“I can’t describe what I’m feeling”: reframing Autism and Hollywood action towards an Autistic screenwriting practice

Authors

Abstract

This PhD examines my own experience as an Autistic screenwriter and avid viewer of Hollywood action films, as both Autistic people and Hollywood action films are stereotypically positioned as “loud”, “empty”, and full of mindless repetition. Guided by the Autistic tenet of ‘different, not less’, this PhD examines the ways in which both can convey emotion in alternative ways. In screenwriting, orthodoxical emphasis on emotion demands the screenwriter deliver both emotionally resonant dialogue and complex characters. An Autistic screenwriter may struggle to convey emotion on the page through characters’ words and actions, but while their screenplay may articulate emotion differently, the Autistic screenwriter’s work may be undervalued when measured by non-Autistic notions of “best practice”. Employing an autie-ethnographic methodology (Grace 2013; Rourke 2016; Yergeau 2018a), which fuses autoethnography with an Autistic positionality, this creative practice research interrogates and reframes the misconceptions and underestimations of Autistic writing. Building upon existing scholarship on spectacle and narrative in Hollywood action films, this PhD identifies new ‘Autistic ways of viewing’ that reveal a different way to appreciate some of Hollywood action’s most popularly derided tropes—such as repetition, explosions, and catchphrases—by framing them through a lens of Autistic experience. Expanding existing scholarship about screenwriting manuals and discourse, this PhD considers how those ‘Autistic’ tropes—evident in Hollywood action and employed in my own screenwriting practice—clash with accepted industrial orthodoxies if viewed as less, not different. Through playful engagement with renowned action screenplays and my own unfinished 2015 action screenplay, the creative component—Action/Inaction—explores the difficulties I have faced engaging with industrial orthodoxies as an Autistic screenwriter by blending autie-ethnography with screenwriting form/format. This process reveals new ways of appreciating the Hollywood action genre, Autistic experience and screenwriting practice, while using creative writing play-as-research (Van Loon 2014) to shape contemporary realities. This PhD urges further consideration of the place of Autistic screenwriters in screen industries and the liberatory opportunities an Autistic screenwriting practice might offer all screenwriters.

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