Truffaut’s L’Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970): Evoking Autism and the Nascent “Eugenic Atlantic”

Abstract

This essay analyzes François Truffaut’s L’Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) as an early representation of autism that metaphorizes the neurodiverse child as the colonial subject. The film takes place in 1798, only a decade after the French Revolution, and depicts the true events of the “wild boy of Aveyron,” a feral child found in the Southern French forest when he was twelve years old. Before the film’s production, Truffaut—who also plays the boy’s teacher, Dr. Jean-Marc Itard—collected articles and books on autism and viewed videos of autistic children to create his main character’s behavioral patterns. The film is thus an exceptionally early representation of autism in narrative film history. While several scholars have analyzed the film with this knowledge—and often through an autobiographical lens that uncritically celebrates the film’s auteur director—I merge the critical lenses of disability studies and postcolonial studies to examine it as an ableist "white savior" genre film.