By, MICHELLE WILLSON, Features Editor
Sia’s movie music is problematic, and here’s why. The first reason this movie caused outrage is that Sia casted Maddie Ziegler as the main character, who has autism.
Many wished that Sia would have casted an autistic person for this role. Her response was that an autistic person wouldn’t work in the movie environment. In many cases in other movies, they would have accommodated to the actor. But Sia didn’t.
When the trailer came out, people were appalled by the calming down mechanisms that Sia portrays in her movie. On multiple occasions, they use prone or supine restraint to pin Music to the ground, completely restraining her.
This has caused many autistic people to die. This is not the way that the situations should have been handled.
Many autism activists on TikTok say they are glad that Sia didn’t pick an autistic creator to play music because of these pins to the ground. They’re traumatizing to the autistic children, and to the person who’s doing it.
When responding to the backlash, Sia said she did lots of research with the Autism Speaks organization.
It has a bad reputation in the autism community because it relates autism to a disease, and they are “trying to find the cure.” Sia responded that they came on after the movie was done, and she didn’t realize that they were such a polarizing group.
But anyone in the autism community could tell you that.Many have said that it’s not a movie about autism, it’s a movie that happens to have an autistic character that’s poorly presented.
The movie will premiere on Feb. 10, but many people in the autism community are advising people not to watch it.
It’s not only bad representation of an autistic person, but is also bad representation of how to interact with an autistic person.
I personally don’t plan on seeing the movie. I think there is too much misinformation in it that it’s not worth it.
I think a movie like this should be given a second try with actual people on the spectrum consulting and helping direct it to make sure it’s going in the right direction.