The redpill is that both sides are looking for their own “weaponized autism” brigades. The only way to outflank their autistic obsession and lunacy is to draw on our own autism spectrum warriors. Jokes aside, I think those with a hint of the autism are capable of ignoring social conditioning so they can overcome what many normies find convincing. They are moved by good data and strict order, which is hardly available on the hard Left. The Left captures them probably for lack of trying rather than some special sauce. I guess their acceptance message might resonate with those who have been bullied, but the autists I know don’t really feel the need to be accepted but rather heard and acknowledged as right. Just food for thought. Also, I think autism is likely a myth covering strange behavior and that those with severe autism are suffering serious neurological disorders that they simply cannot control.
Friggin' hilarious. Years ago I watched the RiffTraxx guys do Birdemic. Ugh. A truly enervating experience but at the time I didn't quite catch the lyrics to that song-celebration of incestuous orgy. Poor grandma. Poor me.
But how would we reach out to these autists who try to drown puppies in toilet bowls? My neighbor's autistic kid tried this -- not, as he said, to kill the poor creature but to "see what happens". I'm starting to think that not just the cockroaches, but the autists as well, will be all that's left after the apocalypse. I haven't studied it but I'm pretty sure they are immune to radiation sickness.
For a big-budget fitting your framework for "autistic movies", Ridely Scott's 'Pometheus' should be /the/ go-to example. It can be summed up as "Awesome stuff happens, and is awesome because awesome Also, cool effects, huh?" While that is in no way unique to 'Prometheus', it is in a class of its own even when accounting for Disney's ritualistic murders of various franchises purchased and their own classics too.
Perhaps the term "auteristic" might have something to it?
As for real autistics, they generally find trust a mystifying concept since they also find deceit very difficult to master (ware those that do master it though) - also, once they realise that an individual or a specific group is untrustworthy, they never ever extend any trust at all to that person/group.
Generalising of course, high-functioning ones can be trained to "do normal" and while it will always feel slightly artificial to them, if they are trained to understand normal they are all the better for it.
Which is why post-modern ideas which decontruct to destroy normal are so detrimental to them.
Source: 25+ years experience of teaching high-IQ aspies how normos function and why and how they must learn to "do normal".
Prometheus has some semblance of understanding typical human emotion, though the behavior of the scientists on the alien planet (like the one who tries to pet the murder snake) does lend itself to your point. One might argue that David is a stand-in for an autist, seemingly human in his superficial dealings with others, but aware of a gulf between he and they that rendered him alien. That explains his odd motives and why he seeks to reproduce anti human life forms once freed from normal moral constraints. One may call that more psychopathic than autistic, though.
I just call it bad writing, honestly. Keep the autism-as-metaphor in mind for the below argument:
The movie doesn't know what it wants to be, the pacing is all over the place, the actors have (or display) zero range but instead flip from one state to another, and the special effects are made more important than story, akin to how a bad cook will use strong spices to cover up the mistakes made when cooking.
Compare it to the original: the actors display real human emotion, beautifully contrasted with Ian Holm's non-emotional performance. Also, the actors are not dolled-up with make up et c to be "cool" or look Hollywood-perfect; they look human, which creates great harmonic contrast with both their ship, the alien derelict and the lifeform they encounter. Promethus lacks that completely - too many characters that are impossible to tell apart since they lack character, and a set that makes no sense design-wise: it doesn't look real even within the internal logic of the premise.
If anyone is acting autistic in 'Prometheus', it's the character of 'Wayland'; totally egocentric without any of the sadistic maliciousness of a psyhcopath, all emotions and emotional understanding of his surroundings having only himself as a point of reference (due to the stunted ability to understand the emotions of others), evidence in his scenes with Charlize Theron - in his daughter he only sees his death.
'Prometheus' could have been great if the focus had been on the triangle of Father-Daughter-Golem. Give Wayland the same motive - prolonged life - and have his arc culminating in understanding that his path to that is via his child(ren), not his own physical shell. Give Theron's character an echoing path where she bounces between kinship and alienation with David, her "brother", culminating in her accepting that David wll never be anything resembling a normal human (contrast with parents accepting that their autistic child always will be autistic if you will).
And have David express emotion in being torn between wanting inependence (expressed via dangerous experiments against the advice of others) and wanting affirmation and love from his 'father' and 'sister', expressed via coming to them for advice and for help resolving paradoxes (the ethical issues and problems re: experimenting).
Scrap the Nomi Rapace-arc completely, it adds nothing. Use the rest as background-characters, and have use the growth of David's "Dr Moreau"-ish creations echo his own possibility for making wonders or monsters and his angst over having to choose between two things he wants, yet that are mutually excluding.
This weaves in the difference between something only performing its function, and something able to make choices, the choice to make choices being the first and most important one.
I'll say this as a closer: 'Prometheus' greatest virtue is providing yet more proof that movie-makers (indeed all artists) perform at their best when under tight constraints. With unlimited budgets and fame already theirs, all they can do is make progressively degrading Zeroxes of their past works.
Great points all. What’s interesting to me is that Ridley Scott, given the chance to flesh out his Alien universe, had infinite creative freedom to do so. What he chose to do, of all things, was follow the Chariots of the Gods-themed storyline of Alien vs Predator. It’s like if Disney decided to continue the Star Wars franchise by incorporating Spaceballs. The Rapace stuff was supposed to be a return to the motherhood themes of previous Alien movies, but as you said, it was just kind of stuck in. Its like he got high and said “dude, what if we remade that Alien movie but had like a billion dollars to spend,” while watching AvP.
Have you ever seen Who Killed Captain Alex? I've seen Birdemic and the closest movie I've ever seen that comes close to matching the absurd sincerity (aside from the room) is that movie, which was single-handedly directed and produced by a single Ugandan man who is similarly the sole driving force behind the entire scene of "Wakaliwood", which may just be him making dumb movies with a camera, but watching his movies really remind me of what can make film so entertaining to begin with. There's a sincerity to it that is hard not to like or appreciate. If you were entertained by Birdemic, check it out.
That being said, outsider art and the relationship between autism and artistic visions has always fascinated me. It's kind of why I've always unironically enjoyed certain "cringe" material. There's just something about it... a certain "je ne sais quois" you don't get from more self-aware creators. Good? Bad? Sometimes it's neither. Sometimes it's both. You always get something different. It's always unique, and it comes from such a personal place that it taps into emotions I don't think something more polished or professional could. I'd post the picture if I could, but recently I saw some picture from, like, ten years ago, of a blue fox furry handing a bowl of Trix to the much beleagured Trix rabbit, with the description that was something along the lines of, "I always felt so bad for the Trix rabbit, all he wanted was some cereal, so I decided to give it to him." And it's... very, very silly, but at the same time, it made me feel more emotion than any recent Hollywood movie has.
I have not seen Who Killed Captain Alex. I will have to check it out. Probably the most prolific bad movie director currently working is Neil Breen. If Birdemic is a study in autism, Breen's films (five feature length films, all directed, produced, written, and starring Breen) are portraits in psychopathy. Breen favors similar environmental themes, but approaches them with a clearly expressed desire to wreak godlike, genocidal vengeance on humanity (he actually plays a god in several of his films).
I totally spaced on Neil Breen, but I have seen... reviews of his movies. I keep meaning to get around to actually sitting down and watching them. Apparently he just put all of movies up for free on his website, which, honestly, is pretty cool of him.
"I firmly believe that it is through art, rather than science, that the deepest insights into human nature can be found."
I would advocate for a combination of the two, not just with reference to human nature, but the nature of the universe in general.
Ray Bradbury touches on this in The Martian Chronicles, when his disillusioned character Spender, attempting to escape the relentless onslaught of the human way of life, with its tawdry commercialism and inflated sense of self-importance, rediscovers the essence of the Martian civilisation.
When the more practical Captain of the expedition mentions the apparent naïveté of the Martians, he states they were naive "only when it paid to be naive. They quit trying too hard to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It’s all simply a matter of degree."
I find that not only a wonderfully poetic viewpoint, but also the type which preserves the harmonious relationship between science and art we have observed here on Earth, in more enlightened times.
‘Nature’ can be used in two senses, how a thing works and its purpose. Science is how we think about the first, theology, philosophy, and art the second. I agree that the two can inform each other, as did the ancients; the Neoplatonists in particular saw awareness of the material world as the first step to the transcend world of ideas. And Bradbury is always insightful.
"[L]ike berserkers, the autistic can be difficult to control once they are engaged in battle"
I swear, having watched and lived with autistic children, this is so hilariously true. Don't EVER mention their hyperfixation, let alone criticize it, unless you're ready to get into the debate of a lifetime. (Joke's on them, I know more about Thomas the Tank Engine then they ever could.)
Nguyen's most basic problem is that he cannot tell a story, which is to say, that nothing in scene 2 follows from scene 1, and so on, throughout the film. It's a disjointed series of things that happen untethered to anything that has happened or will happen. For example, the last half of the movie centers on the characters driving around in a van; so much nonsense happens that I only noticed on my third or so viewing that at no point do they establish where they are trying to go. They are not trying to escape the town they are in, nor are they trying to rescue family members (established and never acknowledged again). They just drive and drive until they run out of gas at a beach and the movie stops. It's clear that he has seen The Birds a million times, and his movie is only comprehensible if one is familiar with the Hitchcock work; its otherwise a pastiche of disaster movies dependent upon audience knowledge of tropes to work in even the minimal sense it achieves. It's truly something to behold.
I believe you said you were in education, so you might have more experience with these disorders. You might be interested in the works of UK child psychiatrist Sami Timimi who questions the epidemic of autism, ADHD, etc. His books can be hard to track down, but he does have many articles that are free on this website. Here is one on “The Manufacture of Autism Spectrum Disorders” (https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/11/insane-medicine-chapter-4-part-1/)
I think there are clearly people with profound mental disturbances along the lines of what the DSM-V describes as autism spectrum disorders. Then there is a larger group of weird people who get called autistic, but can function normally. In the middle are cases where it is hard to tell a difficult personality from a mental problem, and I think it is in those spaces that real damage can be done, either through stigma or a lack of help, as the respective cases demand. In my personal opinion, as a teacher and not a mental health professional, I think it is real but widely over-diagnosed, with many of the problems associated with autism being attributable to too much time online.
Well said! Those in the middle are the worst served because they think they are given a lifelong diagnosis and their parents are often completely broken hearted (many times one parent will simply abandon the family). The expansion of the “spectrum” has been a disaster for the parenting race.
The redpill is that both sides are looking for their own “weaponized autism” brigades. The only way to outflank their autistic obsession and lunacy is to draw on our own autism spectrum warriors. Jokes aside, I think those with a hint of the autism are capable of ignoring social conditioning so they can overcome what many normies find convincing. They are moved by good data and strict order, which is hardly available on the hard Left. The Left captures them probably for lack of trying rather than some special sauce. I guess their acceptance message might resonate with those who have been bullied, but the autists I know don’t really feel the need to be accepted but rather heard and acknowledged as right. Just food for thought. Also, I think autism is likely a myth covering strange behavior and that those with severe autism are suffering serious neurological disorders that they simply cannot control.
I would agree with this. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a touch of the ‘tiz.
Autisticish
Friggin' hilarious. Years ago I watched the RiffTraxx guys do Birdemic. Ugh. A truly enervating experience but at the time I didn't quite catch the lyrics to that song-celebration of incestuous orgy. Poor grandma. Poor me.
But how would we reach out to these autists who try to drown puppies in toilet bowls? My neighbor's autistic kid tried this -- not, as he said, to kill the poor creature but to "see what happens". I'm starting to think that not just the cockroaches, but the autists as well, will be all that's left after the apocalypse. I haven't studied it but I'm pretty sure they are immune to radiation sickness.
There's the sad phenomenon of helmet-and-institution autistic, and then there's internet-Star Wars-argument autistic. The latter group is who I mean.
What I like about this piece is that it's not only hilarious, but also truly generous and kind.
I hope so. It’s what I was aiming for.
For a big-budget fitting your framework for "autistic movies", Ridely Scott's 'Pometheus' should be /the/ go-to example. It can be summed up as "Awesome stuff happens, and is awesome because awesome Also, cool effects, huh?" While that is in no way unique to 'Prometheus', it is in a class of its own even when accounting for Disney's ritualistic murders of various franchises purchased and their own classics too.
Perhaps the term "auteristic" might have something to it?
As for real autistics, they generally find trust a mystifying concept since they also find deceit very difficult to master (ware those that do master it though) - also, once they realise that an individual or a specific group is untrustworthy, they never ever extend any trust at all to that person/group.
Generalising of course, high-functioning ones can be trained to "do normal" and while it will always feel slightly artificial to them, if they are trained to understand normal they are all the better for it.
Which is why post-modern ideas which decontruct to destroy normal are so detrimental to them.
Source: 25+ years experience of teaching high-IQ aspies how normos function and why and how they must learn to "do normal".
Prometheus has some semblance of understanding typical human emotion, though the behavior of the scientists on the alien planet (like the one who tries to pet the murder snake) does lend itself to your point. One might argue that David is a stand-in for an autist, seemingly human in his superficial dealings with others, but aware of a gulf between he and they that rendered him alien. That explains his odd motives and why he seeks to reproduce anti human life forms once freed from normal moral constraints. One may call that more psychopathic than autistic, though.
I just call it bad writing, honestly. Keep the autism-as-metaphor in mind for the below argument:
The movie doesn't know what it wants to be, the pacing is all over the place, the actors have (or display) zero range but instead flip from one state to another, and the special effects are made more important than story, akin to how a bad cook will use strong spices to cover up the mistakes made when cooking.
Compare it to the original: the actors display real human emotion, beautifully contrasted with Ian Holm's non-emotional performance. Also, the actors are not dolled-up with make up et c to be "cool" or look Hollywood-perfect; they look human, which creates great harmonic contrast with both their ship, the alien derelict and the lifeform they encounter. Promethus lacks that completely - too many characters that are impossible to tell apart since they lack character, and a set that makes no sense design-wise: it doesn't look real even within the internal logic of the premise.
If anyone is acting autistic in 'Prometheus', it's the character of 'Wayland'; totally egocentric without any of the sadistic maliciousness of a psyhcopath, all emotions and emotional understanding of his surroundings having only himself as a point of reference (due to the stunted ability to understand the emotions of others), evidence in his scenes with Charlize Theron - in his daughter he only sees his death.
'Prometheus' could have been great if the focus had been on the triangle of Father-Daughter-Golem. Give Wayland the same motive - prolonged life - and have his arc culminating in understanding that his path to that is via his child(ren), not his own physical shell. Give Theron's character an echoing path where she bounces between kinship and alienation with David, her "brother", culminating in her accepting that David wll never be anything resembling a normal human (contrast with parents accepting that their autistic child always will be autistic if you will).
And have David express emotion in being torn between wanting inependence (expressed via dangerous experiments against the advice of others) and wanting affirmation and love from his 'father' and 'sister', expressed via coming to them for advice and for help resolving paradoxes (the ethical issues and problems re: experimenting).
Scrap the Nomi Rapace-arc completely, it adds nothing. Use the rest as background-characters, and have use the growth of David's "Dr Moreau"-ish creations echo his own possibility for making wonders or monsters and his angst over having to choose between two things he wants, yet that are mutually excluding.
This weaves in the difference between something only performing its function, and something able to make choices, the choice to make choices being the first and most important one.
I'll say this as a closer: 'Prometheus' greatest virtue is providing yet more proof that movie-makers (indeed all artists) perform at their best when under tight constraints. With unlimited budgets and fame already theirs, all they can do is make progressively degrading Zeroxes of their past works.
Great points all. What’s interesting to me is that Ridley Scott, given the chance to flesh out his Alien universe, had infinite creative freedom to do so. What he chose to do, of all things, was follow the Chariots of the Gods-themed storyline of Alien vs Predator. It’s like if Disney decided to continue the Star Wars franchise by incorporating Spaceballs. The Rapace stuff was supposed to be a return to the motherhood themes of previous Alien movies, but as you said, it was just kind of stuck in. Its like he got high and said “dude, what if we remade that Alien movie but had like a billion dollars to spend,” while watching AvP.
Have you ever seen Who Killed Captain Alex? I've seen Birdemic and the closest movie I've ever seen that comes close to matching the absurd sincerity (aside from the room) is that movie, which was single-handedly directed and produced by a single Ugandan man who is similarly the sole driving force behind the entire scene of "Wakaliwood", which may just be him making dumb movies with a camera, but watching his movies really remind me of what can make film so entertaining to begin with. There's a sincerity to it that is hard not to like or appreciate. If you were entertained by Birdemic, check it out.
That being said, outsider art and the relationship between autism and artistic visions has always fascinated me. It's kind of why I've always unironically enjoyed certain "cringe" material. There's just something about it... a certain "je ne sais quois" you don't get from more self-aware creators. Good? Bad? Sometimes it's neither. Sometimes it's both. You always get something different. It's always unique, and it comes from such a personal place that it taps into emotions I don't think something more polished or professional could. I'd post the picture if I could, but recently I saw some picture from, like, ten years ago, of a blue fox furry handing a bowl of Trix to the much beleagured Trix rabbit, with the description that was something along the lines of, "I always felt so bad for the Trix rabbit, all he wanted was some cereal, so I decided to give it to him." And it's... very, very silly, but at the same time, it made me feel more emotion than any recent Hollywood movie has.
I have not seen Who Killed Captain Alex. I will have to check it out. Probably the most prolific bad movie director currently working is Neil Breen. If Birdemic is a study in autism, Breen's films (five feature length films, all directed, produced, written, and starring Breen) are portraits in psychopathy. Breen favors similar environmental themes, but approaches them with a clearly expressed desire to wreak godlike, genocidal vengeance on humanity (he actually plays a god in several of his films).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V79qKOdCYZw
I totally spaced on Neil Breen, but I have seen... reviews of his movies. I keep meaning to get around to actually sitting down and watching them. Apparently he just put all of movies up for free on his website, which, honestly, is pretty cool of him.
You used to have to mail him $30, and he would mail you a DVD he burned on his PC.
"I firmly believe that it is through art, rather than science, that the deepest insights into human nature can be found."
I would advocate for a combination of the two, not just with reference to human nature, but the nature of the universe in general.
Ray Bradbury touches on this in The Martian Chronicles, when his disillusioned character Spender, attempting to escape the relentless onslaught of the human way of life, with its tawdry commercialism and inflated sense of self-importance, rediscovers the essence of the Martian civilisation.
When the more practical Captain of the expedition mentions the apparent naïveté of the Martians, he states they were naive "only when it paid to be naive. They quit trying too hard to destroy everything, to humble everything. They blended religion and art and science because, at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle. They never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It’s all simply a matter of degree."
I find that not only a wonderfully poetic viewpoint, but also the type which preserves the harmonious relationship between science and art we have observed here on Earth, in more enlightened times.
‘Nature’ can be used in two senses, how a thing works and its purpose. Science is how we think about the first, theology, philosophy, and art the second. I agree that the two can inform each other, as did the ancients; the Neoplatonists in particular saw awareness of the material world as the first step to the transcend world of ideas. And Bradbury is always insightful.
"[L]ike berserkers, the autistic can be difficult to control once they are engaged in battle"
I swear, having watched and lived with autistic children, this is so hilariously true. Don't EVER mention their hyperfixation, let alone criticize it, unless you're ready to get into the debate of a lifetime. (Joke's on them, I know more about Thomas the Tank Engine then they ever could.)
"...their tribal police re-enacting Little Bighorn with a Dodge Ram."
Notably followed by
*KNEE ON THE NECK*
Wounded Knee on neck.
Haha quite so
My house always lands on witches.
In what particular way, though, does Nguyen differ from say Kubrick or Huston or Hitchcock, and how is his work inferior to theirs?
I remain fascinated by the fact that film is a medium for peeps and creeps; voyeurs. Irreputable people. Hitchcock made a movie or two about this.
Nguyen's most basic problem is that he cannot tell a story, which is to say, that nothing in scene 2 follows from scene 1, and so on, throughout the film. It's a disjointed series of things that happen untethered to anything that has happened or will happen. For example, the last half of the movie centers on the characters driving around in a van; so much nonsense happens that I only noticed on my third or so viewing that at no point do they establish where they are trying to go. They are not trying to escape the town they are in, nor are they trying to rescue family members (established and never acknowledged again). They just drive and drive until they run out of gas at a beach and the movie stops. It's clear that he has seen The Birds a million times, and his movie is only comprehensible if one is familiar with the Hitchcock work; its otherwise a pastiche of disaster movies dependent upon audience knowledge of tropes to work in even the minimal sense it achieves. It's truly something to behold.
I believe you said you were in education, so you might have more experience with these disorders. You might be interested in the works of UK child psychiatrist Sami Timimi who questions the epidemic of autism, ADHD, etc. His books can be hard to track down, but he does have many articles that are free on this website. Here is one on “The Manufacture of Autism Spectrum Disorders” (https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/11/insane-medicine-chapter-4-part-1/)
I think there are clearly people with profound mental disturbances along the lines of what the DSM-V describes as autism spectrum disorders. Then there is a larger group of weird people who get called autistic, but can function normally. In the middle are cases where it is hard to tell a difficult personality from a mental problem, and I think it is in those spaces that real damage can be done, either through stigma or a lack of help, as the respective cases demand. In my personal opinion, as a teacher and not a mental health professional, I think it is real but widely over-diagnosed, with many of the problems associated with autism being attributable to too much time online.
Well said! Those in the middle are the worst served because they think they are given a lifelong diagnosis and their parents are often completely broken hearted (many times one parent will simply abandon the family). The expansion of the “spectrum” has been a disaster for the parenting race.
Autism
Another reason to avoid vaccinations