Life, Animated

Ron Suskind’s memoir, Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism (2014), inspired the popular 2016 film adaptation of the same name. The book delves into the raw emotion of the Suskind family in a way that the documentary cannot, as it offers a chronological look at Ron Suskind’s thoughts and frustrations while raising his autistic son, Owen.

Owen is a rambunctious and happy toddler. The three-year-old is talkative and playful with his older brother, Walt. With no concerns about the development of their young boys, Ron and Cornelia Suskind are blindsided one morning in 1993 when Owen’s growing vocabulary suddenly dwindles down to one word: “juice.”

It is as if Owen completely regressed overnight. Every social, verbal, and mental skill seems to have disappeared. The Suskinds take their son to a medical professional, who then refers them to a specialist, who tells them the news that would forever change their family: Owen is on the autism spectrum.



Ron is relieved that his son is healthy physically, but he and his wife quickly start to lose faith in Owen’s interactive and personal skills. Some specialists tell them that he may never retain a full vocabulary, and he may not be able to form relationships or solve problems on his own. Other therapists, however, assure the family that Owen may develop at a regular pace with certain therapies and interventions.

Ron and Cornelia make it their mission to assist their son in his development however they can. They place him in two separate preschools to see which will be more beneficial to him. One school is exclusively for children with special needs, while the other is a traditional preschool focused on integrating special needs’ children with an average classroom. This method, Ron informs the reader, is known as “inclusion.” Neither scenario seems to work for Owen. He doesn’t have many friends or play dates, but he does find solace in the Disney movies his parents put on for him every night.

Growing up, Owen loves movies. He can’t communicate that love in words, but it is clear that he is happy when an animated film is on the screen. Ron recounts seeing Owen in front of the television every day, immersed in all of the classics – The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King, Dumbo, Beauty and the Beast, to name a few. As he ages, Owen learns basic skills such as rewinding the movie on the remote so he can re-watch his favorite parts. At six years old, Owen’s vocabulary is still stagnant, but he starts repeating some gibberish that sounds like a variation of “juice.”



One day, Owen rewinds back to his favorite part in The Little Mermaid where Ursula is singing the words “just your voice!” Owen repeats this back in the same garble he has been mumbling for a while now, and Ron and Cornelia realize it wasn’t gibberish; Owen was repeating the words he was hearing from the movie. With this realization, Ron recalls feeling a sense of hope for his son and his future.

Despite being far from successful real-life communication, Owen excels when Disney characters and movie quotes are involved. He completes his first sentence when he says his brother “doesn’t want to grow up, like Mowgli or Peter Pan.” In an effort to help his son, Ron takes his Iago hand puppet and voices the parrot from one of Owen’s favorite movies, Aladdin. To his surprise, Owen responds immediately to the parrot revealing that he has been feeling lonely as he can’t talk well with other people.

Ron and his wife search for ways to integrate their son’s ability to relate to movies with his counseling. Dr. Dan Griffin suggests a full-fledged course of therapy based solely on Owen’s comfort with these fictional characters. He names it “Educating Zazu” after the sidekick in The Lion King. Owen plays his favorite scenes over and over, memorizing nearly all of the lines in every movie. The Suskind family interacts with their son using only Disney dialogue, and he starts to break out of his shell. They role-play as some of his favorite characters. Through this form of therapy, Owen starts communicating how he feels on a basic level by relating it to what he has learned from the characters and storylines in Disney movies. He reveals that he feels like the sidekicks in every classic film and that his brother is just like the Disney heroes.



Ron proudly recounts his son’s steady development, which he attributes to the Disney strategy and homeschooling. By his teenage years, having learned fundamental social and behavioral skills from the movies, Owen feels ready to enter high school. Although his academic skills are not fully developed, his social skills are far enough along that he makes a few friends with similar interests. Ron stresses this part of his son’s therapy; for Owen, it was about advancing his communicative and cognitive skills before all else, so his academic progress was on the backburner.

Halfway through high school, though, Owen starts to experience issues he has not been exposed to before. Learning basic life skills and bare bones communication from his favorite movies, he hasn’t learned how to apply those skills to complicated situations that exist outside of the Disney universe. There were bad guys in the movies, sure, but in real life, the bad guys are rotten high school bullies. Owen cannot fully cope with these new introductions. His progress temporarily slips, and he becomes isolated and angry in high school.

To get Owen past this newfound obstacle, specialists urge Ron to turn to what his son knows best: movies. This time, he exposes his son to a more mature movie with slightly complicated concepts, The Dark Knight. After watching that movie repeatedly, Owen picks ups more advanced skills that help him overcome his real-life trauma; he goes on to graduate high school.



The course of action used to guide Owen, dubbed “affinity therapy,” is now being widely researched by universities as a form of generalized autism counseling. Whether an obsession with animation or a passion for music, specialists are exploring the noteworthy effects of communicating through more easily understood means.

Ron shares that Owen learns more every day. He is now off to college with dreams of working in animation. Not only is he living on his own for the first time, but he has a girlfriend, too. Although he still struggles with social cues – especially when it comes to his new partner – he continues making strides in his development, which is all that Ron can ask for. He also notes that his son’s autism diagnosis did not tear his family apart, as it often does for others. Instead, Owen’s diagnosis drew the Suskinds closer, lending them the strength to brave it together.