ik ben niks (i am nothing)

[mellowtigger]

I learned two linguistic facts this week.  First, I learned that leet-speak is not limited to English.  Second, I learned that English vocabulary incorporates more Dutch words than I ever would have guessed.  I recognized most of the numbers, but there were other familiar words too.  Unless Dutch itself gets the pronunciations from German, which I already know is a heavy influence on English. 

I'm succumbing to deja vu at the moment.  I can't find while searching, though, that I've written about this topic in LiveJournal before.  Anyway...

Upon recommendation, I watched a Belgian film about autism and bullying.  The title of the film "Ben X" is meant to be a leet-speak reference to the phrase "I am nothing".  (It shouldn't be confused with "Ben 10", which is a good tv animated series.)  The main character, Ben, has a fulfilling online life and so the leet reference is appropriate for the movie.  Throughout the movie, actually, we see reminders of the online metaphor.  Human bullies are replaced by harassing orcs, for example, but the persistance of the metaphor carries it much farther than such simple body replacements.  It also carries the lesson that online bravery needs to find its way into real life expression, albeit more peaceful expression than simple online combat.    Ben's final solution to the bullying problem is supposedly taken from a real life newspaper article, but I couldn't find the original reference on my own.  According to the IMDB entry, the film has won a few awards in 2007 and 2008.  I think the film deserves them.  The pace gets a little weak or hard to follow at the end, but otherwise it's a good film.  (Ben plays the game "Archlord" online.  I had heard of it before seeing this movie.  It's said to have a decent crafting system, so I'm tempted to try it out now just to see what they implemented.)  

The film reminds me of some parts of my own early life. 

• I remember sitting in an insulated box room doing the hearing tests to prove that I wasn't really going deaf.  I just didn't hear people.
• I remember growing up in a house filled with people that I didn't really comprehend.
• I remember not knowing how to act around a little brother, as I preferred to be alone.
• I remember my parents telling me at one point that I should do "whatever it takes" to defend myself, essentially giving me permission to hit my younger brother if that's what it took to keep from being bullied by him.  He had learned that the only way to get me to interact was to annoy me to the point of anger.  (I think it was valuable for me, though, to learn in youth how to recognize such emotion in myself.  It makes adulthood much less dangerous for everyone.)
• I remember looking at walls instead of people because it was less stressful.
• I remember other people saying that I didn't talk much.  I remember that everyone else talked too much.
• I remember deciding in college that I was going to make myself into a social person, social like other people were, although I wasn't as observant as Ben about cataloging their behavior.  (Which might be why the effort was such a failure for me.)
• I remember devoting too much attention to planning my own death.  I found a different solution at the last moment, and Ben does too.

There are differences, though. 

• I'm glad that I never endured the kind of bullying and teasing in high school that Ben did.  I think that I was different enough to be seen mostly as "neutral territory" in high school, so people from both high and low social classes would talk to me.  I was no threat to either caste, so I was an interloper permitted safe passage for my temporary involvements.
• I didn't have the supportive love-interest who helped rescue me from my torments.  I learned to survive on my own.
• In high school and college, I already knew how to disperse rage/frustration.  (Valuable early life training.)
• When my senses blur in social stress, I think it's more like the confusion/fear depicted in "Finding Forrester", although I recognize the piecemeal focus that's used in "Ben X".

Overall, "Ben X" is a good film.  I think it's a very good introduction to (one person's) autistic adolescence.   The ending is too close to happily-ever-after (depending on how you interpret the last few seconds), and real life is not like that.  It's still a good movie, though.

Comments

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

It's weird - looking at the Wiki for autism I would say not; apart from some severe resistance to change at points in my life; and a love of sameness and a little bit of ritualistic behaviour (unlike most people I can do the same thing, eat the same specific meals again and again - pissing off restaurants and takeaways in the process - and not get bored; but weirdly other stuff I can't) but otherwise the other stuff listed no, not as far as I know (although my mother or father never mentioned anything wrong).

Certainly at least a loner with some social phobia (as in I have to sometimes psych myself up before entering a room, or talk to people, sometimes I just don't want to - walking into a room of people I don't know or a place I've not been is hard for me) and depression, maybe slight mania.

I started to wonder about this because of my partner, who is incredibly bright, a classification freak (was making lists and organising his book collection with cards at about 6) but like me seems to have missed something in his social programming, or sometimes like me is being an 'asshole' and doesn't really care for social mores, it's hard to tell sometimes...certainly the extrovert/small talk/social programming seems to have been learned at least in me by mistake and hard work. So I can function more than I could at 17, where I was so shy I would automatically ask people what they thought when asked a question - partly my parents divorce, but maybe something else. But that curious empathetic blindness I get, I dunno where that's from. Sometimes I just miss the cues.