E-Book Overview
Contemporary Hollywood films commonly use mental disorders as a magnifier by which social, political, or economic problems become enlarged in order to critique societal conditions. Cinema has a long history of amplifying human emotion or experience for dramatic effect. The heightened representations of people with mental disorder often elide one category of literal truths for the benefit of different moral or emotional reasons. With films like Fight Club, The Silence of the Lambs, The Dark Knight, and Black Swan, this book address characters identified by film or media as people who are crazy, mentally ill, developmentally delayed, insane, have autism spectrum disorder, associative personality disorder, or who have other mental disorders. Despite the vast array of differences in people’s experiences, film often marginalizes people with mental disorders in ways that make it important to be inclusive of these varied experiences. These characters also commonly become subject to the structures of hierarchy and control that actual people with mental disorders encounter. Cinematic patterns of control and oppression heavily influence the narratives of those considered crazy by the outside world.
E-Book Content
Mental Disorders in Popular Film
Mental Disorders in Popular Film How Hollywood Uses, Shames, and Obscures Mental Diversity Erin Heath
LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Heath, Erin, author. Title: Mental disorders in popular film : how Hollywood uses, shames, and obscures mental diversity / Erin Heath. Description: Mental disorders in popular film : how Hollywood uses, shames, and obscures mental diversity / Erin Heath. Identifiers: LCCN 2018057402 (print) | LCCN 2019000348 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498521727 (electronic) | ISBN 9781498521710 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Mental illness in motion pictures. | Motion pictures--United States--History and criticism. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.M463 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.M463 H43 2019 (print) | DDC 791.43/6561--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057402 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction
vii 1
1
Gender and Reality in Fight Club and Black Swan
2
Villainizing and Psychopaths in The Dark Knight and The Silence of the Lambs Cognitive Theory and Autism in Rain Man and Mary and Max Disability Theory and Race in Radio and The Soloist Institutionalization and Gaslighting in Girl, Interrupted and 12 Monkeys
3 4 5
Conclusion Bibliography Index About the Author
11 29 41 55 69 85 89 93 97
v
Acknowledgments
The research and writing of this book have been greatly supported by my family and friends. I would like to thank my parents for the unending faith that they have always shown in me. Anne and Gary Heath have never let me think that I wasn’t completely capable of anything that I sought, and apparently, I have come to believe t