10.13130/2036-461X/16393
One of the most original, recent contributions of contemporary European seriality to the crime genre has been the introduction of a notable number of detectives repeatedly diagnosed as autistic by autistic online communities. Titles such as the&nbsp;Millennium saga, Sherlock, Forbrydelsen, Bron/Broen, and, more recently, Astrid et Raphaëlle, are all widely debated within autistic online communities. This article investigates the unique critical perspective brought by the autistic parlance on these popular products, through a survey of blogs, social networks, fanfiction, and videos, in English and French. The analysis of this material reveals that there is a whole spectrum of different opinions among autists when it comes to their approval, or disapproval, of media representations of neurodiversity, oscillating between complaints for the persistence of the ‘savant autist’ stereotype and a grateful appreciation of the effort to portray the condition in positive and empowering ways. Most of the comments reflect the stances of the neurodiversity movement and the complex context of autism advocacy, by which autistic individuals reclaim the right to speak for themselves and stand up to fight for a more inclusive society.
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Disability Studies
European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation
Text.Serial.Journal
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Thematic issue / Section thématique
2021-11-17
2021-09-19
2021-11-17
2022-12-30
145-174
Cinéma & Cie
Monica Dall’Asta
2021/11/17
10.13130/2036-461X/16393
145
University of Bologna
2036-461X
36/37
Disability Studies
en
174
European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16393/14749
21
                                                                                       European Neurodivergent
                                                                                       Detectives and the Politics of Autism
                                                                                       Representation
                                                                                       Monica Dall’Asta, University of Bologna




                                                                                       One of the most original, recent contributions of contemporary European seriality                         Keywords
                                                                                       to the crime genre has been the introduction of a notable number of detectives
                                                                                                                                                                                European TV crime series
                                                                                       repeatedly diagnosed as autistic by autistic online communities. Titles such as the
                                                                                       Millennium saga, Sherlock, Forbrydelsen, Bron/Broen, and, more recently, Astrid             Autism representation
                                                                                       et Raphaëlle, are all widely debated within autistic online communities. This article                 in the media
                                                                                       investigates the unique critical perspective brought by the autistic parlance on        Autistic female detectives
                                                                                       these popular products, through a survey of blogs, social networks, fanfiction, and                Autistic fandom
                                                                                       videos, in English and French. The analysis of this material reveals that there is a
                                                                                                                                                                                                Reception
                                                                                       whole spectrum of different opinions among autists when it comes to their approval,
                                                                                       or disapproval, of media representations of neurodiversity, oscillating between                   Disability studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       complaints for the persistence of the ‘savant autist’ stereotype and a grateful                                  DOI
                                                                                       appreciation of the effort to portray the condition in positive and empowering ways.     10.13130/2036-461X/16393
                                                                                       Most of the comments reflect the stances of the neurodiversity movement and the
                                                                                       complex context of autism advocacy, by which autistic individuals reclaim the right
                                                                                       to speak for themselves and stand up to fight for a more inclusive society.




                                                                                       INTRODUCTION1
                                                                                         The trope of the autistic detective has become so widespread in TV
                                                                                       seriality over the last few years that it deserves to be regarded as a major
                                                                                       feature of contemporary popular culture. In a way, it all started off with
                                                                                       Sherlock Holmes and his eccentric oddities, like ‘his little monograph on
                                                                                       the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar and cigarette tobacco, his
                                                                                       clear powers of observation and deduction, unclouded by the emotions of
                                                                                       everyday people, and the extreme unconventionality’2 of his investigative
                                                                                       methods. And yet it is important to note that the association of fictional
                                                                                       detectives with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) could only emerged as a
                                                                                       product of reception, for of course, at the time when Conan Doyle published
                                                                                       his stories, the autism diagnostic label was still far from being around.3
                                                                                         Initiated by psychiatrists and neuroscientists looking for representations
                                                                                       to help the public understand the ‘autism enigma’, the debate around the
                                                                                       neurodiverse characteristics of many a fictional detective has now become


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                                                                                      
      ubiquitous in the context of autistic forums and fan communities, serving
      as a means to not only make meaning of the condition in empowering ways,
      but also question and debate the stereotypes continuously surfacing in
      contemporary media representations and the cultural discourse at large.
        This article presents an analysis of the reception of a few extremely
      popular recent European TV dramas—Sherlock (United Kingdom, 2010-
      2017), Bron/Broen (Sweden-Denmark 2011-2018), Forbrydelsen (Denmark
      2007-2012), and Astrid et Raphaëlle (France-Belgium 2019-)—revolving
      around eccentric figures of (often female) detectives that have been
      repeatedly diagnosed by fans as autistic or neurodivergent. The autistic
      audience’s response to these shows is examined through a survey of online
      forums, fanfiction portals, blogs and social networks, with the purpose to
      identify the recurrent motifs and motivations that lie behind the appraisal,
      either positive or negative, of the representation strategies used to design
      and perform autistic characters onscreen. The positions thus identified
      are confronted with those expressed in the frame of autism advocacy and,
      wherever available, critical literature from disability and feminist/queer
      studies, to both help with the analysis and show how several issues raised
      in the social discourse are also topics of scholarly study.
        The first paragraph introduces a few notions concerning the history of
      autism as a psychiatric label, which are needed to understand the stakes
      of the current—extremely lively and sometimes vehement—debates about
      the products of popular culture within the autistic community. The second
      paragraph moves on to examine the reception of Sherlock, on the background
      of the heated controversy about the stereotypical representation of autistic
      characters as individuals affected by the so-called ‘savant syndrome’. The
      following paragraph focuses on Nordic noir’s original introduction of the
      trope of the female autistic sleuth, presenting and discussing the different
      interpretations it has been given, particularly in a feminist context. The final
      paragraph deals in some more detail with Astrid et Raphaëlle as a case
      study. This time the focus is on the queer, or rather neuroqueer discourse
      that the show has inspired, at the intersection between autistic fandom and
      autistic advocacy.
        In the following, I will be using Identity-First Language (e.g. ‘autistic
      people’ or ‘autists’) instead of Person-First Language (e. g. ‘persons with
      autism’), out of the respect for what I have learned during this research
      from the people, activists and advocates that support this use.4



      Diagnosing Sherlock Holmes
        Autism is currently defined as a neurodevelopmental condition
      characterized by impairments in social interactions, communication and
      behavioural flexibility. The history of autism as a diagnostic label can be
      described as curious at the very least, reflecting the enigmatic character



146   Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

of a condition that is still to be fully understood. While the use of the term
in psychiatric literature is documented as early as the beginning of the
20th century, in the context of research on infantile schizophrenia,5 the
origins of the notion are most commonly referred to Leo Kanner and Hans
Asperger’s studies, first published, respectively, in 1943 in English and
1944 in German.6 First introduced in the inaugural edition of the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952, the term
acquired an autonomous status as a diagnostic label, for children up to
30 months, after the publication of DSM-III in 1980, when six broad criteria
(including pervasive lack of social responsiveness, severe impairments in
communication and bizarre responses to the environment) were finally
defined, the last of which (absence of delusions and hallucinations) meant
to serve as a differential diagnosis with schizophrenia. At this stage, the
condition was still believed to be an almost exclusively male condition.
  The recognition that many autistic children showed enhanced mental
abilities (such as a phenomenal memory and precise recollection of
complex patterns and sequences) led to the formulation of Asperger’s
syndrome in 1994 in DSM-IV, to discriminate between these cases and a
more severe, low-functioning form of autism characterized by intellectual
impairment.7
  The notion of ‘Autism spectrum disorder’, introduced in 2013 in DSM-5 to
account for the notion that autistic symptoms appear on a scale at different
degrees of severity, spurred a wide debate and generated controversy, both
within the medical profession and the autistic community. In particular,
the decision to remove Asperger’s Syndrome as a separate diagnosis and
conflate it within the ‘spectrum’ as a mild (or high-functioning) form of autism
found many people formerly diagnosed as Asperger’s complaining ‘about a
threat to [their] ‘Aspie’ identity’, which ‘they felt engendered a strong sense
of belonging [that] had been particularly helpful to them on their personal
journeys’.8 In fact, depending on the point of view, the new diagnostic criteria
in DSM-5 (now cut down to just two: social communication problems and
restricted interests/repetitive behaviours, but with the specification that
both issues must be present since early childhood) have been criticized for
being either too broad or too stringent—too broad from the angle of low-
functioning individuals (for example, non-verbal people), whose advocates
support the definition of much more specific descriptors of the condition;
too stringent from the angle of high-functioning, ‘Aspie’ individuals, who
fear to ‘lose’ their diagnosis and, with it, not only a defining aspect of their
identity but also the right to access social and medical services.
  The choice to describe autism as a spectrum should be seen in the contest
of the exceptional increase in the number of diagnoses recorded in many
countries in a short period of time. According to data collected by the Center
for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States, the prevalence of
autism has increased of 178% since 2000, with 1 in 54 children (1 out of 37
boys and 1 out of 151 girls) now diagnosed in the United States.9 While not


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      as dramatically as in the US, the prevalence of autism has been steadily
      increasing in all European countries, with cases said to be ‘skyrocketing’
      in Northern Ireland since 2014 and a figure of 1 child out of 87 recently
      estimated in Italy.10 Despite worries that up to 40% of affected children may
      escape detection, the notion that the condition occurs on a spectrum is
      consistent with the idea that autism traits are actually ‘distributed’ across
      the population and may be responsible for minor troubles. In any case,
      and contrary to the fears expressed by Asperger’s communities that the
      new diagnostic criteria might restrict the number of people who qualify for
      social care, the last couple of decades have witnessed a steep growth in
      autism diagnoses.
        All these issues are widely, and sometimes wildly debated within online
      autistic communities, in discussions that often show the existence of
      heated contrasts between opposite stances. Two topics of dissent in
      particular emerge that are of interest for this study. On the one hand, within
      autistic forums, users generally regard the polemics against the merging
      of Asperger’s diagnosis with ASD as an expression of an elitist attitude
      known as ‘aspie supremacy’. Popularized during the 2000s through blogs
      and websites, ‘Aspie supremacy is an ideology followed by a fraction of
      adults diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome [who] emphasize evolutionary
      superiority over individuals diagnosed with Autistic disorder’ as well as
      ‘over neurotypicals’.11 Aspie suprematists believe that individuals with
      Asperger’s do not really suffer any significant impairment and are instead
      endowed with special powers, which are not recognized as such just
      because of the social prejudice against their different way of thinking. In
      the effort to distance themselves from autism, aspie supremacists have
      often claimed ‘that those who have it are sub-human, or at least a burden
      on society’, while characterizing Asperger’s individuals as the ‘next step’
      in human evolution.12 These positions have provoked strong reactions,
      especially from the proponents of the emergent neurodiversity paradigm.13
      As we will see, neurodiversity activists question the media stereotype of the
      ‘savant’ autist, seen as a kind of role model for aspie suprematists, while
      the same time refusing to frame autism as a pathology.
        On the other hand, together with the boost of online tests, the introduction
      of the notion of autistic spectrum has triggered a new phenomenon,
      encouraging a growing number of adult individuals to seek a diagnosis,
      or even a self-diagnosis. This is related to a widespread perception that
      many people had their autism go unnoticed in the past because of a lack
      of awareness about the condition, which is particularly true for the female
      population, still largely believed to be disproportionally affected by autism
      symptoms. One characteristic aspect of the current debate, both among
      specialists and within online autistic communities, has to do with the
      experiences of many girls and women who feel their struggles have gone
      unrecognized because of the male-bias that dominates in autism clinical
      practice and research studies.14 Several recent studies have challenged



148   Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

the Extremely Male Brain (EMB) theory of autism and have provided hints
to recognize the specific presentation of the condition in female subjects.
  In this context, the spread of the neurodiversity movement has marked
lines of divisions in a field once occupied exclusively by the parents of
autistic children and their medical counsellors. Once grown up, some of
those children have taken stance against the types of treatment they were
given during their infancy to ‘cure’ their condition and started to advocate
for the rights of low-functioning autists on a militant base. Under the motto
‘nothing for us without us’, a growing movement of autism self-advocacy
has emerged that questions and dispute the right of neurotypical parents
to choose treatments for their children that the neurodiversity movement
deems to be both abusive and degrading. On the other side of the barricade,
parents’ associations argue that those who reclaim for themselves the
role of autistic advocates are too high-functioning to really understand
the challenges and drama experienced by the families dealing with low-
functioning, sometimes cognitively delayed, children. The discursive arena
of autism’s public sphere appears today as a site of profound controversy
and conflict, marked by distinct, opposing positions with regard to the
politics of autism representation.
    Aspects of this intense debate surface clearly in the autistic fan
communities’ reaction to the products of popular culture and, more
specifically, European crime television series.



Neuroqueer Fans, Anti-ableism and
the ‘Autistic Sherlock Headcanons’
  No popular culture artifact has ever been responsible of such a deluge
of social discourses about the representation of autism as that which
followed the release of BBC’s Sherlock. The title character played by
Benedict Cumberbatch has come to occupy the centre of a debate focusing
on the adequacy vs dangers of media representation of autism as a
form of savantism.15 In December 2013, taking side with the opinions of
many aspies, even the British National Autistic Society recognized that
the character showed obvious symptoms of autism, citing his ‘ability to
concentrate’ and memorize and link clues ‘in quite a unique way’.16 While
the show, like its later American counterpart, Elementary (US, 2012-
2019), does not explicitly confirm this theory, writer Stephen Moffat and
Cumberbatch himself have flirted with this reading in different ways. For
example, episode 2x2 has John Watson mention Asperger’s openly during
a conversation with Lestrade about his friend.17 The comments posted by
various users below the Youtube clip of this scene reveal the sense of pride
that many aspie viewers take in recognizing Sherlock as one of them.18




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                                                                                      
      •    I fully agree with that Sherlock is autistic, I’ve read many comments
           from autistic people which can identify with him.
      •    Seeing someone that extreme have a successful career, make
           friends, have people love him […] is a confidence boost I think all
           people with Aspergers really need.

          Other users call for the diagnosis to be made explicit:

      •    I kind of hoped the show would be more clear [sic] about Sherlock’s
           aspergers, though, because so many people don’t understand it.
      •    I have minor asbergers [sic], not quite as bad as some people and
           definitely Sherlock, but I did relate to him a bit. It would be great to
           have it actually confirmed.

        More comments in the page show how eager autistic subjects are for this
      kind of empowering representations:

      •    Back in the day when I liked this show [the original poster writes],
           as an autistic person I felt seen because I had already felt connected
           to the character and that made it really special to me, to see any
           form of representation, especially in a character I actually liked (my
           mom called me Sheldon19 for several years...). That’s why I originally
           posted this video, to share with other autistic people who also
           connected with the character to see representation with that.

        Clearly, autistic viewers perceive themselves as a minority group that
      is often misrepresented, and they voice a strong desire for validating
      renditions of their experiences in TV fictions. However, not everyone in this
      YouTube forum agree that Sherlock does a good service to the cause of an
      adequate representation of autism.

      •    The idea that BBC Sherlock is on the spectrum is insulting to people
           on the spectrum and it’s also used as a sort of functioning label,
           which isn’t good and most of the autistic community disagrees with.
      •    So called after a NAZI.20

        An article by autistic disability scholar Anna N. de Hooge helps shed light
      on the political motivations behind such severe readings. According to
      Hooge, BBC’s Sherlock is an emblematic example of how current media
      products tend to portray autism in terms of Asperger’s supremacy. ‘

      •    He may not be properly plugged into the symbolic network (and is
           therefore attributed inhuman, robotic qualities), but he acknowledges
           it, observing the occurring interactions from a bird’s-eye-view. Even
           without ticking all symbolic boxes of humanhood, he corresponds
           exceptionally well with human (white, male) normativity’.21

       In other words, ‘he is not portrayed as someone with a divergent neurotype,
      but as the extreme version of an entitled, allistic,22 white man’, that is,



150   Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

‘a high-functioning jerk’ who does not behave ‘like a common autistic’.
Hooge’s thesis is that Sherlock is shaped after an ableist model, one that
conceives of the condition of Asperger’s subjects as out of the ordinary
only because of their exceptional skills and talents, not because they are
disabled in any way. For example, she writes, Sherlock ‘does not stim’.
Furthermore, the character illustrates a classical vision of autism as the
product of an Extreme Male Brain, a theory coined by Hans Asperger and
later popularized by Simon Baron-Cohen,23 according to which the autistic
personality is merely ‘an extreme variant of male intelligence’. Criticizing
Sherlock is then to unmake a patriarchal notion of autism in which ‘the
superiority of [white, cisgender] men is naturalized and reinforced, and
the Aspie, with his Extreme Male Brain, stands at the top of this pecking
order’.24
  Interesting attempts to make up for the ableist, patriarchal and virtually
racist biases in the representation of Sherlock Holmes can be found in
the domain of autistic fanfiction. The ‘Autistic Sherlock headcanons’
are narrative artifacts that re-imagine the famous sleuth as an autistic
person. The term ‘headcanon’, a recurrent definition in fanfiction slang,
is suggestive of the subjective attitude that the writers take in creating
their stories—they reinvent Sherlock Holmes’ canon literally ‘within their
heads’. At the time of this writing, using the keyword ‘Autistic Sherlock’ on
the most popular fanfiction archive, Archiveofourown, allows to retrieve up
to 263 items.25 Building on the fans’ affective relation with their favourite
character, these stories offer alternative representations that describe
Sherlock’s presumed autism through the filter of the writers’ intimate
experience. While the sentiment of ‘aspie pride’ is not totally absent,
surfacing from time to time in both the narratives and the community’s
comments, the fics are definitely more interested in exploring Sherlock’s
inner experience as a disabled person.
  For example, the two authors of, respectively, Fresher and When Boys
Fall in Love, explain that their depictions of the character’s quirks and
social struggles reflect their own lived experience:

•   Due to us both being autistic, I treat Sherlock how others tend to
    treat me;26
•   As someone who is autistic themselves I do love a good representation
    of Sherlock this way! I already connect so much with him in the
    show—this was just a little bit of projecting and indulging for me.27

  The aim is generally to foreground those particular behaviours that
conventional representations of Sherlock as a high-functioning subject
tend to omit, thus delivering a false understanding of what being autistic
is actually like. Contrary to Hooge’s description of the character in the
BBC’s adaptation, ‘stimming’—that is, a kind of self-stimulating behaviour,
usually involving repetitive movements such as spinning, rocking or hand
flapping—is ubiquitous in fanfiction’s Sherlocks.


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                                                                                      
      •   I don’t know what stim Sherlock would find the most pleasing or
          would be the most commonly used, I tried to base it off of body
          movements observed in the BBC’s version of Sherlock in addition to
          knowing personally which stims cause me, as an autistic person, to
          feel the happiest.28

        Many of the stories are conceived as retrospective narratives of the
      character’s childhood, working at once as attempts to explain the roots
      of his psychology and opportunities to explore the specific aspects and
      social upshot of autism as a neurodevelopmental condition. Other stories,
      however, offer more complex as well as more provocative insights into
      these characters’ adult lives. Often Mycroft and John are also portrayed
      as autistic, and often their relation with Sherlock is imagined along queer
      lines. Although the representation of Holmes as an asexual person is well
      rooted into Conan Doyle’s original canon, the bending of this trait within the
      framework of queer affectivity, and even atypical sexuality, is by all means
      an invention of fanfiction writers. A look at the keywords used to tag the
      Autistic Sherlock works shows the extent and variety of these variations on
      asexual romance: Sherlock’s relationship with John is said to be ‘fluffy’,
      ‘pre-slash’, ‘platonic’ or ‘queerplatonic’; he is represented as being a ‘virgin’
      or ‘demisexual’. Elsewhere the references to queer sexuality are more
      downright, with tags like ‘Gender Dysphoria’, ‘Bisexuality’, ‘Pansexuality’,
      ‘Gay’, ‘Trans’ or ‘Genderqueer’, but also fancier keywords like ‘Lesbian
      Femlock’, ‘Lesbian John Watson’, ‘Harry Watson is now Hareem Watson
      but she’s still a lesbian’, ‘Sharing a Bed’, and even ‘all of them are the
      “opposite” gender here’.
        According to Scott Folsom, by representing ‘Autistic-friendly’ sex
      scenes—which favour ‘specific sensory descriptors, such as the texture
      and temperature of John’s lips, or the feeling of scar tissue’—autistic
      fanfiction offers an opportunity to counter current

                 insufficient notions of Autistic sexuality […]. One could
                 reasonably argue that fan texts […] operate as a sort of
                 instruction manual for sexuality for Autistic people (and anyone
                 else befuddled by the sensory experience of sexual activity)’,
                 therefore filling ‘a teaching role left vacant by a popular media
                 that erases Autistic sexuality’.29

        Of course, queer narrative imagination is all but not exclusive of autistic
      fanfiction. The practice of ‘slash’, a genre of fan-written stories focusing on
      the representation (often in very explicit terms) of same-sex relationships
      between popular fictional heroes, has been around since at least the first
      attempts at creating alternative scenarios involving Star Trek characters
      in the early 1990s, ‘where a slash between the names ‘Kirk’ and ‘Spock’
      denoted sexual content, while an ampersand denoted simple friendship’.30
      In the case of autistic narratives, however, it takes up a particular relevance


152   Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

because of the ‘significant over-representation of queer, trans, and otherwise
gender variant individuals among autistics’. In fact, ‘partly because of this
overlap, some autistic people refer to themselves as “neuroqueer”’.31
  In line with a neuroqueer approach, Hooge notices a similitude between the
‘conversion therapies’ meant to ‘cure’ homosexuality and the controversial
Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), which is today considered ‘the gold
standard for autism treatment. ABA and similar interventionist programs
aimed at autistics never lost their anti-queer roots; social skills-training
is still used to enforce gender roles in autistic subjects’.32 Interestingly,
autistic fanfiction often takes stance against both conversion therapy and
ABA. In The Rainbow Connection, Sherlock and John—now a homosexual
adult couple—open up to one another about their earlier dire experiences
as autistic boys enrolled into ABA therapy.

•   I know ABA therapy and conversion therapy is not the same, Sherlock
    says, but the toll emotionally for people who are different is hard.

  He then goes on recalling how treatment involved five hours a day after
school and having his hands tapped when he didn’t listen.

•   The clinic was tedious at best and hateful at worst. ABA highlights
    the worst things about a person.33

  The Struggles of Living in a World of Neuro-typicals has a whole chapter
centred on Autism Speaks, a US-based organization that is a major supporter
of ABA and generally of a notion of autism as a (quite horrible) illness to be
cured. In contrast, neurodivergent, neuroqueer fanfiction authors espouse
a vision of autism as just an expression of the natural diversity of human
minds, which should be respected and accepted for what it is, rather than
cured. John Watson voices fiercely this point of view in a scene in which he
rips an Autism Speaks poster from a wall, addressing Greg Lestrade with
these words:

•   ‘Autism Speaks is a HATE organization, thay are trying to find ways
    to ‘cure autism’ and detect if a baby is going to be autistic before it’s
    even born, so that people can ABORT it!’ He yelled and ripped the
    poster in two.34

  All this demonstrates the reciprocal permeation between the worlds of
autistic fandom and autistic self-advocacy. On the side of fanfiction, the
critique of aspie supremacy, with its corollary of internalized ableism, is
translated into narratives that often take side with the political stances of
the neurodiversity movement. On the side of the self-advocacy community,
examples taken from popular TV shows are often used to illustrate and
condemn the simplistic stereotypes that prevent a complex understanding
of the experiences of autistic and, more generally, disabled people.


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      Female Detectives on the Spectrum
        If the stereotype of the eccentric, quirky detective has been with us since
      the invention of Sherlock Holmes, its representation as an autistic-coded
      character is a more recent phenomenon. In parallel with the growth of
      online autistic communities and their debates about popular media
      products, the last fifteen years or so have seen writers and screenwriters
      play increasingly with their expectations, ‘penning eccentric characters
      whose quirks would seem to align with typical characteristics of ASD’.35
      While the trend finds several examples in the US,36 European popular
      narratives seem to have been on the forefront of this movement, offering
      ever more original versions of the figure of the eccentric detective as an
      autistic-coded figure.
        Although a number of these characters follow in Holmes’s steps in
      portraying the socially awkward, but ultra-intelligent sleuth as male,37 in a
      way that can remind us of the EMB theory, the most original contribution
      of European crime fiction (both in print and onscreen) to this development,
      enrichment as well as destabilization of the Sherlockian legacy was the
      introduction of a few, particularly engaging figures of female neurodivergent
      detectives.
        More precisely, this move away from a traditionally masculine
      representation of ASD is one of the most remarkable contributions of
      Nordic noir to the European crime genre. There is general agreement
      that the first character of this kind to appear in popular fiction was Lisbeth
      Salander, the dark anti-heroine of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. An
      intriguing, mesmerizing figure, Salander is a brilliant computer hacker with
      a troubled childhood history. She ends up pairing with journalist Mikael
      Blomkvist to help him investigate about the disappearance of his younger
      sister forty years earlier, which uncovers a series of murders committed
      by Blomkvist’s own brother. Intermingled with this storyline is the grim,
      merciless revenge meticulously planned and executed by Salander on her
      rapist and appointed guardian. Androgynous, bisexual and cold-minded,
      she is at least in part the blueprint for two more Nordic anti-heroines, Saga
      Norén of Bron/Broen/The Bridge, a Danish-Swedish television coproduction
      that ran four seasons and 38 episodes between 2011 and 2019, and Sarah
      Lund of Forbrydelsen, another lenghty Danish TV serial, broadcast in 40
      episodes between 2007 and 2012. Interestingly, 2007 is the year when the
      Swedish public television broadcaster, SVT, made an agreement with the
      Swedish Disability Federation, aimed ‘to promote a shift in the televised
      representations of persons with disability from […] prevalent psychiatric
      perspective to a more emancipatory human right perspective, and to
      improve on the number of characters with disability portrayed and the way
      they are framed; from heroes or victims to multifaced, real-life people’.38
        While both Sarah Lund and Saga Norén are police officials who work
      within the boundaries of the law, their psychological as well as behavioural


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characterization is clearly reminiscent of Salander. Solitary, unemotional,
obsessively attached to their job, entirely absorbed in the details of the
murder cases they investigate, they are mostly unable to meet social
expectations or interact with others in reciprocal ways. But apart from
this character type, there are other important elements that bring these
titles together. Firstly, they have all originated complex transnational
franchises that have further popularized the trope of the female autistic
sleuth across Europe and beyond.39 Secondly, both the originals and their
sequels/adaptations/remakes have been met by both an exceptional
critical and academic consideration and by an eruption of social discourse
in online forums, blogs and social networks. Practically the entirety
of this material deals in one way or another with the heroines’ autistic
personality, with various interventions aimed at making meaning of these
works’ engagement with ASD from a feminist angle. The intersection of
autism, feminism and crime plots in this wave of serial narratives has thus
proved ‘to be particularly amenable to cultural exchange’40 and ‘cultural
shareability [… of] common values, images, archetypes and themes’.41 In
this way, these traveling figures have contributed to shape a widespread
transcultural conversation about the representation of female autism,
imbued with a cosmopolitan ethos. Finally, all these products result from
a complex integration of a traditionally masculine genre like crime with
the more ‘feminine’ appeals of serial melodrama, as proved by their ‘focus
on emotion, relationships, and open-ended seriality’.42 Kathleen McHugh
discusses this point by elaborating on Jason Mittell’s observations about
the ‘gender inversions’ found in so much contemporary ‘complex TV’,
well exemplified by the recent, prolific wave of female-led crime serials.
These shows, Mittell’s argues, use their melodramatic emphasis on ‘moral
legibility, narrative drive, and emotionally resonant characterization’ to
generate a sense of a ‘shared felt good’. Yet in fact ‘crime serials with
gendered look and subject matter (gender-based violence)’ McHugh
contends, ‘possibly shade complex TV’s appeal of a “shared felt good” into
a form of critical “felt knowledge” […] central to what could be called the
complex feminism that arises from these shows’.43
   Nevertheless, whether the character type at the centre of these stories
may represent a feminist icon or not is a matter of disagreement. For
example, in their article ‘The Female Detective as the Child Who Needs to
Know’, Camilla Schwartz and E. Ann Kaplan argue that ‘unlike the female
detectives in the film and TV versions of the Scandinavian femi-crime wave
such as Anna Pihl (DK), Dicte (DK), Modus (S) and Fjällbacka Murders’,
Saga Norén embodies ‘an otherwise typically masculine genre ideal’.44 In
fact, not only ‘she is not torn between family life and career […] and she
shares the traditional male detective’s inability to sustain and nourish a
normal family life’;45 and not only she looks ‘almost inhuman because of
her rational, slightly robotic ways of thinking’; in addition, she is ‘depicted
as a child who [because of her autism] has not learned (or cannot) learn the


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      social order of things or who does not […] understand the demands of the
      Other’.46 According to this reading, since Saga is only seen through the gaze
      of her male colleagues, who giggle, laugh or gasp whenever she fails to fulfil
      the social codes, ‘her performance appears comical and embarrassing’,
      creating an impression of a ‘shameful dysfunctionality’.47 While conceding
      that Saga represents a departure from the classic representation of the
      female character as a sexualized figure, since she seems ‘uninterested in
      attracting the “male gaze”’,48 the article is quite stern in concluding that, as
      a ‘dysfunctional detective [she] is certainly not understood as “the maker
      of meaning” (Mulvey)’, nor as ‘a potent performer of “female masculinity”
      (Halberstam)’, or ‘“the subject who is supposed to know” (Zizek)’, but
      simply as ‘the passive bearer of meaning […] or the subject who needs
      to know’.49 This is reinforced through a comparison with the blueprint of
      all neuroatypical detectives, Sherlock Holmes. Although Saga is said to
      be ‘a female version of Sherlock Holmes since she is hyper intelligent and
      extremely skilled’,50 the reactions she elicits from the other characters
      regularly put her in an inferior position. ‘While Watson is addressing
      Holmes with an admiring and impressive gaze, Saga’s partner Martin
      looks at her [… with] an indulgent and loving gaze that actually […] puts the
      female detective in the child’s position’.51 As a result, the authors contend,
      ‘the dysfunctional female detective does not appeal to female identification
      and she therefore does not function as a feminist icon’.52
        It seems fair to say that this reading does not make good service to the
      cause of autistic women. Although it concedes, in just a few lines at the
      end of the article, that ‘for women (or men) diagnosed with autism the
      recognition process of course is suspected [courtesy the authors] to be rather
      different’,53 the whole analysis is obviously delivered from a neurotypical
      standpoint that does not take into account any different possible subject
      positions. The hurried, last-minute addition, to an otherwise considerably
      lengthy discussion, that autistic women ‘recognize aspects of themselves
      in Saga’ and ‘welcome her high-profile role’54 comes as a somewhat
      unexpected surprise at the end of an article that, despite references to
      queer studies, appears fundamentally allegiant to the perspective of
      second-wave feminism. For example, there is no acknowledgment that,
      just like autism, feminism is today better understood as a spectrum across
      different stances, positionalities and theories, so much that it is now
      more common to speak of feminisms, not feminism. It follows that the
      notion of ‘feminist icon’ is too overly generic to be convincing, especially
      in a context where the concept of recognition/identification is referred to
      a specific character type defined by an intersection of both gender and
      neurodivergence.
        Interestingly, the issue of the comedic effects of Saga’s behaviour has
      been read along very different lines by authors working in the field of
      disability studies. Asking whether ‘laughing at neurodivergence [could]
      be reconcilable with an agenda of propagating greater understanding,


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recognition and acceptance of variations in human functioning […] without
echoing a discriminatory past’,55 Danielson and Kemani argue that the
answer lies with our willingness to acknowledge Saga’s ‘discursive position
and endorse our own laughter not as an expression of superiority, but as a
journey into the liminal space’ between neurotypicality and neurodivergence,
‘where new insights are made, prejudices are scattered, and normalcy is
challenged’.56 Once this stance is taken we realize that, in the world of
Bron/Broen, laughter is more likely to be ‘generated by the incongruency
between the two moral perspectives represented by the neurotypical
Martin and the neurodivergent Sara, not as right and wrong, but rather
as interacting fields between which moral considerations are negotiated
and molded’.57 While the series ‘still contains stereotypical features and
still denies Saga’s neurodivergence the full status of normal variation’, for
we still laugh at times at her ‘deviations from what is perceived as normal
behaviour’, it nonetheless indicates that ‘popular culture is moving away
from a ridiculing humour informed by a superiority-inferiority discourse’,58
reaching out to embrace acceptance and accommodation of difference.
   Furthermore, the feminist perspective deployed in these works cannot
be reduced to the characterization of the female detective’s personality
and should rather be seen as a function of the peculiar realism of their
melodramatic structure. As Janet McCabe suggests in a poignant analysis,
it is exactly in the contradiction at the heart of these characters—the conflict
between their potency, talents, skills, and the limitations or expectations
posed upon them by the social rules of a neurotypical world—that ‘the new
politics of feminism(s)’ are made visible, allowing the identification of ‘new
sites of struggle and possible strategies of resistance (however limited)’.59
While no doubt their physical appearance represents ‘the contemporary
state of the feminine ideal’ and speaks to the neoliberal democratization of
beauty ‘exported globally as aspiration’,60 their investigative style in dealing
with ‘gruesome cases […] involving sex crimes and brutal murders, most
commonly of women (often at the social margins, immigrants, prostitutes)’
ends up challenging ‘beliefs and attitudes towards representing the
feminine in terms of (in)equalities and (in)justice’.61 It is actually through
their unbiased autistic stare—rather than gaze—that the burden of injustice
behind the murders, the violence, the abuses is revealed to the viewer with
the strength of an intolerable objectivity, as a ‘felt knowledge’. In contrast
to the.

          troubling erotic of male investigators’ visual exploration of
          female corpses […] in series where the chief investigator is
          female, this stare is often framed as empathetic […]. However,
          where the female detective is neurodivergent, the stare acquires
          added critical and possibly political functions. […] These
          protagonists often invite stares rather than gazes, perplexity
          rather than desire. At the same time, they themselves mobilize
          the stare as central agents within visual fields organized by
          their forensic look.62


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        This kind of impassive, unprejudiced way of observing the crime scene,
      from the same neutral position she holds in front of regular social
      interactions, is consistent with ‘a character able to deliver equality and social
      justice precisely because she can do so without recourse to difference,
      including gender’: ‘her so-called disability allows Norén to travel beyond
      the ambiguity of difference and adhere without sentiment to […] universal
      standards of human rights and democratic values’.63
        Similarly, speaking of the Millennium trilogy, genderqueer writer and
      journalist S. E. Smith also emphasizes the ‘social commentary’—embedded
      in the novels through Lisbeth Salander’s own perception—on the abuse
      still suffered by many autists all over the world. Again, stereotyping is
      noted as a problematic issue: ‘Salander is, of course, depicted as the
      Good Autistic. She is hyperfocused, resourceful, intelligent, driven. She
      turns her neuroatypicality to her advantage and doesn’t do scary autistic
      things […] there’s a lot to discuss about how she falls into some Autism In
      Fiction Stereotypes’.64 But Smith points to yet another aspect of Salander’s
      characterization that has generally passed unnoticed, despite what she
      calls its important ‘feminist implications’: her institutionalization in a
      mental health facility at a very young age, ‘for absolutely no reason’.

                 All of the reviews focus on her autistic behaviours. No one
                 talks about the fact that institutionalisation, sexual assault,
                 and social control are experienced by people with autism. It’s
                 all about how her […] autism influences her ability to do things
                 like being a brilliant computer programmer, not how […] the
                 books are a pretty condemning indictment of the guardianship
                 system and of the belief that institutionalisation is always in
                 the best interests of the patient. Salanders exist all over the
                 world. People all over the world are sexually abused by their
                 ‘guardians’.65

        A similar point is made by Caroline Narby:

                 disabled people are far more likely than non-disabled people
                 to be victims of violence and sexual assault. Lisbeth is not
                 just acting against the violent force of misogyny, but against
                 ableism and homophobia. Her interactions with her odious
                 financial guardian demonstrate the intersection of those two
                 forces: he makes it clear that her same-sex relationships are
                 part of her overall inability to function like a ‘normal’ person.
                 For a woman who is disabled or otherwise deemed ‘unsound’,
                 non-heterosexual and/or non gender-normative behavior
                 is considered part of her pathology. The very fact that she is
                 considered mentally unfit and is therefore a ward of the state
                 goes from being a plot device […] to being ‘too real.’ It becomes
                 a commentary on the systemic denial of disabled people’s
                 agency and autonomy.66


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  Despite a widespread preoccupation with the number of stereotypes that
still characterize these fictional figures, autistic women have generally
reacted very positively to the new European vague of female autistic sleuths.
The mere opportunity to recognize autistic traits in a fictional heroine is
received as a refreshing novelty that helps dispel the notion of ASD as a
purely male condition. ‘I saw myself in Lisbeth Salander’, says Leah Jane
on her blog, The Quixotic Autistic.

          Like Salander, I’ve experienced hardships in my life and abuse
          at the hands of parental and authority figures [… She] will
          change the way neurotypical authors portray autistic women
          […]. Very rarely do neurotypicals take responsibility for isolating
          us, bullying us, abusing us, or turning us into pariahs for the
          crime of being different. But Larsson savages this illusion.67

  In her article in The Art of Autism online magazine, Stephenie Thorne
argues that ‘more autistic women on the screen could mean real changes
in how autistic women are viewed’,68 spreading awareness that the gender
ratio for ASD is not as disparate as was once believed. In fact, she writes, ‘the
lack of autistic women on TV only helps reinforce the narrative that autism
is a disorder for men […] if all the characters we see on TV are autistic men
and never women, we might conclude that autistic women either do not
exist or are a rarity. But we do exist’.69 Indeed, the new visibility of female
autism in the products of popular culture has come in parallel with a novel
wave of research studies that have started to dismantle the idea that ASD
is just another word for an ‘extreme male brain’. There is also growing
recognition that the autistic phenotype may present differently in women:
they seem to be less impaired in terms of communication abilities and
more likely to camouflage or ‘mask’ their symptoms, which ‘may contribute
to the under recognition, and diagnostic delay, of ASD in females compared
to males’.70 As a consequence, the number of adult women who seek, but
struggle to get, a diagnosis has been steadily increasing. The notion that
an autism diagnosis may be seen by many as an object of desire may strike
neurotypical minds as a nonsense; however, it is not difficult to understand
how a diagnosis, or even a self-diagnosis, can bring about an important
sense of validation in terms of personal identity, both as an explanation for
a pervasive feeling of not belonging and as a tool towards achieving self-
acceptance of individual limitations.
  Speaking of Saga Norén and other popular female autistic icons, Thorne
reflects that more visibility for this character type would allow

          more women seeing themselves in autistic characters and
          realizing they themselves might be on the spectrum. […] It is
          crucial that autistic women see characters like themselves on
          TV, because it can affect how they see themselves. If young
          autistic girls saw more women on TV like themselves they
          might receive a boost in confidence and realize they are not


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                 alone. Furthermore, if these autistic characters are portrayed
                 achieving success and making a difference in the world, it will
                 show young girls on the spectrum that they too can accomplish
                 great things. This sort of representation is crucial to helping
                 young girls and women on the spectrum understand they are
                 valued and able to succeed.71




      Neuroqueer ‘Shipping’ and
      Astrid et Raphaëlle
        McCabe’s description of the female autistic sleuth as a travelling
      representational type found new evidence in Europe with the release in the
      spring of 2020 of the first season of Astrid et Raphaëlle, a mystery series
      co-produced by France Télévisions and the francophone branches of the
      Belgian and Swiss national public broadcaster. The show (which was also
      seen in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even reached English-speaking audience
      niches thanks to the work of an active subtitling community), was confirmed
      for a second season, aired on France 2 from 21 May to 11 June 2021.
        When compared to the Nordic examples discussed above, Astrid et
      Raphaëlle presents with a few striking aspects, which prompted a rich
      debate in the francophone autistic community. To begin with, it must be
      noted that in terms of generic models Astrid et Raphaëlle is a much more
      conventional product than its Nordic counterparts. It would be hard to deny
      that, with its masterful combination of multi-layered long-running plots, its
      cold landscapes and dark imagination, Nordic noir has truly represented
      an aesthetic turning point for European television, marking in a way its
      coming of age. In comparison, the aesthetics of Astrid et Raphaëlle, its
      narrative structure and screenwriting style are more allegiant to the form
      of a traditional procedural, with single cases that come to solution at the
      end of each episode and a running plot centred on the recurrent characters’
      private lives and relationships. However, when it comes to the portrayal of
      autism, there are a few important departures from previous examples that
      deserve in-depth consideration.
        Firstly, this is the first crime series featuring an overtly diagnosed leading
      character. This is an important point to be noted, since there is generally an
      ambiguity from writers, actors and directors as to their intention to really
      portray ASD. While they play with autistic audiences by disseminating clues
      through the narratives, when questioned in interviews they regularly deny
      that this was actually a strategy. As has been suggested, ‘being vague
      means that writers have less of a duty towards accurate portrayal’72, which
      takes away the social responsibility that overtly mentioning autism would
      inevitably imply. The lack of diagnosis is also preferred because ‘it allows
      other characters to poke fun, and create comedy’, without putting the show


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at stake of receiving criticism and lose ratings. This latter idea, expressed
for example by Bones’ creator Hart Hanson, ‘is concerning, and supports
the notion that whilst much work has been done to increase awareness
and understanding of ASD, widespread stigmatisation continues to exist,
or at least is perceived to do so by television executives’.73
  This is not the case with Astrid et Raphaëlle. Astrid Nielsen, a
documentalist at the criminal investigation department of Paris police,
played by Sara Mortensen, is explicitly autistic. She is terribly shy, has
strong sensory issues (she has to wear headphones to avoid experiencing
extreme confusion—meltdowns—in noisy places) and self-stimulating
behaviours: she rocks, moves her hands in funny ways, takes strange
postures, and so on. She also has a phenomenal memory: she is able to
recall even the smallest piece of information in every single document in
the archive and has extensive factual knowledge on the most improbable
topics. Moreover, she is very detail-oriented and has a systemizing, hyper-
logical style of reasoning.
  A second original aspect of this series is the choice to have the female
autistic character flanked not by a male, but by another female character.
When chief inspector Raphaëlle Coste (Lola Dewaere) approaches her to
ask for help in investigating a case of apparent suicide, the two forge what
is going to become something more than a long-term collaboration—a
devoted, affectionate friendship. Raphaëlle’s personality could not be more
different than Astrid’s: she is a strong, determined woman with a leading
position in the police department, where she is in command of several male
colleagues. She is very empathic, good-hearted, and somewhat maternal.
Together, Astrid and Raphaëlle form an odd, definitely atypical, and yet
extremely efficient, duo, with Astrid providing Raphaëlle with the rational
methodology and the data needed to solve the cases, and Raphaëlle
helping Astrid cope in social situations, go through the elaboration of her
traumatic childhood and build up the self-confidence she lacks. The special
relationship between the two characters has been met enthusiastically by
many female viewers. Queer viewers, in particular, have been attracted
by what they have read as obvious allusions to a burgeoning erotic desire
between the two heroines, which they have addressed and developed in
different ways through practices of ‘textual poaching’.74
  Thirdly, a mention must be made to the involvement of autistic advocates
in the series’ development. Alexandre de Seguins, who co-authored the
concept with Laurent Burtin, refers to have been researching the issue
of female autism extensively while elaborating the script since 2017. This
process, triggered by the reading of Temple Grandin’s books,75 continued
through conversations with French autistic authors and advocates Joseph
Schovanec and Natalia Pedemonte and even involved passing on the scripts
for revision to members of autistic associations.76 The authors’ engagement
with the community resulted, among other things, in the inclusion in the
narrative of a ‘groupe de parole’, that is, a self-support group for autistic


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      adults whose meetings Astrid is seen attending in a few episodes.
          Finally, and connected to the latter point, the series also cast a few
      autistic persons. Some participants in the support group are actually
      autists—among them Lizzy Brynn, a youtuber and the author of a self-
      published novel featuring a lesbian romance between two adolescent girls,
      which also touches upon the issue of disability.77 Hugo Horiot, an autistic
      advocate, a comedian, a playright and an essayist, is cast in the role of
      a medical doctor who is the brother of the support group’s animator,
      William.78 There’s enough to say that Astrid et Raphaëlle is quite a unique
      case.
          However, looking into its reception within the community reveals a mixed
      reaction. Not surprisingly, despite Sara Mortensen’s hard work to offer
      a sensitive rendition of her character, her performance is targeted as a
      major source of dissatisfaction. In her interviews, Mortensen recounts
      how attentively she observed the people in the ‘groupe de parole’—their
      gestures, their use of language, their intonation—and how she went on
      using this inspiration to create her character.79 Still, comments in the
      Asperansa forum, the main online francophone community for autistic
      people, are often very critical. A few comments in the dedicated thread
      read as follows:

      •    ‘The way she moves, she speaks, super quick and jerky all the time,
           the way she rocks, nothing is credible (#16).
      •    I had the impression to be watching an accumulation of single traits,
           which do not work together. She definitely does too much, […] it
           seems mechanical and really unnatural’ (#24).

          While concurring that her character comes across as ‘rough, exaggerated,
      a caricature’ (#47), other users are more accommodating. There’s a
      recognition that some of the scenes ‘show a real knowledge of autism and
      an effort to portray it in all of its aspects’ (#20), proving that ‘the creators
      have really researched the subject’ (#46). Many users even declare to have
      been unexpectedly pleased with the representation:

      •    ‘To my great surprise, I was moved, and it was totally unexpected
           (#47).
      •    This series really ‘spoke’ to me (#50).
      •    It made me smile, since I recognized myself in certain situations
           (#28).
      •    Certain moments looked very familiar, as taken from my daily life’
           (#2).
      •    I really found myself reflected in certain aspects’ (#55).

          The presence of real autistic people in the cast is particularly appreciated
      (to be able to see autistic adults ‘who work, communicate, have different
      profiles’, #47), as is the relationship between Astrid and Raphaëlle:


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•   ‘You can add among the plus the representation of a female autistic
    profile (#19).
•   I can’t remember anything alike on French television (#2).
•   It’s fun that Astrid et Raphaëlle have become two gay icon on social
    networks’(#50).

  Unsurprisingly, the affectionate friendship that builds up between the two
characters throughout the episodes has inspired a variety of lesbian fan
‘shipping’ content, which the show has obliquely encouraged. ‘Shipping’ is
the term used by fans to define the different creative practices (fanfiction,
memes, videos, gifs) through which they express their desire that their
favourite characters get involved in a romantic relationship. Despite Lola
Deawere’s declaration that the presumed lesbian subtext identified by
many fans was in no way intended by either the writers or the actresses,
a dialogue in episode 5 of the second season hints openly to the fans’
readings. At one point in the narrative, Raphaëlle congratulates Astrid on
the new investigative success of ‘Astraëlle’. Astrid is puzzled, so Raphaëlle
explains: ‘This is how everyone calls us in the team. Don’t you know? […]
There are even some who think that the two of us […] are a couple’. Here
Raphaëlle is clearly referring to the tag #astraelle that queer fans had
launched in the wake of season 1 as a tool to enable the retrieval of lesbian
transformative works on the web. Searching #astraelle on the web digs up
a wealth of fan content that unveils the neuroqueer quality of the desire
elicited by the series. Given the higher prevalence of gender-diverse people
among autistics as compared to the general population, this may not come
as a surprise.
  As in the case of Astrid’s autistic characterization, the covert, coded
allusions to a romantic interest between the two heroines has also
spurred controversial opinions. In the lesbian forum The L Chat, some
users complain that their love relationship is confined to a mere subtext,
presenting as a typical case of ‘queerbaiting’:

•   Two girls close/kinda flirting but nothing will happen between them
    (#14).
•   Seems like we still haven’t learned any lessons from all the previous
    experiences. I would rather watch a 100% hetero show (#17).
•   Writers and crew of the show are 90% men and they want you to
    know once and for all Astrid and Raphaelle are just friends! (#72).
•   However, most of the users find the subtext extremely engaging.
•   ‘I’m not really one to get hung up on whether things are or aren’t
    ‘queerbaiting’ I’m just gonna enjoy their relationship, but interesting
    to know that the writers do explicitly know people are shipping them
    and to have the characters outright reference it (#71).
•   I came into the show expecting it to be just two friends, but this show
    really hits you in the face/heart with the bond between them, and it
    stands out all the more juxtaposed with how not-hetero they are in
    their interaction with men’ (#38).
•   I did’nt expect much, but I was hooked right away. The show isn’t


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          that subtle for me. Maybe the straights won’t get the heart eyes
          Raphaëlle gives to Astrid or why she kissed Astrid on the cheek but
          it was all gay for me’ (#44).
      •   I am so overwhelmingly happy with this show. I didn’t expect anything
          more than subtext, but wow this season really delivered on everything
          I could hope for in a sweet blossoming romance’ (#54).80

        Astraëlle videos on YouTube play with this subtext to create lyric
      montages in which the two characters appear to actually be in love, as
      the titles anticipate: Hungry Eyes, The Kiss, Crazy in Love, and so on. As
      is customary in this genre of fan videos, the soundtrack makes use of
      love songs to better highlight the romantic theme, while the editing plays
      astutely with the actresses’ close-ups, their gazes and smiles, to create
      evocative situations that were only partially there in the original. More
      ‘shipping’ content is found on fanfiction sites. At the time of this writing,
      the tag #astraelle retrieves 12 titles on Archiveofourown, some of which
      cross-tagged with keywords like ‘Friends to Lovers’, ‘Slow burn’, ‘Fluff’,
      ‘Domestic Fluff’, ‘Pre-relationship’, and so on.81 The representation of
      same-sex attraction is given a further queer twist through the description
      of Astrid’s peculiarities, struggles and special needs. What emerges is
      a very delicate type of sexuality, with excitement arising as the result of
      a profound trust and mutual understanding. Trying is Caring describes
      the romantic involvement of the two characters as an exciting process of
      discovery of their reciprocal differences:

                 Sometimes, Astrid would talk Raphaëlle’s ears off about puzzles
                 and the brunette would happily listen to her passionately
                 ramble on and on until the blonde was yawning every few words.
                 Sometimes, Raphaëlle would just go and on about ‘neurotypical
                 nonsense’ as Astrid had once put it with a teasing smile. It was
                 a great opportunity for them to learn about each other, to bond
                 and just openly communicate. It also greatly benefited their
                 relationship since, without really noticing it, it helped them
                 apprehend Astrid’s autism and Raphaëlle’s neurotypicality.82

       Interestingly, the stories emphasize the points of intersection between ASD
      and queerness, actually presenting autism as a kind of neuroqueerness. In
      Notes of Love, the author has Astrid reject gender identification:

                 One uneventful day, after finishing her tasks, Astrid decided
                 she was ready to begin her quest for a potential partner. She
                 remembered William mention a forum where autistic people
                 could interact. Creating a profile appeared to be an easy
                 process until she was asked to specify her sexual orientation.
                 She had read plenty of articles on this topic, but never once
                 did she stop to ask herself who she was attracted to. Astrid
                 refused to decide on the spot. Since she only wanted someone
                 to talk to at first, under the ‘Interested in…’ line, she chose to
                 select the box that said, ‘Not specified’.83


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
  In Astraëlle, Astrid muses about queer sexuality in terms of a spectrum

          She had never thought about it. The possibility of Raphaëlle
          and her, being more than friends. Or had she? She sure knew
          about people like that. She read about them. People could be
          on one end or the other of the spectrum. She was familiar with
          the concept of a spectrum. But that is what it was, a spectrum.
          It was not black or white … gay or straight. The animal realm
          was filled with examples. She just had not thought about it for
          her.84

  Yet, Raphaëlle’s caring attitude towards Astrid is also made the target of
severe criticism. Autistic fans express a concern that her caring, supportive
behaviour is just a front to hide her true, manipulative purposes. Comment
#2 in the above mentioned Asperansa thread explains this clearly:
  :
• The series’ overall message is very disturbing […]. It makes it appear
    acceptable that an autistic person is manipulated to have they do
    what she [Raphaëlle] wants (it’s literally said by one of the characters:
    ‘Autists have a weakness—their special interest. You can have them
    do anything you want by drawing on their special interest’).

  This point, along with many others, is further discussed in two video
reviews by autistic youtuber Angie Breshka. Her channel is an interesting
site to explore for researching female autistic advocacy on the French-
speaking web.85 Breshka is a brilliant young woman whose mission is to
‘debunk’ widespread myths about autistic people that are detrimental
to their social inclusion, to denounce abuses, mistreatments and
misrepresentations and educate her audience on the neurodiversity
paradigm. She has strong opinions that she exposes in typical autistic style,
by analytically deconstructing the views she opposes by means of logical,
data-driven argumentations. Her videos receive numerous comments and
prompt debate, such as when her theses are countered in lengthy notes
that sometimes take up the form of short essays. Her two videos on Astrid
et Raphaëlle, in which she targets what she considers to be the series’s
flawed treatment flaws in the series’ treatment of autism, are no exception.
  Published in April 2019, the first video offers a harsh review of the pilot
episode, just recently broadcast on France 2 to test the audience’s response
before putting the show in production.86 Some of Bershka’s observations
reiterate the criticism against Mortensen’s performance (e.g. her way to
avert the gaze appears innatural) and the inconsistencies in the script (e.g.
Astrid is seen to go all of a sudden from a shutdown that makes it impossible
for her to speak to an unhampered conversation with Raphaëlle, or being
able to tolerate noisy environments—which is inconsistent, Bershka
contends, with her wearing noise canceling headphones in other scenes).
The main point, however, has to do with what she considers to be an
inadequate involvement of the autistic community. Despite commending


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                                                                                      
      the insertion of the ‘groupe de parole’ in the narrative as a ‘super positive’
      initiative, one that draws autists from their invisibility and helps disclose
      the diversity of their individual profiles, she still contends that in the end
      the series comes across as ‘made by neurotypicals to take advantage of
      our handicap to make spectacle’. Even the names of autistic advocates
      and associations credited in the end titles are turned down as problematic.
      Natalia Pedemonte, a legal expert and the founder of Juris Handicap
      Autisme,87 gets criticized because of her dismissive attitude toward the
      increasing number of high-functioning people seeking a diagnosis or self-
      diagnosing for purely ‘identitarian’ reasons.88 Her claim that ‘anorexia
      is no more common among autists than across the general population’
      leads Barshka to provide a number of links below her video with specific
      information about female autism and its relation to anorexia nervosa. Most
      of these links are to the Association Francophone de Femmes Autistiques
      website89 and in her introduction Bershka explicitly invites producers at
      France 2 to get in touch with this organization, since ‘they know what it
      means to be both autistics and women, which obviously is not the case
      neither of your screenwriters, nor of your actress, nor of the people
      from the autistic world that you have consulted’. The only association
      mentioned in the pilot’s end credit is indeed another target of Bershka’s
      complaint. Like Autism Speaks in the US, Vaincre l’autisme is constituted
      mainly by parents of autistic children and medical experts. Many French
      autistic advocates have openly criticized its emphasis on the need to ‘treat’
      autism, espousing a militant agenda in accordance with the principles of
      the disability movement and bringing to the fore the need to fight for a
      more accepting and inclusive societal attitude. Bershka finds a clue of the
      series’ allegiance with the perspective of Autism Speaks (‘this association
      that excludes autistic people’) in the choice to have Astrid wear exclusively
      blue clothes—the colour adopted by the association as a symbol to wear
      on the occasion of the World Autism Awareness Day (2 April each year) to
      support the battle to ‘win’ the condition. For Bershka, the choice of blue is
      yet another sign that speaks of the dangerous belief that autism is merely,
      or at least predominantly, a male condition.
        Most of these criticisms are dropped in the second review, posted after
      the end of season.90 Bershka recognizes that the script has improved in
      several respects and even makes room for an ironic cameo intervention of
      a supporter of the series, Lyzzy Brin, who, as an autistic person involved
      as a figurant in the ‘group the parole’ scenes, expresses her unconditional
      gratitude for what she characterizes as ‘the quintessence of entertainment’.
      Interestingly, Bershka declares to have been reached out by the production
      team in the wake of her first video. Apparently her criticism hit home, for
      neither Vaincre l’autisme, nor Natalia Pedemonte are now mentioned in
      the series end credits. Instead, a mention is made of the Collective pour
      la Libre Expression des Autistes, an association ‘steered by autists of all
      profiles’91 that Bershka promotes on her channel. Among other initiatives,


166   Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

CLE-Autistes has supported the #Redinstead campaign to declare April to
be Autism Acceptance—not Awareness—month.92 Yet, despite recognizing
a number of improvements, Bershka is still unhappy with Mortensen’s
performance. Although several of her subscribers express a different
opinion, she insists that the only way to achieve credible performances is
to have autistic characters played by autistic actors. Similarly, she argues,
involving autistic creatives in the writing process would result in more
interesting storylines. For example, after demolishing episode 7—in which
Astrid’s mother reveals that her own little autistic brother was killed by
their mother (an incident that Breshka dismisses as undeveloped and too
dramatic to be superficially treated as in this episode)—she comes up with
‘an alternative scenario’ in which Astrid’s mum goes on discovering her
own autism, ‘something that occurs frequently to the mothers of autistic
children’. Regretting not having been able been able to discuss this idea
with the writing team before they finished the script, she argues that the
story of a woman who finds out to be neurodivergent as an adult would
have turned out to be ways more socially helpful than the current episodic
plot, for ‘there’s a lack of this kind of representations’.
  ‘Rien pour nous sans nous’—nothing for us without us—is thus the final
message that this young female autistic advocate is proudly delivering
across the French-speaking web through her acute, intelligent analyses of
popular media products.



Conclusions
  Studying the autistic reception of a few European crime TV series
involving the character type of the neurodivergent detective has shown how
widely issues of representations are debated within both the Anglophone
and the Francophone autistic online communities. Autistic viewers express
a complex, articulated desire of recognizing themselves in onscreen
fictional figures, onscreen fictional figures, portrayed as round, layered
characters endowed with distinct personalities, which they believe can
help validate their own individual experiences. At the same time they reject
the stereotypes that still bias media representations of their struggles,
needs and diverse personalities. Their online critical interventions address
directly the shows’ production and creative teams, calling for more subtle,
complex renditions of both their intimate and social experiences. Thankfully,
there is also an increasing awareness among producers and creatives
about the need to take into account the sensibilities of these growing
audience niches, which show to at least partially overlap with queer niches.
The neuroqueer intersection of autism and LGBTIA+-inflected storylines
appears to have a particular appeal on these atypical viewers. Yet concerns
remain that the use of autistic-coded characters is only aimed to make
spectacle out of their disabilities, in the same way as queerbaiting profits


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                                                                                      
      of gay figures and themes merely as a marketing strategy. While there is
      an appreciation of the steps forward made by some productions to offer
      nuanced representations of autism—including female autism, an area in
      which European productions have marked a considerable development in
      recent years—autistic communities are calling for more creative effort and
      more concrete inclusion, even in terms of their active involvement in the
      production process.
        This survey has also shown that there is a whole spectrum of different
      opinions among autists when it comes to their approval, or disapproval, of
      media representations of neurodiversity. This reflects the complex context
      of autism advocacy, by which autistic individuals reclaim the right to speak
      for themselves and stand up to fight for their own rights. Controversial topics
      that are intensely debated in generalist autistic forums—such as whether or
      not ASD should be considered as an illness to be cured; or how to react to
      the tensions that threaten to divide the community between ‘high’ vs ‘low-
      functional’ people; or how to promote awareness of the unique struggles
      faced by autistic women—also surface in the discussion threads, blog articles,
      fanfictions and videos specifically devoted to reflecting and commenting
      upon the representation strategies of European crime TV dramas. In this
      way, the autistic reception of popular European narratives featuring autistic
      or autistic-coded characters can be said to be actively contributing to the
      circulation and development of an empowering autistic culture.




168   Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

Notes
  1
    The research presented here has been financed by the research project DETECt — Detecting
Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives (Horizon 2020, 2018–2021) [Grant
agreement number 770151.
  2
    Uta Frith, Autism: Explaining the Enigma (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), pp. 23-24;
see also Eric L. Altschuler, ‘Asperger’s in the Holmes Family’, Journal of Autism and Developmental
Disorders, 43.9 (2013).
  3
    Loftis, Sonya Freeman, ‘The Autistic Detective: Sherlock Holmes and his Legacy’, Disability Studies
Quarterly, 34.4 (2014).
  4
    ‘Both person-first and identity-first approaches to language are designed to respect disabled
persons; In person-first language, the person is emphasized, not the individual’s disabling or chronic
condition (e.g., use ‘a person with paraplegia’ and ‘a youth with epilepsy’ rather than ‘a paraplegic’ or
‘an epileptic’). In identity-first language, the disability becomes the focus, which allows the individual
to claim the disability and choose their identity rather than permitting others (e.g., authors, educators,
researchers) to name it or to select terms with negative implications […]. Identity-first language is
often used as an expression of cultural pride and a reclamation of a disability that once conferred
a negative identity’. American Psychological Association, ‘Disability’ https://Apastyle.apa.org/style-
grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/disability [accessed 26 May 2021].
  5
    The term was coined around 1910 by Eugen Bleuler, who had already introduced the concept
of schizophrenia in 1908. See Berend Verhoeff, ‘Autism in Flux: A History of the Concept from Leo
Kanner to DSM-5’, History of Psychiatry, 24.4 (2013), pp. 442-458. See also the ‘History of autism’
project (University of Oregon), https://blogs.uoregon.edu/autismhistoryproject/timeline/ [accessed 9
June 2021]. Generally uncredited in the history of psychiatry is the use of the term by Grunya Efimovna
Sukhareva, a Russian child psychiatrist who described a set of clinical features closely resembling
those reported in DSM-5 for ASD as early as 1926. First appeared in German, her article ‘Die schizoiden
Psychopathien im Kindesalter’ is speculated to have been a major source for Leo Kanner’s later
work. See Irina Manouilenko, Susanne Bejerot, ‘Sukhareva-Prior to Asperger and Kanner’, Nordic
Journal of Psychiatry, 69.6 (2015), pp. 1761-1764. DOI: 10.3109/08039488.2015.1005022.
  6
    Leo Kanner, ‘Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact’, Nervous Child, 2 (1943), pp. 242-243.
http://Neurodiversity.com/library_kanner_1943.pdf [accessed 26 May 2021].
  7
    The term was proposed by Lorna Wing in her article ‘Asperger Syndrome?: A Clinical Account’,
Psychological Medicine, 11.1 (1981), pp. 115–129. DOI: 10.1017/S0033291700053332. Hans Asperger’s
article, ‘Autistic Psychopathy’ in Childhood’, was first published in English in Autism and Asperger
syndrome, ed. by Uta Frith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 37–92. For a
reconstruction of the label’s vicissitudes from its inclusion in DSM-IV to its disappearance in DSM-5,
see J. B. Barahona-Corrêa and Carlos N. Filipe, ‘A Concise History of Asperger’s Syndrome: The Short
Reign of a Troublesome Diagnosis’, Frontiers in Psychology, 6 (2015). DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.02024.
  8
     Bethan Chambers and others, ‘“Sometimes Labels Need to Exist”: Exploring How Young
Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome Perceive its Removal from the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders Fifth Edition’, Disability & Society, 35.4 (2019), pp. 589-608. DOI:
10.1080/09687599.2019.1649121.
  9
    See data in The Autism Community in Action website, https://TACAnow.org/autism-statistics.
Source: Center for Disease Control (the US national health agency) [accessed 26 May 2021].


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                                                                                                         
 10
     John Monaghan, ‘Autism Diagnoses in NI Children up by More than 100%’, BBC News, 21 February
2019 https://BBC.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-47028502; Antonio Narzisi and others, ‘Prevalence
of Autism Spectrum Disorder in a Large Italian Catchment Area: A School-based Population Study
within the ASDEU Project’, Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences, 29.5 (2018). DOI: 10.1017/
S2045796018000483.
  11
      Cf. the well documented article on the ‘Rational Wiki’ website, https://Rationalwiki.org/wiki/
Aspie_supremacy. [accessed 26 May 2021].
  12
     Ibidem.
  13
     For an introduction to the neurodiversity concept and movement, see Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes:
The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (New York: Penguin Random, 2015).
  14
     Kate Seers, Rachel C. Hogg, ‘“You Don’t Look Autistic”: A Qualitative Exploration of Women’s
Experiences of Being the “Autistic Other”’, Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice
(15 March 2021). DOI: 10.1177/1362361321993722.
  15
      As Stuart Murray writes in Representing Autism. Culture, Narrative, Fascination (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 2008, pp. 65-66), ‘when seen through the contemporary lens of popular
representation, autism and savantism appear to have become almost synonymous. […] Savant skills
excite in the ways in which they represent seemingly impossible capabilities and talents; they are
exceptional and ‘beyond’ that which is considered normal human performance. […] The degree of awe
savant talents produce is matched by the idea that these skills act to compensate the disability with
which they are associated. Hence the common attachment of the word ‘idiot’ to ‘savant’, to designate
this double aspect of ability and impairment’. See also Christina Belcher, Kimberly Maich, ‘Autism
Spectrum Disorder in Popular Media: Storied Reflections of Societal Views’, Brock Education, 23.2
(2014), pp. 97-115.
  16
     Harley Dixon, ‘Sherlock Holmes is Autistic, Leading Charity Claims’, Telegraph, 16 December
2013, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10521128/Sherlock-Holmes-is-autistic-leading-charity-
claims.html [accessed 26 May 2021].
  17
     The Hounds of Baskerville, first aired in the UK on January 8, 2012. For an introduction to the
phenomenon of autistic fandom, see Scott D. Folsom, ‘Autistic Self-Advocacy and Activism on the
World Wide Web: Frontiers of Digito-Neural Subject Formation’, Autonomy, the Critical Journal of
Interdisciplinary Autism Studies, 1.5 (2017). Another useful source is the ‘Autism and Fandom’ article
on the Fanlore web portal https://Fanlore.org/wiki/Autism_and_Fandom [accessed 26 May 2021].
  18
     John Watson says Sherlock has Aspergers, Youtube https://Youtube.com/watch?v=lIlm5MyZTlM
[accessed 26 May 2021].
  19
     The reference is to Sheldon Cooper, a fictional character in The Big Bang Theory (USA, 2007-
2019) that many believe to be the portrayal of an autistic person.
  20
     Asperger’s collaboration with the Nazi regime has been extensively documented in numerous
recent studies. See Herwig Czech, ‘Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and ‘Race Hygiene’ in Nazi-
Era Vienna’, Molecular Autism, 9.29 (2018). DOI: 10.1186/s13229-018-0208-6.
  21
      Anna N. de Hooge, ‘Binary Boys: Autism, Aspie Supremacy and Post/Humanist Normativity’,
Disability Studies Quarterly, 39.1 (2019). DOI: 10.18061/dsq.v39i1.6461.
  22
     ‘Allistic’ is a neologism coined within the neurodiversity movement, meaning ‘not autistic’.
  23
     Cf. Simon Baron-Cohen, ‘The Extreme Male Brain Theory of Autism’, Trends in Cognitive Science,
6.6 (2002), pp. 248-254. DOI: 10.1016/s1364-6613(02)01904-6.
  24
     Hooge, ‘Binary Boys’.
  25
      ‘Autistic Sherlock’, Archiveofourown web portal https://Archiveofourown.org/tags/Autistic%20



170                      Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

Sherlock%20Holmes/works [accessed 26 May 2021].
  26
     Orphan_account, Fresher, comment section, Archiveofourown web portal https://archiveofourown.
org/works/17439941?show_comments=true&view_full_work=true#comments [accessed 26 May
2021].
  27
     ZuccaFireTrash, When Boys Fall in Love, comment section, Archiveofourown web portal https://
archiveofourown.org/works/18330593?show_comments=true#comments [accessed 26 May 2021].
  28
       Goldenheartedrose, Enraptured, comment section, Archiveofourown web portal https://
archiveofourown.org/works/382089?show_comments=true#comments [accessed 26 May 2021].
  29
     Scott D. Folsom, ‘Sleuthing and Stimming: Autistic!Sherlock Headcanons and the Cultural Politics
of Autism’, paper presented at Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National
Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, 4 April 2015. https://Academia.edu/11390453 [accessed 26
May 2021].
  30
     Ibidem.
  31
     Hooge, ‘Binary Boys’. The notion of ‘neuroqueerness’ has been proposed by Melanie Yergeau,
Authoring Autism On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017).
  32
     Ibidem.
  33
     Honeybee_motorcycles, The Rainbow Connection, Chapter 6, Archiveofourown web portal https://
archiveofourown.org/works/26986852 [accessed 26 May 2021].
  34
     Xenay, The Struggles of Living in a World of Neuro-typicals, Chapter 11, Archiveofourown web
portal https://archiveofourown.org/works/18384842 [accessed 26 May 2021].
  35
     Nick Patch, ‘Characters with Autism Getting Prime Spots on Major TV Series’, Globe and Mail,
27 December 2012. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/conditions/
characters-with-autism-getting-prime-spots-on-major-tv-series/article6744446/ [accessed 26 May
2021].
  36
     A few characters in American crime TV dramas that are widely held to be autistic by their fans
are Inspector Monk of the eponymous series (USA 2002-09), Spencer Reid of Criminal Minds (USA
2005-20), Sherlock Holmes (and his girlfried Fiona Helbron) of Elementary (USA 2012-19); among
the women, Carrie Mathison of Homeland (USA 2011-2020) and, more recently, Holly Gibney of The
Outsider (USA 2021), a mini-series adapted from a novel by Stephen King. None of these characters,
however, hold a diagnosis in the fiction. Sometimes cited is also Temperance Brennan of Bones (USA
2005-2012), another character with a literary origin—she’s the heroine of a long series of novels by
Kathy Reichs. For more general information about the portrayal of autistic in American primetime
television, see Phillip S. Poe, Maxwell C. Moseley, ‘She’s a Little Different: Autism-Spectrum
Disorders in Primetime TV Dramas’, ETC: A Review of General Semantics, 73.4 (2016) https://www.
thefreelibrary.com/SHE%27S+A+LITTLE+DIFFERENT%22%3A+AUTISM-SPECTRUM+DISORDERS+I
N+PRIMETIME+TV...-a0562370462 [accessed 9 June 2021].
  37
      In addition to BBC’s Sherlock, other dysfunctional European male detectives in the Holmes
tradition, often diagnosed as autistic by their audience, are Endeavour Morse of Inspector Morse
(United Kingdom 1987-1993), Sean Stone of Chasing Shadows (United Kingdom 2014), the protagonists
of the two versions of Professor T (Belgium 2015-2018; Germany 2017-2020), and Dimitris Lainis of the
Eteros Ego (Greece 2019-). In the literary field, it is worth recalling the hugely successful mystery novel
by Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (London: Jonathan Cape, 2013)
and Sandrone Dazieri’s Italian trilogy about the investigative duo Colomba and Dante (Uccidi il padre,
2017; L’angelo, 2018; Il re di denari, 2019). The two detectives have been said to be ‘neurodivergent’
by the author himself, in an interview in which he also reclaimed the label for himself. See Berna


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                                                                                                          
González Harbour. ‘Sandrone Dazieri: “Yo soy neurodiverso, como mi personaje”’, País. 5 May 2017.
https://elpais.com/cultura/2017/05/05/elemental/1493962980_795296.html [accessed 9 June 2021].
  38
     Magnus Danielson, Mike Kemani, ‘When Saga Norén Meets Neurotypicality. A Liminal Encounter
along The Bridge’, in Normalizing Mental Illness and Neurodiversity in Enternanment Media, edited
by Malynnda Johnson, Christopher J. Olson (London and New York: Routledge, 2021), p. 96.
  39
      Stieg Larsson’s Millennium book trilogy (2005-2007) was adapted for the big screen both in
Sweden and in the US (respectively three feature films in 2009 and two in 2011 and 2018). A TV
series based on the first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is currently in production at Netflix.
Bron/Broen/The Bridge has been adapted in five different versions, through co-production ventures
between, respectively, the UK and France (2013-2017), the US and Mexico (2013-2014), Estonia and
Russia (2018-), Malaysia and Singapore (2018-). Forbrydelsen has been remade as The Killing in the
US in 2011.
  40
     Janet McCabe, ‘Disconnected Heroines, Icy Intelligence: Reframing Feminism(s) and Feminist
Identities at the Borders’, in Feminisms: Diversity, Difference and Multiplicity in Contemporary Film
Cultures, edited by Laura Mulvey, Anna Backman Rogers (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
2015), p. 24.
  41
     Joseph Straubhaar, quoted in McCabe, p. 24.
  42
     Kathleen McHugh, ‘The Female Detective, Neurodiversity, and Felt Knowledge in Engrenages and
Bron/Broen’. Television & New Media 19.6 (2018), pp. 538.
  43
     Ibidem.
  44
     Camilla Schwartz, E. Ann Kaplan, ‘The Female Detective as the Child Who Needs to Know. Saga
Norén as an Example of Potent yet Dysfunctional Female Detectives in Contemporary Nordic Noir’,
European Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 48.2 (2018), p. 216.
  45
     Ibidem.
  46
     Ivi, pp. 226 and 223.
  47
     Ivi, p. 220.
  48
     Ivi, p. 217.
  49
     Ivi, p. 227.
  50
     Ivi, p. 216.
  51
     Ivi, p. 225.
  52
     Ivi, p. 228.
  53
     Ivi, p. 227.
  54
     Ibidem.
  55
     Danielson and Kemani, p. 99.
  56
     Ibidem.
  57
     Ivi, p. 103.
  58
     Ivi, p. 107.
  59
     McCabe, p. 32.
  60
     Ivi, p. 34.
  61
     Ivi, p. 23.
  62
     McHugh, p. 542.
  63
     McCabe, p. 41.
  64
      S. E. Smith, ‘Lisbeth Salander and Social Perceptions’, This Ain’t Living. Blog article. http://
meloukhia.net/2010/05/lisbeth_salander_and_social_perceptions/ [accessed 9 June 2021].
  65
     Ibidem.



172                       Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation

  66
     Caroline Narby, ‘Double Rainbow: On Lisbeth Salander’, Bitchmedia, 5 January 2021 https://www.
bitchmedia.org/post/double-rainbow-on-lisbeth-salander-feminism-autism-millennium-trilogy.
[accessed 9 June 2021].
  67
     Leah Jane, ‘Fröken Salander & Me: How a Misanthropic Computer Hacker Will Change Autism in
Literature and life’, The Quixotic Autistic, 6 June 2010 http://quixoticautistic.blogspot.com/2010/06/
froken-salander-me-how-misanthropic.html [accessed 9 June 2021].
  68
     Stephenie Thorne, ‘We Need More Autistic Women on TV And Here’s Why’, The Art of Autism, 18
September 2019. https://the-art-of-autism.com/we-need-more-autistic-women-on-tv-and-heres-
why/ [accessed 9 June 2021].
  69
     Ibidem.
  70
      Rebecca Tharian Priyanka and others, ‘Characters with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Fiction:
Where are the women and girls?’, Advances in Autism. 5.1 (2019), pp. 50-63. DOI: 10.1108/AIA-09-
2018-0037. See also J. R. Thorpe, ‘Why Are There So Few Women With Autism On TV?’, Bustle, 1
August, 2017 https://www.bustle.com/p/why-are-there-so-few-women-with-autism-on-tv-71248
Accessed 9 June 2021.
  71
     See the following threads in online web forums: ‘Are series and movies representation of autism
realistic?’, Autismforums https://Autismforums.com/threads/27454/; ‘Female Characters With
Asperger’s Syndrome?’, Wrongplanet https://Wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=223356;
‘How Many of You Are Autistic?’ Singletrackworld https://Singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/how-
many-of-you-are-autistic/. Accessed 9 June 2021.
  72
     Priyanka, ‘Characters with Autism Spectrum Disorder’.
  73
     Ibidem.
  74
      The notion of ‘textual poaching’, or the transformative appropriation of the products of popular
culture by fans, resulting in different types of artifacts, was introduced by Michael De Certeau in his
Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) and later developed by Henry
Jenkins in Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge: 1992).
  75
      Temple Grandin. The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, 2013).
  76
      Julia Fernandez. ‘Astrid et Raphaëlle sur France 2. “La complexité de l’autisme est une grande
richesse dramaturgique”’, Allociné, 21 May 2021 https://Allocine.fr/article/fichearticle_gen_
carticle=18699631.html [accessed 9 June 2021].
  77
       See her interview in the Petitesattentions website https://Petitesattentions.wixsite.com/
petitesattentions/post/interview-avec-lizzy-brynn-actrice-youtubeuse-et-autrice           [accessed    23
August 2021].
  78
     Hugo Horiot. Autisme: j’accuse! (Paris: Iconoclaste, 2018) [accessed 9 June 2021].
  79
     https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10521128/Sherlock-Holmes-is-autistic-leading-charity-claims.
html Stéphanie Gorlin. ‘Astrid et Raphaëlle (France 2): pourquoi Astrid boîte-t-elle ? La réponse de Sara
Mortensen’, ProgrammeTV, 4 June 2021. https://www.Programme-tv.net/news/series-tv/277390-astrid-
et-raphaelle-pourquoi-astrid-boite-t-elle-la-reponse-de-sara-mortensen/ [accessed 9 June 2021].
  80
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174                      Dall’Asta, European Neurodivergent Detectives and the Politics of Autism Representation
