There is a brand new movie called “21 Jump Street”. It is about two underachieving police officers that are assigned to blend in at a high school in order to bring down a drug ring. In this movie, the police captain uses the word “autisic” as an insult.
The new movie “21 Jump Street” seems to be very loosely based on the main concept of the television program of the same name. Two young looking police officers, (played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum), are given the undercover assignment of blending in with teenagers at a high school, for the purpose of bringing down a ring that is producing and selling a synthetic drug.
These two police officers are described as “underachieving”. There is a trailer for this movie that includes something rather controversial. The two officers are standing in front of a bulletin board that has photos connected to each other by strings of yarn. It doesn’t look very professionally done. The police captain, (played by Ice Cube), is obviously unimpressed by this presentation.
The police captain says to the officers: “That looks like (expletive deleted)! Are you autistic?”
In other words, this character is using the word “autistic” as an insult. It appears that the writers of the movie intended it to be a joke. There is concern from parents of children who have an autism spectrum disorder that this particular scene in this movie is going to cause people, (especially young people), to start using the word “autistic” as an insult.
Does this mean that the word “autistic” is going to become the new version of the “R-word”? It wasn’t that long ago that awareness groups were able to educate people about why it is hurtful to use words like “retarded” or “retard”. Will autism awareness groups now have to fight that very same battle?
The Centers for Disease Control have noted that 1 in every 110 children have an autism spectrum disorder. It is very likely that there will be people in the audience, watching the new “21 Jump Street” movie who have a family member that has autism. This group is not going to find that “joke” to be the least bit funny. Personally, as the sister of a person who has Asperger’s Syndrome, I am not amused by this particular joke.
We have come a long way with autism awareness. When my brother was a child, no one had ever heard of Asperger’s Syndrome. Today, there are a lot of people who have an understanding of what autism is, even if they don’t happen to have a family member who is affected by it. Jokes like the one used in this movie show that we still have a long way to go before true acceptance of people who have autism will be achieved.
Image by Lachlan Hardy on Flickr