This thesis will explore autism representation and the role of the director in creating an ethical portrayal that encompasses all autistic people. It looks at the harm of stating a character as explicitly autistic and surveys the responsibility in the filmmakers in educating misinformed audiences. My research has been led by my direction on Bite the Hand (Matthews, 2023), a short psychological thriller that I wrote and directed for my graduation project as a Film Production student. My research looks to uncover the ethical implications of presenting a character as autistic and reflect on my work within Bite the Hand, in order to assist me in creating more well rounded autistic characters in the future. I have found that labelling characters as autistic can have negative impacts on the wider audience’s conception of autistic people. However, it is not always necessary to label them as such, as audiences often pick up on implicit representation and label the characters
themselves. I have also found that it is important to separate traits of autism from the negative and violent elements that appear in horror, to avoid the association between the two. It is important to have varied representations of characters across all genres, as autistic people deserve to feel represented no matter their tastes in film.
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