 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, delightful, and talented internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Footless Joe, where I am still Joe. I am still missing a foot, and that is just about nothing to do with the content of today's video. What we are going to be talking about today is something that I've watched unfolding on social media for like four months now, and that is a lot of controversy revolving around a new movie coming out later this week called Music that Sia, the musical artist, has been heavily involved with from co-writing to producing to being heavily involved on set and casting and directing and all of that. Before we fully dive into this topic, I just want to say right off the bat that I have been a huge fan of Sia for like a decade. One of her songs, Breathe Me, I've listened to probably a thousand times on repeat during some especially dark periods in my life. I've admired her music for years. I deeply appreciate so much of her music and the art that she's decided to share with the world. I'm also in no way advocating for cancel culture, being like, she's a shit person, let's cancel her, but taking a look at everything that has occurred, I think that this situation is a really good case study in where good intentions matter, but only up into a point regardless of how pure or good someone's intentions can be. They can still cause a lot of harm to marginalized communities. Hello, friends. It is editing Joe here. I wanted to clarify one thing as we get started. I am not an autistic person, meaning that the thoughts and feelings and opinions you are about to hear are coming from someone outside the immediate community. With that being said, I have linked three videos from three fantastic autistic creators down below that I would highly recommend checking out, talking about the situation from their perspective, which I think is exponentially more important to listen to than mine in the situation. So please go check out those videos, perhaps even before finishing watching this one. Check out and follow those links in the description down below. So what actually happened with this movie and the controversy surrounding it that led to Sia, one of the biggest musical names, I believe, worldwide actually deleting her Twitter just days after this heart project of hers received two Golden Globe nominations. Let's talk about a few issues. Number one, from the time that this trailer was released, you may have seen it. You may not have. The autistic community, especially on Twitter, raised a lot of concerns about a number of issues. Issue number one, music is the story of a nonverbal autistic girl and her sister and friends. It's a musical that's supposed to be like a happy feel good movie. But the main character is played by a neurotypical to our understanding actress by the name of Maddie Ziegler. She is not autistic. Initially, Sia said that she tried to cast someone who was autistic for this role, but it wasn't compassionate to keep that person on because the set was overwhelming to them. So she cast Maddie Ziegler, who she's worked with on countless projects. You may have seen some of these. Now, if you find yourself thinking, okay, but it's acting like it's okay for someone to portray someone else's life at the entire point of acting, as I found myself thinking in the past, a couple things there. Number one, the stated purpose of this movie was to like bring awareness and understanding to the autistic community. And so to deny autistic people the opportunity to play a role that represents them seems very backwards just starting out. An offshoot issue of that is the idea that they were unwilling to accommodate the set to an autistic actress to play this role. The idea that one autistic actress was cast for this role, the set could not meet her support needs, then she was sent away only to bring in Maddie Ziegler, who is Sia's muse. Her words, not mine. Seems a little bit odd and there are quite a few autistic actresses who have said, hey, I could have taken this role. Why was this not made available to my community? And Sia's response was less than graceful. One of the biggest things about casting someone who is not autistic to play an autistic role is that a lot of the movements and patterns that Maddie uses are movements and patterns that are used to make fun of autistic people and people with disabilities. And to see that on screen to a lot of people has been called a mockery. A little bit of backstory that apparently Maddie's first day on set. She came to Sia in tears and said, I don't want anyone to think that I'm making fun of them. So this was a known concern and Sia told her we're not going to let that happen. Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. So another issue with Sia's initial response and please feel free to disagree with me on this. She writes, I cast 13 neuro atypical people, three trans folks and not as fucking prostitutes or drug addicts but as doctors, nurses and singers. Fucking sad. Nobody's even seen the dang movie. My heart has always been in the right place. And let's let's put a pin in the idea that my heart has always been in the right place because that counts for something. But unfortunately, it does not count for everything. I personally feel like this tweet and sentiment speaks to the idea that there was some kind of inclusion quota. I've got neuro atypical people. I've got trans people. I have people of color. Okay, we're good. These in and of themselves are really good things. But promoting the idea that all communities that have commonly been heavily stereotyped and or excluded from Hollywood that everyone in any of those categories should be thrilled or happy with her is not really that the core of the issue that people were bringing up. Trans people being cast, though very important, has absolutely nothing to do with autistic people being cast. Issue number three. During a variety interview with Sia and an interviewer from Variety, I guess I kind of already said that. The interviewer equates nonverbal people with inanimate objects like wigs and Sia kind of nods and goes along with it. Here's this person who can't speak. You know, she might as well be like an inanimate object like a wig except there's so much going on in there. But I love it. That's what movies and music are for. Which I think we can all agree is extraordinarily uncomfortable. In this interview, Sia talks about her heart for autistic people and the purity that they have. It's a pure. Yeah. That's what I've always found with the special abilities people that I've fallen in love with is this purity. Well, I think it's easy to look at that and be like, oh, isn't that sweet? In reality, what that's doing is infantilizing autistic people to an extreme level. It's something that we unfortunately see all the time. People with disabilities basically being turned into something that someone else can be inspired by or feel good by instead of being seen as whole human beings. So this idea that autistic people or neuroitypical people have this like beautiful purity is really unfortunately perpetuating stereotypes that are harmful to people. Sia also noted at one point that she brought in autism speaks to consult on the film as it was as it was done and wrapping up. And if you don't know this, autism speaks is kind of universally known as almost a hate group at this point. As one user wrote, had she talked to like three or four autistic people, we'd have told her that autism speaks is ableist and wants us fixed or dead. I've heard from multiple autistic friends that autism speaks is really, really, really harmful. So for Sia to have brought in this organization that the majority of autistic people do not think speaks for them and thinks is actively harming them and for her not to be aware of that after having claimed researching this for years and years and years is a strange and concerning move. Now the grand finale and unfortunately really heartbreaking issue with this film. In this film there are a number of scenes where music's character is restrained and restrained in very dangerous ways as she is having meltdowns. The way that she is being shown as being restrained in this film is killed people in the past, it's extraordinarily dangerous and it's just a really horrible idea generally speaking to restrain someone in this mental space. You can kind of see some of these scenes in the second trailer but there was additional footage that was leaked that showed the extent of what was gonna be included in the film and people very loudly and very clearly spoke up about how incredibly dangerous and deadly this can be to people. And thankfully this is where voices started actually being listened to. Following this outcry Sia eventually did listen to critics, she added a warning label to the beginning of the movie. Any future screenings or releases of it are going to have those controversial restraint scenes removed which I think is a very beneficial thing along with that warning label and after doing so she said I'm sorry and deleted her Twitter. Sia apologizing and closing her Twitter comes at the tail end of like I said months of backlash and of autistic people and people in the disability community raising their voices and saying hey this does a very very bad job of representing us. We know you think you did a good thing here but you really didn't and here's why and it comes after months of these voices not being listened to clearly in some cases openly disrespected by Sia and this happens days after music is nominated for two Golden Globe Awards. So let's take a moment and talk about intention because I feel like there is a central issue here when it comes to how Sia has perceived this movie and what she has created. Repeatedly she has talked about like her heart being in the right place and her intention with making the film. This is clearly a heart project for her something that has been many many many years and the making. If you listen to her interviews and what she has written and spoken on about this film you can tell that she sincerely believes that her intentions were good and that she has done a good and beautiful thing for the autistic community. I often talk in my videos about intention when it comes to people not understanding something or being ignorant or doing things that are actually hurtful or harmful and how I do believe intentions are really important. Yes it's important to recognize where someone is coming from but that does not erase the detrimental or harmful things that they have done. She was trying to do the right thing and yet seemed to fail over and over again. There's a part of me that really feels for her because I think most of us have been in that situation where we had good intentions about something and they're backfired and it's hard not to feel betrayed by that situation and upset and angry. Those are understandable emotions. However, what's important here is that damage is not caused to the autistic community. What's most important, what's paramount is that there are things not represented in this movie that are going to perpetuate stereotypes or lead to very deadly or dangerous actions against neuro-atypical people. A reality that's really uncomfortable for me anyways to face is the idea that my heart can completely be in the right place with something and I can still get something so terribly wrong. Okay, let's get personal for just a moment. I wanna share that there is a 2% part of me that when I hear stories like this, even when they directly affect communities like mine, there's this part of me that goes, it's just a movie. Why do we take everything so seriously? Everything's so politically correct now. You know that narrative that you hear so often? There's a part of me that starts thinking that and starts feeling that and starts going like, God, can we just stop trying to cancel everything and trying to call everything out? But what I have come to learn and will continue to learn is that change is uncomfortable. Like I said, it takes a lot of courage to change and when we're talking about groups that we do not belong to saying there is something wrong with this and we willingly choose to say it's just a movie, please be quiet, I'm enjoying this, that speaks to a serious problem. If I am unwilling to get uncontrable for a moment and consider that my understanding of the world is perhaps different than others, perhaps other people have had different life experiences, perhaps other people have been marginalized and bullied and made fun of and put down and discriminated against and hurt and killed. If I am unwilling to consider the validity of what people who belong to these groups are saying, that's a problem. It is so much easier to stay comfortable to just keep the status quo because hey, if it doesn't affect me, it's more comfortable that way. But I think it's really important for a world to be a better place that we are willing to get uncomfortable and ask ourselves and others, maybe difficult questions and respectfully criticize and call out really poor actions when we see them so that things can improve in the future. So if you're someone who has a voice in your head like I do sometimes that just rolls its eyes and just wants everything to be fine, know that you're not alone in that but that I personally believe it is incredibly important that we examine where that is coming from and why and we step outside our comfort zone to listen to people who are stating that there is an issue when there is one. During the months that all of this controversy was building and concerns were being raised, Sierra released this song, which I believe is part of the movie called Courage to Change. It's a song when I heard, I really enjoyed it and I think the message is very relevant for all of us and perhaps particularly for Sia. Having the courage to change, having the courage to look at our actions and examine if perhaps even if our hearts were in the right place, we did something that was hurtful or damaging or wrong, takes a lot of courage because it is so massively uncomfortable, capable of change and resilient as we are. None of us really like it that much. It does take a lot of courage to change and I hope that the message that is promoted in that song of being courageous enough to examine ourselves and make a change is something that perhaps Sia is in the process of personally examining herself and is something that we could all probably take a few minutes to think on with our own actions and reactions and perceptions of people who we view is different from us. At the end of the day, a lot of movies telling these stories are feel good, but oftentimes at the cost of people who are basically being objectified as inspiration porn for all of us to feel better about the world or feel better about ourselves. Progress has been made, but it's also very clear that there is a long way to go towards seeing disabled people as simply people with stories to tell and not being props or objects in a story where the only focus is this disability or is this thing about them and oftentimes it's just used as a vehicle to further the stories of other people. After watching all of this unfold and seeing some positive actions take place with the warning being added and those scenes being removed, I think is a step in the right direction. It's obviously not fixing everything, but it is a small move in a better direction than it was heading in. And I really hope that in the future we can continue to see better, more comprehensive changes in Hollywood, in the media, because it's important, it matters and it greatly affects people. So my question for you is this, how much do you feel like intentions matter when it comes to potentially harmful actions? Is it something that sways how you view a situation or do you think intentions don't really matter that much if someone is harmed in the process of executing those things? That was a very wordy way of saying that. Basically I'm asking, how much do you think intentions matter? And secondly, what do you think of people being cast in Hollywood in roles to represent marginalized communities who they do not belong to? Thank you to Paige, Chloe, and Stephanie, autistic creators who shared their thoughts about this film. I've lent all the videos down below. Again, please go check those out. Listening to their voices on this topic is exponentially more important than listening to mine. So please check them out and give them a listen. Let me know what you think. As always, a gigantic and heartfelt thank you to all my patrons over on Patreon for choosing to support this channel financially if that is something you are interested in. And if you wanna know what you can get in return, like behind the scenes videos and exclusive content, check out the link on screen or linked down below. And to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day to hang out with me here today and think about some thought provoking hopefully things. Let me know what you think in the comment section down below, but you could be anywhere in the world doing anything else. And you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I truly appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. 🎵 Have her from the sky all about... 🎵