This essay was written in 2022 as the first part of my final research project for my Bachelor’s Degree in Film at Queen Mary University of London. The second part of the project, and the culmination of my research, is my dissertation film, A Brief History of Circles.

This essay seeks to begin to configure what I am calling an ‘autistic cinema’; a cinema that enables the articulation of the autistic experience. In traditional film theory, psychoanalysis is most commonly used to understand the minds, or ‘gaze’, of those outside of the hegemonic framework, for example feminist and queer theory. However, this theoretical perspective neglects bodily, and therefore sensory, engagement, reflecting Vivian Sobchack’s remark that ‘the spectator’s identification with the cinema has been constituted almost exclusively as a specular and psychical process abstracted from the body and mediated through language’ (Sobchack 2000). Sobchack further suggests that marginalised peoples ‘desire a new language that will articulate the specificity of their experience, and they struggle to find the grounds from which they can speak it’ (Sobchack 1992: xvii). The significance of sensory difference and bodily stimulation in autistic people indicates the need for a new cinematic language that forgoes the normative, neurotypical conventions of mainstream cinema. For this reason, I will be arguing that it is phenomenology, the philosophy of experience, that best allows for the construction of a cinematic language that privileges the pre-articulative expressions of autistic people. I will firstly be analysing the foundational YouTube film In My Language (Baggs, 2007), to underline the primacy of feeling over verbal communication as a key principle of autistic film phenomenology. I will then examine key elements of existing films, such as post-production effects and repetition, that demonstrate the potential for the phenomenological embodied autistic language of the cinema.

In 2007, autistic activist and blogger Mel Baggs uploaded their eight minute film In My Language to YouTube. The film is structured in two parts, the first is a montage of Baggs stimming (a common abbreviation for self-stimulation for neurodivergent people) using objects such as a computer keyboard, a necklace, a slinky, and also their own body, whilst they vocally produce long, single tones. The second part, titled ‘My Translation’, employs a vocal synthesiser to reflect upon the first section, explaining to the audience that 'the previous part of this video was in my native language.’ 

When applied broadly to cinema, language constitutes a highly standardised semiotic system of creating meaning, based on a common knowledge of culture and social codes. The Kuleshov Effect is the most widely recognised example of this, by taking two images imbued with culturally recognisable meaning, and creating a clause within the sequence by cutting between the images, just as a clause in linguistics creates meaning. Taking this into account, normative cinema can be seen as exclusionary in its adherence with a monolithic, highly indexed language that is exclusively informed by dominant hegemonic culture. Vivian Sobchack even suggests that ‘the highly codified language of official culture has been seen to appropriate, constrain, and transform experience different from its own, whether that of women, people of colour, or the differently abled’ (Sobchack 1992: xviii). Sobchack’s inclusion of differently abled people in this argument could situate In My Language as a key reference for the construction of a new cinematic language that accommodates autistic expressibility. 

Baggs goes on to say in the film that ‘my language is not about designing words or even visual symbols for people to interpret. It is about being in a constant conversation with every aspect of my environment.’ This signals the need to move beyond symbolism, which Baggs describes as being ‘designed for the human mind to interpret’, as a form of cinematic language, as it seems the mind in question is the neurotypical mind. Instead, they suggest a symbiotic, affective relationship with one’s environment as a foundation for autistic expressibility. In the second part of the film, Baggs’ fingers dance under a running tap in circular motions. They state that ‘the water doesn’t symbolise anything. I am just interacting with the water as the water interacts with me', prioritising the feeling of pleasure from the repetitive sensory interaction over psychologically coded meaning, and highlighting the communicative relationship between Baggs and the running water. 

This echoes the work of phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who uses the term chiasmus to explain the reversibility of perception and expression, or the objective and the subjective, the ‘unique space which separates and reunites, which sustains every cohesion’ (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 187). In the context of cinema, Sobchack repurposes this unique space as an intuitive and spontaneous communication between the object on-screen, and the subjective experience of the viewer. Defining the spectator as the ‘cinesthetic subject’, she asserts that this subject ‘both touches and is touched by the screen’, establishing a conversation between the cinema and the body that is similar to Baggs’ relationship with their environment (Sobchack 2000). 

The neologism ‘cinesthetic', coined by Sobchack, draws on the experience of synaesthesia, the involuntary stimulation of one sense by another, creating inter-sensory links within the chiasm of sense perception, and therefore indicating a wealth of meaning that can be communicated cinematically by evoking the senses, rather than by purely relying on the mind. For example, the sight of Baggs’ hands under the water, as well as the trickling sound as it flows through their fingers, can cause the spectator to feel as though Baggs’ fingers are their own fingers, creating an intimate identification with the environment on-screen through sense memory. For autistic filmmakers as well as spectators, this provides a useful framework for expressing sensory feeling in cinema, evoking Laura U. Marks’ suggestion that ‘a mimetic and synaesthetic relationship to the world underlies language and other sign systems’ (Marks 2000: 214).

Erin Manning writes extensively on the film’s relational encounters. She states that ‘Baggs approaches not objects as such, but their relational potential,’ meaning that each object transgresses its indexical form as Baggs interacts with it, moving and expressing in tandem (Manning 2009: 214). She goes on to argue that this becomingness demonstrates that In My Language is not about one language, but a ‘collective event’, proving the potential for the invention of new, transgressive languages that forgo strict codification, allowing those with different forms of expressibility to articulate thought (ibid: 221). The construction of an autistic cinema must therefore resist codification and indexing of cinematic elements, as the experience of autism varies greatly from person to person. Instead, what must be prioritised is precisely this becomingness, the potential for expressibility that arises from phenomenological cinema, the fluid reflexive relationship between the on-screen object and the subjective experience. This allows for the fluidity of the autistic experience to be acknowledged, in addition to the liberation from normative cinematic language which limits these possibilities for articulation.

One way of approaching the autistic cinema through phenomenology is to explore haptic visuality, which Marks defines as 'the way vision itself can be tactile, as though one were touching the film with one’s eyes’ (Marks 2000: xi). She explains that, for her, this term excludes optics and sound, which are materially representable in film, and focuses exclusively on touch, smell and taste, evoked through the inter-sensory links mentioned previously. Haptic visuality is useful in that it  draws upon relational connections, such as those depicted in In My Language, which provide the tools for a language that is sensory and tactile. Additionally, the sensory potential of texture brings into question how images can be deliberately manipulated to articulate feeling through post-production effects. 

Carolee Schneemann’s Plumb Line (1968-72), for example, utilises haptics by manipulating the physical film itself. The film contains 8mm printed as 16mm, splicing, double exposure, repetition of sequences, scratching, and filming projected footage, producing a tactile quality in which the overwhelming incoherence of what is being seen encourages the viewer to explore the screen, rather than distinguishing codified objects and characters. A relational connection is established between the viewer and the deliberately tampered-with film, which goes on to show a sheet, onto which the film is projected, catching fire, the image distorting and consuming itself. The reflexivity of the relationship between subject and object results in the embodiment of the burning sheet captured on the manipulated film strip. The heat of the flame and the smell of the burning sheet becomes felt, as the interior and exterior worlds combine to articulate Schneemann’s total multi-sensory meltdown. 

Plumb Line’s haptic visuality therefore demonstrates the phenomenological exchange of feeling through post-production effects, rather than exclusively through the indexical image. It brings into question the potential of digital post-production to create similar effects, exploring the haptic potential through elements such as editing, colour grading, superimposition, text, looping, speeding up, slowing down and deliberate image corruption or glitching.

Repetition and circularity is a form that can be haptic, and a useful tool to articulate autistic experience. Stimming, for many autistic people, involves using repetitive motions, often engaging the hands and body, to express feelings of excitement, to stimulate the vestibular system as a form of sensory input, or to focus in on a single sensory input to reduce overstimulation (National Autistic Society 2020). Stimming is somatic, rooted in the sensations of the body, and therefore difficult to articulate through normative language. This calls for the possibilities of affective language that Baggs articulates in their video. Taking into account Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion that ‘My body […] is the fabric into which all objects are woven,’ it can be argued that the elements of cinema can be arranged to stim with the body, reacting and transforming in tandem with the embodied flesh of the film (Merleau-Ponty 1962: 235). 

In Yuyan Wang’s experimental film One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean (2020), a montage of ‘satisfying videos’ creates a collage of patterns and waves that, when taking into account the reversible encounter of the body and the screen, encourages the viewer to become part of these waves and flow with the images. Although focusing mainly on the unrepresentable senses, Marks suggests that sound, too, can be haptic, moving away from being an informational medium, and instead becoming ‘ambient and textural, […] moving the listener in ways that cannot be easily described and contained’ (Marks 2000: xvi-xvi). Whilst the conventions of dialogue in normative cinema encourage the viewer to decode meaning through coherent language, Wang’s soundscape consists of a single line of dialogue that is repeated, condensed, cut up and expanded throughout the entire 11 minute duration of the film. The desire to comprehend the barely coherent sentence is overcome by a collage of words, creating a trance-like audio environment. As the sounds repeat, words become transformed as the viewer’s ears adjust to the rhythm, opening up possibilities for new sounds and meanings to be discovered. 

In the same way that stimming engages a single sensory input to regulate the other senses, Wang’s refusal to engage other sounds reverberates with the desire to hyper-focus on a single object, reminiscent of echolalic vocal stims. The feeling of flapping one’s hands, or bouncing one’s leg, or any grounding, repetitive motion is synaesthetically stimulated through the audio, which oscillates and loops alongside the images, inviting the viewer to implicate their own body as a key component within the film. This calls to mind Baggs’ fingers circling under the running tap in In My Language, a reversible conversation with sensory stimuli that evades symbolism and instead signifies intimate, subjective experience. This is not to suggest that the technique of repetition itself is an indicative element of autistic cinema; as mentioned previously, such a cinematic language must avoid codification in order to remain accessible to all modes of articulation. Instead, I am suggesting it as a tool to open up possibilities of expression and reinvention, as well as a way to somatically engage with those who stim.

The construction of an autistic cinema relies upon work that seeks to challenge and transgress normative cinema. Standardised conventions in filmmaking such as eye-line match, the 180 degree line and continuity editing are enforced to the extent that to defy these conventions would be considered ‘bad filmmaking’, even when the intention behind this defiance is to challenge and rework cinematic language. Whilst experimental cinema has historically worked to deconstruct these conventions, there is more to be explored in the articulation of bodily experience, specifically of those who exist outside of the norms of neurotypical social codes. 

Autistic cinema must challenge normative cinematic conventions and propose ways to invent modes of language and identification. Vivian Sobchack argues that, in a phenomenological cinema, identification takes shape in neither character projection nor moral positioning, as in normative cinema and psychoanalysis, but rather ‘of the sense and sensibility of materiality itself’ (Sobchack 2000). Therefore, to consider autistic cinema through the lens of phenomenology, identification must be located within the flesh of the film, reflecting back to the spectator in a symbiotic exchange of bodily knowledge. What must be put forward, as Baggs states, is the ‘constant conversation with every aspect of [one’s] environment’, weaving every frame of film through the fabric of the body, creating new expressions and relations that give voices to those who need them.

Bibliography:

Baggs, M. (2007) In My Language. Available at: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc [Accessed: 20 November 2022].

Manning, E. (2009). Relationscapes: movement, art, philosophy. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Marks, L. (2000). The skin of the film: intercultural cinema, embodiment, and the senses. Durham: Duke University Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception, trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). ‘Eye and mind’, trans. Carleton Dallery. In Edie, J. (ed.). The primacy of perception. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. P.187.

Stimming (2020) Available at: https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/behaviour/stimming [Accessed: 20 November 2022].

Schneemann, C. (1968-72) Plumb Line [Installation]. Barbican, London (Viewed 14 December 2022).

Sobchack, V. (1992). The address of the eye: a phenomenology of film experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Sobchack, V. (2000) What my fingers knew: the cinesthetic subject, or vision in the flesh. Available at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2000/conference-special-effects-special-affects/fingers/[Accessed: 20 November 2022].

Yuyan, W. (2020) One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean.