After months of defending her choice of casting the neurotypical actor Maddie Ziegler as an autistic character in the upcoming movie Music and beefing with critics online (including the very people her film is attempting to represent), Sia, it seems, has had a change of heart. Or, now that she’s nominated for an award, she’s in damage-control overdrive. You decide!
Per Variety, the singer/songwriter/first-time director announced that she has “been listening” and will include a warning at the start of the Golden-Globe nominated film that reads: “Music in no way condones or recommends the use of restraint on autistic people. There are autistic occupational therapists that specialize in sensory processing who can be consulted to explain safe ways to provide proprioceptive, deep-pressure feedback to help w meltdown safety.” Restraint and seclusion interventions are widely acknowledged as dangerous and abusive (in 2018, a 13-year-old autistic boy died after being restrained by a staff member in his high school).
“I plan to remove the restraint scenes from all future printings. I listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility, my research was clearly not thorough enough, not wide enough,” tweeted Sia.
She also tweeted, “I’m sorry.” About an hour after this series of tweets, she deleted her Twitter. If a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you tweet an apology and then delete your Twitter, is it an actual apology? Maybe not, but at least we have blogs to catalog receipts.