Neurodivergent Diversions: A Column about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

by James Coulter

If you’ve never heard of Dead End: Paranormal Park, there’s a good reason for that. The animated show aired for two seasons on Netflix in 2022 before being unceremoniously canceled.

However, aside from being a rather charming supernatural comedy, Paranormal Park also featured good representation of trans and neurodivergent identities.

One character in one episode, in particular, showed how scary even the simplest social interactions can be for people with Autism.

Overstimulating Trust Exercises

Paranormal Park follows the misadventures of two teenagers, Barna and Norma, as they work as employees at a haunted amusement park. Both of them get into wacky hijinks solving the mystery of the strange happenings happening at the park.

In the episode “Trust Me”, Norma and Barney head to the beach to partake in trust-building exercises with their fellow park employees. While most of the others pull off the trust-building exercises well, Norma does not.

As a person with Autism, Norma struggles with these exercises, as they force her to go outside her comfort zone by touching other people and making eye contact. She attempts to circumvent these challenges through clever tactics like wearing sunglasses during an eye staring contest.

However, the exercise where everyone has to form a human web proves to be too close for comfort for her. As it forces her to come into close contact with everyone else, Norma feels overstimulated and has a meltdown.

This scene is a good example of overstimulation, or sensory overload, which is when someone with Autism feels overwhelmed by too many sights, sounds, and other sensory perceptions. Overstimulation can often trigger a meltdown, which, according to one website, is when someone “experiences a loss of control over their behavior…which can manifest physically through crying, shouting, hitting, or withdrawing.”

In Norma’s case, being in close contact with so many people inside the human web causes Norma to feel overstimulated through her sense of touch. As such, it triggers a meltdown which forces her to withdraw from the group.

The Fear World of Autism

In the last exercise, everyone is forced to touch a crystal skull that transports them into a “fear world” to confront what scares them the most. Surprise! Turns out their instructor Harmony was a demon in disguise who wanted to feed off their fear.

However, while everyone else faces random phobias in their fear world like being covered in rabid hamsters or not finding an open outlet to charge a dying laptop, when Norma has to place her hand on the skull, she faces a completely different fear.

What follows is a vividly animated sequence where Norma relives events from earlier in the day visualized through surreal imagery: her feet sinking into the ground like quicksand, people’s faces twisting into distorted figures, their voices distorting into different tones, and colors flashing in and out.

“Remember, Norma, it’s only the fear world,” her friend Barney says in an attempt to console her.

“You don’t understand,” she replies in tears. “My fear world is the real world.”

This animated sequence visualizes the social anxiety Norma feels on a daily basis. While not a perfect representation of the social anxiety many people with Autism face, it does an excellent job of portraying a particular instance of Autism.

Autism is a social disorder. As such, people with Autism often struggle with social interactions that most other people experience daily without problem. For them, something as simple as making eye contact or having a conversation can be a challenge. And as this cartoon shows, it can be quite scary sometimes.

Dead End: Paranormal Park is available for streaming on Netflix. Watch it at: https://www.netflix.com/title/80994692