Australian pop singer-songwriter Sia has made the jump from directing music videos, to directing her first theatrical feature film, “Music.” Almost immediately as the first trailer dropped, controversy arose due to the film’s portrayal of autism.
The trailer for “Music” teases a musical-drama film about a young girl on the autism spectrum that sees the world through music. The trailer makes a big splash about its cast, which includes Kate Hudson and Leslie Odom Jr, and the theatrical debut of Sia’s longtime creative collaborator Maddie Ziegler as the titular Music.
Though the film features some visually stunning musical numbers and an original soundtrack by Sia herself, the trailer has drawn criticism from the autistic community for Ziegler’s character, who communicates her emotions through a tabler in the trailer, despite Ziegler being able-bodied and neurotypical. Sia didn’t wait long to directly address the pushback, taking to Twitter to ask fans to watch the film before judging. Sadly, it didn’t take long before Sia’s defense turned ugly, directly attacking people on Twitter for voicing their concerns with the trailer.
It’s a valid point to ask fans to wait to see the final product before judging, but a trailer’s job is to sell you on a movie, so it is valid to use a trailer as the deciding factor before watching anything. What’s problematic is the direct attacks against those simply raising concerns about the very real problem of poor representation of the disability community by Tweeting “maybe you’re just a bad actor” to someone.
Sia has acted as the director of some of her music videos since 2004, with the most prominent being “Chandelier” in 2014. The singer has shown competence in capturing dazzling visuals to accompany the music. At the very least, “Music” will look and sound great, but the movie is not on a particularly great track with audiences at the moment.