by: Meriem Boumghar
In this TV show review, I will have a look at Atypical, a show produced by Netflix. It portrays an 18 years-old young man, Sam Gardner, who has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum disorder (ASD).
Sam lives with his middle-class family in Connecticut and works in a tech store. Atypical follows Sam’s journey through high school, with all the following issues: dating, conflicts with parents, etc… As we can read from its scenario, Atypical could be like any other show portraying an American teenager in his everyday life. However, Atypical’s scriptwriters and producers challenged themselves by creating a Tv show around a character with ASD.
Before Atypical, the situation was as follows: very few TV shows or movies had characters with ASD, and none of them played a leading role. Conceiving Atypical was therefore a challenge in the sense that people with ASD were often invisibilized in the mainstream pop culture. Atypical was thus much anticipated by the ASD community, for which the lack of representation is a major concern.
So, did Atypical meet this need of representation? Not really.
First, for a TV show that aims to bring more visibility to ASD, the least it could have done would have been to cast an actor with ASD to play the role of Sam Gardner. But Sam is portrayed by Keir Gilchrist, who is not autistic. Plus, during the first season, none of the writers or the producers of Atypical were autistic either.
This raises the question: how is it possible to accurately portray ASD without being part of the autistic community?
Well, Atypical received many criticisms because its depiction of ASD is very stereotypical. The main character, Sam, is a young, good-looking, high-functioning white man. The problem is that autism is already associated with this kind of profile in the mainstream medias.
Although there is diversity among people with ASD, Atypical does not portray it. As Matthew Rozsa, an actor with ASD said in an interview for Salon, “Autism does not discriminate in real life”. The lack of diversity in the representation of ASD in Atypical is a reflection of the invisibilization of the minorities within the autistic community. For example, many studies have found that girls suffer from late diagnosis of autism.And it is impossible to deny the significant role played by medias in building the collective psyche. If most of the people with autism on TV are white men, then it reveals something about how we perceive autism, and it further invisibilize people who do not fit in this mold.
Plus, another problem with Atypical is that most of the time, Sam’s autism is used to make the audience laugh. Many stereotypes about autism are used as a laughing matter ( example: Sam’s obsession with Antarctica), and stereotypical behaviors of people with ASD are amplified. We can see it in one scene where Sam is having dinner with his girlfriend’s family at the restaurant. He suddenly tells her, in front of her entire family “ I am sorry to inform you of this but I should not be here because I don’t love you”.
This scene, along with other scenes contribute to portray people with ASD as totally insensitive people who do not seem to care about basic social rules. In another scene, during a meeting with his counselor, Sam tells her: “ I can see your bra. It’s purple”.
In such scenes, we can see that Sam’s “atypical” behavior is amplified and it creates awkward situations to make the audience laugh at Sam’s unconventional behavior.
The fact that the show was not conceived or played by people with ASD ( at least in the main roles), and its stereotypical representation of ASD rings a bell: it is definitely not the first time that a dominant group controls the images of an oppressed group. In her book “Black Feminist Thought”, chapter 4, Patricia Hills Collins analyzes how controlling images of oppressed groups, for example by using stereotypes is a form of domination over them. In Atypical, Sam is essentialized, reduced to this aspect of his identity. He is obsessed with Antarctica, Penguins, works in a tech store and seems insensitive.
One can argue that it would be too ambitious for a TV show to portray everything about ASD or to be more diversified in its representation. However, Atypical also misses out many opportunities to highlight some issues affecting the autistic community. For example, Sam is employed in a tech store. And at no moment the show mentions how hard it is for a person with ASD to find a job. Discrimination in the workplace is not even mentioned. Here is another question: are we expecting too much from a comic TV show? Is the role of Atypical to entertain us or to educate us about ASD?
I personally think that it could do both. It is unfortunate that Atypipal is exploiting ASD as a narrative, for comic purposes without giving actual representation or helping with issues related to ASD.
A rational and effective way to solve these problems would be to include people with ASD in Atypical, both in front of the camera and behind it. It seems like this is well on the way, since an author with autism, David Finch, have been added to the staff crew for the second season. Also, more people with ASD have joined the casting. This brings us to the importance of self-redefinition when it comes to representation. The concept of self-definition, as conceived by several black feminist scholars, (including Patricia Hill Collins, in the same book mentioned before) highlights the importance for an oppressed group to define and represent itself. Oppressed groups -such as people with ASD- are less likely to use stereotypes/ misrepresentations when they have to define themselves. However, there are more chances that they accurately describe and represent themselves.
It seems like Atypical, by including more people with ASD will manage to achieve a better representation of ASD’s diversity and of the social issues related to it.