There will be spoilers, please do not read if you want to avoid being spoiled.
Irony?
In the previous post, I discussed how fiction is just fiction and should be left alone and we shouldn’t write blog posts complaining about them, but… I gave in to the urge after watching Episode 14. I also said in my previous post that the next post would be about masking, this isn’t it.
What I think this show is really about
This may seem like a show about autism given that the main character is described as being on the spectrum, but it isn’t. This not a show about autism, or savant syndrome. It’s a show about prejudice and discrimination, and is ultimately political in nature.
Not only are a disproportionate number of cases are about either prejudice, discrimination, or disability, the character they invented hardly represents either the significant intellectual disability of savant syndrome, or conversely the lack of savant abilities in autism spectrum disorder. Rather, her traits seem geared towards proving that we shouldn’t plainly discriminate against those with disabilities because they can have something to offer too.
Another way to describe her would be that she feels like a character with too many skill points. They wanted to depict a savant who has autism, but they completely missed the part where savants characteristically have significant intellectual disability. Instead, Attorney Woo’s savant ability feels like it was retroactively added after her autism, perhaps because it’s much easier to convince the audience that she shouldn’t be discriminated against because she has a talent that’s virtually impossible to ignore.
It’s not the most creative, nor did they take the most realistic approach, but it seems to work very well. It does make one wonder though: could we push the same agenda with a regular autistic person—someone without savant abilities? Or are they only worth being pardoned if they have the exceptionally rare savant syndrome?
A brief defence of the story
First of all, I still think fiction writers should be allowed to create the story from their imagination without being censored or sanctioned by others. If we think about this show as not being about about autism but rather about prejudice and discrimination, then I think it’s doing quite well.
Autism here, then, is used as an expository “tool” to depict the world from the perspective of someone who’s on the receiving end of discriminatory and unfair treatment—a very useful way for helping the audience understand and empathise with those who receive such treatment, as she is the main character. Hopefully, by watching this show, people can become inspired to rethink their prejudices and whether they often discriminate against others in order to avoid subjecting others to similar treatment if they can help it.
Perhaps it’s just like the movie Inside Out (2015), which has received praise from psychologists for serving as a useful and simple exposition of the mind that helps people empathise with and understand others better, despite being remarkably and infamously inaccurate on the neurological level.
To paraphrase a quote from the drama: what we see on the surface isn’t everything. Think about what the story really is about and what its true meaning is. Inside Out isn’t a Psych 101 lecture, and Attorney Woo isn’t about autism more than it is about prejudice, discrimination, and maybe even disabilities in general.
Is it really fair to criticise Attorney Woo for its inaccurate depiction of autism and savant syndrome? Is that really the main point? I don’t think so.
In addition, we current don’t know enough about the causes or fundamental workings autism or savant syndrome to say that her character is literally impossible on the neurological level (unlike someone being born with three eyes, for example), so it’s reasonable to give the writers the benefit of the doubt here.
But, I’m still going to point out a few things that have been bothering me anyway, even if it means missing the point.
Savant syndrome
The part about savant syndrome doesn’t make a lot of sense because she doesn’t have any extreme intellectual disability and has shown to be capable of quickly seeing patterns and finding relationships in abstract concepts and ideas. A recent example (i.e. the last episode I watched) that comes to mind was when she quickly recognised the equivalence between Attorney Jung’s ex-wife and her current relationship, an incredible feat for somebody with allegedly severe intellectual disability.
Even just looking at how she normally solves cases ahead of everyone else, quickly connecting the dots and seeing patterns, I’m having a hard time convincing myself that I’m looking at an accurate depiction of savant syndrome that doesn’t defy its definition.
Maybe it’s possible, I don’t know. Again, we don’t know the inner workings of this disorder enough to say that it’s literally, biologically impossible for someone to be like her, but I nonetheless remain doubtful.
Autism and some illogical things
Hearing and noise sensitivity
What originally inspired me to start writing this was a scene in Episode 13 where she was kept awake by the sound of a clock ticking. I wonder if this scene was intended as a joke, given how exaggerated it is, or if it really was an honest misunderstanding of what noise sensitivity means.
The scene starts with them in a bedroom with Attorney Woo being unable to sleep due to the sound of a clock outside. That’s reasonable, some wall clocks can be quite loud, especially if the door is open. But, the door was closed…
That’s… odd. A wall clock may be loud, but it doesn’t typically produce enough sound energy to penetrate a wooden door before being either reflected or absorbed almost completely, even if it were only made of MDF instead of solid wood. Lower frequencies do pass through walls more easily, but the sound effect they used was around 4-6 KHz according to a (very) rough frequency analysis, which… isn’t exactly a low frequency.
But what if the clock is right outside the door? And what if it was really one of those loud ones? Okay.. that’s plausible. But wait… they’ve left the room and they’re still walking? Wait… that clock is almost ten metres away… and it’s not even a wall clock…! (though the sound effect they used was from a wall clock).
What’s going on? That’s just a tiny bedside table clock. Given the amount of sound energy it produces, given the distance, and given the wooden door in the way, wouldn’t any sound that somehow gets through surely be far, far below the human hearing threshold? At that point, even ambient noise or someone breathing nearby would be significantly louder than that clock. How does she even live in the city with the low ambient rumble of distant vehicles without going insane?
What I suspect happened here was that the writers misunderstood being sensitive to noise for having superhuman hearing ability without noting that the noise sensitivity in autism is actually processing disorder. That is, in reality, those with noise sensitivities don’t actually have physically different ears, but rather process the same auditory stimuli differently. If you were to administer hearing tests or even physically examine their ears, you’d find little difference between those with noise sensitivity issues and those without.
I say this because I also struggle with extreme noise sensitivity. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw her wearing (I assume) ANC headphones because it’s probably the most effective method for dealing with noise sensitivity issues. When my old set stopped working, I remembered thinking that I might literally die if I didn’t get a new pair; it worried me to the point I even stopped leaving the house for a period of time (I eventually managed to get my current Sony WH-1000XM4).
Speaking of headphones, it bothers me a lot that she doesn’t seem to actually use her Sennheiser PXC-550 properly. Based on the manual, her headphones turn on when they’re unfolded so it doesn’t require holding the power button like my Sony, but nothing states that it starts playing automatically after it’s turned on. She would need to either use her phone or tap the right earcup in order to start playback, which I’ve never seen her do. So… how does she even listen to her favourite cetaceans if she doesn’t press play?
Anyway, one thing is for sure: I can’t hear below the human hearing threshold. In fact, I don’t think any anybody can hear below the human hearing threshold. That won’t change regardless of how my brain works because hearing is a physical process. If the stimulus can’t be detected then my brain can’t react to it, because it has nothing to react to.
It’s easy to understand where the writers are coming from, as noise sensitivity is often described using the example of imagining the same noise but louder and nigh-impossible to ignore. Intuitively, anyone would be tempted to imagine that it means actually having better hearing. Plus, at this point, having another superpower on top of her photographic memory isn’t that much of a stretch anymore. By the way, her photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist in real life (though Eidetic memory does), but as with our introduction it’s important to remember that this is a work of fiction, and that her abilities or disabilities are not the main point of the story anyway.
I think it’s good that they at least did some research on autism and noise sensitivity, even if it seems like they misunderstood it a bit. It’s a good effort, and I think they deserve praise for it. They had no obligation to, after all, since it’s their story with their own characters.
Masking
This is very much low-hanging fruit since almost all depictions of autism in mainstream media can be lazily subject to this criticism, but let’s talk about it anyway.
I think we should first start by considering her age. How old is Attorney Woo? 26?
No, she isn’t 26. Remember, she’s a fictional character. So, how old is she?
According to Wikipedia, filming started in November 2021, but little is stated about when the original script was written. Let’s just assume that she was created in 2020, which would make her 2 years old.
A 2-year-old doesn’t have a lot of experience about the world, and it shows. Textbooks may be a good baseline for knowledge, but experience often teaches us things we can’t always infer from theory. That’s why practice, as well as making mistakes and learning from them is so important. There is no skill in this world that doesn’t require practice or making mistakes; and no textbook in the world can help someone master a skill just by reading it (at least, none that I know of).
She may be written with textbook knowledge in mind, but she’s sorely missing experience. This is the most plausible explanation I can think of for why she doesn’t seem to have any experience with masking despite being 26. It makes so much more sense if we consider that she’s only 2 years old.
Actually, this still doesn’t make a lot of sense. A real 2-year-old would be able to continue learning about the world, but a fictional character lives a static life on a piece of paper and isn’t actually capable of learning from experiences over the course of her life due to not being alive—or even real for that matter.
Far too often she acts as if she’s encountering a relatively common situation for the first time in her life, displaying no coping strategies whatsoever despite having demonstrated on multiple occasions that she is capable of recognising potential triggers ahead of time, like when she explained her preference for eating gimbap because she could see all the ingredients at a glance, as well as hesitating to join her boyfriend’s sister for the Pandora’s box of a homemade lunch.
She’s also often surprised when others react negatively towards some of her behaviours. After 26 years, surely not? It makes sense if she was only 2 years old, but not 26, especially given her relatively high level of functioning that’s far more than capable of understanding and recognising patterns as well as competently manipulating logic.
Take the way she introduces herself, for one. 26 years. 26 years and she hasn’t found a single strategy to try and hide, suppress, or even work around it. 26 years and she hasn’t a strategy for camouflaging at least the most obvious, dead giveaway traits like the way she darts her eyes around all over the place for no apparent reason. 26 years and she has no contingency plan for when things start becoming too overwhelming. This isn’t someone with significant intellectual impairments, mind you, and masking is very much a real phenomenon among those with autism. It really only makes sense if we think of her as only having 2 years’ worth of experience living in this world with autism compared to the alleged over two and a half decades.
Also, 14 episodes in and not a single word about masking. It frustrates me because it gives me that “just barely missed it” feeling, as she sometimes talks about other aspects of autism (albeit in a limited manner). So, why not masking?
She’s also literally been shown trying to mask, like when she follows the advice her friend gives her, or at least obeying instructions like when the judge told her that attorneys have to raise their hand if they want to talk. She’s obviously capable of memorising and following camouflaging instructions in order to appear acceptable and normal to others. The question I have is how she’s 26 and only just discovered she could do this, but I’m repeating myself.
Perhaps it’s because having autism be camouflaged well would defeat the purpose of this show; if she appeared normal to strangers then it would be a lot harder for the writers to push their message, as it would significantly reduce the number of opportunities to demonstrate discrimination and prejudice taking place.
After watching this, some people may also make the mistake of thinking that they’d “be able to tell” if someone has autism just by looking at them, but if these people are using a television drama as a primary source of information then… what’s to say they wouldn’t have gotten the same information from a different, equally unreliable source anyway? This problem is hardly to do with the story here in particular, so I don’t think it’s that relevant.
Knowledge about autism
She’s capable of using the internet, she’s capable of finding information about novel topics like stomach cancer all on her own. Yet, why is her knowledge on autism so limited and abrupt? It’s like she read the first half of each paragraph on the Korean equivalent of Wikipedia or something before getting closing the page and reading about cetaceans instead.
There really is no better word to describe it other than “abrupt”; that is her knowledge about autism ends very abruptly. Plus, she often talks about autism in a way that makes it seem like she’s talking about someone else, sometimes even as if trying to directly address the audience. Why else would her script sound like it was copy and pasted word for word from some intro psych textbook?
While watching, I’m often left with the impression that the writers only have a superficial knowledge of autism. I don’t know who they’ve consulted, and I don’t know everybody involved in its production. But, using Inside Out as an example again, even if they did consult experts doesn’t mean they ended up followed everything the experts had to say and adjusted their plot accordingly.
Sometimes, it’s as if Attorney Woo only exists to push the writers’ political agendas, and autism + savant syndrome was just the most convenient way for them to do that. Still, I like that they’ve done at least some research.
There was also a scene where she briefly lamented about not having anyone to provide support for her autism. This is coming from someone who’s tech-literate and able to use the internet. The writers do know that online communities exist, right? It’s as if she lives in complete isolation, not being part of any community even for those who like aquatic animals.
One might think that it’s because she’s naturally withdrawn, but her extremely loud and noisy demeanour including that stupid greeting she has with her friend (seriously, why is she so loud? It’s like she’s not afraid of attracting attention), combined with starting her own public protests doesn’t seem to me like the behaviour of someone who’s too withdrawn to join online communities.
The best explanation I can think of, unfortunately, is just incomplete writing. I really want to give the writers the benefit of the doubt so I hope I’m missing something important, but at the moment I just can’t seem to think of anything else. It’s as if her character ceases to exist the moment she goes off-screen. Does she not read anything in her free time? Using the speed she was reading through case files for the road construction as a baseline, the entirety of her knowledge about autism might only be about 10 seconds long.
At times, it feels like she came straight out of some MMORPG’s character creation where the writers just randomly clicked on a bunch of autistic traits before hitting “confirm”.
Closing
As with my previous post, I still think a television drama shouldn’t anyone’s primary source of information or knowledge, so it really doesn’t and shouldn’t matter if a work of fiction isn’t non-fiction.
I still like it when characters are portrayed accurately enough to be realistic (and thus) more relatable, like in Good Doctor (2013) where I never felt like my sanity was being questioned. I really liked how autism was portrayed in that show, and I liked they demonstrated how many people misunderstand autism, including doctors.
They didn’t try and centre their story around some political agenda, nor did they try and exaggerate his traits to the point of disbelief. It may even be argued that it was more accurate only because the writers were more modest and stuck only to things they were actually certain about instead of wildly experimenting, but… if you’re aiming to be accurate, that’s just the right approach, isn’t it? It’s hard to say something wrong if you don’t say anything at all.
I heard that Attorney Woo is getting a second season in 2024. by then, she’ll be about 4 years old. I’m looking forward to seeing if she’ll have learned any new strategies by then—if there’s been any noticeable character development.
Maybe the second season will be a huge surprise because she’ll be shown just behaving normally like everyone else in front of strangers, even losing her introduction catchphrase as the writers demonstrate how autism can be nearly invisible due to masking, thereby raising even more awareness for it.
Addendum: While writing this post, there were many times where I wanted to address her exaggerated movements, but I quickly realised why mirrors were invented. I still think some of her movements are a bit too exaggerated, but I can’t point them out without doubting my own sanity anymore. Is this really how others see me? What a terrifying thought! I really need to pay more attention to how I move…