I hate The Big Bang Theory, and I can say that because I watched three whole seasons of it in a semi-marathon that ended when I caught a glimpse of my reflection and had to ask myself who I thought I was, exactly, and what the hell I thought I was doing with my life. I was dressed in the previous days’ pyjamas at the time, wrapped in a blanket and chugging directly from a two-liter bottle of Fanta. It would have been funny, if I hadn’t forgotten how to laugh.
There are a number of cultural problems with The Big Bang Theory – Elin talked about one of them the other day – but one thing bothers me more than all the rest. No, it’s not the mis-representation of “geek culture” nor the pervading misogyny and racism, although they do bother me – greatly, in fact. I’m just out of my depth talking about those things, so let’s move on to the next paragraph, in which I actually explain what it is that bothers me.
It’s the fact that one of the main characters clearly has some kind of developmental disorder, probably Asperger’s, and nobody on the show ever has or ever will come out and say that explicitly because that would draw attention to the fact they’re making fun of that character for having Probably-Asperger’s. I’m talking about Sheldon (Jim Parsons), by the way. You knew that. Don’t pretend you didn’t know what I was talking about.
You know what I’m talking about because, although co-creator Bill Prady has said “we never gave him a diagnosis“, Jim Parsons plays Sheldon as a man with Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s safe to say that somewhere along the line, somebody is writing a show that occupies some dangerous, even offensive, territory.
Perhaps my (very preliminary) diagnosis of Asperger’s is hasty; all I can say for sure is that Sheldon displays a number of traits that are consistent with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC), and even those fluctuate week-to-week depending on the writer, which makes any kind of pseudo-diagnosis difficult, but Sheldon presents with a number of typical Asperger traits that remain constant throughout the show, such as:
- Repetitive routines and rituals
- Limited awareness of social conventions
- Rigid social behaviour
- “Single-mindedness” – extreme attentional focus on one thing at a time
- Lack of empathy
… and so on. We could do this all day, but I don’t want to trawl Youtube for evidence. I might go into a rage blackout, and then my editor would kill me.
Taken by itself, this could all be fine. One of the main characters in the competing Community is identified as having Asperger’s Syndrome multiple times, even in the pilot episode, and the stories and jokes that spin out from his character traits are generally handled very well and they are hilarious (I love Community, by the way, so I admit to a small bias on this point).
So what’s the difference?
Where Community succeeds in this matter, I think, is in the willingness to laugh along with the character and use the character traits as part of the actual character, whereas The Big Bang Theory has an ugly tendency to use Sheldon’s obvious disorder as the punchline, and I am using the word “punchline” very loosely. At the very least, his actions are intended to be funny, and those actions are generally those of a man with ASC.
Essentially, Sheldon has never been identified in-universe as a person who displays traits of ASC so that the writers on that show can keep making fun of him. That is to say, they can keep making jokes at the expense of people with Autism Spectrum Condition, because once you start making fun of the disorder, you make fun of everyone with that disorder.
I have a thought experiment for you to demonstrate what I’m talking about. Go back through my points and replace “Asperger traits” with “traits and mannerisms that are stereotypically associated with black people”. Hopefully, the show’s creators and executive producers, Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, would never allow those kind of jokes because it would be wrong as well as unfunny.
(Actually, given the show’s treatment of Raj (Kunal Nayyar) and his family, I wouldn’t be so sure.)
I’m not saying “stop making fun of Sheldon”. That would be fine: taken at face value, Sheldon’s the outlier, or “Phoebe” of the group. I’m saying stop making fun of Sheldon for being “weird”. Stop explicitly calling him “weird”. Stop using Sheldon’s Asperger traits as a punchline; you’re making fun of an entire population of people who are, however “weird”, still people.
A version of this post originally appeared on my personal blog. As a bonus, you can read a scathing comment from somebody who has clearly never seen The Big Bang Theory. If you disagree, let me have it in the comments, but at the very least can we agree that The Big Bang Theory is about as funny as an aneurysm?