Autism Story 2: My Reaction to the New Neighbor on Sesame Street

Greetings, one and all!  I’m back today for my second Autism Story.  Before I begin, I do hope that everyone reading this has had a wonderful Easter (I know I did)!  This week’s story will be short, and that’s not compared to my last Story.  But this week’s story is actually about a non-anime show that has gotten some attention, and coincidentally making headlines right around Autism Awareness Month.

                As many of you may know, a while back Sesame Street welcomed a new neighbor.  And this neighbor, named Julia, has garnered a good bit of attention when word got out of her arrival.  Why?  Because she’s the first autistic muppet.  And sure, this is a good reason why Julia is getting so much attention.  It’s even no surprise that her debut came at the start of Autism Awareness Month.  But what exactly do I think of Julia?

                I got word about Julia through an article.  Back then, reading about her and her introductory sketch brought tears to my eyes.  Watching the actual sketch a few weeks later brought a smile to my face.  In what I’ve seen and read, Julia's introduction is very simple, but incredible on so many levels.  And a lot of that came from how other characters reacted to her.  What probably was most surprising was my own sister’s reaction to the sketch.  There were parts of the sketch that she didn’t agree with or saw things that Julia would say or do that didn’t seem to fit the profile of an autistic person.  In some respects, I understood that point.  After all, her experience with autism was with someone on the higher functioning end of the disorder, and it’s pretty clear that Julia is a little lower functioning.  But believe it or not, I thought that Sesame Street did a respectful and tasteful job of depicting autism.

                The obvious symptoms of autism were definitely evident in Julia: the lack of communication, unexpected behavior, sensitivity to light and sounds.  But what was also evident was how Julia played and interacted with the other characters.  Again, I thought it was all done with good taste, was pretty close to accurate, and was not offensive.  But what was probably the best part of the sketch were the inputs of Elmo and Abby.  They knew that Julia was autistic.  They knew she did things differently.  But they didn’t care about that.  In fact, they focused more on what Julia was able to do and not what she couldn’t.  This is what I thought was Sesame Street’s way of bringing a resounding point in Autism Awareness home; not only do we need to be aware of autism, what it is, and how it affects an individual, but we also have to accept that it’s present but not a defining factor of a person.  Autism may be a part of someone's life-especially my life-, but it doesn’t define who that person is.  It’s like I always say, people with autism are just different.

Like I said, this week’s story was short, and probably more of a reaction than a story.  Still, I thought it was appropriate to share my thoughts on it.  Anyways, stay tuned for tomorrow as I do a new reaction video!

-Hanime on Anime