Aspies For Freedom

Who knows of any?

By this I mean characters in books, TV, and film that have autism diagnoses - not ones who just show the traits.

(Meega is pondering research on how autistic people have been portrayed over the years.)

So far I know of:

Books - Chris Boone in The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time"

TV - Lily (All My Children)
       The autistic little boy on Eureka

Film - Raymond (Rain Man) (of course)
        The mom in Snow Cake

Any others?

I haven't seen the film PS - I Love You, but apparently there's an Aspie character in it.  A review of it just popped up in one of my news feeds: http://www.bostonnow.com/entertainment/m...i-love-you

Jerry Newport and Mary Meinel in Mozart and the Whale.

They are real people (DUH) but the characters in the movie are fictionalized.  Does that count?  (similar to Rain Man, I guess)

I know some people hate it, but there is the movie Mercury Rising with an autistic child as a main character.  He is diagnosed and attending a special school.

Great research project, BTW.  Keep us posted!

That autistic guy is Season 6 of 24?

Clarification:

-I'm looking for fictional diagnosed characters for this....autiebiographies, movies made from them, and documentaries on autism don't qualify.  

(Hence, at this point, "Mozart and the Whale" doesn't count - too closely based on an autiebiography from what I've heard.  Raymond in "Rain Man" was based on a real person, yes, but the movie does not tell the story of that person's life - the writers just got the idea from him.)

Hope that distinction makes sense.

-Also: I'm looking for fictional diagnosed characters, regardless of story viewpoint...including prejudiced or inaccurate portrayals, stereotypes, curebie propaganda hidden in the story, etc.  (Hoping it'll turn out that things have evolved to be more tolerant/accurate over time.)

-One-shot appearances (i.e. "The 4400"'s phobia-inducing-autistic-kid episode) also qualify.

Thanks folks.

As far as I can remember, AS is never explicitly mentioned...Is it?

Other than that, I believe I've mentioned Stieg Larsson in passing before. His Millenium series (which has an aspie main character--well, the characters speculate that she has AS, anyway) has been hugely popular in Norway and Sweden, and will (I believe) be released in English translation in 2008.

There was an episode of CSI or Law and Order, one of those shows, where one of the main characters is an Aspie, and there was an Aspie for one of the episodes. He arranged things in sets of a certain number obsessively, and was obsessed with numbers. I can't remember the episode too well, but I'm sure there's a synopsis out there somewhere.

There's a really lame BBC TV drama series here in the UK called Waterloo Road. They had a character called Karla Bentham who was meant to be a school student with Aspergers, but I think she was only in like two episodes and it sucked of course.

There is a novel called Daniel Isn't talking by Marti Leimbach.  I haven't read it yet.

That teenage bloke on The Boy who could Fly whose name I can't remember cos I haven't seen it since the early nineties. (A good movie until the point where he actually flies and that just becomes stupid)

Susan in the Babysitter's Club Not a very good characterisation but readable enough I s'pose. And there's another one by Anne M. Martin about some boy and his brother but I can't remember the title.

...And another one I saw in the early / mid nineties with Sam Neill in it as a psychiatrist with an autistic son -- and about a dozen other kids as well.

And Mozart and the Whale isn't really autobiographical. The movie at least differs a lot, notably in the characters' names. It seems they just used the original story as inspiration or as a starting point.

Dare I mention Jerry from Boston Legal?? Great series, but he's one of the worst characters in my opinion actually.

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon.

Check out the review: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction...ofdark.htm
  

No, she's been in most episodes.

The portrayal of Karla is in some ways OK. She is in a mainstream school, there is no curebie propaganda in there anywhere- in fact there is the opposite. The show is sympathetic towards her and she is shown to be talented in some areas. There was also a bit where she went and sat next to a boy with HIV, whereas all the other students in the school either kept away from him or bullied him badly.

However there is no escaping the fact that she is a stereotype. It is as though the researchers just whacked 'Aspergers' into google and went with the Wikipedia definition. The way she acts is not representative of aspies of her age group, she was unable to see why you can't do a fossil dig in a crime scene, she has the usual obsessions (maths, dinosaurs), she is too literal for her age group, every single epsiode she runs off stimming- in real life that wouldn't happen very often, there have been no storylines about her that have been nothing to do with her Aspergers and it was implied that she is not able to walk home from school alone.

snow cake me and my friend try to watch it but i was getting annoyed and it was not making any sence the mom in the movie has hfa ,but like my friend who nt say it was being exzited the beghavior ,she works with some people all diff leavel and she now me .some things were right but most was like huh

It is in the blurb.

True enough. The thing about blurbs, though, is that very often the author has little or no say about what goes into them.

Although there is a chance they got much of what is in the blurb from Haddon's original synopsis. (if there was one.)