Sheldon Cooper. Aspie, or offensive parody?

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This past week's episode of the Big Bang Theory (The Proton Displacement) was, I thought, the best example yet of Sheldon being on the spectrum. Much of what happened/what was said resonated with me. I particularly liked the scene where Amy is about to tell Sheldon how he comes across, and he responds with "Just say it. The words I've heard all my life. Say it. I'm annoying." After that the scene moved back into humor, but for that moment I felt really sad for him, because I've had the same experience in my life.

I think we all have.

I've never owned a TV, but my counselor recommended tBBT, and I enjoy watching the little excerpts I find on YouTube. If I could maintain Sheldon's confidence, I'd have been prone to acting much like him. (I tell my Counselor that his advantage is holding the apartment lease. :-)
Since AS is such a spectrum, I have no problem giving Sheldon that label, but of course, the lawyers won't let the writers do it.
What I like, besides the great jokes, is a chance to see myself as others have sometimes seen me, but also coping with it better. As difficult and demanding as Sheldon is, the show is about tolerance and co-operation. A negative approach would have been a show about the boys getting bullied when younger, from the point of view of the bullies. This show celebrates diversity, and reaches millions of people on our behalf. "All in the Family," OTOH, made men like Archie Bunker into pariahs.

To me, it's hard to hard to say. I've been watching the show more than usual and he may have many asperger's traits but he also has some social skills. Sheldon, to me, was more of a character made for laughs. He has his social circle for comfort, he has his anxieties and troubles similar to an aspie, but he is willing to try something new. That's just my opinion.

As far as Sheldon having certain social skills - to be sure yes, but so do I, which I acquired through years of trial and error navigating the NT world.

When I was young, I -was- Sheldon Cooper. Don't laugh. It isn't funny.

ruveyn

I, too, was learning how to socialize, sometimes through TV, sometimes directly with people. As for Sheldon, I don't believe the humor was aimed at Aspergers people specifically.

Sheldon = Aspie, at least in a crazy sitcom kinda way. On one hand I watch it and think "hey this show is having a go at people like me" but then I vacillate to the position "hey it is nice that people like me are on the teevee and they are nice people, kind people, normal in their idiom, accepted and oft appreciated, etc..." I think it's just a pretty clowny, low-brow, happy show with lotsa laffs so I cannot say that I find Sheldon particularly offensive in that context.

And at times his quirks do admittedly reflect my own. More than one of the NTs in my life has brought up the show to me in conversation, asking me what I think about it as an Aspie and ubernerd. At those times I have generally said conversation-filler stuff like "sure it's a funny show" or "yeah that Sheldon ha-ha he's like me" and moved the topic politely on.

I've watched an episode or two of TBBT and I think I do relate to Sheldon more often than not. For one, there are times I ended up coming off as a douche when I didn't mean to, to just generally not wanting to socialize much.

Congratulations, you now understand how every dark-skinned person feels when they get told that they are just like [insert African-American celebrity that is nothing like that person here].

But for some reason our culture accepts it when you can't see it on a person on first glance.

<sarcasm>Who would have thought that our judge-a-book-by-its-cover culture could be so superficial?</sarcasm>

So it's okay to have a show with incredibly racist sterotyped African-Americans as long as you never explicity say that the characters are African-American despite the obvious intimations that they are?

It's better that way so it can be funny and not offensive, and you can feel identified if you want? I don't think so...

Being a collector is not the same as being Autistic...

Thank you! You obviously understand ASD better than many posting here saying 'he's obviously Aspie and it's hilarious'

The writers are obviously unable or unwilling to write a 'real' autistic character, but since that is what the entire show revolves around making fun of, they cram symptoms into this character that are obviously not organic to his character if you are familiar with true ASDs, but most people are not familiar enough with actually LIVING with ASD on a daily basis to notice.

It's the ASD equivalent of the Amos and Andy radio show. People not of a culture who don't understand that culture making superficial stereotypical jokes at the expense of that culture.

And the audiences who are not of that culture think it's 'adorable' that REAL people of those cultures bear superficial resemblance to these characters. They then draw obvious and incorrect comparisons between the REAL people and these characters.

Black people were not offended by Amos and Andy because they COULD relate to the characters, they were offended because to them the characters and situations on a mass-media show were wildly and obviously INACCURATE to anyone actually of their culture.

Is reading the Shylock character from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice your best tool for understanding Jews?

I think it would be a MUCH better tool to actually spend time with REAL neurodiverse people rather than a character contrived by people who obviously don't understand, and worse seem to have a healthy disdain for, neurodiverse people.

Or maybe it's just poor writing... but either way SHELDON COOPER IS NOT A TRUE PERSON AND THEREFORE SHOULD NOT BE STUDIED IN ANY CONTEXT OTHER THAN THAT OF AMERICAN MEDIA CULTURE!

I also love Louis CK and certainly much of his humor touches on topics that some can be offended by (of course... but maybe.... lol!!)

However the difference is that Louis CK does not simply imitate mentally 'different' people or any specific culture for his entire show.

He sometimes makes some minor imitations to help bring a joke to life, but it is the joke that is funny not the imitation. The imitation by itself is not funny, and the joke itself would be funny on its own and his imitations often serve to limit the mental pictures the audience may run wild with because he's NOT trying to set up such stereotyped characters in his jokes.

Sheldon Cooper is a poor and stereotyped imitation of an Aspie, and does not tell funny jokes.

The writers obviously give him behaviors (symptoms?) we can identify with, but without the overall mental state that leads to these differences in personalities between Aspies and NTs, or even an explicit statement that this what they're going for but maybe don't succeed all the time, the acting out of those symptoms seems disingenuous, unbelievable, and in poor taste to me.

While I think the show is rather funny, it is despite agreeing with pensieve's quote below. In fact, when I saw the first couple of episodes of BBT for the first time, I was disgusted by how the so-called normal nerds would have sold their grandmother to get with Penny, and how three of the guys just wanted to get laid while Sheldon actually had interests and was scorned. I gave up on the series at that point.
They were supposed to be his friends, but they seldom treated him that way, both in regards to how they acted around him and how they talked about him.

It was only after seeing some of the episodes in seasons 5 and 6 earlier this year, that I started seeing the funny aspects of the show, and gave it a shot, watching it from season one and onward. This time around I enjoyed the fun parts, but I also saw how accurate parts of my assessment had been. I'm looking forward to season 8 starting today, but I watch seeing it all.

Thankfully Sheldon does get to pick apart the rest of them at times too, but it too much ganging up on him and against him. It's fun when characters have a go at each other and are sarcastic and all that, when it goes all ways. That's what I like so much about "Married with children"; they're all equally bad in different ways. No angels, just a bunch of funny characters.
If BBT was more evenly balanced in that way, with everyone getting more of their share, it would be a better and funnier show.

It amazes me that aspies can feel Sheldon gives aspies a voice, and make people aware and even appreciative as I read in the general forum just today.
No, BBT most certainly does not do that. Not at all. No one but us likes Sheldon. Of course he is often played in such a way that he comes off as insincere and doing it all on purpose and just claiming that he doesn't understand, which doesn't help. I haven't ever heard any NT call him anything but "obnoxious".
Anyone who pays even just a little attention to the show gets that he is just the comic relief character. The audience never laughs with him, they laugh at him. They never go "aww" about anything that happens to him, that is only for the rest of the gang (minus Amy).

Penny is as close I have ever come to hating a fictional character. To me she represents everything that is wrong with NTs.



There was a thread recently pointing out that we aren't all that narrow in interest, several of us have interests we enjoy besides special interests. And being aspie doesn't mean having NO social skills, it means having problems with them. Surely we all have some.
Nor do we do nothing but lecture. And Sheldon certainly does lecture at times!

Last edited by Skilpadde on 23 Sep 2014, 9:03 am, edited 5 times in total.