Sia Defended Her "Offensive" Movie "Music" After She Was Diagnosed With Autism Spectrum Disorder
Sia addressed backlash of her 2021 movie, Music, following her own Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis.
The movie, which starred Maddie Ziegler in the titular nonverbal role, was met with considerable backlash from the moment its trailer was released. The movie itself was further called ableist and has a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, with one review calling it "offensive and poorly judged."
One of the major points of criticism was over Maddie's casting, rather than an autistic actor. It reached the point where Sia even responded to one autistic actor who accused the movie of making "zero effort to include" people with autism by writing, "Maybe you're just a bad actor."
Sia did say that she "actually tried working with a beautiful young girl, nonverbal on the spectrum, and she found it unpleasant and stressful."
As Alaina Leary wrote for Bitch Media, "The implication is that a nonspeaking autistic actor who might require accommodations on set is, in essence, incapable—thus reinforcing ableist ideas that already lock out such performers. By contrast, one of the main characters in the 2020 Pixar short Loop is a nonverbal girl of color played by Madison Brandy, an autistic teenager who is mostly nonspeaking, which shows that casting nonspeaking actors can be done well and that it’s possible to make set accessible to neurodiverse actors."
After revealing earlier this year that she was diagnosed with ASD, Sia spoke about Music in an interview with Zane Lowe. "It took me 20 years to make that movie. I wrote the music and wrote the film with my friend, and it took me 20 years of thinking about it and then five, six years to make it and then edit it. And then I got into a stupid Twitter spat with somebody autistic," she began.
Sia then said that the online storm led to her being diagnosed with autism: "Kathy Griffin, one of my friends, said to me, ‘I think you're autistic.’ And so I went and I had a neuropsych eval, and it took 18 hours over the course of like five, six days. And it turned out that I’m a level 2 autistic."
She continued, "There’s three levels. And one is Asperger’s, two is pretty autistic, and three is nonverbal. So it made a lot of sense to me because I’ve suffered my whole life, really suffered, and I didn’t know why. And I felt like I had to put on a human suit all the time to go out and be a part of the world."
Asperger's stopped being diagnosed in 2013. It was retired so that people wouldn't confuse it as a separate diagnosis from autism — and because Hans Asperger was a Nazi who was involved in the murder of children with disabilities.
When Zane then said that Sia's own autism was likely why she was drawn to the movie's "subject matter," Sia replied, "What was extra funny was someone said, 'I should have gotten Maddie's part, these are the parts I miss out on that I should get.' I just wrote back, like an arsehole, 'Maybe you're not a very good actor.'"
"What was terrible is that people were like, Maybe you're a bad person, maybe you're a terrible person, and plus, you were mean to an autistic person and that's ableist."
When it came to people accusing her of being "ableist" for her response, Sia told Zane, "Actually, I think it's the opposite of ableist. I think I just treated her like I would treat anybody on the internet."
"Of course, when it comes out that I was just speaking to a peer, oh the irony! It was so interesting," she continued, going on to attribute the online "negativity" to QAnon, Reddit, and algorithms. "I thought it was my fans and that they hated me, that they had turned against me. But actually, it was people pretending to be my fans that turned against me."
"When I look back on it, it wasn't really real. It never affected my music business — it affected the movie, like I got a Golden Globe nomination and they sent a petition trying to get it taken away from me. So that was heartbreaking, but Fuck, I got a Golden Globe nomination!"
Zane then affirmed that "the movie will forever exist" and said that people will view it differently with "time." Sia agreed and said, "I think it will have a little renaissance, that would be really nice."
Here's the thing: Sia and Zane chalking criticism of Music to Twitter nonsense over Sia's own neurodivergence feels willfully ignorant at best. Regardless of whether or not Sia responded to an autistic actor like an "arsehole," it doesn't change the fact that a neurotypical actor played a role that numerous people, professional critics included, deemed offensive, stereotypical, and even harmful.
Many journalists who reviewed the film are also autistic themselves.
Autism Speaks was involved with the movie, an organization that many autistic people have long criticized — from the way they speak about autism to the way they spend their money. Sia said at the time that she had "no idea it was such a polarizing group."
On the note of harm, the movie shows the use of prone restraints, a sometimes-deadly technique that has been used to restrain autistic people. While Sia said that she would ensure that the scenes were removed and a warning was added, the scenes are still present in at least the Amazon Prime version. "I am not [hurting her], I am crushing her with my love," Leslie Odom Jr.'s Ebo says while restraining Music. Numerous autistic children have died from prone restraints.
