Please Stand By was the film I need­ed after my autism diagnosis

“Light. It can trav­el for mil­lions of years before final­ly reach­ing its des­ti­na­tion. It goes lone­ly and alone, hop­ing that it will reach some­one. But what if it nev­er arrives? What if it nev­er finds a home? Because space is so vast, and time is so long, and out here it’s so easy to get lost.” So says Dako­ta Fanning’s Wendy dur­ing the open­ing min­utes of Ben Lewin’s 2017 film Please Stand By.

I under­stand just how easy it is to get lost, as I remained this way until receiv­ing my long-await­ed diag­no­sis for ASD (Autism Spec­trum Dis­or­der) in Feb­ru­ary. That piece of paper allowed me to final­ly con­nect the dots, to find and bet­ter under­stand who I am as a per­son. And for months after receiv­ing it, I spent hours trawl­ing cin­e­ma and TV, try­ing to find as much autis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion as I could to help under­stand myself even more, and most impor­tant­ly, to give myself a ref­er­ence point, out in the world, in fic­tion, to help me feel less alone in who I was, and my expe­ri­ences, and diagnosis.

The trou­ble was, all I could seem to find were sto­ries about autis­tic men who were prodi­gies, which is as far away from who I am as a per­son that you could pos­si­bly get. It was as if I’d gone from feel­ing lost to being found, and now just feel­ing unseen – lone­ly and sin­gu­lar in my expe­ri­ence, because the media seemed so devoid of an autis­tic char­ac­ter who was any­thing like me.

Then, a few weeks ago, I watched Please Stand By, and over the course of 90 min­utes final­ly saw my autis­tic self rep­re­sent­ed on screen. The film sees Fan­ning play a young autis­tic woman who is a writer and big Star Trek fan. She writes an entry for a Star Trek scriptwrit­ing com­pe­ti­tion but ends up hav­ing to trav­el to Los Ange­les in an attempt to hand deliv­er it after she realis­es that send­ing it through the post means that it won’t arrive in time.

The film has a glo­ri­ous warmth to it – while there is ten­sion and sad­ness through­out, direc­tor Lewin nev­er lingers too long on these moments. This is a rare film that deliv­ers a hap­py yet real­is­tic end­ing for an autis­tic char­ac­ter. Wendy doesn’t get every­thing she wants, but she grows as a per­son – and that’s the real­ly impor­tant thing. It isn’t at the loss of her being autis­tic, either, there is no mag­i­cal cure or fix for her being neu­ro­di­ver­gent because there doesn’t need to be one.

She’s a hap­py, con­tent per­son who by the end of the film has learnt so much about her­self and life in gen­er­al. But she’s still autis­tic, and Lewin shows this to be a good thing. Wendy is allowed to grow as a per­son while hav­ing her autism shown not only as a strength but also as a valu­able part of who she is, and I can’t tell you how impor­tant that is to me, who in my search have found pieces of media that belit­tle and deval­ue autis­tic peo­ple as less able or valu­able, just because of who they are.

The impor­tance of fam­i­ly and the bond between Wendy and her sis­ter Audrey (Alice Eve) slow­ly rebuild­ing itself through­out was love­ly to see, and it was also amaz­ing that Wendy had a car­ing and lov­ing care­giv­er in Scot­tie (Toni Col­lette). And while it has to be said that while hir­ing an actu­al autis­tic actress to play Wendy would have been best, Fan­ning does dri­ve the film with her cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mance – and the sup­port­ing actors are all fan­tas­tic, too – but again, despite the great per­for­mances and the occa­sion­al focus on char­ac­ters like Audrey and Scot­tie in the nar­ra­tive, the sto­ry remains Wendy’s. She goes on this jour­ney of inde­pen­dence and con­fi­dence and under­stand­ing, and no one else.

Please Stand By affords Wendy the lux­u­ry that only neu­rotyp­i­cal char­ac­ters are usu­al­ly afford­ed. Sim­ply put, she is allowed to be human, to be too trust­ing, and emo­tion­al, and messy – but also smart and cre­ative and resource­ful. Her autism is a big part of the film, but she isn’t oth­ered as part of the nar­ra­tive because she’s autis­tic. This is her sto­ry, and as a result, her being autis­tic is nor­malised in a way that I’ve nev­er seen before with autis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and will undoubt­ed­ly be just as edu­ca­tion­al to neu­rotyp­i­cal audi­ence mem­bers than the por­tray­al of autis­tic traits, while also being incred­i­bly impor­tant to any autis­tic viewers

Please Stand By is the film that final­ly pro­vid­ed me with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see myself – in all my autis­tic, nerdy glo­ry – rep­re­sent­ed on screen. Sure, there are lots of dif­fer­ences between me and Wendy, but I found this film at just the right time, and saw a char­ac­ter that I could relate to so strong­ly, that I no longer felt so alone. And I am so very grateful.