Spectatorial Friction and Neurodiversity
– Encountering Autistic Experiences through Participation in In My Language (2007)

Introduction

Autism has been largely positioned and identified as ‘deficits’ in social interactions and sensory processing, framed as ‘disorders’ in the field of medical research (Eastwood et al. 2022, 3). However, there has been a recent shift in academic research from this deficit paradigm to understanding autism as different modes of engaging with the world (ibid). The recent decade has witnessed a growing popularity of autobiographical narratives by people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (Van Goidsenhoven 2020, 22). Meanwhile, numerous amateur videos have been prevalent on YouTube that are forming vernacular creativity (Burgess and Green 2009, 25), reshaping the cultural landscapes and modes of spectatorship. The intersection between spectatorship, autism and more broadly, neurodiversity enables a rethinking of how social space and self-narratives are negotiated, as well as how modes of knowledge production can be imagined. However, this intersectionality has been seldom discussed.

Mel Baggs is a non-binary person with autism, who has been making YouTube videos and blogging continuously about autism awareness before they passed away in 2018. In 2007, Baggs uploaded In My Language which demonstrates how they experience and perceive the world in daily life. The first half of the video presents Baggs’ ‘native language’ in a non-verbal approach; while the second part offers a verbal translation of their perspectives on what constitutes thoughts and intelligence. It has reached more than 1.7 million views, 13 thousand likes and 575 comments up to the point the paper has been written. The paper does not emphasize the diagnostic criteria of autism, nor does it define or delineate the pathological spectrums of neurodivergent symptoms. Instead, it looks at how moving images can challenge the normative cinematic experience, offering neurodiverse openness to and new potentialities of autistic, and more generally, neurodivergent experiences. To be more exact, it investigates the way in which the on-screen spectatorial friction of In My Language can be transformed into a site of knowledge production of autistic experiences and challenge neurotypical spectatorship.

Through analysing the audiovisual elements, media affordances and discursive practices of this video, the paper is structured by and closely engages with spectatorship in relation to the notions of theatricality, friction, participatory culture and autism awareness. It concludes that In My Language weaves an affective tool out of frictions in a double gesture that, on the one hand, opens up a pre-linguistic and non-verbal environment where the neurodivergent experiences and the becoming of neurodivergence roam, and on the other hand, invites us to participate in the forming of language as a collaborative event, and to enter an alternative zone with neurodiverse potentialities.

Literature Review

1. Theatricality, Spectatorship and Friction
In recent decades, the research focus of theatre studies has shifted from the ‘drama-text’ to medial and material conditions of what is performed or staged (Röttger 2024, 30). Specifically, Röttger refers to the mediality of performing arts as the complex interplay between ‘the visible and the audible’ and the way in which the ensembled relations between media and their phenomena are unfolded (ibid, 32). Similarly, Diana Taylor (2003) addresses the importance of localized meanings and embodied practices in the constitution and transmission of socially situated knowledge. Theatricality, according to both, is located in this very figuration of both performing and spectating, a ‘negotiation of the chiasm’ (Röttger 2024, 31) between fictional, dramatic illusion and what is staged and performed. Theatricality ‘flaunts its artifice, its constructedness’, as Taylor (2003, 13) argues . In the economies of the epistemological process as such, theatricality questions the spectators on the notion of reality and the illusionary construction of it as natural, confronting them with dynamic relations of a lifeworld between illusion and truth.

Viewing theatricality as an epistemic mode means involving the spectators in the realm of performing arts, where seeing and being seen constitute a constellation of figurative processes. Theatricality is a process that enables a text to become ‘more’ (Piotrowska 2024, 168). It operates at the ‘blind spot’, where the unstable dynamics between the medium, the mediated and the spectators are activated by their internal structural effects sustained by multistability (Röttger 2024, 32). Jacques Rancière (2009) questions the binary relation between acting and viewing of theatre and cinema studies, who normalises the condition of spectators as active interpreters and participants in the making of theatricality. In this sense, the emancipation of spectators, according to Rancière, opens up deconstructive potentials to question the medium itself. What can be seen and thought have the potential to be ‘reconfigured in a different regime of perception and signification’ in the scenes of ‘dissensus’ (ibid, 49), cracking open multiple situations from the inside and distributing new significations, as Rancière points out.

This manner of ‘cracking open’ is given more socio-political significance by Anna Tsing’s notion of friction. Tsing (2011) proposes the notion of ‘friction’ to refer metaphorically to the dynamic and often-time chaotic encounters through which global universals and local specificities interact. Interestingly, friction has been deployed interdisciplinarily in the studies of performing arts and moving images, with a particular focus on spectatorship. Formal elements are arranged and presented to serve dramaturgical effects and construct certain narratives, modulating and regulating the audience in terms of how to know and what to feel. Frictions, however, are experienced when the promised smoothness of viewing experiences are failed. Theatre scholar Jane Dunlop addresses that friction produces a sense of dissonance, addressing the occurrence of ruptures of experiences that causes disorientation and uneasiness (Dunlop 2024, 65). As a performance device, friction produces an affective quality in the spectators. The contradictions are detected by and disorienting the spectators, opening up new possibilities for reinterpreting stories and their intentions (Oppenheimer 2012, 322). Drawing the spectators’ attention to the medium and therefore raising their awareness of theatricality, the gap between social reality and theatrical representation embodies the emancipatory potential for the spectators to demystify the mediating process of images and performing arts.

2. Participatory Culture of Youtube
Artworks that are situated on the Internet have unique mediality and intermediality that offer a ‘double service’ that on one hand captures the mediated relations in specific moments, and on the other hand interrogates and denaturalises its processes to trigger critical perspectives (Dunlop 2024, 69). YouTube, as a well-established global online streaming platform, not only serves as a site of participatory culture but also becomes a cultural archive, a museum of accidents.

From an audience-centered perspective, Burgess and Green (2009) situate amateur videos in the history of vernacular creativity that is constituted by a wide variety of everyday creative practices. Viewing amateur videos on YouTube as forms of vernacular creativity is culturally significant because the creation and circulation of videos become a means of ‘social networking’ instead of existing merely as a mode of cultural production (ibid, 26). Regarding it as a ‘continuum of cultural participation’ (ibid, 57), YouTube operates its institutional function as a ‘coordinating mechanism’ (ibid) of various competing discourses and ideologies between individual and collective creativity. In this sense, not only do amateur videos move beyond the dichotomy of professional and amateur production, but YouTube as a platform also becomes an ‘enabler of encounters’ (ibid, 77) with socio-cultural differences across various identities and belief systems.

Additionally, beyond the intended consequences of how it is designed and used, YouTube accidentally becomes a cultural archive with open access globally, accommodating contemporary cultures from a wide range of sources (ibid, 88). Various vintage videos have been uploaded by amateur collectors and television curators (ibid). It not only functions as a preservation device but, more importantly, also allows for repurposing contents. With billions of monthly active users distributing content in audio and/or video formats and following interactions afforded by the platform itself (ibid, 90), YouTube has gradually turned into a disordered yet valuable cultural institution whose intermediary and curatorial roles are played by the users. In this way, YouTube is a chaotic yet living, public and dynamic archive of immense assets of memories and experiences.

3. Autism and Moving Images
Autism has been nosologically defined as a ‘persuasive neurodevelopmental disorder’ marked by difficulties in social communication, as well as sensory processing differences (Eastwood et al. 2020, 3). Until recently, medical research models still situate autism as a disability, focusing on identifying the ‘deficits’ and ‘impairments’ associated with ‘disorder’ (ibid). However, recent years have witnessed a shift from the deficit paradigm as such towards a new understanding of autism in the differences of how the world is experienced and engaged with (ibid). It offers society ways to look beyond the restrictions of established social norms (Eastwood 2016, 12). Instead of reinforcing the non-verbal as a lack and pathologizing autistic people as a magic closure, autism should rather be viewed as ‘a set of practices’ (Van Goidsenhoven 2020, 30) with a focus on the ‘relational and procedural’ (Van Goidsenhoven & De Schauwer 2020, 330). In her study of the constitutive aspects of the discursive practices of autistic self-expression, Van Goidsenhoven (2020, 50) points out that autistic people’s incapability in wielding languages conventionally results in difficulties in recognizing and valuing the subjects. She thus calls for attention to the materiality of languages and the understanding of alternative forms of life stories that embody ‘potential recalcitrance with regards to narrativity’ (ibid, 50).

In relation to the moving images, cinematic languages and techniques are largely based upon neurotypical norms and lived experiences (Eastwood et al. 2022, 2), widening the gap between representation and transmission of social knowledge of autistic experiences. From a Deleuzian perspective, Eastwood proposes the notion of ‘cinemautism’ as ‘an autistic cinema assemblage’ (Eastwood 2016, 11), a body-without-organs that moves beyond the realm of the symbolic and the existing modes of representation and towards a deep engagement with a social reality that relies less on traditional forms of human interaction (ibid, 12). By unmaking and unlearning the familiar positionality as a neurotypical spectator, the on-screen assemblages as such decolonise neurotypical meaning making processes and cancels its credibility by situating the spectators in alternative forms of affective experiences.

Speak My Language!: Friction as sites of knowledge transmission

I hate to burst people's bubble but just because I get to the same kinds of words other people use, doesn't mean I'm using the same path to get there [...]. (Baggs 2006)

In My Language showcases Baggs’ tactile communication with the environment of their apartment and later turns into an analysis of how people define Baggs as a non-verbal person and how Baggs themselves define thoughts, languages and concepts. The first half of the video presents Baggs’ ‘native language’ shown in a non-verbal fashion. Shot on a handheld camera, this part of the video demonstrates Baggs' repetitive movements and engagement with everyday items in their apartment. Accompanied by a constant humming sound whose source is unknown, we witness Baggs touching the keyboard and door handle with their hands, rubbing a book with their face, interacting with their surroundings with a rope or a paper, and waving their hand by the window [Figure 1]. All illustrate their obsession with tactical elements of their surroundings, including inanimate objects [Figure 2]. Without clear audiovisual guidance, however, a sense of disorientation derives from the spectators of what is happening and should be focused on. Failing to fulfil the expectations and desires for a smooth viewing experience, the video creates friction by its inability to reproduce cinematic and theatrical conventions, troubling its supposed category (Dunlop 2024, 65). The spectators gradually encounter the theatricality of the video, raising awareness of the mediating process of how the video is sustained by both audiovisual elements and more importantly, sensory and tactical textures that are essential experiences for autistic people. The sense of discomfort and uneasiness provoked by the video serves as a way for the spectators to question their own neurotypical behaviours and confront, instead, the neurodivergent experiences. As Baggs continuously feels and communicates with the inanimate objects within her home environment, the spectators are able to feel the forces of the object ‘as a relation to be lived’ (Manning 2009, 219).

Figure 1: Baggs waving the hand

Figure 2: ending credits of In My Language (2007)

In the second half of the video, Baggs starts to use voiceover to accompany their movements. Due to their loss of functional speech, Baggs makes their script audible through a computational text-to-speech tool. The result is an extremely mechanical and dull monotone voice that explains and translates the non-verbal way of communicating with and feeling the world that Baggs embodies in everyday life. In an attempt to translate and articulate the non-verbal behaviours into verbal descriptions for the neurotypical people to make sense of them, Baggs reinterprets the images the viewers are previously confused about. In interacting with running tap water with their fingers [Figure 3], the voiceover begins to claim that ‘the running water does not symbolise anything’ (Baggs 2007). As it is not intended for particular symbolic messages to be interpreted, it instantly cancels the voice-over’s assumed function of translating on-screen visual elements. However, their seemingly purposeless movements are ‘an ongoing response’ (Baggs 2007) to what is around Baggs, which is their mode of communicating. As the video imposes difficulties on spectators in translating non-verbal languages, the multisensory experiences of Baggs rather open up new possibilities for people to experience the linguistic structure of the languages that they otherwise have no adequate knowledge of.

Figure 3: Baggs interacting with water as the water interacts with them

Frictions are experienced by the spectators here again in the encounters between language expressibility and more-than-language multisensory experiences. Taylor (2003, 15) believes that the problem of untranslatability should in fact be treated as a positive proposition because the difficulty it imposes reveals the opaque specificities of embodied knowledge, lived experiences and nonverbal practices. In My Language exposes the untranslatable experiences through the failed promises of frictionless viewing experiences that are expected by the spectators. If neurotypical perspectives largely demarcate normality and knowledge that incorporate suppressions and devaluation of the neurodivergent people (Van Goidsenhoven 2020, 37), this video perhaps reproduces the linguistic violence that neurotypical people use against neurodivergent groups in daily life. It situates, confronts and challenges the audience with neurotypical norms in a relational position by denaturalizing their viewing process with the embodied experiences of being autistic in everyday life. Transforming friction into affective sites of knowledge production, spectatorship opens up the in-between moments of encountering neurodiverse experiences. The difficulty and frictions in the viewing experience are therefore transformed into an affective site of knowledge production, inviting the audience to participate in the complicated interplay between language, thoughts and articulation.

Spectatorship and Participatory Archive

Although they lost all their functional speech in their 20s, Baggs has been filming, editing and uploading their footage onto YouTube since 2006 (Cyborg Anthropology 2010). Apart from her YouTube career, she continued composing blogs about autism communities as well as autobiographical stories. It is worth noticing that during the time Baggs was active on the site, vlog videos were largely prevalent on the platform of YouTube with a focus on confessional culture and the focus on the ‘observation of everyday life’ (Burgess and Green 2009, 53). However, what does it mean for a neurotypical spectator to watch In My Language on a streaming platform, in this case, YouTube?

The technological infrastructure of YouTube provides this video with a co-creative environment and a domain of exchange for a global audience to participate and interact. The viewers might not be aware of the autistic symptoms of Baggs when clicking into the video, nor would they be informed of it later in the video. However, among hundreds of comments under In My Language, most commenters reflected their gratitude towards Baggs, as well as the growing awareness and understanding of autistic groups. The video therefore becomes relational in the sense that it allows for immediate interaction and in Nicolas Bourriaud’s sense, a ‘domain of exchange’ (Bourriaud 2010, 162) by clicking a like, leaving a comment, or sharing the link to a friend. Afforded by YouTube’s user interface for likes, comments and sharing, the platform enables the users to embody multiple identities — they are able to simultaneously be audiences, editors, critics, producers and distributors ‘at all various times and to varying degrees’ (ibid, 82). With the media affordances, the video has been translated by amateur users into multiple languages with increasing clicks and views [Figure 4], which increases the influence of autism awareness situated in the various cultural logics.

Figure 4: translated versions of In My Language (2007) on YouTube

Furthermore, situated in a public archive of lived experiences, In My Language not only enables YouTube users to participate but also, on a larger scale, challenges the canonical norms of moving images on the platform. The contents on YouTube are engaged with and valued largely in accordance with their specific genres and users, as well as their relevance to the everyday lived experiences of other users (Burgess and Green 2009, 57). In the translation of lived autistic experiences to a public presentation, YouTube serves as a mediator of participatory art and autobiographical self-expressions for neurodivergent groups. Baggs’ video produces forces for the audience to feel, know, and think about what moving images can learn from autistic experiences. Through articulating ‘relational series’ (Manning 2009 221), it serves not only as a personal enunciation of autistic experiences but also as a collective event with a global audience. Ultimately, the video becomes a site of encounters that not only demands spectatorial responses to the frictional experience but also invites the spectators to imagine and perceive a new method of reading, doing and archiving amateur moving images, especially for neurodivergent people.

Approaching Neurodiversity through Frictional Participation

In reconfiguring the epistemic modes of feeling and knowing, the form of expression in In My Language enables a rethinking of the theory of language itself. In Baggs’ fluid interactions with the relations and forms around her surrounding environment, the video creates the ‘enabling constraints’ (Manning 2009, 227) of relational processes. Autistic experiences in this video are not merely reflective — the viewers learn from these autistic experiences and move themselves with the experiences. It opens up an ‘extra-linguistic operation’ (Eastwood 2016, 24) for moving images that realize an alternative cinematic arrangement that conceives new identities and corporealities on the screen. Embodying frictions and constraints during a video on YouTube as a living archive, we, as neurotypical spectators, are asked to participate in an environment where language is taking form. On-screen assemblages of cinema usually constitute, delineate and operate a normative mode of knowledge production that both exposes and conceals certain subjectivities, leading to the othering and exclusion of neurodivergent experiences. In My Language, however, opens up a pre-linguistic and non-verbal environment in which neurodivergent experiences roam — it invites us to participate in the forming of languages as a collaborative spectatorial event, an alternative zone with neurodiverse potentialities.

However, several questions remain after this discussion. It for example raises the question of the ethics of spectatorship, in that having frictional viewing experiences does not exonerate the audience’s reiteration of visual pathological representations. On top of this, to what extent can contemporary cinema learn from neurodivergent experiences? How far should it go? It is rather an ongoing project that demands constant attention and endeavours to the current discussions on neurodiversity and inspection of the dynamic cultural logics of the global spectatorship.

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