Research Focus Switch: A combined version of blog 1 & 2, expect a combined 3&4 in the upcoming blog!

Part 1:

Hey everyone!
After some consideration, deliberation, conversation, and many more “-tions” I have decided to switch the focus of my research. Still focusing on autism, the research is now focused on the portrayal of autism in film as perception of autism changes.

For a solid RQ, here it is: “How has the portrayal of autism changed in films as public perception of autism has changed over the past few decades?”

Reason:
My prior RQ was heavily reliant on the fact that I would get sufficient responses on a survey, which, quite frankly, I will not get. Should the organizations I contact agree to the survey, the actual number of people they send the survey out to and the number that actually answer it would be far too low to be significant. After all, how many of us answer random surveys we get in our mail? (Unless it is school-mandated)

Context
Media is more popular than before and is a MASSIVE force in shaping public perception. As a result, a plethora of researchers have been analyzing marginalized communities and minorities and their depictions in media. Unfortunately, autism has not exactly been deeply looked at in this. As a topic of important to me, I decided to fill this gap.

Hypothesis
I largely believe that there will be a general trend, BUT I more strongly expect a point where the films shift away from the “savant,” “superhuman” nature of autism, and move closer to a “normalized” (or in line with expert opinion) depiction.

PART 2:

Important pieces of literature:
Once again, will rely on and make the most use of 3 papers.

Paper 1: Stereotypes of Autism:

It’s a self-explanatory title.  Draaisma, the author, goes through various exceedingly common autistic stereotypes from savantism to obscene levels of bluntness and provides a loose comparison to various expert opinions (including Asperger). This article provides a valuable starting point, introducing some basic but common stereotypes and introducing me to the idea of comparing movie depictions vs what is real or a proper expert opinion.

Paper 2: American Studies, vol. 42, no. 2, 2001, pp. 177–78. THE BLACK IMAGE IN THE WHITE MIND: Media and Race in America (INTRODUCTION)

One idea I had was to utilize similar research on other marginalized communities to, and I stumbled on an issue that provides the entire purpose for my research. The idea is that certain media representations will become an issue. In this case, the authors (Robert M. Entman, Andrew Rojecki) specifically point out that dominant groups (in the context of this article “whites” will understand this movie portrayal to be representative of the marginalized community, and the marginalized community (African Americans) would come to accept that depiction as who they are.

I couldn’t find any reason why this issue of poor media representation doesn’t transfer to other minorities, and the first step to tackling the current representation of autism, is to properly understand it, and its evolution.

Paper 3: Autism, through a Social Lens.

This paper is largely filled with sociologist opinions on autism. Sociologists focus on the social aspects of this condition, from affected families to societal perception, etc. This provides a powerful baseline of expert opinion to compare movie portrayals to. After all, despite many critics, and even Draaisma focusing heavily on savantism, it Is unfair to completely disregard any other traits the character shows.

ORAL DEFENSE:

“What was the fundamental argument/idea in your research? How does this argument/idea relate to the primary purpose of your research?”

2 Fundamental arguments:
1. That portrayal of autism has changed in films over time
This fundamental argument works more as a hypothesis; if I find that portrayal has not changed, I believe that would be an equally interesting discovery.
2. That the perception of autism has changed, be it due to higher diagnosis rates or other factors.
This is the main fundamental argument: should this be falsified, then any “change” I find in movie portrayals would either have to be correlated to randomness or some strange external factor.

How is the method/proccess you chose aligned with the purpose of your research? Which methods did you consider and reject?
In order to truly understand the changes, simply looking at the major characteristics of the autistic character’s condition isn’t enough. It’s the little details that matter: stimming, pacing, and strangely unique behaviors that no one else in the film seems to do, etc. As such, I believe comparing both the major characteristics and the minor characteristics with expert opinion is a powerful way to organize the portrayal.