Do you think that if "Rain Man" had never been released...

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...we'd all be much better off?

I mean, this is the movie that was the genesis for an awful slur against people on the autism spectrum, and it also etched a permanent archetype in people's minds.

I'd tend to think that for us ASD/HFA males, we'd have had an easier time navigating the dating world when women wouldn't automatically think of Rain Man if we broached the topic of ASD... just explaining it as if were some challenge in life like dyslexia or ADHD or colour-blindness, which can be worked around with the right attitude. (Of course, if the other person has met more severely autistic people, they might unconsciously invoke that archetype for someone who's more HFA).

I still remember my worst year of bullying, while beginning my teens, was in '88...and the movie didn't come out till the end of that year, and I remember having those racing thoughts, "What is wrong with me?? Why can't I be a normal human? Why do I have to suffer for it??" but at least that slur didn't exist yet, nope, it was "loser", "spazz", "freak", etc.

The "funny" thing is, after I saw it on TV in early 1991, I didn't make any connection between my struggles and those of the lead character's, in any sort of way.

Before "Rainman", I had never heard a serious discussion of autism spectrum disorders.  Even though Mr. Hoffman's role established an incorrect stereotype of a 'typical' autistic person, it still raised awareness of autism and provoked discussions and real research into the condition.

That said, it is still annoying to correct people who have heavily bought into the stereotype.  "When you have seen one autistic person, you have seen one autistic person" is the mantra, after all.

I watched 'Rainman' long before considering myself autistic or seeking a diagnosis for it, perhaps in the year 2002 or so. I didn't think the protagonist behaved anything like me in general, but then, my autism manifests differently than the portrayal by Dustin Hoffman.

It really is a movie that people have in mind when they think of autism, which can lead to comments such as "you don't look like you have autism", since people think Rainman is what autism necessarily looks like, or something similar to that.

Get over it.

If the movie had never come out your life would suck just as much as it does now. And it would probably suck more.

You would still have autism. And its the autism that makes your life suck. Not Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of an autisitc character.

Neither Rainman nor Big Bang Theory feature a typical autistic person, but at least they made people aware autism exists.

Well, at the risk of going on a slight tangent from the original topic header...I think Dimitri in Cobra Kai is definitely ASD/HFA, and then there's Sam in the Netflix series "Atypical", who I believe is more of an IRL "Aspie" type character.

One can definitely see how there's been a proliferation of autistic characters on TV and movies in the past decade or so...

Yeah. Its become the "disease of the week". Which on balance is a good thing. Raises awareness. More characters...who differ from each other...but who are closer approximates of real autistics ...who differ from each other IRL...is a good thing.

Better than just having one stereotype for classic autism (Rain Man) and one for HFA (Sheldon Leonard, and his buddies).

Rainman gets a bad rap because at the time the preferred term for his condition was "autistic savant" even though there was never a real connection. It's part of why the medical community needs to think about what it names things carefully.

As far as the topic goes, it's just a movie. The bigger issue was that there was no awareness for most people before it came out. Anything it did was going to be somewhat problematic.

Actually the term back then was "idiot savant", not "autistic savant"...kinda worse doncha think?

I think that they still use that term.

You might be right, between idiot savant and savant syndrome. I can't figure out when the autistic savant term was adopted and dropped.

Another movie would have just been released about an autistic person. Good or bad. I've always heard that Rain Man brought a lot of awareness to the fact autism was a thing...but at the time people still assumed it only affected males and people were only severely affected to the point they had to live in institutions or assisted living situations.

Kim Peeks, the man Dustin Hoffman's character was based on wasn't even autistic.

No, I don't think so.

In my experience, bullies actively seek excuses to bully people. If the movie didn't exist, they would probably have found some other excuse.

Then again, I'm biased, because "Rain Man" was one of my favorite movies growing up and I still reference it all the time. I saw it before I was aware I might be on the Autism spectrum, but there are some general things I have in common with Raymond, such as having a routine and being disturbed when it's interrupted, though not to the same degree as he does in the film.

The character of Raymond may be "inaccurate," but I don't think he's a stereotype. He's a fleshed out character. I wonder if the bullies who turned him into one saw the film. The point is that Tom Cruise's character, Charlie, starts out as a jerk who sees Raymond as an annoyance and only wants to use him to save his business, but by the end, Charlie sees Raymond as his brother and cares deeply about him. Charlie's frustration with Raymond is also a great source of humor in the movie. It still cracks me up when Raymond is complaining that he usually has six fish sticks for dinner and Charlie angrily chops the three fish sticks in half, so there are six.

This is one of the reasons I tend to like older movies better, because I think a modern, mainstream movie would shy away from making Charlie a genuine jerk at the beginning of the film -- especially since the person he's being a jerk to is neurodivergent -- which would make the payoff of him becoming nicer by the end much less satisfying. Then again, it's possible I'm just watching the wrong current movies. Or, like Raymond, I don't like change .

Last edited by vividgroovy on 05 Sep 2023, 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No, because we still would've had Big Bang Theory come out with Sheldon Cooper