In the Hollywood movie Rain Man (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1988) the movie makers introduce the movie goers to a condition known as the savant syndrome. This film is one of the first movies that won an Oscar for shedding light on a mental disorder. Giving the fact that this movie is now nearly 18 years old it paints a pretty accurate and realistic picture of the disorder! Often times the media distorts the facts in favor of the message is like to convey. The Actor, Dustin Hoffman, plays the role of the savant Raymond Babbitt with extreme authenticity, kindness and attention to all the important details. His incredibly sensible performance helps to understand the condition a lot better and lessen the stigma of this particular mental disability. Overall, in this particular case the savant syndrome wasn’t shown as correctly as it could have been, yet the movie brings awareness to a disorder, most people haven’t heard before.
Keyword: Savant syndrome, Asperger’s syndrome, highly functioning, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Rain Man
RAIN MAN, how the media sees the savant syndrome
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Raymond Babbitt is a man with savant syndrome, a severe mental disability like Asperger’s yet with an extraordinary mathematical ability. This rare condition may occur with other developmental disabilities or nervous system injury or diseases. Maybe one in ten autistic patients has these remarkable abilities to a variety of degrees. ‘While J. Landon Down included 10 such cases in his original description of this interesting circumstance in 1887, and Kanner included some such cases in his first accounts of early infantile autism in 1943, the 1989 movie Rain Man made “autistic savant” a household term (Treffert,