How dyslex­ia helps some of the biggest film­mak­ers to think differently

Defined by the British Dyslex­ia Asso­ci­a­tion, ​“dyslex­ia is a learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ty that pri­mar­i­ly affects the skills involved in accu­rate and flu­ent word read­ing and spelling.” Dyslex­ia exists around the globe, across all cul­tures and lan­guages, and even today car­ries a sus­tained stig­ma, despite the fact that in the UK at least one in ten peo­ple are dyslex­ic.

How­ev­er, if we get down to basics, dyslex­ia is sim­ply a dif­fer­ent way of pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion. So it shouldn’t be too hard to imag­ine that there are also poten­tial advan­tages with this dif­fer­ent way of think­ing – although that’s easy for me to say; I’m dyslexic.

Of the dyslex­ic expe­ri­ences I had at school, the most arche­typ­al was the humil­i­a­tion of strug­gling to read aloud in class – an expe­ri­ence shared by many peo­ple with dyslex­ia, includ­ing movie leg­end Steven Spiel­berg. In an inter­view with Friends of Quinn (an online com­mu­ni­ty that offers resources and sup­port for young adults with learn­ing dif­fer­ences), he shared ​“It all stemmed from the fact that I was embar­rassed to stand up in front of the class and read”.

An all-too-com­mon start­ing point, he con­tin­ues, ​“Dyslex­ia was the first thing that led me to realise that I was dif­fer­ent although I didn’t have a name for it, I just knew that I dread­ed going to school, because if I was called on… that day would be anoth­er long day in a long series of the worst days of my life”. But thank­ful­ly, ​“mak­ing movies was my great escape”.

Con­sid­er­ing movies as a means of escapism is noth­ing new, but in the con­text of the dyslex­ic expe­ri­ence, find­ing com­fort in a medi­um that cel­e­brates sto­ry­telling and imag­i­na­tion in a non-lit­er­ary form can be extreme­ly liberating.

With­in the past few years, there has been a shift in the research around the study of peo­ple with dyslex­ia. More and more research cor­rob­o­rates the key new idea that dyslex­ic peo­ple are prone to advan­tages due to the unique way their brain works. The over­all mes­sage of the 2022 study led by Dr Helen Tay­lor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, is that dyslex­ia should be rede­fined as a strength rather than a disability.

The research by Dr Helen Tay­lor explains that the key areas of enhanced abil­i­ties for peo­ple with dyslex­ia are dis­cov­ery, inven­tion, and cre­ativ­i­ty. It explores the enhanced cog­ni­tive advan­tages for peo­ple with dyslex­ia, due to the mul­ti­sen­so­ry ways in which infor­ma­tion is processed by a dyslex­ic brain. The dyslex­ic brain has a height­ened abil­i­ty to con­nect and car­ry out unusu­al com­bi­na­tions of ideas which can inspire orig­i­nal think­ing. This skill of inno­v­a­tive thought goes hand-in-hand with good storytelling.

It should be no sur­prise then that peo­ple with dyslex­ia have excelled in the art of sto­ry­telling; Octavia E. But­ler and Agatha Christie were both very suc­cess­ful authors and both dyslex­ic. How­ev­er, when we mix in that for peo­ple with dyslex­ia, dif­fi­cul­ties when it comes to read­ing, writ­ing, and spelling are renowned, it’s no won­der that so many tal­ent­ed dyslex­ic sto­ry­tellers, turn instead to film as a medi­um of expres­sion. It’s not just Steven Spiel­berg who has spo­ken pub­licly about his dyslex­ia diag­no­sis – Mar­tin Scors­ese, Steve McQueen and Spike Lee have all spo­ken about the ways in which being dyslex­ic has con­tributed to their film­mak­ing abilities.

More than sto­ry­tellers, more than direc­tors, Spiel­berg, Scors­ese, McQueen and Lee are all auteurs in the truest sense of the term. Speak­ing in a 2019 inter­view in The Times, Lee said ​“Being a film direc­tor, you lead a lot of peo­ple, and I’ve always had that in me. Even when I was a lit­tle kid, I was the one that would organ­ise all the games.” You know when you’re watch­ing a Spike Lee joint, and it’s clear the high lev­el of con­trol he has over his films to deliv­er his dis­tinc­tive style. Lead­er­ship, a key skill for an auteur to actu­alise their film­mak­ing vision, aligns again as a skill high­light­ed as an excep­tion­al area for dyslex­ic thinkers.

Speak­ing with two aspir­ing film­mak­ers in 2018, McQueen explains, ​“For me the most impor­tant thing when film­mak­ing is sound. Image and sound of course were much more height­ened because my oral read­ing wasn’t as good”. McQueen exem­pli­fies the mul­ti­sen­so­ry way in which dyslex­ic learn­ing occurs, using mul­ti­ple sens­es and there­fore engag­ing mul­ti­ple areas of the brain to achieve new and unique outcomes.

Think­ing back to McQueen’s Small Axe anthol­o­gy, in par­tic­u­lar Lover’s Rock, it’s clear to see how these skills were used to cre­ate more intense­ly immer­sive, emo­tive imagery through a fore­ground­ed sound­track. Set amongst a 1980’s blues par­ty, the music and sound of par­ty­go­ers pro­vide us with a diegetic sound­track, paired with incred­i­ble imagery of sweat drip­ping down walls and close-up track­ing cam­er­a­work that cre­ates a unique­ly intense view­ing experience.

For some­one with dyslex­ia, watch­ing a film can be an all-around more engag­ing expe­ri­ence. Accord­ing to research by Made By Dyslex­ia, 84% of dyslex­i­cs are above aver­age at rea­son­ing (recog­nis­ing and under­stand­ing pat­terns, cal­cu­lat­ing, and eval­u­at­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties and mak­ing deci­sions). When I’m watch­ing a film, it feels like one big rea­son­ing exer­cise. Aim­ing to under­stand the char­ac­ters, their actions and their moti­va­tions for them; the progress of the plot points and how on earth we are going to get to the res­o­lu­tion from here.

Of course, this kind of movie-watch­ing expe­ri­ence can be had by neu­ro­di­ver­gent and neu­rotyp­i­cal peo­ple alike, but when it comes to con­nect­ing and inter­sect­ing ideas in the dyslex­ic brain, there seem to be more oppor­tu­ni­ties for orig­i­nal thought and inno­va­tion –although when watch­ing any who­dunit film my rea­son­ing often leads to accus­ing any­one with even a sec­ond of screen time as being the assailant. This rea­son­ing strength has often been linked to the idea of explor­ing the unknown, a height­ened abil­i­ty to sim­u­late an unwit­nessed past and to make pre­dic­tions about the future. For a dyslex­ic view­er, this can cre­ate a more immer­sive experience.

Con­sid­er­ing the ways in which we might think dif­fer­ent­ly, we might begin to see the future Dr Helen Tay­lor sug­gest­ed, in which dyslex­ia is rede­fined as a strength rather than a dis­abil­i­ty. We should recog­nise the exam­ple that has been set by great dyslex­ic minds and encour­age peo­ple with dyslex­ia to explore their unique strengths in new and cre­ative ways. After all, the future of cin­e­ma can only be strength­ened by inclu­siv­i­ty, and encour­ag­ing more cre­ative, orig­i­nal thinkers.