Thousands of people have added their names to an online petition calling for the Golden Globes to strip Sia's movie Music of its two nominations.
The film has been blasted for its depiction of autism and the casting of Maddie Ziegler as a nonverbal autistic teen. It is nominated for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and Kate Hudson is up for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.
“Sia's debut movie Music is severely ableist and contributes to harmful stereotypes of autistic people,” reads a change.org petition created by Rosanna Kataja and Nina Skov Jensen that had more than 67,000 names on Thursday morning.
“We call on the Golden Globes to rescind its nomination in both categories.”
Despite the breathless coverage they receive, the Golden Globes (which will be handed out Feb. 28) are a dubious honour. Winners are chosen by only 85 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) – many of whom are not, in fact, journalists.
(In a recent Paste post, Jacob Oller opined that the Golden Globes “should fade into obscurity” and called out the HFPA’s “shady membership with questionable credentials” and “history of corruption and bribery.”)
Another change.org petition, which had nearly 25,000 names as of Thursday morning, called for Music to be cancelled. “Sia has shown no remorse for her inaccurate and hurtful betrayal of the community,” fumed Hannah Marshall.
The U.S. National Autism Association denounced Sia’s directing as “dangerous and abusive.”
Sia initially defended Music on social media, tweeting: “F**king sad nobody’s even seen the dang movie. My heart has always been in the right place.” Later, she tweeted simply “I’m sorry.”
Sia added: “I listened to the wrong people and that is my responsibility, my research was clearly not thorough enough, not wide enough.”