{"id":12090,"date":"2016-01-08T18:03:53","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T18:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=12090"},"modified":"2018-06-18T14:26:45","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T22:26:45","slug":"more-than-rain-man-autism-portrayals-on-screen","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/more-than-rain-man-autism-portrayals-on-screen\/","title":{"rendered":"More Than Rain Man: Autism Portrayals on Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a long time, the Oscar-winning 1988 drama <\/span>Rain Man<\/a><\/i><\/b> wasn\u2019t just the best-known representation of autism on film, it was a lot of people\u2019s <\/span>only <\/span><\/i>frame of reference for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in general. But over the past decade or so, as more and more kids have been diagnosed as on the spectrum, the culture at large has become more aware of what <\/span>autism<\/span><\/a> and Asperger Syndrome really means \u2014 and popular culture has gotten up to speed, too. <\/span>Rain Man<\/span><\/i> remains a touchstone, as a depiction of certain common ASD tics, but television and movie screens have also been crowded in recent years with a wider variety of characters and experiences, more reflective of the real world\u2019s neurodiversity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Autism in Love<\/a><\/i><\/b> is a case-in-point. Matt Fuller\u2019s documentary tells the story of a small handful of autistic adults who\u2019ve been trying to make sense of relationships and sex, and trying to figure out if there\u2019s room for the messiness of romance in their rigid daily routine. These men and women are more articulate about their emotions than Dustin Hoffman’s Raymond Babbitt in <\/span>Rain Man<\/span><\/i>; and their lives aren\u2019t defined by whether or not they\u2019re a burden to someone like Tom Cruise\u2019s Charlie Babbitt. Fuller shows them as complicated individuals, who understand their own considerable challenges.
\n<\/span>
\nWatching something like <\/span>Autism in Love <\/span><\/i>is a reminder of how far the movies have come with autism in so short a time \u2014 especially given how long it took for filmmakers to tackle autism spectrum disorder at all. For the longest time, the dominant impression of ASD in cinema and on television was of an impossible problem, ripping innocent families apart. Or, conversely, autists were reduced solely to savants, wielding their extraordinary memories and pattern-recognition like superpowers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The way the media has engaged with the spectrum over the decades has been a study in good intentions and gross misunderstandings, ultimately resolving into the more nuanced take we see much more often today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here then is a rough, abbreviated sketch of what the past 50 years have been like, starting with a handful of films so skittish about the topic of autism that they can\u2019t even call the disorder by name.<\/span><\/p>\n

Autists on the Margins<\/b><\/p>\n

One big reason why not many ASD kids (or adults) made it into the movies pre-<\/span>Rain Man<\/span><\/i> was that the public awareness of the disorder was limited, and medical science\u2019s explanations for autism were fairly crude. People on the spectrum were sometimes misdiagnosed as mentally retarded or mentally ill \u2014 with the blame for the latter falling on parents who were accused of being too emotionally cold. (For a good documentary on that subject, check out David E. Simpson\u2019s 2003 film <\/span>Refrigerator Mothers<\/i><\/b><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n