Abstract
A critical social sciences perspective, critical race and disability studies, media studies, lived experience, and the neurodivergence movement shape a conceptual framework in this paper to critique and resist popular media tropes of autistic people and their families. ‘Normal’ and its modern meanings are presented, followed by a theoretical re-framing. Then, an irreverent and informal critique of one example US newscast highlights the dominant narrative and invites readers to unlearn these myths of normal. Recurring hegemonic news frames reflect a larger culture where familial abuse and violence against autistic people is dangerously presented as reasonable. Counter narratives exist, however. Autism can be understood as a natural, integral, welcome part of a wider human neurodiversity that enriches society. Families and autistic advocates must work together to resist and respond to pressure to conform to myths of normality.
Highlights
What I wish for is a cure for the common ill that pervades too many lives, the ill that makes people compare themselves to a normal that is measured in terms of perfect and absolute standards, most of which are impossible for anyone to reach. (Liane Holliday Willey 1999: 96)
Many consumers of media likely do not question what is being set as societal expectations of what is normal for families, even if their own family’s lived experiences are not reflected back at them
This paper is not adhering strictly to an academic voice or format, all sources are cited, because my voice here is both as the parent of an autistic teenager and as a person with disabilities herself: It is this voice that seems most suited for a critical response
Summary
What I wish for is a cure for the common ill that pervades too many lives, the ill that makes people compare themselves to a normal that is measured in terms of perfect and absolute standards, most of which are impossible for anyone to reach.(Liane Holliday Willey 1999: 96)Popular US media often promotes and sells a narrow vision of what a family should look like, act like, and think like, as a conceptualized unit. Through a critical examination of how media rhetoric both develops and perpetuates the myth of normality in a representative newscast, I aim to resist the explicit and implicit assumptions about lived experiences of autistic people, their siblings, and their families.
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