Sound Off!

It was music to my ears when I heard that the movie Music did not win a Golden Globe. For months, I have heard about this movie that Sia made, and I hoped that what I heard was a lie.

The movie is about an autistic girl named Music. Her grandmother dies, leaving Music to the care of her sister Zu. We meet Zu at a meeting and find out that she is a newly sober drug dealer. She answer's the phone and learns about the family death. The film explores the sister's lives as they learn how to live together and the challenges they face.

I grew up with an autistic brother, and he is very dear to my heart. I am very protective of him, and I will always stand up for and stand by disabled people.

Witnessing the way autistic community got depicted in this movie made me so angry. It reminded me of how bullies mimic and mock autistic people because of the way they walk/speak/ and sound.

Sia filmed this movie in 2017 when Zeigler was fourteen. Maddie was a child when Sia cast her for this role, and she was uncomfortable playing the character. However, reading the September 2019 Marie Claire interview with her does not inspire confidence. Maddie said that one way she prepared for filming was by watching YouTube videos of autistic kids melting down posted by their parents. This is a dehumanizing and disturbing way to prepare for her role. Sia also sent a clip of Maddie acting "autistic" to the Child Mind Institute, and she got one hundred per cent on it. They pathologize autism and promote ABA (Applied Behavioural Analysis), an abusive form of therapy that conditions autistics to dull their pain for the tiniest bit of joy. ABA practitioners focus on eliminating what they call problem behaviours. Child Mind Institute is not a respected source in the autism community. In her interview with Variety, Sia said that Maddie had a rough childhood, and she claims she wanted to rescue her. To protect Maddie, Sia should not have cast her for this role. What autistics do naturally Maddie does not! Sia said that she feels she inadvertently threw her to the wolves. OF COURSE SHE DID!

Music opens with Maddie Zeigler in blackface portraying the most offensive caricature of autistic people. We see Music (Maddie Zeigler) getting dressed and hitting herself, and it goes straight into a colourful musical dance number. The flashing lights were overwhelming, and the way Maddie acts "autistic" while dancing is sickening.

This movie has ten dance numbers that occur during "emotional" moments. The bright, flashing lights take over the screen in cotton candy worlds supposedly meant to portray the title character's inner spirit. During these scenes, Maddie has no resemblance to an autistic person. All interludes consist of a familiar pop song made by Sia (because they are!). They are ableist scenes designed for Maddie to dance, not for an autistic. The strobing lights and colours are overstimulating and could cause seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy.

We continue into Music's daily routine of her grandma serving her eggs, then she leaves and goes for a walk. Along the way, she is on her tiptoes as she makes different sounds and doing a face that I have seen actual autistics do. My brother walks on his tiptoes, this is a natural behaviour of his. When I saw Maddie doing this, I thought she was mocking him and other autistics I know.

When Zu (played by Kate Hudson) arrives, she has a hero mentality when she reads her grandma's letter and is told she is all Music has. The letter from grandma calls Music a magical little girl, which is something, that Sia has called disabled people. Music is used as a tool for other characters growth and prime viewers to empathize with Zu, rather than with Music. In the interview with Variety Sia says that she had the character Zu the most in her head because she knew that character the best. Sia uses patronizing language attempting to speak for autistics and calls them special abilities displaying a similar mentality to Zu. She repeatedly uses the words "compassionate" and "kind" to show an infantilizing view of nonspeaking autistic people. Instead of allowing the actors to tell her what they need to perform well, she ignores this claiming she has the best intentions.

Sia cameo's as a woman looking for drugs for her charity Popstars without Borders (not a real charity). When Zu enters, she sees the classic black and white wig that we know Sia for. When she asks about the wig, a lady denies it's Sia's wig. The interviewer for Variety compares non-vocal autistics to this inanimate object, and Sia agreed! Non-vocal autistics are nothing like inanimate objects! Sia said, "I want them to know that there is somebody in there and don't talk about them like they're not there because they understand exactly what you're saying..." Why didn't she take that same energy and put it toward letting actual autistics speak? In the same interview, Sia said, “The first day I said I got us in a huddle and I said hey guys… you know I’m so glad you’re all here, and it’s nice to meet you all. I said I’m I really want you to come to work every day knowing that we’re trying to show love for all of the caregivers, and for all of the people on the autism spectrum. That this movie is for them, and if we can try and keep our egos out of it, that would be great. If you have a problem, please come to me. Um, I only had to fire two people. Um, and that was pretty, and as soon as anyone brought a bad vibe, I was like, you’re fired.” Then she laughed.

According to Sia one of those people she fired was autistic, referring to the original actress cast to play Music. Sia said she did hire an autistic actress to play Music, but had to fire her because she was too stressed in that environment. It sounds like she thought that people would think that was the nice thing to do when it sounds more like pandering. What Sia should be promoting is accommodating autistic people in the workplace. She had a budget of sixteen million dollars and she couldn’t make accommodations? That is messed up! On Twitter, many responded to Sia's tweets and one, in particular, said, "Several autistic actors... responded to these tweets. We all said we could have acted in it on short notice..." Sia responded, "Maybe you're just a bad actor." In an interview with The Project, Sia said, "I realized it wasn’t ableism. I mean, it is ableism, I guess, as well — but it’s actually nepotism 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." Sia sort of admits (finally) that it's ableism but I don't think she knows what ableism is. She has not come out and told her fans that what she did with this movie is wrong. She attacks autistics and treats them like they aren't human.

There are two restraint scenes involving the prone restraint and there is no warning about them! One occurs in the first twenty minutes of the movie. Music gets upset when Zu can’t braid her hair. Ebo comes over and does Prone restraint! He calls it crushing her with my love! This restraint has KILLED autistic people, there is no love involved if you use this restraint! The second occurrence is forty-four minutes in while Ebo, Zu and Music are walking in a park. Music is overstimulated and has a meltdown and Zu asks Ebo to do something. Ebo says he’s not going to climb on top of a small screaming white girl in the middle of the park. On Twitter Sia has apologized to the autistic community about the restraint scenes. She promised to put a warning at the beginning or remove them. They have not been removed, and there is still no warning about the restraints!

Imagine making a movie about a transgender woman and using a cisgender woman for the role. Then you consult with a gay conversion therapist to make sure that you have all the details right. Autism Speaks is another partner that worked with Sia on this movie. They are an anti-autism group because they want to remove/ cure/ get rid of autism. Only one per cent of their funding goes toward helping families with autistic children. Sia said that she did three years of research for this movie, yet she didn't learn that the autism community finds this organization polarizing? With a budget of 16 million, you'd think she could have done better.

Autism is not a dichotomy. You cannot split it into labels like high functioning and low functioning. Sia referred to Music as “quite low-functioning” in that Variety interview. Functioning labels further marginalize autistic people within a neurotypical society. Those labels are outdated and are from the Holocaust when Nazis were killing Autistic people. Hans Asperger found that some autistics could work for the Nazi party, so they would not have to kill those. The ones that could work were high functioning. The ones that could not got labelled as low functioning, and they murdered them.

The autistic community is not Rainman or the Good Doctor or What's eating Gilbert Grape. We were mad about these stereotype performances from cis straight white men, savant, weird with girls kind of way. Maddie’s performance is slightly different from the Good Doctor because it is different to act autistic by saying things. It’s more harmful and more of a mockery to act autistic with your movements, with the way you say your words, the way you move your hands stereotypically. That is the way that people make fun of autistics in real life. That is the way autistics are bullied by people like Maddie doing that in real life! This treatment is unacceptable. The Snowman trend on TikTok is a diversion. It is a publicity stunt to detract from the negative press that this movie is getting. Do not let it distract you! Get informed and support the autistic community!

Where is Sia right now? She has dropped off the face of the earth because she is a coward for not being around to face the music! Sia, you should have stuck to swinging from the chandelier!