What was rain mans disability
In his youth, Hoffman had worked at the New York Psychiatric Institute ; for Rain Man he spent a year intensively researching autistic and savant individuals including Temple Grandin, Joseph Sullivan, who had incredible skills with numbers, and savant twins George and Charles.
Subsequently, Rain Man led many people to assume that everyone with autism possessed incredible savant abilities. In the years following, rates of prevalence for autism spectrum disorder ASD , as it became known, rose dramatically — today in the US, one in 59 children have ASD.
Thirty years on, as the parent of a child with autism, I view the film very differently. How, I wondered, does the autism community view the movie? To even suggest that Raymond was a human with basic dignity was a really big deal. The film opens with Charlie Babbitt depicted by Cruise in one of his finest performances , a narcissistic and selfish young wheeler-dealer in Los Angeles who is struggling to resolve an impending crisis for his car dealership over its failure to comply with EPA standards.
However, upon suddenly learning of the death of his estranged father, Charlie abruptly changes course for Cincinnati in order to attend the funeral with the preeminent desire to discover what inheritance he may have been left. The funds have in fact been entrusted to a trustee who oversees their distribution to the Walbrook Institute where Raymond lives. A treatment facility for people with mental and developmental disabilities, it has been home for at least 20 years to Raymond who is arguably moderately high-functioning but still unable to really care for himself and all that entails.
In addition, the director Dr. The ensuing road trip is a journey filled with humor but also with extreme aggravation. In one particularly funny scene, Raymond walks in on Charlie and Susanna having sex, the concept of which is foreign to him, and imitates their private vocalizations as he watches TV in their room. Since this would normally be considered a violation of privacy, Charlie becomes very incensed and aggressive, insulting Raymond and telling him that the sounds he heard are none of his business, prompting Susanna to abruptly leave in protest of this treatment.
In a hilarious moment after they leave a motel in Missouri, Raymond repeatedly insists that they go to Kmart in Cincinnati to buy underwear despite the fact of having been given a fresh pair by Charlie since he is accustomed to wearing clothing from that particular store.
Underwear is underwear! In addition, following his observation of another meltdown in which Raymond begins screaming and hitting himself in panic at the sight of hot bathwater running, Charlie realizes that Raymond was institutionalized because of the fear that he might harm Charlie with his unpredictable behaviors. This plays out in a Las Vegas casino where Raymond counts the poker cards with such consistent accuracy that he and Charlie come under suspicion of using illicit techniques in order to win.
The ability to focus very narrowly on and excel in a topic of specialization, having an eidetic memory, and astute attention to detail and organization are highly desired qualities in the workplace, and in the present time many employers are specifically seeking job candidates on the autism spectrum because of their possession of these particular skills. But his newfound empathy and brotherly bond persists at the close of the film since he promises to visit Raymond on a regular basis.
Rather than being viewed as a single iteration of autism, Raymond Babbitt became autism. The idea that all autistic people are geniuses, or that they all have savant abilities such as extraordinary memory, is a myth, a myth that is largely alive and kicking today due to Rain Man. Yet the cultural stereotype of Raymond Babbitt, the autistic savant, persists.
The blame lies with the wider industry. Rain Man should have been a cultural beginning for autistic characters on screen. Instead it became a singular event, an end point.
As a beginning for autism on screen, Rain Man deserves applause. It gave autistic people a visibility that had previously been denied them. In one fell swoop Rain Man achieved almost overnight the kind of representation that parent advocacy groups had been working towards for decades.