I have a funny relationship with Sia's music. I tripped over her the same way we all did: at the end of Six Feet Under, and that song became woefully overused. It's not even a bad song, it's amazing, but now you can only think of that Cyberbully movie and the suicide scene (I stupidly kinda felt that scene was still pretty emotional but it's not very good, it's the fucking song that moves you not what's on screen). And it was used perfectly in the initial sense. Once was enough.
So, in terms of her movie Music, once turned out to be far too much. I'm not going watch this given I've seen enough now that the initial reactions weren't overblown enough to put an end to this. I've defended Sia in terms of her Shia music video, I liked it, it was emotional and I refused to see it as pedophilic, I worry about people who see that where it's not intended. But this incident didn't really get her to think about how to respond with sensitivity, which is necessary. She lashed out more and got angry. She's had a misdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder which damaged her life and led to some alcoholism. But I didn't know anything about her weird relationship with the dancer in all her videos, Maddie Ziegler. I supposed if we'd all found out six years ago they were working on a movie about autism, which, on inspection looks like it belongs back in 2015 when she wrote it, we wouldn't have thought much of it. Worse, we may have considered it brave and bold, like Rain Man. Maybe she just went, no too late to revise with actual up to date information, let's maybe leave it and actually skirt some of the danger zones, like working with the worst organisation that "advocates" for autism by literally spending resources to eliminate it from existence like it's of the devil. I think she just went too far down the road, spent too much money and couldn't get more to fix it. But I can't even argue that because it was after the release of the trailer she realised she backed all the wrong horses. Good intentions do nothing to save this, apparently.
Look, I fell for Jenny Mccarthy's BS at that start, and thought she was on to something with the vaccine bullshit because back then, we were all working with the least amount of info. Adults who were autistic had no clue they were on the spectrum. Parents were operating clueless to this, so they were ready to blame a vaccine. But once we tried to reverse the damage of one failed, misrepresented study, it was too late. People are going to die now, and indeed have died, due to the massive rise of anti-vaxxing bullshit. We have to worry about political parties decrying mandatory COVID vaccinations (which hasn't been introduced). We have to worry about parents feeding their kids actual bleach to "cure" their autism. We have to imprison well-intentioned parents who are practically starving their infants with bone broth to keep them healthy. (Some of the responses I have heard from these people, some are unequivocally evil and controlling, and some are just sadly misguided).
And now we have to contend with this movie. Which needs to be so heavily derided and dismissed and discredited just to keep it from doing more harm than good. Cutting out scenes aren't going to keep it from being shallow and ableist. Yelling at people to save their judgements until the credits roll won't make it less of a dumpster fire. Sia herself seems to have really lost the plot. Her bellicose reactions to legitimate concerns on Twitter were horrifying. Now she's left Twitter entirely. There's no way you can stem the tide of criticism now. The intended audience voiced concern and, well, it turned out to be so much worse than people thought.
Tragically, she also managed to get Henry Rollins and Ben Schwatz on board, albeit in smaller roles, maybe where they weren't privy to the entire production, they may have signed on with similar good intentions. She also got Juliette Lewis (who was in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?* which isn't a bad movie but very much a product of its time) but then Lewis is also a known member of The Church of Scientology, (not sure if that's a current thing but it was so before), so I don't think she's the smartest person either. The nicest reviews seem to only focus purely on the music and the "nuanced" performance from Maddie, who I now feel awful for because she's far too young to understand what Sia was asking her to do: Go Full R-word.
I had an issue with Keira Knightly's performance in A Dangerous Method on my first watch, I felt her overwrought acting pushed her depiction of someone in the grip of neurosis into unbelievably offensive territories. On another watch I didn't find it as bad but I was cringing. What I saw of Maddie's performance made me cringe too. I always found Sia's love of colours, props, pipe-cleaners and paints so Play School, but I liked most of the songs off her last couple of albums. Until I just stopped listening. I was so into them then I just went, meh, over it. And it's not like it's awful music, it's good. People wanted her to write for them, she seemed the type to want to fade into the background and write and not perform, but then David Guetta outed her version of Titanium, after a leak featuring Mary J Blige and Katy Perry passing despite Sia writing it for her, and she sort of took off from there. In her words, she never wanted that. Which is something I can appreciate, it even inspired something I wrote because I found the idea of her being the opera singer behind the waif on stage kind of romantic. (I actually prefer She Wolf to be honest). But maybe Guetta's decision led us here by accident too. If she had less fame then, she'd have less infamy now.
Now, she's an official garbage person, and she probably has retired because there's no coming back from this. Its theatrical release was small, people probably won't stream it. It's a critical flop, she may have destroyed Maddie's career, however I wouldn't blame Maddie at all, she might grow up and distance herself from Sia, given she's already had a difficult childhood in the sphere of the toxic Dance Moms arena. And given Sia steered her away from another project, she might come to resent her surrogate stage mother too. There's no way you could blame her for any of this, and I feel terrible for her. Sia can fade out on this, Maddie probably can't afford to. So I hope she's supported by better adults going forward.
Anyway, I guess I'll still listen to like the one Sia song I still like. I'm kinda bummed it's another artist you have to grapple with when flicking through your music, but that's my privilege talking. I prefer to just enjoy the art and ignore the artist now, and yeah, I feel bad I recently paid for a couple of Manson tracks before he was #MeToo-ed, but I won't defend Sia anymore. She's slipped off into indefensible territory on this one simply by not showing sensitivity to rational disapproval. Perhaps she has an illness that prevents her from controlling her emotions. She had an outlet for that and we all got to benefit from it up until this point. She had the day job you're not supposed to quit yours for. And she fucked it up.
Colour me shocked (sarcasm) but Sia's since discovered she's autstic. She thought she had bipolar the pipeline is absolutely real, she's basically lived out my life with more drugs and booze. I really do like her music, I don't think she's a terrible person, she just reacted terribly to legitimate criticism. She's not like Kanye levels of fascist where no amount of acceptance into a community can fix. I totally believe this and I'd be willing to let it go, but I'm not watching her movie even if she's put warnings on it. If I found out she was back talking to Autism Speaks (like another misguided actor), then I'd be more willing to never listen to her music again. As I said, I go through a big love of her music then just burn out and get bored with it. It looks like others can't forgive her. I see why. It's more my concern that so many people are going to just use this the way they use other mental health "diagnoses" to get out of legitimate punishments and jail terms. The rest of my medication is also kicking in and I just realised how fucking tired I am and how much I do not want to touch this one. (I lied, I put my piece out there it's more a lament she could've handled shit way better).
*I got hella bored with no internet the other day and was doing exactly what I do with Netflix with an external hard drive full of movies so I selected this before I went to bed just for noise. Honestly, I couldn't watch it. It's genuinely so much harder to commend Leo's performance in light of what happens in Music. It's tarnished Rain Man, I'm sure, and even movies like Nell, which were supposed masterpieces, Nell's still essentially a beautiful film if not overly dramatic. It's this notion you're mocking the handicapped at this point, that despite the sincerity it's now been transformed into parody. Even if a community heralded it back then, current trends and attitudes on representation have changed. If you do have a performer who is genuinely disabled, you have to avoid tokenising them.
