Disney may be given a lock of flock for being a bad influence on children, prompting poor self-esteem in young girls, mishandling mature content, underrepresentation of minorities, etc. etc. However, I just read this article from the New York Times, linked on the side of my blog, called "Reaching My Autistic Son Through Disney," and it sort of blew my mind. I previously blogged about how Disney will, I'm almost certain, never make a video with a mentally handicapped princess or character as the heroine or protagonist because it doesn't fit the mold of perfection they usually go for. My issue with this was that I assumed children who were in a handicapped state and watched these movies would intuit that what they suffer from deems them unworthy of ever being the protagonist and living happily ever after. Without a protagonist that represented them, I assumed children would be unable to identify with the characters and feel left out and diminished by viewing these movies. Owen, the child with autism in discussed in the New York Times article, showed me there could be another perspective.
Owen was a normal kid until the age of three when he stopped being able to comprehend human speech and social cues like a child without autism would. He became unresponsive and quiet until his parents discovered they could communicate with him using the characters from Disney. While Owen was unable to comprehend day-to-day social interactions appropriately, the social interactions, speech patterns, and language of Disney (along with the frequently musical adaptation of speech) Owen was able to learn English and understand complex social relationships that were too nuanced in the real world for him to learn. His parents began employing puppets, adapting the voices of the characters, and various other Disney-fied way of communicating with their son and learned that he was understanding the world and not only that, but he could also recognize that he did not engage with the world like the other kids did. Owen saw himself as a "sidekick" in a Disney movie, equivalent to Mrs. Pott, Lumiere, Sebastian, Rafiki, and the like. Owen saw the characteristic in each of the sidekicks that made them a little bit different -- their gentleness, their loyalty, their lightheartedness -- and recognized the same characteristics in the children he attended school with. According to Owen's father commented "It’s often the supporting players in Disney fables who are more varied and vivid," and it's true, the sidekicks are more often the flawed characters, those with harsh tempers or who are overprotective, those who maybe behave in ways that society doesn't necessarily promote. But they are still deserving of love, appreciation, and sometimes even laudation. Without the sidekicks, the protagonists would never achieve their happily ever after. The most beautiful part of Owen's story to me was the no-sidekick-left-behind policy he instituted in his sketchbook. Owen had a lot of difficulty making friends in school when he was young, according to his father's article. After attending a certain school for special needs children through the elementary school levels, Owen was removed from the school. Any friends or acquaintances he'd made in his years there were torn away and he felt dejected, unworthy, and unwanted. While Owen couldn't communicate this orally, he showed his dismay at being removed by drawing the emotion in the faces of the Disney sidekicks he recreated in his sketchbook. To compensate with the loneliness he felt, Owen drew the sidekicks in his sketchbook in pairs so they were never without a friend and he could feel vicariously secure.
Even in a story not meant for children like Owen to identify with, Owen was able to find his place in the story, perhaps because he looked at the storyline with a more sophisticated and considerate eye. Owen valued the "sidekicks" that most of us just see as background noise to the hero/heroine of the story. I just wish that Disney created something that could help ameliorate Owen's loneliness by making him a Disney hero with whom he could relate. While it's touching that Owen was caring enough to become defender of sidekicks and paired them together to protect them from being as lonely as he was, no child should ever be made to feel so marginalized. Obviously Disney isn't all bad, in fact it was a critical factor in Owen learning how to socially relate to the world and it later enabled him to engage in relationships with his peers later in life. Owen made himself and the sidekicks the heroes of his life-story, but in my ideal world, Disney would already have them, or similar characters, occupy that space and all Owen, or children like him, would need to do is watch.
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