Raymond Babbitt: Accurate portrayal of Autism?

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I am interested in everyone's impression of Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman, as portrayed in the movie "Rain Man" (1988), also starring Tom Cruise as Raymond's brother, Charlie

The Spectrum is wide and Spectrumites are just as individual as NT's. I can't imagine that there are not people on the Spectrum who are just like him. And he had all the criteria of the DSM5 to be on the Spectrum so yeah, his portrayal was accurate as far as I think.

I haven't even fully sat through the movie yet, so I can't really say. I only wish I would stop having to hear about it constantly. I get that this will be a lot of people's first impressions of autism, and that's a pretty important thing. But it gets so tedious hearing about this movie and even being compared to this character in passing conversation.

Not sure I believe that any more, I used to though. At the very least I would say he was probably more aware and emotionally involved then he appeared to be. But do adults even present like that? Don't know.

Raymond was based on Kim peek, who was not himself autistic but who did have a rather severe neurological difference.

I do think some adults do present in ways similar to that. I know of at least one who said she was similar.

My issue with Rain Man is more my issue with people who see the film and assume it is definitive instead of representational.

I agree with Verdandi. I am sure that somewhere on the Spectrum, with the millions of people who have this disorder, you will find some adults somewhere who present very much like him. But like Verdandi said, Spectrumites are all individuals and are as diverse as NT's even though we all have the fundamental DSM5 symptoms. I guess people identify Autism with this character because he was the first portrayal on the big screen. But with shows like Parenthood and other shows and films I think that people are changing their perceptions.

I'm just thinking of the people I know from here. Some of the non verbal members have mentioned that people think they have no idea what is going on, when in reality they know very well. But I guess there could be some people like that.

its just one possible presentation of someone who has savant autism.
a lot of people;some WPers included wrongly think he represents what classic autism looks like;we are all different just like the rest of the spectrum.

coudnt agree more on how rain man is STILL!! used as a yard stick for judging everyone with autism,but it wasnt just the awesome kim peek they based it on, there were around ten savants all together; most of them had autism if memory is correct-kim was just the most popular person that whats his name trained on.

we have had WP members who are sensitive to meeting other spectrumites meet kim peek before and they didnt see the social/communication issues in him, that was before people even knew it was agenesis of the corpus callosum he had.

Rain Man from the movie is pretty good for the severe end of HFA (that's a professional opinion too; Lorna Wing puts him as such). He was based on several individuals with such, so that makes sense.

The "real" Rain Man, not so much.

Yeah, he was based on more people. I was looking for references to others (I recall reading about at least one autistic person), but since I couldn't find anything I didn't think to mention.

Definitely only one view.

It's not a horrible portrayal of autism. But it's only one way an autistic person can be. There are many other ways.

The chief problem with the film isn't the film itself; it's that people are taking it to be some kind of archetypal autism, when it's not.

That's my main issue regarding this subject.

I voted "no" but realistically, I am sure there are individuals who do present similarly to Raymond Babbitt. It's just not a broadly accurate representation.

If you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person. My impression is that they wanted to make up a character that fell in the middle of the spectrum.

My understanding is that it was a fairly accurate portrayl...of Babbitt...No one else.

I worked with Autistic teens in a special program at my school, before I was diagnosed with my learning disability (this is what lead me to get evaluated, I felt I shared some similarities) and I feel the speaking pattern was similar to some of those kids, some of the behaviours were similar... Similar, not the same. And I agree that once you've met one person with ASD, you've met one person with ASD. All the kids in the program were different. Just like Raymond Babbitt is different than anyone else with an ASD.