Two years after Music controversy, Sia shares autism diagnosis
The singer’s film about a young girl on the autism spectrum, Music, was so widely panned that Sia apologized
Aux News Autism
Two years after apologizing for the depiction of neurodivergent people in her film Music, Sia is taking the parodically massive wig off. On the Survivor recap podcast, friend of the show Sia popped on to a Zoom call to chat with contestant Carolyn Wiger about the competition and to offer her $100,000 for being Sia’s favorite contestant in “forever.” Sia also revealed her own recent autism diagnosis for the first time, something she only learned within the last two years.
“I’m on the spectrum, and I’m in recovery—there’s a lot of things,” she said. “I’ve felt like for 45 years, I was like, ‘I’ve got to go put my human suit on,’ and only in the last two years have I become fully myself.”
In 2021, Sia faced a backlash from the autism community for casting a neurotypical actor, Maggie Ziegler, as a non-speaking singer who is on the autism spectrum. Though Sia claimed the character was based on a neurodivergent friend, some criticized the film and its director for the depiction of those with autism, particularly scenes featuring a “face-down prone restraint,” which can suffocate and kill people. Future screenings featured a warning about the dangers of such restraints.
Despite a series of begrudging half-apologies and shit-stirring insults, Sia eventually relented and agreed to remove the scenes of restraint from “all future printings,” saying she “listened to the wrong people.”
Sia, who is a recovering alcoholic, related to Wiger, she said, namely for being herself on the show—or as Sia put it, “The kook in me recognizes the kook in you.”
“I think one of the greatest things is that nobody can ever know you and love you when you’re filled with secrets and living in shame,” Sia said.
“And when we finally sit in a roomful of strangers and tell them our deepest, darkest, most shameful secrets, and everybody laughs along with us, and we don’t feel like pieces of trash for the first time in our lives, and we feel seen, for the first time in our lives, for who we actually are – then we can start going out into the world and operating as human beings with hearts, and not pretending to be anything.”
[via BBC]
16 Comments
“…for casting a neurotypical actor, Maggie Ziegler…”Wrong. It’s Maddie Ziegler.
you don’t know the Ziggler twins, Maddie and Maggie?
Freddie deBoer in The Gentrification of Disability talked about how the representatives of “neurodiversity” are in a very different boat from non-verbal autistics. The trouble is that the latter can’t really speak on their own behalf.https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-gentrification-of-disability
Kris King, who goes to fucking HARVARD, is a prime example of this. She unilaterally declared that autism wasn’t a disability because she (supposedly) has it and she attends an Ivy. Cool. I hope she spends the rest of her life taking care of nonverbal people with autism. You know, since she advocated to remove their disability status and need for accommodations.
Wow, that was two years ago? Time really flies when you’re not giving a shit.
In the biz we call that a Siagnosis.
Sia later!
Siayonara!
I find it so odd: around a decade-plus ago, I remember so many people identifying themselves and others as being on the autism-Asperger’s spectrum, like it was this mass acceptance and lifting of stigma, and an understanding that autism can manifest in many forms.Then it went quiet until over the last year or two, as SO MANY people have come out as having autism/adhd as though it’s new, bold, and unique. It’s good to understand oneself, but in a lot of ways I see people wielding it like astrology: it’s an explanation of all their foibles and faults, a group that only members will truly understand, and actually strikes me as super diminishing towards those for whom such a diagnosis is a much larger struggle than “sometimes I have trouble focusing.” I think tiktok is part of the propagation of understanding, but it’s also guilty of boiling things down to a really simplistic form. I don’t know; I’d love to see some writing from a doctor and/or sociologist on this particular moment.
Indeed. I’m an Indigo kid …
You’re witnessing a continuing trend that never stopped, it just probably only catches your attention when the person is famous or when you feel skeptical of it.
For me at least, it’s something I’ve lived with since the mid-90s but spent years doing therapy and various coping things to mask to the nth degree in public.However, despite that, I’m sure it’s been universally obvious that I’m different (and one of my colleagues once told me that the worst-kept secret in my industry in the city I live and work in is that I have ASD).It’s a different experience for everyone but thankfully I’ve been able to excel in my industry in spite of my differences to the point where I hold leadership positions and manage a team.With that said, I’ve only really begun to talk about it and what it means in the past couple of years, largely because people have actually asked about it and it felt safe to discuss in a way that it certainly didn’t when I was at school and university in the late 90s and early 2000s or even in my workplace a decade ago.
I keep seeing memes saying something like “the non neurotypical urge to” and it’s something incredibly basic like drinking water and coffee at the same time. It’s starting to be used like some adorable thing people can point to to show how quirky and offbeat they are.
“Sia eventually relented and agreed to remove the scenes of restraint from “all future printings,” saying she “listened to the wrong people.”Kind of leaving out the most important part of the story there, which is that after making that promise, she NEVER ACTUALLY DID IT.
You hate to armchair diagnose, but wow, so many people called this ages ago.
I had to read that first paragraph like 8 times before I figured out what was going on.