I saw a video by someone talking about Love on the Spectrum’s discourses and is this good, is this bad, is this good representation, is it bad representation, is this inspiring, is this wholesome, does this encourage autistic people to go outside and date, does this humanise the cast, does this objectify the cast, is it infantilising as a concept, is it infantilising to say that the show is exploitative of its cast members who consented to this, is it bad to ask the cast on camera questions about sex, is it good for the audience to know that autistic people do in fact have sex, I do not care, I will end the discourse in one sentence, here we go:
Love on the Spectrum is a show with an inherently and insurmountably othering premise packaging autistic experiences for the consumption of neurotypical people.
I want to say though the video I’m talking about, the creator’s special interest appears to be discoursing about this kind of thing and I get it, if you have a special interest you want to explore every nook and cranny of the thing. I’m not condemning the creator, my perspective on the discourse is just from a different angle that the show in question is inherently ableist by its premise and the details of the show are in my mind, irrelevant. I also don’t think the show is meaningfully making the lives of autistic people as a group worse or different, ultimately the show is a reflection of ableism in our culture. Digging through the actual content of the show and talking about how the cast feel is not a *bad* way of engaging with it, but I think it ultimately muddies the waters in a way that isn’t productive.
I don’t always think “switch the roles” is the best argument for things, because it misses asymmetrical shapes of marginalisation, but also think about if this was a show about the dating lives of African-Americans made by white people. Reality TV targeting black Americans absolutely exists, but the key difference is that it’s targeting a black audience. Love on the Spectrum does not target autistic people, and while its cast consists of autistic people, it is made by neurotypicals for neurotypicals, who are presumably interested in the show because they know autistic people are different from them and socialise differently to them.
I reject that autistic people have poor social skills, we just effectively have a different culture. I have never struggled to understand or read another autistic person because we’re just very honest and understand that directness isn’t trying to be hurtful. Neurotypicals however, have weird confusing social rules. Why do neurotypicals get to decide that we’re socially inept because we have a different set of social rules to them?
Back to the comparison – a show about African-American social lives made by white creators for a white audience would be inherently othering, because the premise of the show is to present a different culture to people outside of the culture, and emphasize cultural differences.
If I can briefly discuss the actual content, the show frequently uses goofy music and the chosen shots emphasize the cast members perceived poor social skills or awkwardness.
The people I know who have watched the show watched it for different reasons, to be clear. My family watched it as a comedy and enjoyed a look into the perceived weirdness of autistic people dating. I asked them how they’d feel if me being in a relatonship was televised because of my autism and they agreed it would be weird. My social worker asked me if I’d seen it, she has an autistic adult son and her reason for watching it was she enjoyed seeing autistic people find successful love lives which she hoped her son could find someday. I also said I didn’t like the show and she understood after some ‘but it’s so cute’.
You can find plenty of autistic people or otherwise neurodivergent people creating artwork about their love lives or their thoughts on love, and all of them are significantly more insightful than a neurotypical looking in on autistic people. But also it probably wouldn’t be that interesting just because autistic people are people, and it only becomes interesting if you’re drawing a line between the love lives of autistic and allistic people and pretending autistic people’s relationships are weird and different and television-worthy.
Ultimately though I don’t think the show is measurably harmful, or making the lives of autistic people worse. Love on the Spectrum reinforces neurotypical conceptions of autistic people being meaningfully different, but this is an existing societal concept. I think I could make an argument for the 20 year group stalking campaign of Christine Weston Chandler being more harmful to autistic people societally than this show. There isn’t really anything in Love on the Spectrum that’s ableist in a way we haven’t seen before. It is a product of an ableist world and it reflects that. Still though I think it sucks. No further discussion needed.
Love on the Spectrum is a show with an inherently and insurmountably othering premise packaging autistic experiences for the consumption of neurotypical people. No further discourse.