Deej is a 2017 documentary about David James (DJ) Savarese, a nonspeaking autistic teenager who communicates with a voice synthesizer. The film has been criticized as using the scientifically discredited facilitated communication technique.[3]
Background
The film was directed by Robert Rooy. David James Savarese, known as DJ or Deej, was also credited as a director and co-producer of the documentary.[4] The film depicts Savarese as an activist with the goal of promoting communication access for nonspeaking autistic people as part of the neurodiversity movement.[5]
The film's relationship to facilitated communication was the subject of one critical essay in a peer reviewed journal.[12]Behavioral scientist and author Craig Foster notes that Deej is never shown independently communicating or exhibiting his "hidden intelligence", even though the documentary implies that he does. Foster states the documentary does not mention that scientific studies have raised questions about facilitated communication and that "skepticism toward facilitated communication is necessary to ameliorate its harmful influence and to encourage genuine acceptance of people with complex communication needs."[12]
Janyce L. Boynton, a former facilitator who has become a critic of facilitated communication, judges the film in a review to be "uncritical promotion" of facilitated communication and notes that the film's editors "chose to leave out some vital information." She concludes that the documentary is a "missed opportunity to teach people what about what living with autism is really like" and that the story the film tells is "one sided and built on facilitator-authored messages."[13]
