It almost feels voyeuristic to watch early videos of Jack, a child with autism, struggling while his parents struggle to communicate with him. “Do you think people still look up to you, that you’re someone to admire?” his mother asks him in one conversation. But in his adulthood Jason has his struggles, becoming fixated on fantasy figures whose reality he insists on. In childhood, he became a near-celeb because of his advanced-for-his-condition learning curve. ![]() Jason’s mother tells of how doctors said he would be “retarded,” and a practically immobile vegetable, but the parents found Jeff not only responsive and warm but able to learn. ![]() One of the most moving stories in the picture is about Jason Kingsley, born in the early ‘70s with Down Syndrome. Which is not to say there aren’t challenges. As the subjects of the movie go on to make clear, the consciousness of the differently abled person does not necessarily process the self as inherently DISabled, or even “less than.” This pronouncement goes beyond a lack of empathy-it shows an almost sociopathic lack of emotional imagination. A man with dwarfism talks about how what are called “average” people will approach him, unsolicited, and tell him that if they had his condition they’d kill themselves. The film’s opening features soundbites from a number of differently abled individuals, all of whom we get to know more fully as the movie goes on.
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