Aspies For Freedom

I don't think he is high functioning at all. The movie was made in 1988 so the facts are old. We know more about autism now than we did 19 years ago. If he was high functioning he be living a normal life, not in some insitution.

She was talking about Savant Syndrome.
It's partly because of Rainman that people tend to get Savant Syndrome and autism mixed up; they do occure together, but by no means are all autistics savants, or all savants autistics!

That's not accurate.  I know a lot of people who are considered high-functioning (note: I don't buy into functioning labels) who live or have lived in institutions.  Whether someone lives in an institution or not is decided primarily by sociological factors, not by anything intrinsic to the person.  

Temple Grandin and Stephen Shore were both recommended for institutionalization in childhood, despite being considered high-functioning.  Sue Rubin lives in her own house despite being considered low-functioning.  And any of them could have ended up in either setting (in fact there's nothing about institutions that provides superior assistance to other living arrangements, they just have a reputation for doing so).

I'd say Raymond was moderately functioning. He was only institutionalised as a young man because he accidentally made the bath water too hot for his baby brother. He was talking and could take care of himself to some degree. I doubt he could have managed on his own though.

Jerry Newport apparently saw it and calculated (out loud) the numbers being described on the screen before Raymond got a chance to answer.  And that gave him a bit of a clue something was... odd going on.

I think it is likely that many people's idea of autism is taken from the character of Raymond.  

A brilliant and powerful portrayal of difference is that of deafness in the film and play Children of a Lesser God.   See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_a_Lesser_God .  The film stars Marlee Matlin (who is deaf) as a worker at a school for deaf students who falls in love with a speech teacher there,  played by William Hurt.  

I saw the film or play on television several years ago and thought it was just great.    

The text of the play should be available in any good library.

I think that a lot of the criticism of Rainman (that perhaps the character was stereotypical etc) is not because Raymond himself is a stereotype, but rather because so much of people's stereotypes are based on that movie.

That confuses me.  I do often miss the cues people use for high and low functioning.  But he seemed capable of verbal conversation, albeit limited conversation on specific topics of interest to him.  And he memorized large amounts of information and used it more or less correctly.  And he could take care of himself provided a particular routine was around him.  (And that particular form of being routine-bound can be caused by institutions just as much as it can be caused by being autistic.  It happens to non-autistic people who spend that long in them too.  Many of his mistakes on the outside had to do with probably never having encountered things like toasters and smoke alarms before.)  I didn't see him as either stereotypically high-functioning or stereotypically low-functioning, as the modern stereotypes go.

To me, he was moderately functioning. He certainly wasn't LFA. I think it is a shame though that people often see him as the stereotypical Aspie.

I liked it better than Mozart and The Whale: although Josh Hartnett's character was credibly aspie, I don't think his girlfriend in the movie was.
It seemed to me she was mostly BPD and Bipolar with a couple of Aspie traits thrown in.

I liked the portrayal of his girlfriend in that movie.  Because she was a realistic portrayal (from what I've heard) of the woman she was based on (when younger), who is definitely autistic.  It's time people (including some autistic people) realized that yes, autistic people can look like that, particularly women, and yes, autistic people can be more than just autistic at the same time, we don't need to only be autistic and have no additional conditions.  And most importantly, that autistic people in movies don't need to run through every stereotypical autistic behavior on the planet in order to be realistic autistic characters.  I've seen autistic women who passed better than her and were definitely autistic.  And the thing of going from passing perfectly to a total meltdown is something I've seen real-life autistic people do -- it generates several times the confusion level of a non-passing autistic person going into a meltdown.

I really liked Rain Man. When I saw it about at age 12 or 13, I thought, "This is just like me." Now I'm a bit older, and am not as similar as I was then. Although not a savant, I sometimes seem like I am - in 10th grade for awhile, I'd solve 10 or 12 step logarithm problems in my head in an instant, whereas it would take other students maybe ten or fifteen minutes per problem. But I've never been able to count toothpicks.

I never saw anything wrong with the portrayal of autism, although one place where they got their facts wrong - most likely due to the times - was in saying that most autistics never speak. Also, sometimes being "high-functioning" can put you at a disadvantage sometimes too - school staff at elementary school frequently assumed that because I scored well on tests (despite rarely participating in class or speaking at all at school), that when I experienced sensory overload in the cafeteria and couldn't respond verbally to them,that I must be "playing games" and when I had difficulty processing spoken language, my concerns have been all but ignored up until now - my senior year of high school.

You can actually buy t-shirts that say "Yes I am autistic. No, I am not Rainman."

I always liked the movie "Rain Man". I try to look pass all the stereotypes and errors and I seem to find to find comfort in watching the movie.

I relate to some things. In particular some of Raymond's outbursts. His anxiety over breaks in his routine.

I'm not so bad with routine as I used to be. I felt I was consumed by routine that I worked on getting rid of some routines (it used to be so bad that I'd use the bathroom once every hour wether I really had to go or not. I mean, jeez, I'm way too young yet to be worried about bladder control). I still have routines. I still get anxious if I'm not home in time to watch "Jeopardy".

I'm also reminded of the scene in the beginning of the film when they're in Raymond's room. I get anxious if people touch my stuff and will quickly move something back to its original position. There's just all these little things that I pick up watching the movie that I can relate to.

Yeah, that bothered me, too. I was leaning forward in my seat, saying, "No, don't make him go..." Like I was watching a sports game and my team was losing.

The part I was most frustrated with was when the psychiatrist kept repeating, "Do you want to go back to Walbrook or stay with Charlie?" and then, when Raymond wouldn't answer, assumed that he couldn't distinguish between them. I was so angry at that guy I wanted to smack him. I've been in that situation where someone asks me to choose one of two alternatives, and usually it's the language that trips me up. Grr.

Still, I love it. I guess because I get so passionate about the characters, and I root for Raymond and Charlies so much at the end, and it was uplifting to see such an **** start to change. One of my siblings reminded me a lot of Charlie, and since I try to avoid contact with her. I think it's the only way there's a chance for a civil relationship sometime in the future.

Oh, yeah. My first speech therapist this year in the IEP meeting would touch my purse and stuff. That was the last time I saw her.

Also, think about how difficult that must be for an NT to portray an autistic with utter total accuracy. I mean, we have such a hard time passing for NT, I'm sure it must be really difficult for an NT to get it down without being "too stereotypical" or anything.