Film: Rain Man
Year: 1988
Directed by: Barry Levinson
Written by: Barry Morrow, Ronald Bass
[Rain Man spoilers ahead]
I vaguely knew what Rain Man was about long before I ever saw it. The film won in the categories of Best Actor and Best Picture at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989, and has been wildly lauded as a great film. What I didn’t realize, until I actually watched the movie all the way through, was that Rain Man is truly beloved, referenced over and over throughout various forms of media. They’re references that will literally go over your head if you’ve never seen the film, and if you have, they’re references that immediately take you back to the scene from which they’re derived.
One that comes to mind poignantly is a scene in the very first episode of Bob’s Burgers when Gene, the middle child, throws a bunch of toothpicks on the floor and asks his older sister, Tina, how many there are. (Though really, this scene is funny even if you haven’t seen Rain Man because Tina guesses that there are 100 toothpicks on the ground when there are just clearly not 100.)
I’ve been rewatching Gilmore Girls (don’t ask – they get on my nerves, but damn if the show is not perfect for fall weather), and there were two Rain Man references in both seasons 2 and 3 – references I otherwise did not catch the first or second time I watched the show, but now I couldn’t miss them if I tried.
Rain Man is referenced in shows like 30 Rock, Community, Orange is the New Black, and even a whopping 3 times in 3 different seasons and episodes of Breaking Bad. And every time the film is referenced, it’s used as a joke – a way to point out the abnormality or vast intelligence (or lack thereof) of a character.
So…is it bad that I really didn’t find the movie funny?
The thing is, Rain Man is categorized as both a comedy and a road drama, and on a broad level I do understand why, but I guess I don’t see the humor in using Raymond Babbitt (Dustin Hoffman) as the butt of every joke. In fact, if I’m being real, the movie sort of pissed me off.
It goes like this: Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) is having issues with his business deals (read: he’s a scammer, your honor) and he needs to come up with the merchandise quick or he’ll be on the hook for the sales he can’t complete. (The merchandise is literal cars, by the way. He needs to come up with four VEHICLES quick and in a hurry. I personally would just skip town. Which I guess he sort of does? I’m digressing heavily, but you see I have strong opinions on this one.) His girlfriend, Susanna (Valeria Golino), is in on these deals with him and doing her best to try to keep him on track, but he never listens to her. He won’t even talk to her. In the middle of all this, he finds out that his father has passed away. Charlie, an only child, and his father have never had a good relationship, and he learns that his father has left him only a car with a painful link to his past. And if that’s not enough to make him want to dance on his father’s grave, he learns that dear old dad has actually left three million dollars to someone else.
So Charlie, being the self-starter that he is, decides to go across the country to find out just who is inheriting what he believes rightly belongs to him. Upon arrival in Cincinnati, the future home of the whopping three milli, he meets Raymond, the apparent heir to his father’s fortune.
The film describes Raymond as an “autistic savant” – he lives in a facility where he has a strict routine, a collection of hundreds of books and baseball cards, and a caretaker, Vern (Michael D. Roberts) who he lovingly refers to as his “main man.” When he’s nervous, Raymond recites the entirety of “Who’s on First” by Abbott and Costello. For all intents and purposes, Raymond has a full life filled with the things he likes to do, shows he likes to watch (he’s a big fan of The People’s Court) and food he likes to eat. It may not seem like much to some, and of course it could be better, but it’s what he enjoys, and he is treated with the kindness that everyone deserves.
This is all upended when Charlie decides to break Raymond out of the institution and drive all the way back to California so that he can meet with his father’s power of attorney and redirect the fortune that is currently primed for Raymond right back over to himself. There’s no guarantee it will work, nor has Charlie done all the necessary research to find out why his father would leave money to someone he didn’t even know existed, but he decides to take the chance anyway.
This is where the movie starts to make me angry. It’s no surprise that Charlie does what he does – he’s not proven to us that he’s nothing if not selfish, rude, and conniving the entire time we have seen him – but the way he does it actually makes no sense. Maybe I’m naïve for assuming that no one would be so evil to uproot a disabled person from their home for money that they may not even get, and I know things like this happen all the time, but come on. Charlie is so blinded by greed that he doesn’t stop to consider how removing Raymond from his home and environment might create confusion and stress for Raymond and further delay Charlie’s mission. For every incident they encounter, more time is added to the trip and Charlie has less of a chance of getting what he wants. And even still, it takes Charlie two-thirds of the way through the movie to realize that Raymond is actually another human being and responds to being treated as such, rather than just a solution to a three million dollar problem.
Since watching this movie, I’ve also thought about the impact it’s had in creating a narrative about what autism looks like to the general public. This article from The Guardian shares a very well-rounded perspective on how Rain Man helped put autism in the audience lexicon, especially in a time when information on autism was less accessible than it is today, but much like Steel Magnolias, it created another host of problems because many understood this depiction to be the sole example of what autism is. We of course now know that autism presents in a myriad of different ways and does not always look the same from person to person, but the stigma of autistic people as either unable to communicate or having unheard of levels of intelligence persists because of Rain Man and media like it. The article also rightfully points out the similarities between Rain Man and the ABC TV show, The Good Doctor, which depicts an autistic doctor much like Raymond who has vast intelligence but is severely socially inept.
This specific trope of autism and a character being categorized as an “autistic savant” reminds me a lot of the “magical Negro” trope that has often appeared in film and media: a story or situation is devoid of black folks save for one, usually older and wiser, black person who has all the answers to the questions the white protagonist is facing. They rarely have any story arc of their own, and their only function is to point out something that the protagonist has failed to see all this time. Once the solution is found, the magical Negro fades back into obscurity, no longer needed in any other substantial way for the rest of the film.
Raymond essentially serves a similar purpose in Rain Man. Throughout the journey, Charlie finally learns the real reason his father has promised Raymond the large inheritance: Raymond is actually Charlie’s older brother. He was sent away when Charlie was a baby because there was an incident where Charlie and Raymond were left alone and Charlie was hurt – it only happened once, but it was enough for Charlie and Raymond’s parents to make the decision to move Raymond into a care facility. Charlie recalls that when he was young, a “rain man” would come into his room and sing to him when he had nightmares. He realizes that in his young age, he was trying to say “Raymond,” but was only able to say “rain man,” hence the memory.
This realization softens Charlie’s demeanor towards Raymond enough, but still not enough for Charlie to stop exploiting his older brother. The movie goes on to show Charlie’s realization that Raymond is good at poker, and he concocts a plan to get him to count cards so they can recoup at least some of the money he’s on the hook for re: his car business. When they finally do make it to California, the funniest scene in the movie in my opinion actually happens. Raymond has expressed previously that it’s important to him to have syrup already on the table when he’s ordering breakfast, and he and Charlie had a minor disagreement about it. In this, one of the final scenes, the two are at a diner where they’ve ordered breakfast and Raymond again emphasizes that he needs syrup for his pancakes. Charlie, with a genuine smile, grabs the nearest syrup dispenser and holds it up, saying “Ta-da.” Raymond laughs, and says, “Charlie Babbitt made a joke.” Yes, he did. Finally.
This movie really left me pondering the following: how do we treat people when we stand to gain something, and how do we treat people who can do nothing for us? When does the distinction creep in? And why is there one in the first place?
The reason this movie made me so angry is because the entire relationship between Charlie and Raymond is transactional. Charlie is only spending this time with Raymond because there’s a big payout in the end, not because he truly wants to get to know him. And when he finally does learn of their shared connection, it’s still not enough to decide to take Raymond back home and move on with his life. Even when his demeanor towards Raymond changes from disgust, to indifference, to tolerance, to genuine love, he’s still arguing with the people who are trying to assess what Raymond’s best interests are and where he would thrive, not merely survive. Charlie’s selfishness knows no bounds, not even when the money is no longer on the table.
This movie brings up things that I worry about for the world in general. We’ve rightfully entered an age in which people are less tolerant to disrespect and mistreatment, but I think it’s easy for that attitude to morph into intolerance for people in general.
A common phrase we hear today is that we don’t owe anybody anything. I’m not disputing that entirely; for far too long I think people, marginalized groups especially, have felt that we have to present a specific image to the world in order to survive. We’re taught that women need to smile more and should generally be more agreeable out of fear of being devalued and attacked by men; black people need to appear docile and humble out of fear of being seen as aggressive or combative to white people; disabled people need to be tucked away out of society’s view as to not create inconveniences for able-bodied people; LGBTQ+ people need to hide who they are because anything else would create discomfort for heterosexual people. The list goes on and on, and as I said, is rightfully being challenged in this day and age. No longer should marginalized groups feel like their very existence is a burden, regardless of the fear-mongering that says otherwise.
But I also see people taking the idea of not owing anybody anything to mean that we don’t owe other people simple respect and courtesy. You see it all the time in things like road rage, workplace disagreements, simple misunderstandings – people are putting the hammer down on others because if they don’t know someone else personally, they don’t owe them a single thing.
The truth is, we do owe people at least one thing. We owe everyone the acknowledgement of our shared humanity. I’m really not trying to get cliché and pull out the “we’re all just made of flesh and bones” argument, and say we should all hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.” But life really is hard enough as it is. And though social media and the internet and this age of technology is connecting us more than any time in human history, I sometimes wonder if it’s disconnecting us, too. We don’t see people as people, just as numbers, followers, likes – disembodied videos for views and clicks instead of actual beings dealing with their own set of circumstances that may be completely different from ours, but also may be more similar than we would think.
I think that’s why one of the social media trends I do enjoy these days is videos of people interviewing other people on the street. You see it a lot on TikTok and Instagram with accounts that have a specific theme or are even just standing on a street corner asking lots of people the same question. For those 60 seconds, you get a glimpse into a life of a person you’ve never met and maybe would’ve never seen otherwise, and get to hear their answer to a question like, “Who’s the last person you said ‘I love you,’ to?” or “When was the last time you laughed so hard you cried?” And in watching those, I’m reminded how truly big the world is, and how much there is to know and experience. People are funny. They are smart and thoughtful and unpredictable and vulnerable. They succeed and they fail and they try and try again. People are just people – and I think we owe them at least the recognition of that personhood.
I guess that’s what I wish Charlie would’ve understood sooner – regardless of if Raymond was his brother, the smartest man in the world, or just a random guy that his father had promised three million dollars to, he was a person first. Just a person. And that alone was enough for him to be treated as such.
Rain Man is available to stream on HBOMax.