Sia Talks Music Backlash, Autism Diagnosis

Sia addressed backlash of her 2021 film Music following her personal Autism Spectrum Disorder analysis.

The film, which starred Maddie Ziegler because the titular nonverbal position, was met with appreciable backlash from the second its trailer was launched. The film itself was additional referred to as ableist and has a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, with one overview calling it “offensive and poorly judged.”

One of the foremost factors of criticism was over Maddie’s casting, quite than an autistic actor. It reached the purpose the place Sia even responded to 1 autistic actor who accused the film of constructing “zero effort to include” folks with autism by writing, “Maybe you’re just a bad actor.”

After revealing earlier this yr that she was recognized 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 started.

Sia then mentioned that the web storm led to her being recognized 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.”

When Zane then mentioned that Sia’s personal autism was seemingly why she was drawn to the film’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.'”

When it got here to folks accusing her of being “ableist” for her response, Sia informed 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, happening to attribute the web “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.”

Zane then affirmed that “the movie will forever exist” and mentioned that individuals will view it in a different way with “time.” Sia agreed and mentioned, “I think it will have a little renaissance, that would be really nice.”

Here’s the factor: Sia and Zane chalking criticism of Music to Twitter nonsense over Sia’s personal neurodivergence feels willfully ignorant at finest. Regardless of whether or not or not Sia responded to an autistic actor like an “arsehole,” it would not change the truth that a neurotypical actor performed a task that quite a few folks, skilled critics included, deemed offensive, stereotypical, and even dangerous.

On the be aware of hurt, the film reveals the usage of inclined restraints, a sometimes-deadly approach that has been used to restrain autistic folks. While Sia mentioned that she would insure that the scenes had been eliminated and a warning was added, the scenes are nonetheless current in not less than the Amazon Prime model. “I am not [hurting her], I am crushing her with my love,” Leslie Odom Jr’s Ebo says whereas restraining Music. Numerous autistic kids have died from inclined restraints.