The artist Sia has recently come under fire after releasing a trailer for her directorial film debut, “Music.” The film follows the character Music, a neurodivergent teenager with a form of non-vocal autism, although this is never explicitly stated in the script, played by Maddie Ziegler.
Immediately upon the release of the trailer, Sia was met with backlash on Twitter regarding Ziegler’s performance and the choice to cast a neurotypical actor, or person without a disability, in the lead role.
“This is totally unacceptable and there are no excuses,” tweeted Jordana Golbourn, a freelance theatre maker, in response to the trailer. “You should know better than to allow able bodied [and] neurotypical to represent the disabled community. It’s incredibly offensive as is the infantalisation of the character. Sickened. And not even captioned. Don’t release this.”
Many users echoed Golbourn’s sentiments and have even created an online petition to cancel the film’s premiere entirely.
In response to the trailer’s negative reception, Sia took to Twitter to respond to the accusations of “ableism.”
“I actually tried working with a beautiful young girl non verbal on the spectrum and she found it unpleasant and stressful. So that’s why I cast Maddie,” Sia tweeted in response to Golbourn’s tweet.
But many felt that more could have been done to accommodate Zeigler’s predecessor.
“I do think a neurodivergent should have been cast because representation matters, and a lot of people think that being neurodivergent makes you incapable of doing things, which isn’t necessarily true,” said Madison Hammond, a musical theatre major who is transferring to Winthrop University from University of South Carolina-Sumter for the spring semester.
“I feel like the production team should have been educated enough to not make it overwhelming for them, but I know things happen, so I do understand why they took another route,” Hammond said.
Sia also maintained that she had the best intentions when creating the film, tweeting that, “The movie is both a love letter to caregivers and to the autism community. I have my own unique view of the community, and felt it is underrepresented and compelled to make it…but my intentions are awesome.”
Ultimately, this is the latest incident where a film has received backlash for casting an actor who is not a member of a certain group or community to portray a member. A recent, similar, controversy was the 2017 casting of Scarlett Johansson as the lead in the “Ghost in the Shell” movie, based on a Japanese manga.
“I know that we live in an age of social media and ‘cancel culture’ where a bunch of people can sit behind a screen and tweet #siaisoverparty without fully knowing the story, but sometimes people deserve to be called out,” Hammond said. “So many times, there has to be a neurodivergent role, black role, plus size role, etc. for people that fall under these categories and they are not looked at in casting.”
Despite the controversy, “Music” is still set to be released in February 2021.
“Overall there just needs to be more representation in the media and every little movie counts,” Hammond said. “I know the movie is going to be made and it is what it is, but I don’t think I will be watching it.”
