 A few months ago, when all of this controversy was first starting, Sia tweeted, excuse my French ear, fuckity fuck, why don't you watch my film before you judge it? Sia, I've watched it and I've judged it and these decisions are so poor and damaging. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, delightful and intelligent internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today. I wanna jump right into the topic that we have at hand today as it is one that I believe deserves our full attention. So last week I released this video in which I talked about a lot of the controversy surrounding the upcoming release of a film called Music by Sia. Now in that video I go into a lot of the depth about the controversy. I would encourage you to watch that video first if you haven't seen it before now but the long and short of it is is that Sia did a absolutely horrendous job of portraying an autistic character by not casting someone who was autistic, by not listening to the autistic community by continuing to make very poor choices and also be cruel and harsh and ignorant in her responses when criticism was raised. This has been going on for months. Again, check out the video for the full details but one of the most concerning issues about this film is that there were restraint scenes depicted. It came out that there was more than one scene that showed restraint being used to help this autistic character music during a meltdown and it was pointed out by a lot of people that the way that they were restrained and using restraint at all in that context is not only dangerous but deadly. It has killed a lot of people and a lot of autistic people and there was a lot of concern that this was being shown in the movie. Understandably so. So last week, right after this film was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, Sia announced that she'd be putting a warning, this warning, at the beginning of the film and also that the restraint scenes would be removed. That is what I talked about in the last video and the movie came out a couple days ago and I watched it for one reason in particular. This is not a movie I wanted to view but as a person who has the honor of having a voice to a number of people here on the internet, I did want to be accurate in what I was saying. I wanted to verify what she said was gonna happen. I wanted to see for myself and what I saw was honestly horrifying. There was no warning. Right here, I'm going to play the opening, you know, minute or so of the video. There is absolutely no warning. I watched this through renting it on YouTube yesterday. There is nothing there. The film just starts. I want to go ahead and give a warning that I am going to be showing brief clips of the restraint scenes in the next couple minutes of my video. I'm gonna put a timestamp right here when those end if you do not want to view those. But I thought it was important to include as documentation that they are still very much in the film and are extraordinarily harmful. Now, the restraint scenes themselves, where those were moved, maybe there was a third and a fourth restraint scene but I can tell you that there are two that are definitely, definitely still in there and are pretty graphic. And from my understanding, to those who have been restrained like that, especially autistic people, this is very traumatizing to watch, restraint scenes are still in the film and more than that, they are promoted as a positive thing. This is so confusing and heartbreaking to me because Sia claimed that she had autistic people consulting on the set. You know, two people were with her at all times consulting on all of her actions and if she had done any actual research or listened to anything anyone had said, this never would have been a part of the script. But one of the most upsetting things is that this is in courage. Like there's a scene where music who is the character is in a park and then she gets really, really overwhelmed, overstimulated because there are kids and loud noises and all of this and she starts having a meltdown and the character that Leslie Odom Jr. plays tells the character that Kate Hudson plays that it's her turn to like step in and take care of her sister and what that means is getting on top of her. This is like actively promoted as the right way to handle this situation. So simply put, Sia lied. This movie was released with no warning and with restraint scenes still in place. The opening musical scene uses movements that are commonly used by autistic people in stimming as like part of the beginning of a dance number but it's done so poorly. It honestly, like there's no way that this can come across as anything but mocking. Simply put, this movie does a horrendous job of representing autism. It's not accessible. It's very poorly done in so many ways. And if an autistic person has had experiences being restrained, it might also be very traumatizing to watch. So with that being said, I was really curious what could be done to make this situation better. So I reached out to a few of my autistic acquaintances and friends online creators and asked them a few questions. The first question I wanted to know is what would they like people to know about autism? Because this movie clearly does a poor, that's an understatement, a very poor job of showing their experiences. So what do they wish the world knew about autism? Something I wish people knew about autism is that it is what people call a spectrum but it's not a linear spectrum. It's a spectrum in the way that people are a spectrum. We have different abilities and disabilities. We have different strengths and weaknesses, just like you. And we are human beings. Autism, yes, it does cause communication changes. Yes, it can cause a disability in somebody. It can inhibit how we communicate. It can change how we communicate. It can change how we see the world. But that doesn't make us any less than you. And it doesn't mean that we don't want the same things that you want. We want connection. We wanna be able to communicate. We wanna be able to express. And I think that's really important to understand about autism and autistic people. First and very, very important is that autistic people are very diverse. The thing that connects us is our brain connections are more diffuse and they have some good things. Like they make us often more intelligent or they make us have synesthesia. For example, I connect numbers with personalities and have then emotions about that. There are so many positive things and we can be creative in such a different way. Feeling the world different and feeling it's so much more intense but everybody else isn't feeling it like that. It feels like I originally belonged to a different planet and I was thrown in here and now I'm trying to figure everyone out and trying to live here. And I enjoy it and I met so many amazing people like you. But sometimes I feel like I kind of wanna visit my original planet. The biggest thing that I want people to know about autism is who we are is exactly who we're supposed to be. The idea of autism that so many people see when you look at Rayman, when you look at Sheldon Cooper, when you look at Sean Murphy, that's not us. There are so many different types of autistic people. There are as many different types of autistic people as there are neurotypical people and just because of who we are it doesn't mean that we are the stereotype, this stigma that you think of us. The next thing that I was curious about is what can be done to make this situation better? I'm a big believer in calling something out when it's wrong and also providing solutions and how we can move forward. So this is about Stephanie, Sophie and Chloe had to say about that. I think this would have actually been helped if Sia had followed through with what she said. Being able to take those scenes out saying we don't condone this, go to an autistic occupational therapist or an occupational therapist in general, someone who's informed about autistic people and what actually helps autistic people when we're in a meltdown or we're in a time or place of crisis would have been really helpful. I think that would have really redeemed a lot of the situation for me personally. To me, the real harm of the movie would have been mitigated by her doing what she said she was going to do. And for me in the US to see on a streaming service which I assume is probably the easiest thing to change out of all of them, I imagine it's probably harder to communicate with theaters and stuff. I don't know, I'm not well educated in that area. But to see that she did not follow through on that really frustrated me. That really would have been what helped. A resource that I think will be helpful for those who have watched the movie, watched the trailer, kind of know what the situation is. Maybe have heard that there's an issue but don't really know kind of what the big issue is. There is a resource done by a group called NeuroClastic. It's a group of autistic people and they made a guide to go along with the movie. It helps explain what the issue around Sia is and the movie music as well as explain maybe some of the things that were portrayed with music. Maybe about meltdowns, maybe why there's an issue that we have with restraints. Instead of relying on a movie that is very fantastical that tries to display things on a deeper level and really missing the mark. Because I think what Sia could have done with this movie is really apparent in what she set up. There were moments if she wanted to talk about restraint and meltdowns and situations like that, had she had the correct input, those scenes could have been very powerful to say this is what people do but this is not helpful. This is actually really dangerous. Don't do that. This could have been a really great opportunity to reach maybe a more general audience who is interested in Sia's music so they wanted to see the movie music. It was a great opportunity to maybe take those scenes and really see them from the autistic perspective but unfortunately she missed that mark and that can really cause serious harm. So really just spreading information would be the best. Sia coming together with the autistic community would be amazing and apologizing for the mistakes she made and taking out like the scene, definitely taking out the scene. Sia is so big, she could just give autistics a different way of being able to reach her community. I think she could collab in a different way with autistic people like there are autistic singers out there. A lot and they are amazing and I think working together with them and working together with others and like a series or creating an album, there are a ton of ways in my opinion that you try to make up for what you've done and try to prevent most of the damage. To prevent this sort of thing from happening again we need to promote and lift up autistic creatives, autistic directors, autistic actors, autistic journalists. We need to uplist autistic creatives so that when movies like this get cast, when movies like this start to happen, we have a team of disabled people behind it rather than neurotypical people which will never understand our journey. We have the ability to create movies for disabled people by disabled people without neurotypical and able-bodied stigmas and stereotypes surrounding it. We have that ability and as soon as the rest of the world sees that we have the ability to create the most amazing content. By the way, all of their channels are linked down below and I would highly recommend that you check them out. Seeing this whole situation unfold is so disheartening to me and to those who are directly affected by this, I am so sorry for the incredibly poor handling, the poor choices, the awful communication and the fact that this movie has still been nominated for awards which is really just like a slap in the face to everybody who has been saying this is not okay. It's yet another film that trivializes and tokenizes and infantilizes and does a miserable job of representing any kind of disability or difference and then gets applauded by everyone not dealing with that because look at them doing a good thing and telling this story. It's really not a good thing and I would highly recommend not watching the film, not supporting this in any way. I think it's so important to look at and consider some of those solutions. Nothing can be done that's gonna fix this situation that's gonna wipe out like what has already happened but there are a few things that can be done to prevent this from happening again in the future. I've also linked some additional articles and resources when it comes to the situation in the description down below. A huge thank you to Stephanie, Sophie and Chloe. Again, they are all creators. They're all on YouTube. They're all Instagram. I've linked all of their socials down below and highly recommend you check them out. I so appreciate each of you being willing to be a part of this project with me. Thank you. And to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to learn a little bit more about what's happening and to educate yourself a little further or hear the story. I appreciate it. And enormous thank you also to all my patrons over on Patreon for making this video possible. And to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day. Here with me today, you could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else and you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes. And I really appreciate that. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I'll see you on the next video. Bye guys.