Rain Man - Isaac Richter

1988
Directed by Barry Levinson

While reading the chapter on Ideology, I was reading through the chapter on the disabled and their different stereotypes. It talked about the physically disabled, but I remembered when I was 13 years old and I was exposed to a lot of films about people who are neurologically disabled, with problems such as autism, schizophrenia, mental retardation and such. Films that range from Forrest Gump, A Beautiful Mind, Shine, I am Sam and so on. The first film I saw on the subject, and it remains my favorite, is Rain Man, a film about Charlie Babbitt, a selfish car salesman played by Tom Cruise whose father just died and the only things he inherited from him are his prized roses and a '49 Buick. His father had $3 million dollars which were placed in trust into a mental institution in Walbrook, where Charlie finds out he has an autistic older brother named Raymond (Dustin Hoffman). Thinking he can scam the money out of Dr. Brooner, the man entrusted with his father's money, Charlie kidnaps Raymond and holds him hostage until he can get his half of the money, and thus begins a road trip cross-country (since Raymond won't get on an airplane, they have to drive) in which a kid who never had to care for anyone but himself for most of his life comes to care for someone who requires a lot of support.

What struck me about what I read in the chapter is how disabled people are portrayed as a burden to the protagonist. They're characters who are pitied and hold the protagonist back. In this film, that's true in many cases. Raymond becomes a burden to Charlie in the sense that he can't get to where he needs to go because he can't get rid of Raymond (unless he wants to kiss his half of the inheritance goodbye, not to mention start a lawsuit). He can't fly to L.A. because Raymond has memorized every plane crash for every airline ever, he can't drive on the highway because Raymond freaks out on the driveway, they lose a day of traveling in a motel because it rains all day and Raymond won't go out when it rains, and Raymond has a schedule that can't be disrupted, or else he freaks out. He has to have pizza on Monday, pancakes Tuesday morning, has to be in front of the T.V. in time for the People's Court and Jeopardy, and in bed by 11:00 on a bed by the window. Charlie keeps getting held back, because if he doesn't cater to Raymond's every need, he goes ballistic and can't get him to shut up, so Raymond becomes a burden to Charlie. One that he brought upon himself, but it's there. However, there's another stereotype of mentally disabled people that is present in this movie, and many other movies after this, and it may have been in an attempt to shine a brighter light on disabled people. That's the fact that they are brilliant, or at least understand things that people around them can't begin to grasp.

Raymond has a lot of special abilities apart from his autism. He has an insane memory. He memorizes full books, including phone books, and can recall every fact about cities, plane crashes and songs, just by looking at them. He's also amazing with Math. When a box of toothpicks falls on the floor, he counts the toothpicks just by looking at them. He's quick with equations, square roots, counting cards, he can do any kind of equation you want him to do in seconds (except when it comes to money, because he doesn't understand the concept of money). I've seen many films with disabled people where they do stuff that the rest of the world can't understand, so they're considered brilliant. A Beautiful Mind is about a man who was considered a mathematical genius and won the Nobel Prize for his equilibrium theorem. Forrest Gump could naturally run fast and play ping pong, and was considered a war hero just because he did what made sense to him over there. Chance, the Peter Sellers character in Being There, is a gardener who is considered a genius by T.V. personalities and politicians because of his very simple inspirational messages, and David Helfgot from Shine was a master pianists. A way for movies to reconcile the burden that disabled people are on people who aren't, they've also been given special abilities to rise them above people who are what we call "normal", which is something I was fascinated by when I first saw many of these movies (though I think now I can see the trick employed).

The thing I like about what this "stereotype"of gifted disabled people does is that it gives people with these disabilities hope of becoming something beyond the limits of their disabilities. In Rain Man, Raymond becomes a character that society looks down upon, yet when the audience meets him up close, he's looked up on because of his grasp of the world, even if he can't understand emotions or anything beyond the functions of a computer, this burden becomes a character that we wish could do our Math homework or our taxes (or that we could do it as well). I don't know if Raymond could have been played by an actor who was actually autistic, or as autistic as Raymond is supposed to be, because he probably wouldn't understand what he's doing. He could memorize the lines and probably deliver them right, but it would probably be a pain to live by an actual autistic-savant's schedule while trying to complete a film, which is why they wanted an able-minded actor to portray this part. I'm referring to the end of the chapter that talks about the criticism of how giving these parts to able-bodied actors diminishes the chances for those who are disabled, and provides the disability as a defining trait. I'll be honest, I haven't seen a lot of actors who are autistic, and I don't know if there are any who understand what acting is. I've seen some actors with Down Syndrome and other minor mental disabilities, and maybe a few with Asperger Syndrome (a more high-functioning mode), but it's really hard to give parts to people who may not understand what acting is, or may not even want to act, which is why a lot of these parts go to the likes of Dustin Hoffman, and Tom Hanks, and Sean Penn and so on who get acclaim for playing a disabled person and studying disabled people. Actors love to play mental disabilities, because it's a challenge, and seeing a known actor in a disabled role is a way to get people interested in learning about this disability.

Before Rain Man, autism wasn't very widely known, so an actor as known as Dustin Hoffman was needed to portray that kind of disability and have the audience identify with it, because they can identify with Dustin Hoffman, and with Tom Cruise, so they know how people can be affected by it. If Rain Man were done today, they may look for an autistic actor to play the part, or at least someone with Asperger Syndrome who just has to go a little further to be autistic, or maybe this isn't so much a concern as it is with people in wheelchairs or who are deaf. It's a tough question to ask. Political correctness is a tough thing to pinpoint because it changes all the time, and the ideologies change with it, whether it's correct to make full-bodied actors play disabled people and leave those who are actually disabled without roles, or typecast those that are disabled with roles that are defined by the disability, it's a tough thing to think about in my opinion, because it can also deprive actors of challenging performances, or disabled people can feel abused by studios. There's always an angle that people will complain about, which is why in retrospect, I wasn't too fond of this chapter on ideologies, because it touches on something that reminds me that people will always have something to complain about, toward Hollywood, toward humanity, toward what roles are available and what is portrayed. It's interesting to look at though, and it reminded me of Rain Man and that string of movies I saw of people with mental disabilities that made me aware of the different mental disabilities that exist, which is why those films work for me (Rain Man particularly).