There are two things that I will not be doing in this article: reviewing Sia’s new film Music, or summarizing every controversy that has surfaced surrounding the film. What I will be doing is discussing the issues with Music’s accessibility and representation for and of autistic people, while also attempting to be constructive. As an autistic person and an artist, I feel that rather than cancelling Sia, it would be more useful for everybody to articulate the core problems with the creation of Music, and subsequently learn what considerations must be made when trying to represent marginalized groups in art.

The film Music is ostensibly about a nonverbal autistic girl named Music and her attempts to navigate the world around her. However, the story primarily focuses on her older sister, Kazu, who is suddenly tasked with caring for Music. This presentation of autistic people purely through the perspectives and hardships of neurotypical characters is a consistent and damaging trope, since it positions autistic people not only as a burden on the people around them but as a mere plot device. To quote screenwriting researcher and autism self-advocate Clem Bastow: “this character of Music is just sort of an obstacle, or a kind of tool, for her big sister to improve her life so as she becomes more tolerant of Music, she becomes a better person.”

This objectifying dynamic becomes more insidious when nonverbal autistic people are involved, since their limited ability to communicate makes them easier to exploit. Sia herself patronized and put words into nonverbal autistic people’s mouths when responding to criticism, claiming that: “what I do know is that people functioning at Music’s level can’t get on Twitter and tell me I did a good job either.” She also nodded in agreement when an interviewer said of the character Music that: “there’s this person who cannot speak, she might as well be an inanimate object … except there’s so much going on in there.” The idea that there is a “better” or “normal” person trapped behind the symptoms of autism is not a new one, and it is exactly this mindset that downplays the capabilities of autistic people and reduces them to figures of inspiration and proxies for deflecting criticism.

There are other obvious indications that Music was not created with autistic people in mind. The film is interspersed with songs intended to give insight into the characters’ thoughts, but they frequently use brightly colored sets and flashing lights which could easily trigger sensory overload in an unwitting autistic watcher. Many have also pointed out that Maddie Ziegler’s portrayal of Music leans heavily on exaggerated movements resembling the self-soothing “stimming” behaviors autistic people often engage in. Sadly, these moments come across as mockery despite Ziegler’s fears that she would be seen as making fun of autistic people, indicating a cavalier attitude from Sia not just towards her audience but her creative team.

Sia’s response to autistic people pointing out flaws in the film, including the ones mentioned above, is egregious evidence that not enough research and forethought went into the film’s writing and production process. In response to people criticizing the choice to cast a neurotypical actress in the role of Music, Sia claimed that she initially cast a nonverbal autistic actress who ultimately left because the process of filming was too “unpleasant and stressful.” This is inconsistent as Sia discussed creating a film with Ziegler in the lead role as far back as 2015. Sia was also criticized for partnering with the infamous group Autism Speaks to promote the film, and claimed that she wasn’t aware of the organization’s bad reputation despite responding to a tweet explaining the organization's problems beforehand.

Some errors should also be attributed to genuine ignorance, such as the inclusion of scenes uncritically depicting physical restraint as a method for controlling meltdowns. This is despite the fact that restraint has been shown to induce long-term physical and psychological trauma in those subjected to it, and in some cases children have died from it. Sia claimed that future screenings of the film would contain trigger warnings and omit the scenes involving restraint, but this has not yet happened.

Unfortunately, past instances where Sia lied makes it difficult to believe that this correction will happen. These lies also show that for Sia, the film was not purely about representing a community that she respects and admires as she has stated, but about her own ego and artistic vision, which she refused to alter despite warnings of her problematic approach.

The story behind Music frustrates me because every single problem could have been avoided if more effort was made to be empathetic toward autistic people. One thing I always try to emphasize when explaining autism is that it is far less about what a person does than how they think. I believe that many problems with representation regarding autistic people happen when there is too much focus on the “abnormal” actions of autistic people and not enough on the reasons why those actions take place. For instance, in the scenes described earlier which Ziegler was concerned about, stimming behaviors are presented with no consideration for the fact that they function to reduce anxiety, thus leading to a shallow depiction that comes across as mockery.

I have tried to be constructive because I am aware that it would be easy for people who don’t have a horse in this race to conclude that the backlash Music received means that undertaking similar attempts to hire and include disabled and neurotypical people in production processes is more trouble than it’s worth, which is not true. But research for a large-scale artistic project like this should go beyond a few Google searches; autistic people should have been involved with writing the script and consulting on Ziegler’s performance from the very beginning. Instead of replacing the actress who (allegedly) was originally supposed to play Music, perhaps autistic consultants could have been brought in to assess why the filming environment may have been stressful for her and what could have been done to mitigate that, instead of concluding that casting autistic actors would have been “cruel”, no matter what. If Sia had put her ego aside and considered the criticisms more deeply, she likely wouldn’t have had to deal with the public relations nightmare she currently faces.

Most importantly, taking the time to understand the reasons behind autistic people’s behaviors, behind the stimming and meltdowns and other sensationalist actions, would have enabled Sia, her creative team and her supporters to see Music as more than an object, a burden, a plot device and a side character. The mistakes made should not be forgotten when Sia releases her next big project because they hold a mirror up to an industry that erases and neglects the input of neurodiverse and disabled people. As the old saying goes, “nothing about us without us.”