ABSTRACT

One of the most remarkable aspects of autism is that, for all of the controversies surrounding its medical definitions and the similar debates about treatments and interventions, most people came to know of its existence through a film. Barry Levinson’s 1988 feature Rain Man, in which Dustin Hoffman played an adult with autism, brought the condition to a level of global public awareness that surpassed anything that had existed prior to this point. It has become a cliché to talk of Rain Man in connection with autism, and many who have or work with the condition become weary when it is mentioned, seeing its depiction as dated and increasingly irrelevant. But the importance of the film in historical terms should not be downplayed. It not only created a huge impact in and of itself, but it became the template for many subsequent representations of the condition, depictions that seeped into public consciousness to create ideas about the condition that still exist today. It is hard to think of any other medical condition or disability that has had a similar breakthrough, one where a fictional narrative has seemingly provided central ‘facts’ about its nature. But, with autism, this is the case.