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Autistic Criticism

Fall 2020

My son is autistic. He likes loud, brightly colored action movies, not the talky kind his mother and I prefer; so I took him to see Spider-Man, which he seemed to enjoy. “Did you like Spider-Man?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered. “What was it about?” “Baskin-Robbins,” he replied. My wife took him to see the first Harry Potter film, followed by the same catechism : “Did you like Harry Potter?” “Yes.” “What was it about?” “French fries.” In one scene, my wife explained, the kids at Hogwarts sat around a table eating French fries; in Spider- Man, I have to assume, the hero at some point must have swung (literally) by a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor, a feat that constituted the rationale of the film for Jeffrey.

You will notice a certain leitmotif in his answers:

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