Movie VS Life
Was the portrayal accurate?
According to the research that I found, Joon seems to be an accurate portrayal of an individual
with mental retardation in most parts of the movie.
She shows infantile behavior in several areas such as when she attempts to direct traffic while
wearing a SCUBA mask. Also, towards the end of the movie, Joon has an episode of kicking and screaming on the bus. The episode
gets so intense that the police had to take her to the hospital. Another moment is when she says she is scared of raisins.
Her slowed learning skills were also apparent
in the movie. Joon has to be watched at all times by someone, usually a nanny since Benny works all day. She is not sure
how to do certain things such as cooking a meal. She is later taught by Sam how to make grilled cheese in his own eccentric
way. At one point in the movie, Joon and Sam get intimate for the first time. Joon seems very child-like as if she was not
sure what was going on. She seemed as though her mind was younger intellectually than it should be because of her confusion.
There was one thing about Joon that I
could not quite figure out how it was linked to mental retardation, or if it was at all. It was the fact that she loved fire
and was basically a pyromaniac because of how often she set things on fire. Benny talked a lot about her love for it and
how it intrigued her. I could not find this under my researched symptoms and behaviors of mental retardation. This may have
been an entirely different behavior issue.
Overall, I felt like Joon was portrayed rather accurately in this movie for a mild case of mental retardation.