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(sighs)
Oh, Sia, Sia, Sia,
Sia,
Sia.
(whooshing) (popping)
Hello and welcome back to the channel.
So, in the last week, Australian singer-songwriter,
voice actress, director, Sia
has pissed off the disabled community.
To be more specific, the autistic community.
And to be even more specific there,
the non-speaking, I believe that's the right word,
right term, autistic community.
Last week a trailer for Sia's new film
that she wrote, directed, I believe she did it all, called
"Music" has been released all over Twitter,
all over the internet,
and it got picked up by the autistic community
and the disabled community at large.
"Music" is an upcoming American musical drama film
directed by singer-songwriter Sia.
The film's screenplay was co-written by Sia
and children's book author, Dallas Clayton
and stars Kate Hudson, Maddie Ziegler, and Leslie Odom Jr.
And what that particular bit about the movie
won't tell you, is that the main actor in this,
the main character is autistic.
But is the actual actor themselves autistic? No.
The actor that has been cast for this character
is Maddie Ziegler, who apparently Sia casts for everything
that she makes or that she's involved with or whatever.
I've talked before on this channel about
"cripping up" is what it is called.
I have a whole series "Film Fridays",
which I eventually will pick up again,
that is all about watching various movies
of disabled characters, primarily deaf characters.
And I talk about the representation or lack thereof.
And I made a video way back, way in the past,
specifically talking about how deaf actors
should be casted for deaf roles,
and it's gonna be the same here.
So when everybody was seeing this trailer on YouTube,
on Twitter, naturally people had stuff to say.
Basically, it was said that Maddie's whole...
What's the word I'm looking for.
Just acting as this character
is a mockery of autistic people.
And people really wanted to know
why there weren't autistic actors involved in this.
And Sia came out on Twitter with various reasons
such as like, there was a time crunch,
which people said on Twitter that they offered
to be a part of this, even with the time crunch.
You know what? Let's just go over exactly what Sia was doing
because Sia, Sia, Sia, Sia,
you (beep) up.
By far, Sia's reaction to everything is probably
some of the worst I've ever seen.
It was worse than Kate Spiegel from "Haunting of Hill House"
when she was doing "Hush" and things like that.
Sia's reactions was way, way, way, way worse.
Let's just read some of the tweets, shall we?
Starting with the most recent one
because it's just pulled up on my timeline.
Somebody asked why she didn't cast a disabled actor.
Which, to be more specific, you wanna cast
an actual autistic actor for this part.
Sia says, "This was to represent a low functioning gal
"with a magical imagination, intuition.
"I feel like I cast the right person.
"Super great for the type I'm trying to represent.
"She was delicate and sensitive and conscious.
"Her peers on the spectrum loved her."
I can't comment on how her peers on set reacted
to this sort of thing.
But when Sia said, "I feel like I cast the right person,"
Somebody told me, because I asked, "Don't you hire Maddie
"for pretty much everything that you do anyway?
"So did you really cast the right person
"when you just put Maddie in everything?"
She says, "She makes roles for her to keep to herself."
"Yep, just more excuses for why she filled the role
"of a non-verbal autistic person
"with the exact same apparently NT..."
Does that mean neurotypical?
"...girl that she always casts in everything.
"She was always gonna cast Maddie,
"the story didn't have squat to do
"with Sia's choice of actress."
"Maddie literally went from one abusive mentor to another.
"This one just showers her with love constantly
"and while controlling her.
"She ain't even want to do it, but Sia hit her with the,
" 'I know what's best for you,
" 'I'll protect you from hate, trust me.' "
I don't know what Maddie's reaction to all of this is,
so I'm not gonna comment on that. But that's just some of the
responses that I've seen so far.
Now, this in particular seems like a more tame response.
It's a response where we're all gonna go,
(breathes heavily)
But it looks like Disneyland compared
to some of the other stuff that's been said.
Someone asked Sia if she did any research
while writing this film.
From what I remember, I think that this character
is supposed to be based on an actual friend of Sia's,
but they wanna know if she did any more research
and Sia replies, "Duh, I spent three
"(beep) years researching, I think that's why
"I'm so (beep) bummed."
She spent three years researching, but didn't realize
that Autism Speaks, who is apparently...
I don't wanna say officially part of this film,
but apparently they came in later
as consulting or something. And then she had no idea
that Autism Speaks was this big controversial group,
that's actually very anti-autism because of what they do
and how they act.
And now there's some other discussion about
how Autism Speaks has tried to separate themselves from it
and said that they weren't involved.
I'm not really sure which is what,
but this is what has been happening in the last week.
And then that's where this tweet comes in,
"Autism Speaks came on board long
"after the film was finished, four years in fact.
"I had no idea it was such a polarizing group."
I don't think it takes that long of a Google search to,
when you're researching autism
to know or at least to see Autism Speaks pop up
and all the articles from autistic people
that talk about how Autism Speaks
is quite frankly a load of crap.
Now, keep in mind this tweet,
this whole discourse happened last week.
But in April, "Sia I love you but Autism Speaks
"is a horrible, horrible thing that does not show
"or represent kindness for autistic people like me.
"They are known to fear monger
"and spread false harmful information and stigma.
"Please don't give them a voice."
And of course Sia replied with,
"Oh, (beep)," which is fine.
There is nothing wrong with not knowing,
I wanna make this very clear.
There is nothing wrong with not knowing
that somebody was bad before. Nobody knows everything.
I didn't know about Autism Speaks
until a couple of years ago.
There's nothing wrong with that,
but how you react to that matters.
And we're April, May, June, July, August, September,
October, November. Seven months. Where did March go?
We're seven months after this specific tweet.
And now she's saying, "I had no idea
"that this group was bad."
Even though she knew about it in April.
But now you could still say something like,
"Oh, by the way, Autism Speaks
"was involved in this sort of way,
"but I don't...I'm not involved with these people anymore."
Oh, by the way, here's a whole chart about
which autism organizations are good and which are bad.
If you wanna take a look at those.
One tweet that Sia wrote was, "Grrrrrrr, (beep)
"why don't you watch my film before you judge it? Fury."
The movie trailer tells us what we need to know.
You make the movie trailer so that we can make a decision
on whether or not we wanna watch it.
You're supposed to entice us,
you're supposed to make us wanna watch the film
with the movie trailer. And if the movie trailer
tells us everything that we need to know,
that we don't wanna watch it, that this isn't gonna be
representative properly of autistic people
or non-speaking autistic people, specifically.
And then of course Franchesca Ramsey,
my dear friend, swoops right in and says,
"The purpose of a movie trailer
"is to spark interest in the film.
"Thus asking people to judge aka decide
"if they wanna see the film.
"Obvious you put a lot of work into this project
"and are incredibly talented but you missed the mark here."
Franchesca gets it.
And Franchesca is in the TV industry,
the movie industry, da-da-da.
So she knows what she's talking about here.
"I agree, I never referred to music as disabled."
What does that even mean?
"Special abilities is what I've..."
Oh, she's talking about the character.
The character's name is Music.
Because she didn't capitalize it, it's confusing.
"I agree, I never referred to Music as disabled.
"Special abilities is what I've always said,
"and casting someone at her level of functioning was cruel,
"not kind, so I made the executive decision
"that we would do our best
"to lovingly represent the community."
First of all, special abilities is some cutesy euphemism
that...I feel like I made a whole video of this. I have.
Disabled is not a bad word. Just say it.
Differently abled, special abilities, all this other stuff,
it's all cutesy, cutesy, trying to dance around the problem.
Disabled is not a bad word, okay? It's not.
And also when she was talking about how casting somebody
at her level would be...
Also I think terms like "high functioning"
and "low functioning" are like a no-no,
but just going off what she's writing in this tweet.
When she's saying casting somebody
that is actually like the character, that would be cruel.
But the autistic folks that are tweeting at you
are saying the opposite. Including the ones
that offered to be a part of it.
"There's so many reasons why this is
"a completely faulty invalid excuse.
"Let's talk about them.
"Number one, this mysterious autistic girl
"never actually existed.
"There are receipts dating five years back
"where Maddie already had the part.
"If this autistic girl did actually exist,
"that opens up a whole new can of issues.
"Number one, there is more than one autistic actress
"in the world, if one of them wasn't working,
"find another one.
"You can't just try one autistic actress
"and be like, 'Yeah, nah she wasn't working out,
" 'we're gonna go with the neurotypical,
" 'it's okay though I've done my part.'
"Number two, and this is the real issue,
"if the environment wasn't working for the autistic actor,
"change the bloody environment!
"You can not make a film about disability inclusion
"but refuse to include disabled actors in your filming.
"The set being too stressful for a disabled actor
"is not a valid excuse when you're making a film
"about disabled people.
"I don't care what you say, there isn't a single reason
"to exclude disabled people from a disabled film
"unless your intentions are poor.
"All we've been saying for years is include us.
"Not silence our voices and use us for entertainment instead."
"Several autistic actors, myself included,
"responded to these tweets.
"We all said we could have acted in it on short notice.
"These excuses are just that - excuses.
"The fact of the matter is zero effort was made
"to include anyone who is actually autistic.
"#NothingAboutUsWithoutUs"
Sia responds "(beep) You have no (beep) idea
"because you weren't there and haven't seen the movie."
If you might have casted anybody but Maddie
I'd maybe believe that, but... "It's a mighty shame
"that someone with such a colossal platform
"is using it to exclude disabled and neurodiverse actors
"from their own narratives.
"I've been a longtime fan of your work,
"so this is really disappointing."
"I cast 13 neuroatypical people, three trans folk,
"and not as (beep) prostitutes or drug addicts,
"but as doctors, nurses, and singers."
Okay. I mean that's good, but okay.
"(beep) sad nobody's even seen the dang movie.
"My heart has always been in the right place."
I think there are people who believe
that Sia's heart was in the right place.
She wanted to try to make something
for autistic people and, you know, get some sort
of representation out there.
But there's a thing called intent versus impact.
Your intention may be good but your impact screwed it up.
Therefore, that's a problem and it's something
that you should address.
Franchesca always talks about this.
You might have accidentally stepped on somebody's toe
and they're in a lot of pain,
maybe you made them bleed,
something, something, I don't know.
Your intent was not to actually step on them
and you feel very bad, but that doesn't negate
the fact that they're in lots of pain
and maybe they might have to go to the hospital.
Their feelings are valid, intent versus impact.
Your heart's in the right place but it's...it messed up.
And right now, you reacting to all this criticism,
it's the way that you're reacting to this criticism
anyway, it just tells us something different.
There's also one thing that I wanna mention
that's actually pretty important.
Some people were bringing this up.
Sia is disabled herself. She has EDS,
it is a chronic illness.
So if she really wanted to make a movie
that wouldn't really hurt anyone
hopefully, she can make a video about EDS.
She knows what it's like to have EDS,
to have a chronic illness,
but she doesn't know anything really
about autism from an actual personal perspective
because she's not autistic, and, you know, just has actually
no experience with that.
You having a best friend who's autistic,
having a best friend who is deaf,
blind, et cetera, et cetera,
you get some information and you see things,
but you don't actually really know anything.
Of course the question is, if she were to make
a video or a movie about a character having EDS,
would she still probably cast Maddie? Probably.
And then there's one tweet in particular
that really set off a lot of people.
It's probably one of the worst things that
she's probably said so far.
It's actually a response to Helen
whose tweet I read previously,
and Sia responds "Maybe you're just a bad actor."
(fingers snapping) (laughing)
If there's anything you probably shouldn't say
to a person of the community who you're trying
to represent in a film and trying to impress,
probably shouldn't say that.
It would have been one thing to say something
along the lines of, "We auditioned several actors
"and unfortunately we didn't feel like
"these actual autistic actors were fit,
"so we went with these abled actors."
Would that fly with a lot of people?
No, because you're still cripping someone up.
Would it have probably been better?
At least I think so than "Maybe you're just a bad actor"
to someone straight up. Yeah?
Saying something in those words is probably
one of the most disrespectful things that you could say.
And of course with all of this now,
Sia's stans, her fans, are harassing
actually autistic people. And it's becoming...
It's becoming this whole harassment campaign.
And it even brought in actors
like Star Trek's William Shatner, who is also ableist himself
and he talks about autism sometimes.
I'm not really completely familiar with this guy
'cause I don't watch Star Trek.
But I did see a tweet that he made,
it says something along the lines of,
"Wow, you think autism is a disability. How dare you?"
Like, you know, it had that sort of attitude.
Now William's stans are, you know, hopping in.
And it's just this whole harassment campaign.
Like, yikes! But it's funny in a not actually funny way
to see how Sia is reacting, when you have actors
like Anne Hathaway who if you don't know,
was recently in the film called
"The Witches." Something like that.
And she plays someone with disfigurement.
I think in her face, but also in her hands.
I forget what the actual term is called,
but basically she had like three very long fingers.
It's like a limb difference, right.
I think she has like lines like scars on here.
And you know how there seems to be this...
What's the word I'm looking for?
Stigma or stereotypes, something like that,
where disabled people in films,
people with limb differences, facial scarring,
facial differences, they tend to play the villains.
And I'm guessing she was the sort of villain in this film.
People were really worried.
The disabled community was talking
about how it just felt so wrong
that Anne was playing this character,
and the movie was making it seem that disabled people
with limb differences would be seen as scary.
And that people...Like, children would be afraid
of children who had these limb differences.
And you know what Anne Hathaway did?
Did she tell people that they were bad actors?
Did she tell people to suck it up and get over it?
No! Anne Hathaway being the graceful person
that she is, actually said,
"I have recently learned that many people
"with limb differences, especially children,
"are in pain because of the portrayal
"of the Grand High Witch in 'The Witches'
"Let me begin by saying I do my best
"to be sensitive to the feelings and experiences of others
"not out of some scrambling PC fear,
"but because not hurting others seems like
"a basic level of decency we should all be striving for.
"As someone who really believes in inclusivity,
"and really, really detests cruelty,
"I owe you all an apology for the pain caused. I am sorry.
"I did not connect the limb difference
"with the GHW when the look of the character
"was brought to me; if I had, I assure you
"this never would have happened.
"I particularly want to say I'm sorry
"to kids with limb differences:
"now that I know better I promise I'll do better.
"And I owe a special apology to everyone
"who loves you as fiercely as I love my own kids:
"I'm sorry I let your family down."
(clapping)
Sia, I think you need to learn a thing or two
from Anne. Just saying.
It seems like so many times, every single time,
that there is a movie where there's deaf people,
other disabled people, it's always abled people
taking the roles. And everybody's like,
"It's just acting."
Hearing people will never know
what it is like to be deaf.
And abled people will not know what it's like
to be deaf and with other disabilities.
You know, it's just...I just saw a trailer
with Madelaine Petsch,
I don't know how to say her last name.
With Madelaine from "Riverdale,"
and she's playing a character who is blind,
and while I can't talk about if that's right or not,
you'll have to ask James Rath.
I don't even know if he's seen it.
It's not only that, but disabled people
don't even get the chance
to audition. Everybody's like,
"Well, why aren't disabled people auditioning?"
Half the time, most of the time even,
actually auditioning is not even accessible.
Wheelchair user: are you even gonna be able to get in here?
There gonna be interpreters?
It's just a lot of people still would be like,
"Well, we can't have these actual disabled people on set
"because of money, money, money.
"We have to pay for accommodations and things like that."
You want us to audition and things like that,
how are we even able to do that
when Hollywood won't even let us?
And instead they just wanna hire the "best actor." Okay.
With that being said, a new movie on Hulu
called "Run" with Sarah Paulson
and a newcomer actor, I believe,
who is an actual wheelchair user
has just come out. And I really want to see it and potentially
talk about it for an episode of "Film Fridays."
So, that's what I'm gonna be up to
after I film this video. Stay tuned for that.
So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out
on that within the next week or two.
Long story short, stop cripping up all the time
and let disabled people have a chance.
I feel like it will be just a little less bad
if disabled people actually had a chance
to even audition for these roles.
But we don't even get the chance to do that.
And that's why there's always so much anger
when things like this keep popping up.
In the description box below, I will have links
to organizations that are in regards to autism,
especially some that I will be donating
some ad revenue from this video to.
Did that English makes sense?
I will also be including links of some discourse,
you know there's Twitter threads and articles
and stuff like that.
I'll leave them down below. I highly, highly recommend
that you sit and learn from the actually autistic community
'cause this is very important.
Don't just brush it off as, "It's just acting,"
Or "This is silly." Or "Everybody's
"getting up in arms with culture,
"raging culture or whatever."
Stop it! Sit down and listen. Just listen.
Be like Anne Hathaway. Anne Hathaway is great.
We all wanna be her, so many people wanna be her.
She's amazing! Be like Anne Hathaway.
Be sure to like this video, give it a thumbs up.
Share this video, and that will help the channel growth,
and also get people more aware of things like this.
Don't forget to subscribe, hit that notification bell
so you hopefully don't miss out
on any future videos. And I will see you later. Bye!
(guitar strumming)