The United States of Leland
A few years back some disability-rights activists were offended by the movie There’s Something About Mary. I wholeheartedly disagreed. Sure, the Farrelly brothers threw in scenes that showed people with disabilities as clumsy and bossy, but it was all funny and close to the truth. I would have been more offended had the Farrelly brothers left us out. They satirize everything and everyone else. Why not us? (I use a motorized wheelchair.) Do they think we’re too fragile to take it?
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Sweeney hasn’t seen the movie, and isn’t planning to–she doesn’t think she could take it. She’s based her objections on the synopsis provided by Paramount Pictures, which describes the main character, Leland Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling), as a “sensitive teenager” who “kills an autistic child out of sympathy (sort of like an emotional euthanasia).”
“My mouth dropped open when I read this,” says Sweeney.
Ryan is certainly a caricature. He fidgets, stares into oblivion, cries, and repeats the phrase, “Sing a song.” His parents seem to derive no joy or anything positive from his existence. After his death his mother (Ann Magnuson) only says of him, “He was barely there.”
I think the more clear and present danger is that prolonged exposure to Leland could greatly increase one’s susceptibility to the pity defense. I wonder if the idea of a victim with autism was appealing to Hoge because it turned what would otherwise be clear-cut brutality into something grayer and subject to debate. Audience members who hop on that ride may well be more inclined to do the same the next time the opportunity arises in real life.
