Autism Does Not Equal Rainman!

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I also get tired of stereotypes. I also hate it when someone is supposed to have AS but they seem to be more autistic. I liked Temple Grandin because it wasn't stereotyped and they didn't show every single symptom of autism because it was about Temple. I thought Mozart and the Whale was okay and Isabel wasn't a stereotype but lot of people on the spectrum and including the actors tat played the people thought it was all exaggerated. I prefer stories that are based on a true story or books that are memoirs. But sometimes people on the spectrum do have stereotypes, John Robison for example or Jerry Newport and his wife. I still wish they focus on people who aren't typical aspies or a stereotype.

I just hate Hollywood stereotyping in general and it's not just us go see a chick flick or look at how many movies have a black man/white woman couple without it being the entire premise of the film.

I entirely understand what you mean. I'm a filmmaker, and have worked for over three years on better understanding the media representation of autism. There is most definitely a problem with the misconceptions perpetrated in the media about autism and what persons affected by it can and can't do. I was lucky enough to meet a director named David Midell, who also worked as a special educator in Illinois and he had some wonderful stories that he turned into a film that I ended up producing.

And the difference between AS and autism are so drastically difference symptomatically. Our film deals with a very low functioning person affected by autism but even then the assumptions run rampant. I would love to hear more thoughts on what everyone in this forum wishes the media WOULD do in terms of accurate representation. What do you want to be shown to more accurately express the reality of AS and autism?

The single best way to deal with this is to develop a Rainman impression. It instantly demonstrates how you're not like the character, and is much less likely to make someone defensive than by confronting them directly about stereotyping you. Besides which, it can be pretty funny if you're good at it.

I started high school during the days of Rainman in 1988. I remember my mum telling me that I was on the spectrum two months after I started Grade 9 in 1989. My mum asked me if I remembered Rainman and of course I remembered him because we just rented the movie two weeks before. I didn't like my mum using that character as an example, so I tried everything that I could to be as social as my NT pears for a while. I was of course shunned by my peers. I was also pretty much told that I had no future by my ableist father in the Summer of 1990. I made the mistake of becoming a hippie instead of asking my Learning Centre teacher if it was true that all I would grow up to be was a hippie. If I would have asked her that question, I would have been dressing like The Kinks and being the Mod that I am, my last two years of high school instead of playing the part of the scum of the Earth.