Bah, Who Knows!!

Hey, Team.

I showed my husband Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love and it broke his heart! No news on Superman but trust I’m still a freak for that beef. Zero interest in Corenswet, all enthusiasm is directed wholly at the character he plays. I am confirmed normal.

Here’s what’s on the docket:

Nathan Fielder didn’t realize the autistics had claimed him. He had no intention for his performance on Nathan For You to read as autistic. Practicing nuanced and difficult to predict social interactions was not meant to mirror actual techniques used to help people with autism move in a world that rejects them. Or so he says. And I’m taking him at his word. But the fact remains when I finished the pilot of season one, I was filled with a strange rush of longing to have the resources to do what Fielder was doing. Admittedly he was taking it to an absurdist level, but to be able to workshop and practice and, well, rehearse moments neurotypical people have no idea are quagmires for the rest of us, what a dream.

To translate this rambling mess posted nearly three years ago when the first bout of “The Rehearsal is evidence that Nathan Fielder is a calculating manipulative creep” discourse flooded the internet: As someone who is also going grey early, speaks in a monotone, and is incapable of experiencing any human interaction without warping it into a waking nightmare worst case scenario, I can’t help but take all of this discourse very personally and without a shred of irony or self-awareness. If preparing for all disastrous eventualities means I’m manipulative, then lock me up in girl boss jail for life. (All of this is meant to be understood as ironic and completely self-aware)

I’m not going to diagnose Fielder, that’s not what I got my degree in¹ and that’s not what I’m getting paid to do here.² What I’m going to do is approach with consideration to the fact that, if a diagnosis were to be had and brought to the public, I wouldn’t be shocked. His behavior, however performative, combined with his general approach to problem solving³ aligns very well with the high masking autistic experience. In a Slate interview the the author of an article reviewing the incidental Autistic representation in season one of The Rehearsal, some attention is drawn to a specific moment in “Kissme.” In this episode, Fielder asks for clarification on a silent signal an actress explains is actually a well-known clue to instigate a kiss. He then asks her to repeat the expression multiple times, an almost inscrutable expression taking over. The Slate interview takes this as proof he couldn’t grasp it. I take this as a familiar experience as someone who is high masking and a comedian (humiliating). It is three stages:

In this case, the potential for a joke is a call back to a moment in Nathan For You when Fielder has an actress say “I love you” to him over and over until they both begin to cry. In the present, he asks the Fielder Method actress to repeat the eye signal over and over, an impish expression flickering as the corners of his mouth tighten into a suppressed grin.

When he speaks to the autism specialist, another representation of high masking makes an appearance. Again, as a high masking comedian (help), I am not diagnosing based on the curated visual story presented but merely noting a reflection of what my own behavior in such an environment might be. And again, it is three stages.

He undergoes a test that I personally hate where way too close up photos of eyes are displayed with four options of what the person in the photograph is feeling. He cannot guess the first picture’s emotions.⁴ The specialist eyes him in an all too familiar way and clicks to the next photo. Fielder mumbles out vague agreements on how he figures someone with autism might have trouble. It stretches out, he spins his wheels to manufacture as much awkwardness as possible for maximum cringe entertainment. The specialist prods him to guess the second photo’s expression. He gets it wrong.

I’m not particularly interested, at least not right now, in talking about my autism like it’s a yoke around my neck. It’s absolutely one of the most constant sources of anxiety in my life and will be until the day I die. I think neurotypicals are bumbling freaks that need to get their shit together yesterday. I’ve learned to get nervous around the two year mark at a job because in my experience that’s roughly when employers start to think something’s… off… about me and my hours get cut or my responsibilities phased down until I find my contract isn’t going to be renewed and it’s back to LinkedIn to rinse and repeat this weird farce. I guess my way through conversations that feel like a mute button is being pressed at random by some unseen juvenile force, studying the muscles around a person’s mouth and ears for tell-tale tugs hinting at what they actually mean, letting my eye trail to their extremities, which are notorious tells of someone’s true feelings. Maybe I’d be good at poker, but that’d be teetering too close to a Rainman parallel. I don’t even like K-Mart, let alone underwear from the one in Cincinnati. As I’m watching The Rehearsal, I’m still awash in that feeling of longing. I don’t want things to be easier, per se, I just want things to be clearer. The pointless politeness politics of the neurotypical society used to ensure the status quo remains unscathed and we all agree “it’s always been done this way,” is a smog filling my lungs.Being able to practice these things out is an air filter. But what if the real solution is to remove the smog? Not eliminate neurotypicals and their weird redundant rituals and falsehood-based economy per se,⁵ but rather have them study what we want for once. Have them memorize what a meltdown can look like, how echolalia presents itself, what a safe food is, how to handle sensory overload, the importance of just saying what the fuck you mean when the fuck you mean it, etc.⁶

Every time the reanimated worm corpse in RFK’s brain drives him to open his mouth, I remember the autism specialist I worked with in my mid-20’s who wasted no time to let me know an official diagnosis can and will be used to enact eugenicist objectives. She listed all the ways it could affect my employability, my healthcare, my ability to marry, access to social services, if I ever need fertility services it might be denied on the grounds of being a disabled person. That said, do you think if I put myself on that registry my doctor would finally let me get a hysterectomy?

There are a lot of accounts online requesting aid in Gaza. These are accounts, usually, run by individuals on behalf of themselves, their family, or loved ones they are apart from. A lot of the time, these accounts end up labelled as “spam” and are quietly removed by the platform. There are efforts to vet these accounts for whether or not they’re “real” or if they are “scams.” And here’s the thing. There will always be grifters, that’s just how it is. But the existence of grifters should never negate the validity of generosity. Food stamps, housing aid, state provided medical care, are all things the grifter boogie man is used to snatch away from folks who need them. And you know what? I’ll say it. I don’t give a fuck. I hate that shitty “one of these m&ms is poison” argument. It’s pointless. Personally, I don’t want to act in a way that even remotely aligns with that mindset.

Sharing a gofundme is, truly, the least anyone can do. There’s no posturing, there’s no virtue signaling, and if one out of the dozens, hundreds of hands reaching out for help are false, who cares. Kindness is not foolish. Averting your eyes because you’re afraid of being tricked or afraid of being judged as a cringe poseur is foolish.

Gofundmes that have been shared to me on Bluesky:

A full thread of of verified Gofundme’s courtesy of Alex Winter’s account:

I noted two things Del Rio says:

Seven minutes in: “What I’ve learned is, whatever happened at that point in time on television is going to haunt you for the rest of your fucking life.”

At the 32:12 mark: “Don’t put me on a pedestal; ‘cause you’re gonna rip me down!”

I’m very likely going to be rewatching this video essay explaining how minstrelsy and fatphobia and punching down in comedy are all bound by a thick diseased chord of white supremacy.

Laughter is somehow both the most vulnerable form of self-expression and one of the most hurtful tools of ostracization and othering. There’s an accountability that must be taken by those who make these jokes, and those who find them funny. No, we suddenly can’t be funny anymore because of “woke.” It’s just that being lazy bullies who throw someone under the bus for a cheap laugh is, well, cheap and unfunny and cruel. Early in the video is a line that really struck me (she’s always got a line that really strikes me) “The fat body has always been seen as an uncivilized body. Losing weight and becoming thin is that person’s body becoming ‘civilized.’” When people say that fatphobia is rooted in white supremacist ideology, that’s it. That’s literally it. It’s a matter of whether or not society deems a body “civilized.” Civilized itself being a term with winding and restrictive definitions that effectively only shame and institutionally other anyone not thin, white, and able bodied. Civility is supposedly something learned, setting up a rapidly losing game. If someone is incapable (not born with the ruling class’s narrow determination) of civility, then they are incapable of learning. This marks them as subnormal and by extension, subhuman. Every video Aliyah publishes is my favorite video by Aliyah, so it goes without saying this is my favorite video essay she’s put out. If I could simp for a second here, she’s so funny and so smart and so focused, she expertly ties themes together in an engaging presentation, I truly admire her work. Also the way she says “....film” through gritted teeth and with a heavy sigh throughout this essay is *chef’s kiss.* Give it a watch, and then a re-watch! Do it now. Close this newsletter and watch the video, what are you doing wasting time???

…and I’m literally always saying that!!

Okay, that’s all for now, Team. Talk soon (threat)!