True Life: I'm Autistic on MTV

On October 3, 2006 Edward Wyatt of the New York Times reported on the television program, True Life, in an article titled “Unsimple Lives on an MTV Reality Show.”

In the article, Wyatt praises MTV for its ability to maintain “both an intimacy with and a distance from its subject” by spending “hours and hours with them.” In fact, he writes, the network “will shoot up to 150 hours of video over a period of months to get the 43 minutes of material that makes it into the final program.”

My son, Elijah, will be one of those subjects in an upcoming installment of the program, which will air under the title “True Life: I’m Autistic.”

I can vouch for the hours of footage their production team is shooting! Their friendly young camera crew has visited our home and Elijah’s school, and they’ll be returning soon to catch Elijah at a local club in Woodstock when he performs his most recent standup comedy routine.

I have high hopes for the program, particularly for the level of “intimacy” and “distance from the subject” that Wyatt speaks of in his article.

Elijah and I have been part of the autistic self-advocacy community for more than ten years. Together we have bemoaned, along with many of our Autie and Aspie friends nationwide, the often superficial (“autistic people have no emotions”), clichéd (“autistic people are all savants with superhuman gifts”), or catastrophizing (“autism is an epidemic”) reportage you often find in the mainstream media.

When the call went out from MTV for teenagers on the autism spectrum to participate in this production, we decided to go for it. After all, Elijah is a HUGE music fan and LOVES to watch MTV.

But our thinking wasn’t only about how great it would be for Elijah to appear on one of his favorite networks. After meeting the producers, we decided to give it a go because Elijah will participate in the production by doing the voiceover on his own story. Perhaps, we thought, Elijah will have a little more "say" in the telling of his own story.

Two other teens will be included in the program as well, and, we are told, the show will give its audience a sense of the breadth (and we hope DEPTH) of what is known as the AUTISM SPECTRUM.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed on this one, folks. I’d like to see the rising generation of self-aware autistic kids be represented as capable people living meaningful lives. Elijah is willing to go for it. I hope MTV is, too!

—Valerie Paradiz
Entered 675 days ago

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A family's journey into the community and culture of high-functioning Autism and Asperger's syndrome. Read more..

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