The truth is I’ve been putting this entry off for a couple of days, trying to summon the intellectual energy to give the subject the weight it deserves. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that energy is going to arrive, so I think I better just bite the bullet and start writing. Four or five days ago, Rainman aired on BBC2. I watched it on Iplayer the next day, and it instantly struck me that it necessitated a fulsome analysis from someone familiar with the contemporary disability rights discourse. The problem was, I wasn’t sure I was the right cripple for the job: as familiar with concepts like the Social Model as I am, I’m not convinced that I’m up to the task of applying them to Rainman to the extent that a proper review/analysis/reading would require. And rather than confining my thoughts to a blog entry, such an analysis would need to be far longer and more substantial.

When you begin to look at it, Rainman is a very problematic film. It is a depiction of a man with severe Autism (played, it must be noted, by a nondisabled actor) being kidnapped from the institution where he lived and then exploited by his estranged able-bodied brother. Much of this interaction and exploitation is played for comic effect: the ‘quirks’ caused by Raymond’s disability are depicted as humorous; the way his brother Charlie uses him to  get an advantage at gambling is not frowned upon or criticised in the film but are portrayed as a highlight. And at the end of the film, in spite of this exploitation, the two are seen to come together in fraternal love, as if Charles hadn’t spent most of the film trying to con Raymond out of half of his inheritance or using him to gamble, but had treated his brother respectfully.

Of course, I know Rainman is forty years old, and was made before disability rights was really a thing. But I nonetheless don’t know where to begin unpacking this film. How can depicting autism, or any disability, in this way be seen as acceptable? As audience members we’re meant to laugh at how one character treats his disabled brother; then, at the end of the film, we’re supposed to find pathos in the way the one brother learns to accept the other, as if he hadn’t just been a complete bastard to his autistic sibling.

The film left a very nasty taste in my mouth, it must be said. It struck me as very uncritical, as the exploitation of disabled people was just water off a duck’s back. I know I ought to go far, far deeper in analysing Rainman, but first I want to see whether anyone else has written anything about it from a contemporary disability rights perspective. What was humorous or lighthearted forty years ago is far more problematic today. Yet if that is the case, why are films like this still being aired on TV today?