My son is autistic. It occurred to me the other day, while pondering some of his struggles understanding the emotional state of others, and why other people do things, that there are some relevant characters in the movies and tv that he might connect with. For example, I thought of Data in ST:TNG. He’s somewhat reserved in delivery. He needs help interpreting human activity or interactions. He wants to learn about and be more integrated with others around him.
I’d like to ask for Doper help in finding other examples of this type that I could watch with my son. The idea is that we could watch an episode and then discuss what happened. Did “Data” (or other character) understand that the Captain was upset? Why did Data think he was upset (what indicators were present)? Did Data do anything differently to help the Captain? Did Data learn anything? What would you have done? That sort of thing.
If you know of any movies or tv shows that have a different or isolated or non-human character, who learns about the larger group and becomes part of the team despite his or her differences, please let me know.
How about a webcomic? Wapsi Square has added a main character who struggles with understanding the emotional state of others, and why other people do things, partly because she has serious trouble with reading other people’s faces. Her name is Atsali and she’s introduced here.
Maybe a terrible idea, but K2SO from Star Wars Rogue One popped into my head. He’s obviously different, speaks very bluntly (usually it’s for comedic purposes, which may not be ideal), but is a part of the team and is my favorite character from the film.
There’s a big issue though with the ending of the film, which I don’t want to spoil.
Farkle from the TV show Girl Meets World has at least one episode about a potential autism diagnosis. It’s a kids show though so his autism is still hella extroverted by real life standards.
Dark Matter, which I believe is currently on Netflix. One of the main characters is an android that is “defective” due to her interest in humans and their behavior.
The closest you could get would be the TV movie The Questor Tapes, which was intended as a pilot for a new series by Gene Roddenberry after Star Trek ended, but it never took off. Questor was an android who was, like Data, struggling to become human.
Robert Foxworth played him. It co-starred a pre-MASH* Mike Farrell, and featured a pre-*Animal House * John Vernon. Worth a look
It’s available on Amazon
You might also consider the Outer Limits episode “I, Robot”, based on the Eando Binder story (Not Asimov’s – his publishers stole the title) from 1939
Outer Limits did it twice – once in 1964, and they remade it in 19895. Both versions feature Leonard Nimoy (in different roles, and not as the robot). It’s about the trial of the robot Adam Link for killing his creator. It’s available on DVD, too.
The British show HUM∀NS is full of characters like that, but it’s a bit racy at times with “adult themes”.
You might watch it yourself first and select episodes. I saw the whole first series and thought it was quite good. There’s this whole interesting dynamic when an “Artificial Human” Domestic Maid enters the life of an upper middle class family. It starts to get weird and mystical towards the end, and it sort of when too far in that direction in the 2nd season and I gave up. But I bet there are at least 5 or 6 episodes from Season 1 that would work.
The Orville has an artificial being who is part of the crew in order to study biological beings. The drawbacks are the show has some adult themes and humor and that character so far is pretty minor. There has so far been one episode that featured him.
Some good things going on in that comic. Atsali only 15 there so should be a bit familiar to your son. There’s been at least one time skip in the past four years and Atsali is a freshman in college now.
Just read ahead before showing strips to him. Going forward a few days to the flashback reminded me that the author has the very occasional bit of graphic violence.
One issue is that the strip’s creator juggles a lot of characters in the strip. So you go months (or even years) without seeing a strip with Brun in it.
I’ve heard that the big guy from **Guardians of the Galaxy **(sorry, don’t know character names) has pinged on the identification-meter with autistic kids.
Maybe try him on some of Gary Numan’s early music? Try starting out with Cars and Are ‘Friends’ Electric?, with the lyrics printed out for him to read along?