In a Nutshell...

I think there are a few important things to point out about the films I reviewed. One of these is that, out of the five movies I watched, four of them featured autistic savant characters. Snow Cake was the only film whose autistic character did not have savant skills. It was also the film that (in my opinion) gave the best, most accurate representation of an autistic character. This fact is particularly telling as Snow Cake was written by Angela Pell, who is the mother of an autistic son. I think this face really reinforces what we've learned in our study of autism - that the best way to learn about autism is from autistics themselves.

Completing this project was really eye-opening for me as well. Until I actually sat down to research movies with autistic characters, I never realized how few portrayals of autism there are in Hollywood. I also never realized how narrowly the film industry focuses only on autistic savants and their skills, rather than taking the opportunity to explore what is really a fascinating and yet vastly misunderstood topic. I think that this lack of visibility and accurate representation in film is directly related to the general lack of knowledge about autism in our society. Perhaps if more members of the autistic community get involved in the film making industry we will start to see more accurate representations of autism in the mass media.