The Rain Man Discussion

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I swear there's a Rain Man discussion in every single thread about movies (ASD-related or otherwise) on this entire site!! ! No offense meant, but...did we really need another one?

Rain Man's character was based on Kim Peek, who did not have autism.

Speaking of Kim Peek, I looked him up on Wikipedia to make sure I was spelling his last name correctly, and it turns out he died a few weeks ago =(

He was based on Kim Peek (and also Bill Sackter), but it wasn't about him; in other words, they used him as a starting point, but they didn't make it exactly like him, instead tailoring Raymond's character to have autism traits. Dustin Hoffman also met a lot of other savants to get a better idea, and I'm sure at least one was autistic.

Rain Man is pretty accurate, really. I don't know why some people think he's too low-functioning to be on the spectrum or something.

This, I would be the most boring film aspie ever. I have no special powers, I'm not a maths whiz, I don't act like it's the end of the world if the college canteen doesn't have my favourite pasta, I don't walk/talk funny, I like discos/parties and other loud events. Infact people would be wondering which character's supposed to be the aspie if it weren't spellt out for them. They could spice it up a bit and make my obsessive traits more obvious but I wouldn't want that. And just like you I'm very messy, my life is a bit like donald's flat in mozart and the whale.

The special abilities*, yeah, but they also included several individuals with autism into the mix, which is why you have all of the symptoms of autism there.

Lorna Wing (the lady who defined AS what it is today), eMedicine, various textbooks and books, all say it's an accurate depiction of someone with HFA (one possible manifestation). It looks right to me and my mother too (there's an anecdote).

*They can be there in autism too

Aww let's see here my Grandma and uncle Mike told me about this movie when I was in middle school, because of my AS spectrum. They always referred to Raymond, cause he's a genius, but socially awkward.Finally watched the movie back in 8th grade, I could relate somewhat to Raymond, except I don't he was a aspie. He was good with numbers, wish I was too.Anyhow yeah I can see stereotypes in Dustin Hoffman's role. But relax during the time the movie 1st hit bigged, people were starting to be aware of autism.Not a bad movie, just stereotypical.

How do the figure HFA? He couldn't care for himself. He was in an institution until Tom Cruises character checked him out, wasn't he?

There is a somewhat funny bit in the movie, "If you could only say it in words" where the AS main character is rattling on at dinner and one of the characters cuts him off with a "thank you Rainman". The actor did a great job of reacting to that, as if he'd heard it many times before and was thinking "here we go again".

I'm pretty ritualistic about eating different foods on different days. Like if I had a burger on Monday, I can't have that on Tuesday.

Also, I'm pretty good at blackjack, but since I'm high functioning, all I do is misread social cues and act awkward. (credit to John Hodgman for that joke.)

I've seen it, and I identify with several but not all aspects of the character. Probably most fascinating to me, was the part about the counting of the marbles (or beans, whatever they were). His was a very exaggerated demonstration, but I use the same method of counting things, and it's not "1-2-3-4". And it's usually more accurate when large numbers of things not entirely visible are involved. I can't really explain it, but I pick out a cubic group of the objects, and "see" the quantity, and then multiply to fill the volume of space I'm looking at. Sounds goofy to anyone I try to explain it to, but it works for me. It's handy when I'm buying a bag of prepackaged nuts & bolts... I never look at how many the package says it contains, and I never get a package with an unbalanced number of nuts to bolts.

The sensory overload stimuli are very different from mine, but I know they can be different and still be autism. I am very routine, and I do eat exactly the same thing for breakfast every day, and have for decades. As far as a certain food a certain day of the week for lunch or dinner, I don't really hold to a routine. The other thing I really related to, is the near opening scene, when Tom Cruise' character starts touching Raymond's books and things. I get VERY upset if people mess with my things. I never shared toys as a child, and I don't lend things to anyone now. I don't borrow or try to use other peoples' stuff either, so I think it's fair.

Charles

I thought the point of the rainman film was to point out that the rainman's brother (played by Tom Cruise) was AS and show how easily it can go undiagnosed. They are brothers and autism is genetic. Take for example the name rainman (raymond). The Tom Cruise character had a picture of a man in the rain in his mind and misinterpreted raymond as rainman, an AS trait to think in pictures, he also lines up cars for his business and knows all the specifications of the cars (special interest), then when he learns that his brother the rainman will inherit the money he drops his girlfriend and kidnaps his brother, without realising the social consequences (lack of social imagination) very aspie indeed, but completely missed by everyone, thats the problems for aspie's we work hard to compensate and fit in with NT's, but never get praise for our efforts, just punishments for our difference.

The movie is from the early 90's or even the 1980's isn't it? Very little was known about HFA or AS back then. HFA can differ in individuals too. I had more severe HFA than a lot of the kids my friends are raising. And as for Raymond not being able to care for himself: neither could Kim Peek. He was taken care of by his father until he died.
Anyway, there was no mild-moderate-severe spectrum back then, only autism. There was no AS. So patiz the film is not about Tom Ctuises character having AS because there wasn't a name for it. It might be based on people that may have AS now but tit's not literally based on them.
I think Rainman portrayed an autistic person quite well and I'm very similar to him.

Yeah seriously. And yet people (including especially many autistic people) have this idea that all portrayals of autism must be just like their experience or else it's useless or something. And this even happens with real-life portrayals of autistic people. A (highly media-twisted) version of my story was in the media years ago, and there were people who expected me to represent all autistic people. Which is totally not fair. The funny (and aggravating) thing though was that many people said that I was too low functioning for them, but others insisted the exact opposite, that I was too high functioning for them. Very few people were satisfied. I made my best effort to get them to interview more autistic people and show a wider range, but they interviewed like a dozen people and then showed only one or two of them, which made them (and me) mad. But one person, whether real or fictional, cannot "portray all autism", nor should it be expected to, nor should all movies/shows about autism be expected to show the entire range of the spectrum or else be useless or something.

If it weren't Rain Man being considered this way, it'd be some other show about autism, whichever was the most popular first film, and then all the stereotypes would come from that instead of Rain Man. It's unavoidable.

Personally I could identify with him somewhat but not always. I could identify in some ways that were common to lots of autistic people, but he also had much more stable intellectual abilities (and was often absorbed in intellectual things) than mine. But that doesn't mean I hate his portrayal or something. It was based off of several autistic people and some non-autistic people too. I know autistic people who totally identify with it. It's accurate enough for exactly one kind of autistic person, that is one where the rigidity, mental/intellectual absorption and stability, and obsessiveness about certain things are the most obvious outward traits. One thing I liked was how the movie showed him understanding things that everyone thought he couldn't.

I even have a suspicion about why he said he was not autistic. I used to wonder why I was called autistic because I didn't identify with my outward behavior so much as my inner life, and my inner life is not the stereotype of autistic behavior. It took me a long time to even understand my behavior and how it related to autism. I wondered if something similar was going on with him (rather than simply the idea that "people with these conditions are oblivious to their own difficulties", which is a stereotype and often nowhere near as true as most people would say).

I didn't like the ending where they made it sound like he had to go back to the institution just because he couldn't handle life outside of it in a few days after a lifetime there. Lots of people with far more difficulties than he had, live outside of institutions. The problem was (as I heard from someone who knew people heavily involved in the movie) they were going to have him move out, and then an autism "expert" who has pushed for the return of that kind of institution, overrode them and strongly pushed for him going back in the end as the only "safe" thing to do. Which is BS, there's nothing good in institutions that can't be done out of them (and there is no severity of difficulties that makes a person have to live in one, otherwise I'd be in one, given that I can do less for myself than that guy could).

Pensieve

Some Asperger facts:

Wing is the author of many books and academic papers, including Asperger's Syndrome: a Clinical Account, a 1981 academic paper that popularised the research of Hans Asperger and introduced the term "Asperger's syndrome".

Rainman fact: made in 1988.

I hope this is OK. Thank you for your comments.