After months of defending her choice to cast the neurotypical actor Maddie Ziegler as an autistic character in the upcoming movie Music and online with critics (including the people her movie is trying to represent), it seems Sia has changed her mind. Or, now that she’s been nominated for an award, she’s in overdrive to limit the damage. You decide!
Per Variety, the singer / songwriter / new director announced she has “listened” and will include a warning at the beginning of the Golden-Globe nominated film with the text: “Music does not in any way endorse or recommend the use of self-control in autistic people. There are autistic occupational therapists who specialize in sensory processing who can be consulted to explain safe ways to provide proprioceptive, deep pressure feedback to aid in the safety of meltdown. “Interventions in restraint and isolation are widely recognized as dangerous and offensive (in 2018, a 13-year-old autistic boy was died after being restrained by a member of staff at his high school).
“I plan to remove the restraint scenes from all future printings. I listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility, my research was clearly not thorough enough, not broad enough, ”tweeted Sia.
She also tweeted, “I’m sorry.” About an hour after this series of tweets, she deleted her Twitter. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise? If you tweet an apology and then delete your Twitter, is that a real apology? Maybe not, but at least we have blogs to catalog receipts.