The perfect metaphor for the autistic experience

InspirationWriting

May 30

I watched Please Stand By recently. I usually avoid films about autistic characters like the plague - especially when the film isn’t made by autistic people - but the local film institute hosted a talk by psychologist Tony Attwood (loved him) as part of their Autism Festival and the film was on immediately afterwards so we thought we’d give it a go.

It’s not a great film - not particularly insulting or damaging, per se, just not great (this review does a fantastic job of explaining why) BUT it does work phenomenally well as a metaphor for the autistic experience.

If you haven’t seen it, the plot of the film goes something like this (spoilers, obvs): Wendy (our autistic lead) lives in some kind of group home and wants to enter a Star Trek script competition. She writes a great script, but is prevented from mailing it in on time due to a) some ridiculously unfair family drama, and b) no one in her life taking her seriously when she says this script thing is really important to her. So, she takes matters into her own hands and decides to secretly make the journey from San Francisco to LA to deliver it by hand (she wouldn’t be allowed to leave the group home to do this if they knew).

She goes off on her adventure and a series of fairly traumatic setbacks befall her: she gets kicked off the bus, has all her money stolen, and is in a car crash which lands her in hospital. When she runs away from the hospital to continue her journey she loses half her script, and is forced to rewrite it by hand, from memory, on paper she stole from a bin, in a bus station in a strange town in the middle of the night.

She eventually gets her script in on time, reconciles with her family and blah blah blah - so heartwarming, so condescending, so trite.

But when the credits rolled I found I was in tears, and by the time we’d walked the short distance home and made it up the stairs I was incoherent. I was literally crying so hard I couldn’t speak, but I had no idea why. I hadn’t felt particularly affected by the film, in fact I’d thought it was pretty mediocre - so why was I so upset?

And then it dawned on me.

That scene in the bus station? That’s autism right there. In a nutshell.

Everyone else gets to mail in their script and then get on with their life. They can use their brains and their energy for other things - writing more scripts, perhaps, or pitching their scripts to multiple places, or meeting people who can help further their scriptwriting careers.

But we (autists) have to go on this epic fucking journey just to get the fucking script from A to B.

And it was the gut-wrenching recognition of that feeling. The feeling of having to rewrite a script from memory by hand whilst on a deadline and trying to get somewhere far away with no money. And that happening every fucking day. Forever. That was what left me in bits.

Because you’re brilliant. You have this incredible brain. Of course you can rewrite your metaphorical script from memory. Of course you can get it where it needs to go by sheer determination, tenacity, and force of will. But OH MY GOD you shouldn’t have to. Because when that is your day-to-day reality it’s exhausting, not to mention completely unsustainable. And imagine what you could achieve if you had the opportunity to put that brilliant brain to work on the things that matter.

I don’t think the people who made this film had any idea that this was the message they would leave someone with. If they did, they certainly haven’t spoken about it publicly, and none of the reviews I’ve read have picked up on it - even Lars didn’t see it until I pointed it out.

But from now on, whenever anyone asks me what it’s like to be autistic, recounting that bus station scene will be my go-to response.

If you want to watch an utterly brilliant, deeply autistic-coded film which is all about a joyful celebration of being a weirdo, then I cannot recommend Brian and Charles highly enough.