Refrigerator Mothers & A Life Worth Living

The names of 2 documentaries I watched over the weekend.

First thoughts - why’s there always this one asshole at the centre of a mainstream (potentially groundbreaking) research movement that postulates all the wrong things, passionately goes against other (sometimes smarter but less social) experts in the same field, is super negative in their outlook towards life, and is depressingly fatalistic? 

Worse, sometimes there’s two. Like Joseph Fletcher for Down’s and Bruno Bettelheim for autism. 

Refrigerator Mothers is a short documentary about mothers from the 50s and 60s who doctors and the medical profession largely blamed as the cause for their child’s autism. Seems pretty absurd now, but that was the popular belief back then, thanks to the work of some people including Leo Kanner. 

This is an agonising tale of innocent mothers marginalized by society, left having to fight two battles in parallel - one with a mysterious condition called autism that seemed to have turned their loving little babies into kids whose life experiences were very different from their peers. And simultaneously, a cruel society that seemed so busy entangling itself in the establishment of a “normal” that it completely sidestepped the very hyper-systemizing types that had possibly been the torchbearers of human evolution with their groundbreaking inventions. 

Autistics from all across the vast spectrum - and their mothers’ journeys learning to deal with their disabilities - have been poignantly captured. And a beautiful, complex emotion underscores the narrative - one that is a product of crushed dreams, dead hopes, and weary wisdom garnered over the years, with the subliminal silver lining of living with a mind so unique, it is soul-enriching in indescribable ways. 

A Life Worth Living is about Down’s children. Chronicles the lives of about 4 or 5 families in the UK, and their coming to terms with their children’s diagnoses at birth. Aside from beautiful, touching montages of children with the most sincere smiles, the most empathetic faces and the most accepting souls, the narrative also captures their parents’ gradual understanding and appreciation of the cognitive differences in their children, and how those very differences make the world a better place to live in. 

There’s a point towards the end where one of the fathers tells this story about his Down’s girl where she went up to an inconsolable kid in her school cafeteria and through her mere presence managed to comfort him. That’s telling of their positive vibe. And another is a short interview with a 20-something Down’s woman who works in a bakery, and she’s teary eyed throughout the interview, clearly unable to mask her overwhelm at being at the receiving end of all this attention and love. 

Somehow, I’m very moved by people unwilling or unable to mask their true feelings. There’s just an honest vulnerability they demonstrate that both makes them so strong and so weak at the same time. Really makes me want to go up to them, hug them tight and tell them, hey, the world needs you so stick around, cuz some of us couldn’t be more glad to have you. That’s the feeling the film evokes, and it’s a good one. 

Gonna watch more docus on Real Stories.