This is what the animated movie ‘Mind My Mind’ does better than other movies and series about autism

Around the end of 2018 I received an email from Floor Adams, who was working on an animated movie with an autistic protagonist. The email stood out to me because it felt like Floor had been very thorough in her ideas about how to visually represent autism. It can be difficult to visually represent autism because autism is something that, for the most part, goes on in someone’s head. So how would you visualize that? Just the sole fact that the creator mentioned this problem gave me hope that I would be watching an accurate representation of autism.

An autistic Film and Television scientist

I am a Film and Television scientist and in the second year of my study I got diagnosed with autism. This got me interested in the representation of autism in movies and TV series, which I ended up researching and writing my thesis about. Because of the double affinity I am able to watch the movie Mind My Mind both critically (is this familiar?) and objectively (in what way does this movie fit the context and representation of autism?).

I was allowed to watch a preview of the movie. You can watch the trailer here. The movie is also available online.

Floor Adams: the director of Mind My Mind

Mind My Mind is a hand-drawn animated movie with a runtime of about half an hour. Floor Adams (direction and screenplay) and her team worked for six years on the movie. Floor creates animations and illustrations as a freelancer and was formerly a teacher at the UNIT Academy, where she provided animation classes for autistic teenagers.

This is the reason that she became interested in what goes on in the head of an autistic person. What happens on the inside that causes someone with autism to react the way they react? The goal of the movie was to make this visible. Another thing Floor wanted to show the watchers of the movie is that often there is more going on in someone’s head than what you can gather from the outside. Thus, you shouldn’t be too quick to judge someone’s behavior.

Mind My Mind – the story

The main character of Mind My Mind is Chris. Chris is an autistic man with a special interest in German army planes. In his head lives Hans, who helps Chris prepare social scripts and tries his best to stop Chris from talking about planes all the time. Chris’ brother is pretty much the opposite and doesn’t really understand what goes on in his younger brother’s head. Chris gets dragged to a party by his brother and at the party he meets Gwen. She invites him to check out her favorite chameleon in the zoo.

Hans the information processor

Connecting a character to the things that go on inside someone’s head has become a lot more popular ever since the Disney/PIXAR movie Inside Out (2015). In that movie the main character is a girl that is moving to a new house. Her emotions all have a distinct personality and they’re trying to make the girl happy again after the move. The similarities between the two movies are coincidental. Both movies had been in the making for years when the concepts became public. I find that showing what goes on in the mind of an autistic person by connecting it to a character is a very smart move. This way we get to see what is actually going on.

Mind My Mind only has one character in the brain of protagonist Chris, this being Hans the information processor. He categorizes all incoming sensory information in a library and if a certain social situation occurs, he must quickly find the right script so Chris can react in an appropriate way. When Chris is occupied by his special interest, he won’t have to really think about what he’s doing, meaning Hans can then go to sleep.

This visualizes that autism is an information processing disorder and that a sensory overload is one of the biggest enemies of an autistic person. When the senses are going haywire, the processing of information will be disrupted and eventually it can cause a short circuit. This also emphasizes that autistic people do have feelings and empathy but that there is a delay in finding the right way to express that.

Camouflaging autism

What, in my opinion, is getting visualized in a movie for the first time, is the attempt at masking autism. Usually we’re seeing movies with autistic people where the autistic person says what’s on their mind without taking into account the feelings of others. This is different for Mind My Mind. Because we get to see what’s going on in Chris’ head, we get to see how hard he tries his best and how much effort it takes to mask. What’s helpful here is that the movie uses Chris’ perspective and not the perspective from the outside world, which is usually the case with movies about autism.

From the outside Chris seems shy, a little odd and awkward. In his head, however, there is a constant chaos; he has to think about everything he says and does, except for when he’s occupied with his special interest. The character Hans makes it clear how social interaction isn’t an automatic thing but requires analysis.

Chris is aware that he is different. His brother also makes him aware of this when they’re at the party and Chris shares his factual knowledge: “Don’t be so autistic. I’m trying to flirt with her.” Chris manages to stick to the social scripts (provided by Hans) for a while, but when he gets a sensory overload, his system crashes. He still tries to mask and stick to the script, but when for example Gwen touches him, he snaps at her. Usually in movies regarding autism, we only see the angry response or outburst, but now we see why that happens. This gives an insight in the behavior of an autistic person, making is comprehensible for the viewer.

Displaying autism visually

Another animated movie about autism is the movie Mary and Max (2009). This is one of my personal favorites regarding visual autism representation. The way autism is represented here is well-considered. The movie is about a man who gets diagnosed with autism at a later stage in his life and tries to come to terms with it.

Most movies about autism are about how autism affects the environment (in a bad way). These two movies I mentioned are about how the autistic person in question experiences the world around them. In Mary and Max there is a narrator and the two main characters write each other letters, which gives the viewer a clear insight in what goes on inside their heads.

Can we then maybe conclude that animation is the ideal way to represent autism? Maybe because there is less of a need to create something that is entertaining, as well as the reliance on acting performances? I think there have been too little animated movies about autism to conclude such a thing, meaning more research should be done first.

Using a narrator or making a character talk to themselves is a way to show what is going on in the head of an autistic person. We then can’t see it yet, but we do hear it. This is something that has been done in the Flemish movie Ben X. So, Mind My Mind takes the extra step by actually showing what Chris’ mind looks like. This is the first time autism is visualized in this way, without adding a prejudice on top.

In the TV series The Good Doctor there was also an attempt to visualize what’s going on in the head of the autistic main character Shaun. They did this by using some sort of overlays on screen, where the viewer can see how the photographic memory of Doctor Shaun works. Except the problem with this is that a photographic memory is not a “required” characteristic for autism. We don’t get to see what else goes on in Shaun’s head, for example when he has social interactions. This causes Shaun to come across as someone with little empathy, who doesn’t care if people correct his behavior.

Movies about autism, and disabilities in general, often use the ‘overcoming-scenario’. This means that if a character with a disability tries hard enough, anything is possible. Mind My Mind approaches this a little different by saying: yes, people with autism can learn certain things. But it’s totally fine if they are who they are.

Stereotypes

Are there only positive sides to this movie? Definitely not. Even in Mind My Mind a couple stereotypes occur, which cannot be ignored. The viewer needs to know it’s about autism, so if you take away all recognizable autism traits, then the autism might not be taken seriously. The change of imagery happens bit by bit. Another contributing factor is that Mind My Mind is a relatively short movie with a runtime of 30 minutes, meaning there is less time to tell a detailed story about the characters.

Mind My Mind clearly uses something called ‘othering’. By making Chris’ brother the opposite of Chris, both in personality as a body type, a big contrast is created and thus we perceive Chris as extra divergent.

Also the adolescent, white, heterosexual man is a very common autism stereotype. In movies about autism there is barely any diversity.

I do like the message that Mind My Mind has. The movie shows that someone with autism really can and is willing to learn about social interactions. At the end of the movie Chris allows Gwen into his own world and experiences the joy of still being accepted, just the way he is.