*Spoilers.*
A quick personal note. Over the last few years, my Twitter feed has gradually filled up with posts from neurodivergent folks, especially autistics and ADHDers, fueling something of an algorithmic personal revelation. I know some will find this journey familiar: you like a few posts about autism, going, “Good point!” or, “So true!”, so the app keeps showing you more and more relatable neurodivergent content. And at some point, you start to wonder, “Why does all this resonate with me so much?” I don’t have any sort of diagnosis, and I haven’t decided whether to pursue one, but in recent months I’ve gotten more interested in exploring my own possible neurotype. So while I read articles and watch videos from autistic/ADHD YouTubers on my own time, I wanted to introduce an outlet for discussing some of this stuff on the blog as well. And naturally, that comes in the form of fictional characters.
Neurodivergent Alley is a new feature to celebrate ND and ND-coded characters—mostly autistic and/or ADHD to start with, because that’s what I’m finding very personal at the moment, but I may branch out into other neurotypes in the future. And while I’m sure I’ll include some characters who are explicitly identified in the story as neurodivergent, most of these posts will probably get this “(Headcanon)” caveat. Even before my more recent self-examination, I’ve tended to be more drawn to characters who aren’t outright stated, or even maybe intended by the writers, to be neurodivergent. Especially when it comes to autism, it feels like there’s more room for nuance and variety when the story doesn’t set out to give us an Autistic Character or Autistic Story. When writers simply create a character who happens to have a lot of autistic traits, there’s often less stereotyping along the narrower perceptions of what autistic people look like.
Okay, housekeeping stuff out of the way. Let’s talk about O.J.!
In one of the earliest scenes in the movie, O.J. is on a film set with his horse Lucky, preparing for his animal wrangling duties. He’s stressed because his sister Em is supposed to be there handling the people part while he stays focused on Lucky, but she’s late. Their dad used to handle this side of the business, but he died six months ago, and without Em, it’s on O.J. to try and impress upon people the importance of not getting too close to the horse, looking him in the eye, approaching him from behind, etc.
O.J. is far more tuned into Lucky than his is any person on the set. He’s not big on eye contact either, and it’s clear that the noise and bustle is overstimulating for both of them. O.J. tries to soothe and calm Lucky, and when he’s called on to start the “safety meeting,” still antsy that Em hasn’t showed yet, he rocks a little as he averts his eyes from others and recites his preamble in a low voice.
This scene is in sharp contrast with how we see O.J. on the farm, where he keeps the quiet company of the horses. He’s comfortable there, attuned to the horses’ needs and relaxed in the daily routine of caring for them. After Hurricane Em finally blows onto the set and takes over the safety meeting (and they quickly lose the job because she never actually tells people not to stand behind the horse,) she tags along back to the farm, getting up in O.J.’s space and disrupting his quiet. He frequently doesn’t act how she wants him to, trying to get her to commit to a plan for how long she’s going to stay and barely reacting to her jokes and nudges. And she pesters him a little, prodding him to do this or that, later pointing out to him when he’s bringing down the room, but she also loves him and does sometimes relate to him on his own terms.
I just love how well O.J. is coded as an autistic person—maybe diagnosed, maybe not—who thrives in his safe environment and gets a lot of private joy from his special interest, the horses. On a chaotic film set, he’s more shut down and people are put off by him, but on the farm, he’s kind of the man. As he and Em consider the possibility that a UFO is hiding in the clouds near the farm, he’s intrigued, but his first priority is protecting the horses—not just keeping them from getting taken by the mysterious thing in the sky, but also keeping them fed, watered, and cared for amid all the creepiness that’s happening.
I like how comfortable he is around the horses compared to how he can struggle to relate to people. At different times, O.J. actually uses horse trainer techniques to communicate with humans—When Angel is at the farm setting up the security cameras, O.J. clicks his tongue at him, and when Em and Angel are trying to outrun the UFO and get to the truck, O.J. taps his thigh to get them to hurry.
Best of all, O.J’s autistic traits help him and the other characters save the day, in a non-stereotypical “human supercomputer savant” kind of way. Because he interacts betters with animals than people, he’s the one to realize that they’re not dealing with a spaceship but a huge extraterrestrial animal. This completely changes the dynamic—it’s not a race that’s come to study humans or invade Earth, it’s a predator that’s hunting. Because O.J. isn’t comfortable with eye contact anyway, he’s the first to figure out that the creature is prone to attack when people look at it. This knowledge allows him, Em, and Angel (and later Holst) to stay alive in their confrontations with it. And O.J.’s special interest in horse training gives him the tools to put together the plan to capture the creature on film, which has been his and Em’s goal since they first glimpsed it.
Furthermore, there isn’t some Moment or Lesson where the film is like, “See what O.J. can do, bless him!” It’s not pointed or heavy-handed. It just is. This character brought me so much happiness to watch onscreen, and he was an obvious choice for the debut of Neurodivergent Alley.
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