A petition launched to rescind the Golden Globe nominations for Sia‘s film Music has reached over 65,000 signatures.
The change.org petition calls the film “severely ableist” and says it “contributes to harmful stereotypes of autistic people”.
Nina Skov Jensen and Rosanna Katajia, who describe themselves as “autistic” and “autism ally” respectively, started the petition together.
They wrote in the official description: “Sia has claimed the movie is a ‘love letter to the autism community’, however, the music segments are filled with strobing lights, colours, loud sounds, and quick camera movements, which is very overstimulating.
“About 1 in 4 autistic people have epilepsy, so the movie can cause seizures and is also very uncomfortable for those without it. Despite making the movie ‘for’ autistic people, Sia has made it in such a way that a majority of us will be unable to watch it.”
Describing the performance of Maddie Ziegler, who plays the titular character in the film, Jensen and Kataja say the actress is “stereotypically mimicking autistic people the exact same way autistic people have been bullied and mocked their entire lives”.
They add: “It also enforces the idea that autistic people are not good enough and that their autism is better portrayed by someone with no concept of what it is to be autistic.”
The petition asks the Golden Globes to rescind their nominations for Music, which has received nods for Best Musical/Comedy Picture and Best Musical/Comedy Actress for Kate Hudson.
In a one-star review of the film, NME said: “This is all cut with pastel-toned dream-like dance routines which hit the midpoint between sugary Katy Perry pop confection and 1930s Busby Berkeley showstopper.
“The Sia-penned soundtrack is sung largely by Hudson, whose decent vocals are perhaps the film’s saving grace, but it’s still not nearly enough to make Music a sound proposition.”
