Special Disinterest: TOTIEK Reviews Sia's "Music"

No, you don't understand, it's really that bad

Welcome to my Substack! I’m Hannah Jocelyn, formerly known as Joshua Copperman, also known as Fell From The Tree, also known as “that writer who became a Swiftie so gradually I didn’t even notice.” I’m calling this The Only Times I’ve Ever Known as a reference to Billy Joel’s “Summer Highland Falls” - the full line is “they say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known.” And I’m trying to make the best of these times, as we all are. Follow the TOTIEK Spotify playlist here!

No preamble, this thing is too long:

BACKGROUND:

In lieu of returning to the stress of public attention, Sia hid in a wig and found herself a "muse”;  2014’s “Chandelier” starred 11 year old Maddie Ziegler furiously dancing in a blonde Sia wig. When follow-up This is Acting became an even bigger success, as did Sia’s “Elastic Heart” video with Ziegler and Shia LaBeouf, Sia’s confidence had grown to the point where she was wondering; “am I just a singer with good ideas, or am I a director?” For years, Sia had been working on a screenplay based on an autistic child she met while part of Alcoholics Anonymous, entitled Sister. The film depicts a recovering alcoholic (Named Zu, short for Kazu because quirky) sent to care for her Autistic half-sister while falling for a boxing instructor. It wasn’t supposed to be a musical at first — Sia even said she hates musicals and the way “[Broadway-trained] White women sing” when speaking with Variety — but once she learned she could get a higher budget by adding songs, a musical is what it became. 

Pulling out her time-tested “victim to victory” formula for a series of new songs, she created several tracks exploring the internal world of protagonist Music, who now gave the film its name. Sia used her clout to recruit the actors via social media, she wrote her pop songs with Jack Antonoff and Greg Kurstin, and she got the budget she was promised. The film completed shooting in 2017, and Sia spent three years in the editing room. Controversy arose first for casting a neurotypical actress Ziegler in the role of a non-verbal autistic child. Sia swore she did her research and consulted with Autism Speaks - controversial in the autistic community - on the film. Autism Speaks denied any collaboration, while rival organization Autistic Self-Advocacy Network denounced the film outright. The only groups who liked it were reportedly the Child Mind Institute and the National Center for Severe Autism, who inexplicably but somehow inevitably invoked the nefarious, nebulous phenomenon known as cancel culture in their open letter. Sia defended some of the decisions by recognizing that no two autistic people were alike, which was apparently permission to do whatever she wanted.

If you know about this film’s controversy it’s because she lashed out at Autistic strangers (“maybe you’re just a bad actor”) and lamented “fuckity fuck, why don’t you watch my film before you judge it” in a series of since-deleted tweets. “My intentions are awesome,” Sia insisted, and non-verbal people just couldn’t get on Twitter to praise her work. In an interview around this time, Sia corrected herself when talking about "special needs," shifting the phrasing to "special abilities,” a phrase that many Autistic people don’t even like. There’s this relentless condescension and ignorance towards the people she tried to support that permeates both the rollout and the movie itself. She eventually gave an honest apology, saying that the film’s insensitivity was “my responsibility, [and] my research was clearly not thorough enough, not wide enough."

I'm on the spectrum, but I will keep my personal experiences to a minimum here to avoid speaking over anyone. My goal is to describe why the movie fails on its own terms - if you want a more authentic perspective, here's an essay by someone who is non-verbal, a thread live-tweeting the movie by another autistic activist, and a breakdown of what else is wrong with this thing.

REVIEW:

Sia bragged in a Q&A that her film was several different movies at once, taking influence from directors like Spike Jonze. But here's the thing: Being John Malkovich was a magical realist comedy-drama at the same time. Jonze and Charlie Kaufman balanced the tone so beautifully that the shifts felt inevitable no matter how chaotic the plot became. Apparently, Sia thought the way to make a genre-blending film was to just... change genres and tones completely from scene to scene. This film would be worrisome if it was made well. Fortunately, it’s a fundamentally broken, poorly paced mess that even neurotypical people couldn’t possibly get through in one sitting.

The film was created in the editing room and the process there was torturous. (That’s true for larger-scale projects too - the first Iron Man famously began shooting with an incomplete script, but there were no twee musical numbers inside Tony Stark’s head.) Sia didn't give anyone direction, and mistaking a lack of vision for humility, she told her collaborators to “do your thing.”  Without a coherent focus, the post-production team could barely even get match cuts to line up because of Sia and Sebastian Wintero's insistence on "European, freehand" cinematography. The cinematography is actually one of the worst things about the movie; awkward in the dance scenes, consciously shaky in the quiet ones, always distracting in its attempts to be organic. Visually, the movie’s always on the edge of overload, which only works when Music actually melts down - the editors insert clips from opener “Oh Body” into the scene, as if other people are crowding her thoughts. If only literally anything else in the movie was that empathetic towards its titular character.

The way the music videos slip in and out of the narrative remind me of the infamous Family Guy cutaway gag where the entirety of David Bowie and Mick Jagger’s “Dancing In The Street” plays. Or some bizarre YouTube playlist where clips from Lifetime movies are interspersed with episodes of PBS’s ZOOM. (Incidentally, Tig Notaro’s role as the bored host of a children’s show is the unequivocal best thing about the movie.) I’m no expert on musicals, but the numbers are bizarrely choreographed and the blocking looks nonsensical, especially on opener "Oh Body" - there’s no space, everyone is just stranded as the camera tries to fit them all into frame. Confusingly, main characters Ebo and Zu get their own sequences, which makes no sense within the logic of the film - I imagine if someone asked Sia about this, she’d respond by saying “they needed to find the Music in themselves,” laughing at her own pun before doubling down and saying that everyone is a little bit autistic. 

Not that anyone is anything in this movie. We know little about Ebo's personality beyond his Ghanaian background, and what we do about Zu's personality comes from the "free spirit" descriptor in the official synopsis. Ebo teases Zu by saying "There's a dark girl vibe," in her but there's not any vibe going on at all. They do their best, and somehow they come out with good chemistry. If Sia had just stuck to writing a quiet movie about companionship and recovery, maybe with the occasional fantasy sequence or quirky moment, we would be spared what she thinks of the autistic community and might even have an okay movie on our hands. Instead, Sia stuffs her movie with big issues, because Sia needs us to know how many groups of marginalized people she can misunderstand. Sia titled her 2008 album Some People Have REAL Problems, and apparently Ebo’s brother cheating on him with his fiancé wasn't enough of a REAL problem, so she wrote her lead with AIDS. That plot point comes up only slightly more often than breast cancer does in The Room, and is just as effective.

If that’s how she treats her main characters, side character Felix never had a chance - a similarly non-verbal kid that takes boxing lessons with Ebo, as well as a potential love interest for Music, he's accidentally killed by his abusive father in a scene that should be emotionally stirring but lasts about ten seconds. The absolute lowest point in the movie is when Music sees sirens and smiles at the flashing lights, because apparently autistic people don’t know what sirens are? Even when it’s addressed in the following musical number, Music waves Felix goodbye without any emotion at all, let alone sorrow. 

Sia’s lack of grasp on tone makes Ziegler ever-so-slightly sympathetic. Since "Chandelier," Ziegler has become an extension of the Sia brand. They even toured the world together, Maddie dancing while her godmother sang at the side of the stage. By “saving” (her words) Zigeler from the world of TLC’s Dance Moms, Sia just subsumed her goddaughter into another franchise. As the face of Music, she's going to get the brunt of criticism and hate, but under these circumstances it could have been a lot worse. There were even some moments where I felt a bit of recognition;  I appreciate the inclusion of stimming, her hands rubbing against walls and fabrics.  (She plans to work with Ziegler again in the future, making projects with the intention to "keep her safe." I’ve done enough ad hominem in this review, so I’ll let you come to your own conclusions here.) Sia thought about casting an autistic actor in the title role, but the bright sets and flashing lights overwhelmed them and Ziegler was soon back in the lead. Ziegler had her own concerns; on the first day of shooting, she came to Sia in tears, worried audiences would think she was making fun of autistic people.  Sia promised Ziegler she would never let that happen. 

As hard as everyone tries to salvage the movie they’re in, what it gets wrong about treating Autistic people - the clunky implementation of AAC devices (the benefits and drawbacks of which Cal Montgomery details here) and the prone restraint scenes are unforgivable, particularly Ebo saying "I'm crushing her with my love.” All of that could be taken out and the movie is unchanged. This could have been worse; Shia LaBeouf apparently could have been Zu. The songs could have been less connected. I want to see what the rough cut was like -- if this is the movie Sia is proud of, what was it like when she wasn’t? But the real final blow is the anonymity of the actual music in Music. Sia openly admitted to songs she disliked from the This is Acting era with the sense that she could break out of her formula. Judging from these songs, she can’t; these could be on anything Sia’s done post-”Chandelier”. The other blow is the film’s distributor; one of the biggest stars in the world landed her film with Vertical Entertainment, responsible for bringing films like John Travolta’s flop Gotti to the public. It’s honestly a relief that people won’t see this, and if they do they’ll be too distracted to internalize the misguided lessons Sia puts forth about autistic individuals.

Thanks for reading. Next week, an interview with string arranger, producer, and songwriter Johan Lenox!