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Post by Admin on Nov 21, 2020 19:21:17 GMT
Thursday marked the trailer release for the movie Music, Grammy nominee Sia's directorial feature film debut. The first footage sees the young dancer Maddie Ziegler, a frequent Sia collaborator, portraying the title role of Music, a low-functioning autistic teenager who finds herself in the care of her half-sister Zu (Kate Hudson), a newly sober drug dealer. Sia, as she wrote in a series of responses on Twitter, based the film's story "completely" on her "neuro atypical [sic] friend." She wrote, "He found it too stressful being non verbal, and I made this movie with nothing but love for him and his mother."
Despite those intentions, something Sia would repeat over and over on social media in the hours that followed, the singer-songwriter found herself in the middle of what has become a heated conversation around accusations of ableism for casting Ziegler, a neurotypical actor, in the role of an autistic person.
At first, Sia attempted a dialogue with multiple Twitter users as many questioned whether she considered casting an autistic actor for the part. "My character was pretty low functioning and after attempting a few actors on the spectrum they suggested I use Maddie," Sia tweeted to one user. In another interaction, she mentioned, "I actually tried working with a a [sic] beautiful young girl non verbal on the spectrum and she found it unpleasant and stressful. So that’s why I cast Maddie."
In other tweets, Sia said she came to the decision that casting an actor at so low-functioning a level as her character would be "cruel, not kind" after the actor found the process "extremely stressful and overwhelming."
According to Sia, the advocacy organization Autism Speaks came on board "long after the film was finished, four years in fact." Zoe Gross, director of operations at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, wrote to EW via email that, of the many concerns her organization has about the film, one is "the fact that the filmmakers partnered with Autism Speaks (an organization without autistic leadership whose advocacy priorities are in opposition to the autistic community) instead of with autistic-led organizations." A rep for Autism Speaks told EW that the organization "was not involved in the casting or production of the film, Music. Representation matters, and we believe autistic actors should always be given opportunities to play autistic characters."
Sia also said she spent three years researching and cast "thirteen neuroatypical people, three trans folk, and not as f---ing prostitutes or drug addicts but as doctors, nurses and singers. F---ing sad nobody’s even seen the dang movie. My heart has always been in the right place."
"Several autistic actors, myself included, responded to these tweets," a user wrote to Sia. "We all said we could have acted in it on short notice. These excuses are just that- excuses. The fact of the matter is zero effort was made to include anyone who is actually autistic."
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Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2020 0:25:53 GMT
If you opened Twitter today, you may have noticed that singer-songwriter Sia is in the center of controversy involving her upcoming movie, Music. After the trailer’s release, the film itself was met with various criticisms. A big one is that the movie cast Maddie Ziegler as its lead: To which Sia said that she did try to work with a nonverbal girl and did cast some neuroatypical people: Finally, there's backlash over the way Sia was speaking to criticisms, especially those coming from autistic people. In total, she replied to people over 40 times — dismissing tweets as "bullshit" and saying that people hadn't seen the whole film. One example came when one user suggested that there could have been a greater effort to include autistic actors:
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Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2020 6:30:10 GMT
Sia’s upcoming film Music is just another example in a long history of autistic people not being centered in stories about autism. The film and Sia are currently facing criticism for casting Maddie Ziegler, a non-autistic actress, in the titular role of Music, a nonverbal autistic character who moves in with her recently sober sister (Kate Hudson). Ziegler and Sia are known for frequently working together, but it’s a disappointment to see yet another neurotypical actor playing a neurodivergent role. It’s even more disappointing that Sia has doubled down in response to criticism from autistic and disabled advocates. In contrast, Anne Hathaway recently apologized for her character’s hands in The Witches after disability advocates spoke out about the implicit ableism and the potential impact on children with limb differences. But Sia’s choice to react in anger rather than reflect on her role in perpetuating ableism and autistic stereotypes, however well-intentioned, shows that she’s not ready to truly listen to autistic people, even though she says she based Music on one of her friends, had two autistic people advising her on the film, and cast 13 autistic people in the film. If she can’t even listen to our community’s criticisms, why should she direct a film about us? Hiring a non-autistic actor to portray a canonically autistic character, or an undiagnosed character who is strongly coded as autistic, is common, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. Abed (Danny Pudi) from Community, Sam Gardner (Keir Gilchrist) from Atypical, Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) from The Good Doctor, Isadora Smackle (Cecilia Balagot) from Girl Meets World, and Sugar Motta (Vanessa Lengies) from Glee are all portrayed by non-autistic actors. This happens across the board with disability. Superstore’s Garrett is played by Colton Dunn, who isn’t a wheelchair user like his character. Often called “cripping up,” this practice can lead to stereotypical and harmful portrayals of disability, such as Sam Claflin’s role as Will Traynor in Me Before You, which suggested that death was better than living with a disability. Hiring nondisabled actors also takes away disabled roles from disabled actors. Ableism is rampant in the film and TV industry, and it’s very difficult to get your start as a disabled actor when famous directors discourage actors from even sitting down to take a break during filming. According to GLAAD’s 2019 “Where We Are On TV” report, only 3.1% of characters on TV are disabled, and 95% of When people suggested to Sia that autistic actors should have been considered for the role of Music, Sia replied “Maybe you’re just a bad actor” to an autistic actor, adding to the prevalent assumption that autistic people are unable to act because we’re not neurotypical, which ignores the incredible diversity of the autistic community. Sia went on to suggest that casting someone at Music’s “level of functioning was cruel, not kind,” showing once again how little research she has done on autistic people. The autistic community has been outspoken for years about the need to do away with functioning labels. Describing someone as low-functioning and making assumptions about their abilities based on how they communicate is ableist, not kind. I should know, I was marked as “low-functioning” by medical professionals when I was diagnosed as a kid and was partially nonverbal growing up. How someone communicates with the world around them is not indicative of their personhood or their right to make choices about their own life, including pursuing acting as a career. As an autistic person, I know that no matter how good an actor is, they will never know exactly how it feels to stim by flapping your hand lightly against your leg because you’re overwhelmed or energized at a busy work conference. They can try to act the challenge of making eye contact, but it’s more likely to be a stiff, stereotypical portrayal, because the reality is that it’s not as simple as Googling autistic traits and copying them. Sometimes eye contact makes me uncomfortable, especially during emotionally charged conversations. Other times, I find it comforting, and could gaze into my wife’s eyes for hours while she talks about books. Living as an autistic person is infinitely more complex than meeting a set of diagnostic criteria. Contrary to popular media representation, many autistic people — myself included — are actually primarily sensory-seeking instead of sensory-avoidant. I find loud music, strobe lights, and crowds energizing and deeply joyful, despite what mainstream media representation of the autistic experience suggests. The trailer begins with Zu speaking and shortly after, her friend Ebo (Leslie Odom Jr.) tells her that Music “can understand everything you are saying to her” and that “she sees the world in a completely different way from us.” Zu is the lead role in this movie, and Ebo seems to be the link that forces her to rethink her relationship with Music. Therefore it can be assumed that the audience is not meant to experience the events of the movie from Music’s point of view. Instead, the audience is primed to take Zu’s perspective: Autistic people are outsiders and their worldviews are automatically othered, even when those autistic people are close to us and we love them deeply. A whimsical, colorful dance sequence in the trailer shows us how Music sees the world. A movie that wants us to understand and empathize with Music will hopefully go further, offering us more of Music's perspective on her world, how she feels, what she's thinking, and what's important to her. She will be more than just energetic musical numbers that remind us she's different; we'll have the ability to get to know her as a flawed, fully-developed character. Autism speaks came on board long after the film was finished, four years in fact. I had no idea it was such a polarizing group! — sia (@sia) November 20, 2020 The tropes surrounding Music’s portrayal aren’t surprising considering the film consulted Autism Speaks, an organization heavily criticized by the autistic community for many examples of harm, including its long-time focus on finding a cure rather than supporting living autistic people. Sia claims she had no idea the group was so polarizing, which again just reassures the autistic community how little research she and her team did into autism. Her responses aren’t comforting and do nothing to persuade me that I need to give the full film a watch before judging it, considering Sia wasn’t even willing to do the same for autistic actors. Music is shaping up to be a movie that completely ignores the rallying cry of, “Nothing about us without us.” This is clearly a movie by non-autistic people for non-autistic people, just like the vast majority of mainstream media. That’s not representation. Music is commodifying and profiting off ableist assumptions about autistic lives.
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Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2020 21:08:44 GMT
On November 19, a trailer was released for Music, Sia's long in the works directorial debut. Almost immediately, the film became the subject of controversy due to its portrayal of autism. The criticisms of the project are many, and the controversy has only become more heated due to the way Sia has responded to autistic critics on Twitter. Let's break down all of the different controversies surrounding Music. The biggest (and perhaps most complicated) subject of controversy regarding Music is that the title character, a nonverbal autistic girl, is played by Maddie Ziegler, who is not autistic. Some autistic people feel it's wrong to cast non-autistic actors as autistic characters, while others think such casting is acceptable so long as the actors do proper research. The subject grows even more complicated when it comes to nonverbal autistic characters. Casting such roles authentically brings with it challenges, but it is possible to do (as demonstrated by Pixar's Loop), and some feel it's more urgent to cast severely autistic characters authentically than it is for more neurotypical-passing characters.
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Post by Admin on Nov 23, 2020 5:45:15 GMT
One of the most famous dancers to ever come out of Dance Moms, Maddie Ziegler, has posted a series of her stunning poses via her official Instagram account and turned up the heat as she displayed her enviable physique in a tiny bikini. On Sunday, Maddie Ziegler posed up a storm in a tiny bikini as she soaked up the sun in the backyard of her home and took to Instagram to share her stunning poses with her over 13.7 million fans. http://instagram.com/p/CH6FfRJh2wK As you can see in her poses right below, the 18-year-old famous dancer put her toned midriff and incredible curves on display as she struck sultry poses in a two-piece tiny bikini next to a palm tree. The model also brought the heat while showing off her amazing legs and cleavage by posing up in the tiny two-piece, which came complete with a grey shirt. With her tresses styled into a topknot, she complemented her complexion with dewy, neutral-toned make-up. http://instagram.com/p/CH3fyonBL-8 Maddie didn’t write anything in her post’s caption, but most of her fans headed to the comment section to praise her jaw-dropping figure and look. Besides, her poses reached more than 475k likes in less than two hours.
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