of what you say she's not going to want to say no to you and it's incredibly unfair to put this on her shoulders rather than yours but even if you don't have a problem with the casting of a non-autistic actress to play an autistic character which is still an ongoing debate and it's really for autistic people to decide what you can't deny is that they went about portraying an autistic character in the completely wrong way they rightfully recognize that people on the autism spectrum are very different from one another and that it's impossible to represent them all in one character but rather than represent one specific form of autism apparently out of fear that they would thereby offend somebody maybe it was because i was scared maybe it's because i was scared that if i if i made it clear what her diagnosis was that then i might offend somebody they decided instead to create their own autistic character by amalgamating a series of stereotypical features attributed to autistic people resulting in what has been widely denounced as an offensive caricature now let me be clear i'm not autistic myself and i'm not trying to speak for people that are or get offended on their behalf they are more than capable of doing that for themselves as indeed they have done there are a bunch of videos up on youtube from autistic people giving their perspectives on the movie which i'd recommend you guys check out but just because it doesn't affect me personally that doesn't mean that i can't recognize that this is offensive online i've not seen a single autistic person express anything other than contempt for this movie and this representation and given the reactions of some of my fans who are on the spectrum themselves i think i'm in good standing to say that this is to put it mildly problematic the character is a walking stereotype having features that individual autistic people can have such as being non-verbal being sensitive to stimuli having repetitive vocalizations and hand movements and so forth but it's rare for anyone to have all of the characteristics music does and of course they don't come naturally to this actress which is why it's considered an insensitive caricature it's like when cartman was trying to fake his way into the special olympics except there he was clearly meant to be in the wrong card man [Music] it also reminds me of simple jack and tropic thunder except the whole point of that was to take the piss out of able-bodied actors who play disabled parts the exact thing that this movie is doing although unlike that time gary oldman played a dwarf in tiptoes yes that's real i even did a video on it i doubt this problem would go away if she were portrayed by an autistic actress but the fact that she's not makes it a hundred times worse i do believe them when they say they never intended to cause offense or hurt anybody's feelings but they colossally [ __ ] this up and it's very clear that they neither did their research properly nor sought input from the autistic community sia claims that she had two autistic people advising her at all times but judging by what i've seen of her in interviews she seems to have been surrounded by yes men and enablers and then a few people started telling me no you're a director you should do the movie by yourself like you should do it so even if this is true they probably weren't in the best position to speak out so it really doesn't mean much and as she later admitted talking to only two autistic people isn't a good way to gauge the experiences of an entire community autism charities and advocacy groups would have been a good way to go but they weren't consulted until after the movie was already completed which is the backwards approach if you're trying to best lovingly represent the community and when she decided to bring one of these groups on board she couldn't even get that right because she chose to work with autism speaks i won't go into details about why autism speaks was such a terrible choice if you want to know more check out this video i'll link it in the description but just know that they are extremely controversial within the autism community and they've been widely criticized for their methods and approach think of them as being like the peter of autism but arguably worse when she was told about this on twitter sia's response was oh [ __ ] how do you spend three years researching autism and not know that autism speaks is controversial that was easy and when even autism speaks denounces your movie you know you're [ __ ] up but like i said they clearly didn't do the proper research sia said that she was inspired by and wanted to recreate older feel-good movies like rain man i i wanted to make a like the old movies you know that like forrest gump and rain man and you know i short described this movie as rain man the musical um but with girls but dustin hoffman worked with autistic men and their families for over a year in order to better understand their experiences as well as spending a lot of time with the savant kim peek the inspiration for his character in the movie and this dedication comes across in his performance but maddie's research involved watching youtube videos of autistic kids having meltdowns that were uploaded by their parents and i really hope i don't have to explain how messed up that is and leonardo dicaprio's performance in what's eating gilbert grape except his character isn't even autistic he appears to be developmentally disabled which is not the same thing but even if his character were on the autistic spectrum that's a terrible way of researching how to play an autistic person that's worse than watching keanu reeves in dracula in order to learn how to do an english accent of course sir if i may inquire what in fact happened to mr renfield in transylvania why didn't they spend more time with more people who were actually autistic would that have been so hard this approach also explains why despite the movie's title and all this talk about representing autism music is not actually the focus of this story her entire character is being autistic in fact she isn't a character she's a prop she serves as a catalyst for change in others but remains more or less the same herself she exists pretty much solely to facilitate the relationship between zoo and ebo and is treated more like a pet than a person with autonomy there are several scenes where other characters minimise or downplay her agency at one point igbo who is supposed to know what he's talking about says that she's incapable of change not saying she doesn't want to change i'm saying she can't change which is a horrible way to think about anyone especially since you're the one who's supposed to know how to take care of her what the [ __ ] this interviewer even inadvertently likens music to an object and sia does nothing to correct her is almost like a parallel to to the main story here which is here's this person who can't speak you know she might as well be like an inanimate object like a wig except there's so much going on in there this whole interview is a gold mine of cringe by the way but it's worse than music being an object she's actively infantilized it's a pure yeah that's what i've always found with the special abilities people that i've fallen in love with is this purity music is portrayed as innocent and childlike and in line with sears assertions about her having special abilities she sees the world in a fantastical way and this is the justification for the music videos that intersperse the film which are supposed to represent her interpretations of reality after all this is a musical which is kind of weird because sia repeatedly says she hates musicals this is not when no one's breaking out in song it's a it i literally hate live musicals and that comes across as the songs overstay their welcome and none of them really stand out oh and there are multiple scenes involving strobe lighting that could cause seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy even within the first 30 seconds of the movie with no warning so yeah thanks for that sir good job oh and a lot of autistic people have issues with sensory overload if there's a lot of stimuli coming in it can be very difficult for them to process and sometimes very distressing so if you want autistic people to watch your movie sia maybe don't make the music videos really loud and bright and for the musicals i wanted it to be very like high like high density color but back to music her non-verbal autism is portrayed as some kind of wonderful thing which i guess is better than demonizing it but it's also very patronizing she's like some kind of cutesy alien autistic people don't see the world in this whimsical way and this is a condescending interpretation of their experience autistic people are just that people and they deserve to be treated as such warts and all south park a show that had an episode called [ __ ] fight showed its disabled characters more respect than music does even [ __ ] mac and me one of the worst movies ever made handled representation better than this piece of [ __ ] how sad is that and everything in music's life is sunshine and rainbows and we don't see her experiencing the difficulties in social stigma that many autistic people unfortunately experience the whole thing is so woefully tone deaf which is funny coming from a musician what i wanted to do was like break your heart and then put it back together again and give you a hollywood ending this is a feel-good fantasy a classic example of inspiration porn that was made to make its creator feel better about themselves without actually doing anything to help the people they're claiming to help that we're here because we care about the autism community and we care about the caregivers and we care about all of the people on the spectrum and all of those who are being represented in film but if that was true sia then you should have done your homework properly and not dismiss those autistic people who raised concerns about what you were doing and there is absolutely no excuse to have included the two worst scenes in the entire movie that take music beyond just being a bad poorly researched condescending and offensive movie and into actually dangerous territory there are not one but two scenes where restraints are used on music while she is in distress both of these methods as they are depicted are dangerous and when i watch this with my girlfriend who's trained in proper crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques she was horrified these scenes are quite distressing and i've been told that they can be triggering so if you'd rather not watch them skip to here in the first scene igbo picks her up and then slams her directly onto the floor then lays on top of her in a supine position pressing her into the ground saying he's crushing her with his love which sounds incredibly creepy this is absolutely not an appropriate way to help music calm down or express what she needs in this situation and is likely to cause her more stress both now and in the future and it's not even safe for him because she could still headbutt him spit at him or bite him there are proper techniques that make use of pressure in order to calm such a person down and make them feel safe but this is definitely not one of them in the second scene igbo encourages and teaches zoo to climb on top of music and pin her fully to the ground in a prone position which is even more dangerous than a supine restraint they make no effort to de-escalate encourage her to communicate what's causing her distress or lead her away from the situation they go straight from zero to a hundred by putting her in a position that's been proven on multiple occasions to be potentially lethal this is one of the worst ways to restrain someone and it should only be used as a last resort in an emergency and even then only on certain people but that's not how these restraints are portrayed in the movie and that context is important if the movie were condemning this it would be a different story but igbo is presented as someone who knows what he's doing and on both occasions these are shown to be the right methods to calm music down and it's a sign of zoo's growth as a caretaker that she's able to use this technique are you starting to see how absolutely [ __ ] up this is some people who see this movie and don't have any other context or understanding of the lives of autistic people or how to address their needs are going to think that this is acceptable when it couldn't be more abhorrent and that's why this movie isn't just ignorant it's dangerous i want to be mad about this but i'm mostly just flabbergasted at how they thought this was in any way acceptable like what the [ __ ] see her in order to cover her ass after the resulting outrage cia said that a warning would be added to the start of the movie that music in no way endorses or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people which is complete bollocks you can't have it both ways sia she also said she plans to remove the restraint scenes from all future printings but this was a digital release so why couldn't she have just removed them already in fact why did she even film them in the first place you did three years of research and thought this was okay what were you doing the whole time watching shane black movies you know a lot of experts say that being on the spectrum isn't really a disorder that's actually the next step in the evolutionary chain you need to shut the [ __ ] up she says the film was inspired by a low-functioning autistic friend of hers but that should have been all the more reason to get it right would she be alright with this happening to her friend she may have had good intentions but she clearly had no idea what she was doing and comes across as a massive idiot and despite sort of apologizing she continued to make condescending remarks about neurodivergent people which doesn't give me much faith in her powers of introspection she seems to have not known what she wanted as a director and the way that she describes the process it sounds like it was very chaotic and disorganized and they spent four years re-editing this to get something that she considered worth releasing which is just solid proof that no matter how hard you try you cannot polish a turd and no matter how you look at this it smacks her being a vanity project it should come as absolutely no surprise that she gives herself a cameo as a pop star who wants zoo the drug dealer to buy prescription painkillers off the streets so that she can fly them out to kids in haiti who need them for surgery pop stars without borders it seems like she was trying to do a self-aware joke here but it inadvertently makes her look even more out of touch than she already did i asked vince my um producer to help me and he came and he whispered into my ear at one point you're coming off a little bit unlikable is that is that what you want and i was like yes yes in fact during the course of my research she came across as borderline delusional i really believe we ended up with the best film because we had we came to work every day with good intentions that this will be my final big hurrah like i'm so proud what a note to end on this film was such a waste of potential they had a great opportunity to tell a story about what life is like for a low-functioning autistic person with echolalia to show us how such a person could learn to express themselves through music and say something about how autistic people are treated in our society instead they present this very unrealistic ableist and very shallow take on this topic perpetuating offensive stereotypes about autistic people and having everything end all hunky-dory for music despite how grossly irresponsible and ill-informed all of the adults in her life are yes scream your head off next to a person you know is sensitive to noise well done the autistic character they made such a big deal about representing takes a back seat to the non-autistic characters who are boring and unsympathetic and the movie's other themes like poverty addiction and hiv are only explored at the most basic and unfulfilling level oh yeah igbo has hiv but it's as inconsequential as henry rollins's 32nd cameo oh and there's another subplot with this boy that goes nowhere and i haven't even talked about the accusations of blackface or about ebo being a magical negro character which i myself don't see but i'm i'm not even touching that one and there's a bunch of other stuff i could complain about but none of it matters in comparison so who gives a [ __ ] you guys get the idea i regularly put myself through terrible movies for a living but i've not felt this uncomfortable watching a movie in a long time don't buy this [ __ ] not even out of morbid curiosity it never approaches funny bad territory and the cringe is not worth it to offset the fact that i spent actual money on this i chucked a bit of money to some worthy causes and i'd suggest you guys do something similar let's make some good come out of this [ __ ] show sometimes good intentions aren't enough you also need to listen and you need to learn and sometimes as with seer you just need to shut the [ __ ] up and uh my mind's able to just be like seriously please shut the [ __ ] up i'm gonna try doing the outro in a different way this time let's see how it goes thanks for watching folks if you enjoyed the video do give it a like and a share and all that good stuff thanks as well to that person who offered to give me the r word pass um i respectfully decline um but thank you all the same if you want to support the channel check out the sponsor raycon pick up some merch over on bonfire pledge your support on patreon or become a youtube channel member not only will you get to join all these lovely people on screen but you'll also get early access to uncensored versions of videos without ads or sponsorships follow me on twitter and join my public discord server if you want to stay up to date with stuff and i will see you in the next one this mic smells of plastic and is very fluffy

Channel: Cynical Reviews

Views: 2,012,859

Rating: 4.9182754 out of 5

Keywords: Music, Music Movie, Music Movie Review, Sia Music, Sia Music Review, Music Film, Music Film Review, Sia Music Film Review, Sia Music Movie, Sia Music Movie Review, Movie Review, Cynical Reviews, Cynical Reviews Music, Maddie Ziegler, Autism, Autism Movie, Representation, Commentary, Parody, Satire, Critique, Criticism, Film, Movie, Rain Man, Music 2021, Music 2021 Movie, Music 2021 Review, ad, Music 2021 Film, Music 2021 Film Review, Cynical CJ, autism awareness

Id: yLBl3he3Nqg

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021

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