Basic Trope: A clichéd, crude, and narrow way to portray an autistic character, which is a cisgender male, slim, Idiot Savant or Manchild from a more privileged background that treats his autism as a tragedy.
- Straight: Bob is a white cisgender autistic guy who can barely function in everyday life and requires support wherever possible, but has an extraordinary talent at mathematics.
- Exaggerated: Every character in the show is a white cisgender male autistic person who can barely function in everyday life, but has a really extraordinary talent. And the show narrates all their lives as if they were utterly tragic.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is a white cisgender autistic guy who has some severe problems with getting along in everyday life and needs some help here and then, but usually gets along quite well and has a good job at NASA thanks to his talent with numbers.
- Bob is a Twofer Token Minority cisgender autistic guy, but his race(s) is one of the stereotypical nerdy races.
- An autistic person is portrayed accurately and realistically, but Inspirationally Disadvantaged implications are shown in the plot.
- Justified:
- Bob has seen so many examples of this trope on TV that he believes he has to be like this to be taken seriously as an autistic person, and behaves this way by this reason.
- Bob and his autism happen to fit most of the stereotypes.
- Bob is autistic and fits all the stereotypes, but for different reasons: he's good at mathematics because one or both of his parents are math teachers, he can't live independently because nobody teaches him to keep his own house, etc.
- Inverted:
- Alice is a black transgender girl with autism who has barely any problems in everyday life, doesn't even consider therapy an option, and is talented at several things. Many people doubt her autism. (Bonus points if Alice is a Mary Sue in a Self-Insert Fic by an autistic writer.)
- The show portrays a life with autism as inherently better and fuller than one without.
- The show doesn't depict Bob as being deprived on any grounds due to his autism, but he believes that he is.
- Subverted:
- Bob, an autistic person, barely gets anything done in everyday life and is unbelievably good with mathematics. But he is a Manipulative Bastard and everything is just a shtick to make people pity him.
- Bob comes out as Alice, a transgender girl, or Bob is a girl all along.
- Double Subverted:
- Then it turns out that Bob is in fact autistic and was never given any needed therapy as a child. He lied that he would just act it up because he is ashamed of the reality of his autism.
- As a girl, she still exhibits every other cliché about neurodiversity out there to an insufferable degree.
- Enforced:
- The storyboard wants to make it absolutely clear that Bob is autistic and thinks this would be an idiot-safe way for that.
- The production doesn't have enough time to research autism, so there are only Small Reference Pools left for the information.
- Averted:
- There are no autistic characters in the show.
- There are multiple autistic characters, all highly different from each other.
- Bob is autistic, and he is rather portrayed with the more realistic and common traits of autism. He is an Occidental Otaku trans man (his deadname being Roberta)note with some social, emotional, and sensory difficulties. He sometimes needs support, but he's far from tragic and dependent. He has good relationships with his friends and relatives, who support him rather than viewing his condition as a tragedy, and he is Happily Married to his husband with whom he has an active, enjoyable sex life.
- Bob really does have high support needs and is non-verbal, but his situation still has proper solutions. He and his family have a strong support network, meaning he has access to therapy, treatments, and an education that's tailored for him. He communicates using sign language and/or an assistive device, goes to activity groups for autistic people, receives treatments and surgeries that reduce his physical and emotional discomforts, and is generally content with his life.
- Parodied:
- As soon as four-year-old Bob is diagnosed with autism, he magically becomes an Idiot Savant, his parents start crying and sobbing in despair about the news, and his doctor predicts with a crystal ball that he will grow up to become a Manchild who will need support with everything.
- One of the lessons in special classroom for autistic students is how to be a perfect Manchild.
- Zig-Zagged: There are only two kinds of autistic people: the Idiot Savant white cisgender Manchild, and a group of extremely diverse Soapbox Sadies who are not only talented at several things but much more sociable than the white male counterpart.
- Invoked:
- Bob's parents want to get on TV and press their son to act like a "typical autistic person", since they think they won't be believed if he doesn't.
- Bob wants to receive a diagnosis and treatment for his autism, so he deliberately acts like an Idiot Savant to make the doctor believe he is actually autistic.
- Exploited: Bob's family falls victim to a Snake Oil Salesman who manages to sell his mother special nutrition that promises to cure his autism.
- Defied: After Bob's diagnosis, his family tries their best to support him into adulthood, helping him learn very different skills, giving him many opportunities to learn socializing and support him in wooing his Love Interest, whether they are female, nonbinary, or male. As an adult, he has a stable job and a family on his own, and while he still has his odd personality, it's not too debilitating.
- Lampshaded: "Beanpole build? Check. Super clumsy in everything, except in that one thing? Check. Family views his autism as a tragedy? Check. See, Bob is just like all those autistic people on TV. I told you he was autistic."
- Discussed: When Bob is diagnosed with autism, his family asks the doctor about the condition, what it will mean for Bob's life, whether they should see it as tragic, and how they can help him. Their questions are very much formed by their clichéd, TV-formed view, and the doctor discusses with them what is true, what is not true, and what might be true.
- Conversed: "The autistic people on TV are all the same, aren't they? It's like the writers just go through checklists for the symptoms online. But you know what they say: if you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob struggles with everyday life only because his parents assumed he'd never be able to learn any useful skills, so they didn't teach him any. The only thing they encouraged him to learn was high mathematics, since they believed that was all he could do.
- Alice, another autistic person who doesn't fit the stereotype, struggles for being viewed as "not actually autistic", which keeps her from getting the treatment she needs. Alice even calls Bob out for embracing this stereotype and doing nothing to stand up for his own rights.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob struggles with everyday life until he meets somebody else who connects with him, sees what he can do with his mathematical ability, and helps him get into an honest job that pays him a living wage.
- Alice is too fixated on this stereotype, about which she unstoppably calls out everyone, and she ends up bullying Bob for being too stereotypical, so Bob still receives more sympathy than Alice.
- Implied:
- Bob looks and acts like somebody with stereotypical autism, but the narrative never says so, leaving him to be Diagnosed by the Audience.
- Bob never does anything onscreen that suggests he has stereotypical autism, but Alice mentions him doing some such thing in a Noodle Incident.
- Bob is said to have stereotypical autism, but he is The Ghost, or at most The Voice.
Back to Hollywood Autism.
