What do you think of Carl from Arthur?

[Misty Avich]

If you've seen the children's TV series Arthur then you may know that they introduced a character with autism called Carl.

The character was supposed to have Asperger's, which is known as a mild form of autism, but to me he seemed more like a moderate functioning autistic child.

As a high-functioning Aspie/PDD-NOS, BAP (don't know which term to use for me any more) I was nothing like that as a child. If I'm honest I was much more like DW. In school I was more like George, even though I wasn't dyslexic I could still relate to his character (being too nice, wimpy and struggling in class). He was quite lonely too.

I'm not saying Carl isn't a good portrayal of autism but it would have been better if his diagnosis in the episode wasn't Asperger's. It should have just been autism. DW seems more Aspie or ADHD-like to me. Asperger's and ADHD are more complex, and if you're going to have a character with one or both of those it is best to just have them as a quirky sort of character rather than very obvious.

 

[tree]

Carl Gould

For other uses of "Carl", see Carl (disambiguation). Carl Gould is a rabbit boy with autism (Asperger syndrome). He is a friend of George. Carl is a rabbit. He has short, swervy orange hair and wears a light blue T-shirt, gray jeans, dark blue and white sneakers and glasses. Carl has a form of...

arthur.fandom.com

He doesn't look much like a rabbit, but Arthur & relatives
don't look like anteaters, either.

 

[Slime_Punk]

Is this a newer character? I don't remember Arthur touching on ASD back in the day (but then again, almost nobody did), and apparently Arthur ran for 25 years, which is a very long time for a show like that. Props to them for keeping it going for so long .

DW definitely had those ADHD vibes, that was basically me as a kid. It's funny that Arthur himself seemed very much NT, but also very sensitive to other's feelings. He was kind of a unique character in that way.

 

[GrownupGirl]

I hardly ever watched Arthur, but this Carl character is a bit too stereotypical for me. He's a boy, for one thing. And he likes trains. Also Buster looks more like a rabbit than Carl.

 

[Misty Avich]

While I don't want this thread to turn into a debate about which animals they look like, I'll just quickly say that a lot of people wonder what animal Binky is, but to me it's always been obvious that he's a Hippo.

Anyway, back to the original subject, I'm not offended by Carl's character or anything, but I still feel he's a more appropriate fit of a child with more severe autism.
If there was an episode that revealed DW had Asperger's or ADHD then that would probably ring true for the character. She so reminds me of me as a child. I was an annoying little sister who always craved attention and bossed my older siblings about and caused drama. The episode "DW's bad mood" described me a lot with my behaviour, although I wasn't an angry child as such but could be quite neurotic when unable to handle my emotions.

 

[Misty Avich]

I hardly ever watched Arthur, but this Carl character is a bit too stereotypical for me. He's a boy, for one thing. And he likes trains. Also Buster looks more like a rabbit than Carl.

And he has glasses. Why do they always put autistic characters in glasses, like we're all blind nerds or something?

 

[ZebraAutismo]

It was ground breaking for the time it was realised and at that point Asperger’s was the term defo not the worst representation I’ve see :

 

[Misty Avich]

It was ground breaking for the time it was realised and at that point Asperger’s was the term defo not the worst representation I’ve see :

It wasn't a bad representation but if I had been younger than and the kids at school watched the episode they would have probably been like "that's not Misty at all!"

 

[MNAus]

Personally I find Arthur bizarre and somewhat creepy. Something about the way they talk feels disingenuous.

But onto the topic, the majority of ASD folk are male, there's a correlation between ASD and myopia and also strabismus, and trains or other forms of engineering are very popular with those with ASD. As ASD is a spectrum, any representation is going to only actually reflect a subset of the population. They've gone for attempting to represent as many people as they possibly can, which is logical and fair IMO.

PS. I use lenses, but my youngest has glasses. He's not a blind nerd. Think we need to be a bit careful with our language here.

 

[Misty Avich]

Nobody's a blind nerd, it's just an exaggeration of the stereotype.