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skrunksthatwunk · 9 months

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oh the inherent autistic4autistic romance of harold and maude (1971). im gonna lose my mind

they. i. omg. look i've seen this movie 3 times and it always gets better. it's very good i love it dearly. im not sure what this post is im just gonna talk about them being autistic that's all.

sensory stuff (sensory seeking, in particular):

maude's scent machine (to "give her nose a treat"!!), harold's enjoyment of it

her "switch to the tactile" via things like statues, her encouragement to explore it in a variety of ways, which harold does in some unconventional ways, i.e. sticking his head in lol

when replanting the tree maude mentions a love of dirt for sensory reasons (i believe it's the way it feels but it might be the smell)

that scene where harold's like ooh the day's so nice i feel like somersaulting and she's like yeah!! go do it!! and he's like but id feel stupid and she's like everyone has a right to make an ass of themselves. and then he somersaults. very neurodivergent friend group of them that kind of enabling is literally me and my friends

in the above scene, maude declines harold's offer of a cartwheel and says she feels like yelling, then does so. vocal stim

maude's breath of fire morning routine could also be a vocal stim

arguably maude's fascination with art and them watching the fireworks and model trains could be visual stims, but that's a bit more of a stretch. still.

maude's clutter could also be kind of a visual stim. i like visual clutter for that reason; perhaps she doesn't mind it in her home

maude's focus on music and making sound, something she passes to harold via the banjo, singing (even if imperfectly), etc

they dance :) (harold's dance at the end particularly feels like stimming to me)

harold sitting upside down on the therapist's chair

harold's morning-after bubble blowing could be visual

maude likes stealing different kinds of cars for the variety. this, combined with how she comments on how harold's hearse drives, makes me wonder if it's a vertebral/proprioceptive kinda thing where she likes feeling the cars move differently, like the different leans to their turns and how they start and stop, things like that (mecore)

communication/self expression:

harold expresses himself through faking his death in a variety of gruesome and creative ways

harold drives a hearse!! and he likes it. even as his wardrobe moves from black and he stops going to funerals it's the one thing he holds onto

harold's affect is relatively flat. his smiles are pretty small and rare and he almost never raises his voice

harold makes little to no effort to hold conversation with others besides maude outside of performances (i.e. faking maude's death with uncle victor). a lot of this is because he detests the situations he's in (i.e. the dating service calls or speaking to the motorcycle cop), but even when speaking could theoretically add to the performance, he chooses not to, instead silently showing what he needs to, i.e. in the harakiri scene. in short, mecore

maude infodumps and overshares and i love her. it matches well with harold's relative quiet. like when she's walking to her house after harold drives her home for the first time and she talks about her friend who gave her the keys and tricks to car theft? unnecessary. but wonderful

not sure how to explain this one but when harold begins to cry when telling the chem lab story, maude doesn't say anything like, "im sorry, that sounds really hard", but instead talks about people backing away from life, and does her "give me an L give me an I" L-I-V-E cheer. it's not a typical response, but it's one that resonates with harold (not that saying the former can't be an autism vibe bc i for sure rely on scripts in situations like that Because they're unfamiliar, but it depends person to person yk)

harold falls in love and plans on proposing within a week, potentially suggesting very strong experiences of emotions

i mean. the whole movie is maude being like get weird be authentic explore and love life and then them being weird. unmasking journey starts NOW!!!!

harold knows that the only way to get people to leave him alone is to scare them away, or to make them think he's a lost cause that they can't make "more normal". he tends to do this instead of talking. obv faking his deaths, but also faking maude's murder, showing his mother maude's photo instead of explaining beyond exactly what's needed, torching the car his mother exchanged the hearse for, etc. he knows he won't be accepted and uses his weirdguy vibe to his advantage bc he knows they think he's weird anyway. and also because he doesn't want to talk much in general

when confronted by a cop about stealing a car she's like yeah i took it. and this tree. she doesn't bother lying bc she doesn't see a problem with it and/or because she isn't afraid of the cop

when harold goes to tell his mother that he's planning to marry maude he interrupts her even though she's on the phone multiple times because he Has To Tell Her Now

harold sending the hearse off the cliff at the end as a symbolic but ultimately useless gesture is another silent death he expresses himself with, but one he is rebirthed from

interests/beliefs:

harold's interest in death and destruction are kinda his only hobbies for a while, and are ones that keep him isolated

they go to strangers' funerals for shits. enough said (they also freely admit to not knowing the deceased like they do not care)

maude chooses to end her life at 80. she has a very positive, loving view of death in relation to life and change, and does not see this as sad, nor does she consider her relationship with harold as a reason to stay longer. she's made that decision, and he's just one beautiful component of an endlessly beautiful world she's leaving behind. her perspective is not common, but it's something that drives her throughout the movie, that search for life and whimsy

the romance itself is unusual, but the only ones who question it are outsiders. they both seem unphased by the age gap. the taboo doesn't matter to them at any stage

maude's past of protest could suggest a strong sense of justice, and her disregard of law could suggest an "im not gonna follow this rule if it's not right/doesn't make sense" attitude (she also explicitly ties her unorthodox behavior to her protest experience, saying it's her own, small form of resistance. just against social norms generally)

harold's rejection of normal social conventions i.e. dating, hanging out at funerals/demolition sites, etc. as well as his disdain for the military (particularly the way it manifests when he's tricking victor into not enlisting him by pretending to be bloodthirsty and screaming at maude that she's a commie pig, reflecting how he sees victor/those like him) show a kind of disregard of/distaste for hierarchy and norm (though he does feel those pressures to mask, as shown by the somersaulting conversation)

maude brings a yellow umbrella to a funeral, not even trying to blend in or seem mournful (her use of color is tied to how live flowers are used at funerals rather than dead ones. it's another joy and life thing. this logic of "i don't get why everyone does this. why should i not celebrate life here/in this way?" is straightforward and unaffected by/in spite of norms but IS affected by/because of her world view in a way that's real autistic to me)

misc

maude collects stuff

maude shows an unusual amount of empathy for the tree in town and moves to rescue it. this may be contrasted with her flippantness about the trouble her car stealing may cause people to show both an unusual amount of empathy for inanimate objects/non human beings and low empathy for humans

something so so very autistic to me about harold blowing up the chemistry lab at his boarding school and just. going home. jdjhsksg he didn't tell anyone he just went to bed im--

when maude says all the daisies are different she mentions all kinds of subtle details, which could indicate a higher level of observation than average

maude shows almost no sense of danger or fear. whether she's being questioned by cops in a stolen vehicle or telling her new lover she's poisoned herself, she seems carefree. that could be because of how much horror she's faced, or because of her knowledge that it'll end soon and she won't have to deal with the consequences for long. but it could also be autism

harold has a similar unusual relationship with fear. he's totally fine with the stunts that could easily go wrong and with maude falling into the ocean and with mixing random chemicals in a lab for shits but when it comes to other people putting him in situations he's upset

harold has no friends and is misunderstood and made to change to become more "normal" by everyone except for maude

just. the themes of societal oppression by demanding conformity. and resisting it by living authentically. they're Everywhere in this movie and that's inherently coded towards all kinds of marginalization, neurodivergency included (one way i haven't mentioned that this appears is in the implication that maude is a nazi concentration camp survivor, as evidenced by the numbers tattooed on her wrist. obviously, fascism and eugenics are heavily invested in removing difference, whatever it may be. nazis did focus on autism somewhat (hans asperger was a nazi doctor, after all), so that could be a sort of autistic coding, though it is (understandably) generally not used as such because they were not nearly as much of a focus to them. such coding is much more often for jewish people for that reason. it's more likely that she is/was jewish, or frederick was, or she helped others who were victimized, or resisted, etc. anyway, her drive to live fully regardless of convention could be related to seeing so much death and suffering firsthand, or to a complete rejection of the ideology that brought it and anything that resembles it. it seems influenced by that, at least.)

tl;dr harold and maude is about rejecting small talk and dating and the government and instead smelling things and rolling around in the grass and loving completely life and living weirdstyle. plus they both give me Vibes. that's all go watch harold and maude

#no not everyone who rejects societal norms and is goofy and stims is nd. but these two are <3 #theyre just like me and my buddies fr #harold and maude #unusually frequent beloved movieposting this week huh. neat #look sometimes ya gotta drop an hour on a zero note post for yourself. meditation #anywya this was not meant to be so long and even so it's not comprehensive. theres probably more #but yeag 👍 autism. proof: uhh i like them.also all of this dtuff #also shoutout to my ouppy dog for sitting in the dark on the floor with me while i typed this waiting for me to pet her #autism girlie camaraderie with my dog #her feet are now twitching i think shes dreaming omg i love her sm. my little stinkman my babushka

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