https://blacknerdproblems.com/why-doesnt-hit-man-acknowledge-that-gary-johnson-is-on-the-spectrum/

To mask or not to mask?

I’m sure you’ve already heard about Netflix’s breakout success Hit Man directed by Richard Linklater, or that we are entering a ‘Summer of Glen’ as Glen Powell receives the respect he deserves: lest we forget Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, or that the movie is based on a true story about Gary Johnson (played by Powell), a philosophy professor who worked undercover for his local precinct as a fake hit man. There is no question that all of these aspects scream box (couch) office darling and to be clear, I enjoyed Hit Man. It’s fun, it’s comical, and it’s sexy. But the more I thought about the movie’s overall message that anyone can find their true self if they commit to change, the more confused I was by the erasure of Johnson’s neurodivergence.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, neurodivergence describes people whose brains develop or work differently for some reason. Neurodivergence can manifest itself in many different ways, but there are some common attributes that, you guessed it, Johnson exhibits pretty clearly in the movie. Johnson has a wide array of niche and hyper-focused interests such as birding, surveillance tech, and philosophy, he struggles to communicate and understand other’s social cues and emotions, repeatedly confirmed by his two coworkers at the precinct who make fun of him for this, and he shows a detailed and novel attention to the ways in which others, aka “normal” people, behave in society. 

Johnson’s ability to analyze people allows him to effectively mask in public. Before you get stressed, I’m not talking about masking in response to COVID (even though cases are on the rise again). I am talking about how neurodivergent people study and mimic “normal” people’s facial expressions, body language, and ways of speaking in order to “mask” or create an artificial performance of social behaviors that they see as socially acceptable by society.

“Masking” actually becomes the major crux of the film as Johnson astounds his coworkers with his ability to fully embody the persona of various hitmen in order to get strangers to commit to the transaction of murder. We are given a montage of the ways Johnson studies his marks, whether he is learning a Russian accent or perfecting how to apply a fake wig. He is so good at masking that his coworkers, both in the movie and in real life, verbally remark on his high conviction rate. 

For the first half of the movie, I’m fully invested and particularly enjoying this level of representation as a neurodivergent person. Johnson enjoys his life, he enjoys waxing poetic about philosophy to his college students, he enjoys feeding his cats Id and Ego (such a great detail), and he clearly enjoys his deep passion for birds. I saw myself in how he went on rants about niche topics, got picked on by his coworkers for being strangely “funny,” and enjoyed a quiet night at home with a book. Yet, as always with Hollywood, here comes a turn that only makes sense if you don’t interrogate it too thoroughly. But I’m a neurodivergent nerd, so you know I’m gunna interrogate the hell out of it.

Linklater, in an interview with Vanity Fair, describes Johnson as a “kinda passionless guy…all brain and no heart…a glasses nerdy professor guy.” Um, what? Johnson actually has a lot of passion (BIRDING!) but what truly confuses me is that this framing makes it sound like Johnson is heartless simply because other people are treating him heartlessly, none more so than his ex-wife. 

Early on, during a scene where Johnson is having lunch with her, she challenges his thoughts on whether people can change their personality or not. She argues that there is recent research that shows people can alter themselves in just a few months. Then we get this bombshell:

Johnson: “So you just didn’t have a couple decades to wait for me to change.”

Ex-wife: “Well, if there was one thing you seemed least interested in, it was probably change.”  

Johnson: “I’ve accepted the idea that a normal relationship isn’t in my cards.”

Ex-wife: “What is normal?…Everyone is at least a little fucked up…you just have to find someone…who complements your own fucked upness, and that is a different level of survival technique that involves another person.”  

The Johnson we were presented with at the beginning of the movie shows no desire to change; only others berate him for being different. Not only that, his ex-wife names his neurodivergence as fucked upness AND states that he just needs to meet someone who complements it to solve his “passionlessness” which just seems…I don’t know, kinda fucked up. The movie wants you to believe that Johnson is unhappy with his current life and wishes for change, and that his various hitman personas, but specifically his ‘Ron’ persona (we’ll get to that in a second), allows him to free himself and become a more passionate person. Yet, this plot point is shoehorned in, meant to make the audience see someone who has a trajectory that is his choice but in effect is actually a response to the desires of others. 

Cue the hot new woman entering Johnson’s life. While embodying his persona of Ron (a strong, charismatic, testosterone stereotype) Johnson whisks Madison (played by Adria Arjona) off her feet. And here ensues, on the surface, a fun, sexy, and engaging identity crisis as Johnson has to put on the Ron mask more and more often. Yet, my question is, what happens to Johnson underneath the mask? 

Madison doesn’t meet Johnson, she meets Ron, a studied and put together façade of what Johnson believes a woman betrayed by her husband would want, someone who is rewarded by society, something made very clear by Johnson’s coworkers as they reflect on Ron being the best and sexiest of all Johnson’s self-created hit men. The crux of the movie falls apart here because Johnson does not long for change, rather he is thrust into it by his precinct and enjoys the rewards he receives from society for masking as Ron. 

If Hit Man explicitly named that Johnson didn’t like who he was, instead of just not liking how others treated him for who he was, if Hit Man had shown how Madison felt about Johnson once the Ron ruse had been dropped, or if Hit Man had acknowledged Johnson’s neurodivergence as something celebrated by literally anyone, the plot would have actually made more sense. But without any of this the whole thing falls apart.

The ending of Hit Man wants to have its cake and eat it too, giving its main character a happy ending where he states he simply found the best cocktail of Gary and Ron. Once he put them together, the movie pressures you to believe Johnson got the life he always wanted. But all Johnson wanted was to mask in public and be rewarded for it, all he wanted was Madison to love him. He got these things but at what cost? 

I wonder what happened to the Gary Johnson that actually liked himself for who he was? He enjoyed teaching philosophy to college students, he enjoyed making technology for the local police station, and he enjoyed birding. The ways in which the movie sells a Johnson that dislikes his life and wants change is not actually true, rather what we are sold is a Johnson that simply changes his personality to make himself more consumable for others, effectively masking his neurodivergent attributes as long as he gets a wife, kids, and a white picket fence. What a shame.

Cover image via Netflix

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The post Why Doesn’t ‘Hit Man’ Acknowledge that Gary Johnson is on the Spectrum? appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.