Benedict Cumberbatch is not ableist
(This card was made by a neurodivergent actor. If you are not actor please don’t invalidate this information just because you don’t understand)
* Ableism is discrimination or social prejudice against people with any type of disability.
The controversy began because when playing Frankenstein he mentioned that the director advised him to investigate about autism. People's impression was that he was comparing autistic people to a monster. First clarification, Frankenstein is the scientist, not the creature.
However, it should not be forgotten that the recommendation was made ACTORALLY.
The first thing that must be understood is that the construction of all the characters, whether human or not, are managed from human psychology, since it is the only one that we know.
Regardless of whether Frankenstein is a monster or not, his character is going to be built from what is known by HUMAN psychology.
Second, the controvelsial comparison about a “kid trapped in an adult” was not made about people with autism, but the character. I’ll explain the meaning of that here.
The second question asked is, what does autism have to do with Frankenstein?
To answer this question we have to go directly to the story of Frankenstein: his creator made it all at once as an adult, he "born" by skipping all relevant growth stages. Because of this, Frankenstein does not have the basic understanding that an adult human has regarding his environment, social norms, or common behaviors of the people around him.
Frankenstein is confused and shows difficulties in being connected or behaving as expected. He hasn’t learned it, and he will have to do it from the start.
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurobiological developmental disorder that shows persistent deficiencies in social communication and interaction as well as restrictive and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. Due to the aforementioned conditions, The creature is expected to take natural behaviors that can be seen in people on the autism spectrum.
The creature shows deficiencies in communication, since it is something new for him, therefore it is seen as a failure in his learning. His repetitive patterns are in favor of knowing what human behavior is like, or to imitate it until understanding it. The creature is just getting to know himself and the world around him, “What do I like? who I am? Who are these people around me? What is right and what is wrong?” His body was already grown when his mind was not.
Studying autism to develop the creature as a character let you understand better what is going on in the character's mind.
Remember that is part if his CONSTRUCTION, therefore this does NOT mean that the creature has autism.
It is very common for actors to study various mental illnesses or disorders, even if the character does not explicitly have them. Since the objective is to understand their mind, emotions, defects, qualities and limitations.