Movies Stereotyping The Mentally IllThe portrayal of mentally ill people in cinema is very negative and steotypyical and limits the self esteem of the mentally ill. Consider yourself a child who has been locked away in the wards of our state institutions. You have been told all of his life that he suffers from a mental illness. Whenever you turns on the TV or watches a movie all you hears is that the mentally-ill are violent and dangerous.
Movies like “Halloween” and “Silence of the Lambs” will reassure you that he will forever need to be vigilant of his violent tendencies and must make every effort to stop his anti-social behavior. You must never forget to take the medications that will save you from yourself. Newspapers that demand forced hospitalization and incarceration make him tremble with fear. This is a recipe for disaster and would make the perfect plot for a horror movie about how people can become what they are constantly told that they are.
Negative images of mental health recipients are so common that peoples perception is one of fear and paranoia. “We continue to be appalled, saddened and disgu sted by our results,” laments George Gerbner, Professor of Telecommunications at Temple University and author of the Cultural Indicators Project Report. Founded 25 years ago to measure television’s and movies diversity and cultural impact on the viewers, the latest study done in 1997 suggests, among other things, that the image of people labeled mentally-ill as “psychotic” and “evil people” has become deeply embedded in our popular culture. The study was based on an analysis of 6,882 speaking parts appearing in hundreds movies shows over a three year period.. While there are certainly acts of violence committed by people who are labeled “mentally-ill”, the percentage is so minuscule compared to acts of violence committed overall in American society. According to Special Agent George D. DeShazor Jr. of th!
e FBI’s Behavorial Science Unit “the majority of crimes in America are committed by people with all levels of functioning and personality types… only a small portion (states 3%) of violence in American society can be attributed to mental illness!” Says Mr. DeShazor: “Despite the infrequency in display of violence with the mentally-ill, mental disorder and violence are closer linked in the public mind.” (Violence and Mental Illness). And ironically, according to Phil Donahue’s national best-seller The Human Animal, “3% of all murders committed in the United States are committed by parents who murder their own children”, and yet I know of no law which forces parents to take medications or to receive “treatment.” Is this because most people would realize how ludicrous it would be to scapegoat 97% of parents because of the behavior of the other 3%? And according to a 1993 University of California study on the prevalence of behavioral disorders in the United States in the mid-198!
0’s, being laid off from a job was a much more significant factor in determining the risk of potentially violent behavior than having a history of “mental illness!” So the actual facts diametrically oppose the media propaganda and the ironic truth is that the overwhelming majority of people labeled “mentally-ill” are not violent!!! Just like the overwhelming majority of postal employees are not violent and have never executed their co-workers. Just like the overwhelming majority of high school students are not violent and have never slaughtered their classmates. Just like the overwhelming majority of police officers are not violent and have never engaged in acts of police brutality. The sad irony is that according to ABC.com mental health recipients are more often the victims of violent crimes rather than the perpertratorsof violent crimes.
Exposing the movies role in promoting the stigma associated with mental illness and to challengeing the media’s deliberate portrayal of people labeled mentally-ill as violent and deranged is essential to help the mentally ill in recovery. Because of the media’s profit-driven need to sensationalize, rare bizarre incidents are being given round-the-clock coverage, in an attempt to keep the ratings high . And as if that were not bad enough, the psycho-horror movie industry is feeding the public it’s daily dose of madmen, “crazies” and maniacs. Because of this “the mentally-ill” have become society’s archetypical villain and are being unjustly committed, scapegoated and even killed by law enforcement officers through out America .This paper is intended to counter the current trend of the movies to demonize “mental illness.” Both promote their own versions of stigma for the same reason profit. It would, of course, be crazy for me to suggest that “the mentally-ill” don’t commit acts of violence. Certainly people labeled mentally-ill are just as human as everyone else. But, it is just as ludicrous to over-emphasize the 3% who do, suggesting that “mental-illness” is synonomous with violence!
“One of the most effective methods of non-rational persuasion is what may be called persuasion-by-association. The propagandist associates his product cause with some idea or image of a person or thing. Movies which stigmatize mental health recipients have been standard fare for Hollywood producers dating back to 1913 with D.W. Griffith’s silent screen portrayal of mental illness “House of Darkness” Probably one of the first movie’s ever to capture on film the public’s perception of “mental illness.” As fate would have it, one of the first movies ever filmed about a psychiatrist in 1919, turns out to be one of the first movies ever filmed about an escaped mental patient, who is none other than the psychiatrist himself, in the movie “When the Clouds Roll By.” Another more disturbing movie directed by Dwain Esper was released in 1934 called “Maniac!” The video sleeve for this movie categorizes it as an exploitation movie. What is remarkable however is that this movie was act!
ually intended to educate its viewers on the varying diagnoses of mental illness. If it were not so disturbing it would be laughable. An online movie reviewer summarizes the movie as: “one of the early examples of exploitation films, Maniac is much more risque than it’s 1934 release date would suppose; what follows is literally a textbook case of demented behavior, with titles to explain the varying psychoses actually included in the film.
But perhaps the movie that singlehandedly ingrained the beleif of the mentally ill as dangerous into the mass consciousness of present day Americian Society was Halloween . And in typical fashion, Dr. Sam Loomis, the psychiatrist who pursues Michael Myers in “Halloween” and who has the same name as his predecessor in “Psycho”, does little to elucidate on Michael’s condition in psychological terms, but resorts instead to the traditonal demon-possessed explanation by declaring that he is “an incarnation of evil.” This tendency to equate evil acts with “mental illness” is a common throughout the history of movies. There is no longer a distinction between people who are “just plain wicked” and people who struggle with anxiety or depression or have post traumatic stress disorders. The two have been conveniently grouped together for the sake of justifying forced treatment and involuntary commitment. And it’s certainly not that evil has gone away or disappeared. Far from it! Ev!
idence of rampant evil is evident in the newspapers daily. It’s just that nowadays we are much more likely to use convenient “terms of absolution” like “untreated mental illness”, “behavioral disorder”, or “chemical imbalance”.
The minute that evil acts are acknowledged for what they are, and the culprits held responsible if they have broken the law rather than coddled because they are so-called mentally-ill, then all those people who truly have a “mental illness” will be free from psychiatric abuse and oppression. That’s not to say that some evil people may not genuinely have a so-called “mental illness” – that’s to say that evil people don’t commit criminal acts because they are “mentally-ill”, but because they are wicked! Not vice-versa! There is no medical solution to moral problems. Or in other words: “you can’t cure evil… because it’s not an illness equate unjustified acts of violence with mental illness. These acts cannot be identified as wicked or evil because to do so would imply a belief in God and the devil. In “Silence of the Lambs,” Officer Starling is admonished by the murderous psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter who insists: “Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened! You !can’t reduce me to a set of influences. You’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants, nothing is ever anybody’s fault. Look at me Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I’m evil?” The touching belief that no one is evil, is it’s obvious conclusion… that no one is good The Silence of the Lambs (1991) is one of the most suspenseful, psychological thrillers ever produced. Director Jonathan Demme’s, film is dark, moody, somber, truly frightening, and exhilarating. Ted Tally’s screenplay was based on Thomas Harris’s 1988 best-selling novel of the same name.
The intimate and disturbing characterizations of mass murderers who mutilate their victims usually female were shocking, particularly the character of evil personified – the notorious, intelligent psychopath Hannibal Lecter and his bargaining game to share information about another wanted serial killer (“Buffalo Bill”) with dedicated, fledgling, vulnerable and rising female FBI agent-trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster). The most compelling part of the film is in the developing dynamics of their participation in a cat-and-mouse relationship and the many chilling, spell-binding discussions in four scenes between them. Their relationship dances and alternates back and forth between psychopath and aspiring female agent, deranged psychologist and therapeutic patient, and father and daughter.
The film was a major commercial and critical success, although gay groups complained about its stereotypical depiction of the trans-sexual killer in the end. It was a five-time major Academy-Award winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Anthony Hopkins), Best Actress (Jodie Foster), Best Director (Jonathan Demme), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ted Tally) – in the Academy’s history, that had only been duplicated once before One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) another movie depicting the mentally ill.
In these two scenes Dr. Lecter and Buffolo Bill accuritly0 depict the steotypical Hollywood profile of the mentally ill. The characters are pure evil and violent, they belong locked away for life, without any chance of rehabilitation. The first scence begins in the damp cellar of the serial killer’s liar, Buffalo Bill with his little white poodle named Precious tenderly held in his arms leans over the edge of the pit, talking impersonally to Catherine as an object or “it.” Standing at the bottom of the dark pit, the distressed, captive, hysterical girl looks up at him:
Buffalo Bill: It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it’s told.
Catherine: Mister, my family will pay cash. Whatever ransom you’re asking for, they’ll pay it.
Buffalo Bill: It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. Yes she will, Precious, or we’ll get the hose.
Buffalo Bill lowers a basket on a rope down into the pit. He orders “it” to place the squeeze bottle of skin lotion which is to keep the victim’s skin supple for a few days into the basket. As the camera pans up the high walls of the pit lit by Bill’s flashlight, it picks up the bloody finger tracks and cracked nails, now dried and brownish, left by other female victims, who tried and failed to claw their way out.
From the scene of Bill taunting his screaming captive, the next scene shows Dr. Lecter, made captive by being strapped and strait-jacketed to a rolling hand truck. His face is imprisoned in a grotesque hockey mask, and he is being mocked by his keeper, Dr. Chilton. Clarice seems to have betrayed Lecter with a deal:
Dr. Chilton You still think you’re gonna walk on some beach and see the birdies? I don’t think so. I called Senator Ruth Martin. She never heard of any deal with you. They scammed you, Hannibal…There never was a deal with Senator Martin but there is now. I designed it. Of course, I worked in a few conditions for my own benefit as well. Identify Buffalo Bill, by name, and if the girl is found in time, Senator Martin will have you transferred to Brushy Mountain State Prison, in Tennessee. Answer me Hannibal. You answer me now, or by God, you’ll never leave this cell. Who is Buffalo Bill?
While Chilton talks to Lecter about a new “deal,” the camera tracks in on a close-up Hannibal’s face, revealing that he is eyeing Chilton’s silver writing pen carelessly left lying on the cell’s cot. Lecter is transferred to Memphis at Senator Martin’s request, information relayed by phone to Crawford from FBI Director Hayden Burke (famed director Roger Corman who gave Demme his directorial start). Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Paul Krendler (Ron Vawter) will take over in Memphis. Later at the Memphis International Airport at night, Lecter restrained with a monstrous face mask arrives bound and strait-jacketed on a hospital stretcher in a hand truck and is met in a secret meeting with a Senator Martin and her assistants on the tarmack.
“Halloween” made in 1978 t was made on a shoe-string budget of $300,000 however, Halloween is one of the highest grossing independant movies of all time. Compass International, the distributor’s of the movie, didn’t have enough funds to release it nationwide at first, it was only after it’s initial success that they found the funds to make additional copies. .However “Halloween” became one of the most successful independent films ever made, grossing over $65 million.{An unrelated interesting fact the mask Michael Myers wears is a cast of film star William Shatner’s face spray painted white)
After the opening scene where Michael stabs his sister with a butcher knife the next time we see him is on his way to the mental institution when the station wagons two headlights appear in the darkness, The back seat is separated from the front by a wire-mesh screen, much like a police car. Marion the nurse is driving. Next to her in the passenger seat is Sam Lomis the clinical psychiatrist. He is a tough-looking man in his forties who flips through pages in a manila folder.
Lomis: then he gets another physical by the state, and he makes his apperance before the judge. That should take four hours if we’re lucky, then we’re on our way.
Marion: What did you use before?
Marion: He’ll barely be able to sit up.
Lomis: hat’s the idea. Here we are.
Through the rain we see a large sign: SMITH’S GROVE – WARREN COUNTY SANITARIUM Behind the sign is the sanitarium itself, a cold-looking building surrounded by a fence.
Lomis; Try to understand what we’re dealing with here. Don’t underestimate “it”
Marion: I think we should refer to “it” as ‘him.
Marion: Your compassion is overwhelming, Doctor.
Through the windshield we see Loomis rush over to the patient, stand and talk for a moment, then hurry back. Loomis climbs back in, dripping from the rain and pulls up to the entrance!
Lomis: Move it! Marion starts down the road.
Lomis: He asked me if I could help him find his purple lawnmower.
Marion: I don’t think this is any time to be funny…
Lomis: He said something else. “It’s all right now. He’s gone. The evil’s gone.”
Ahead of them is the entrance to the sanitarium. Marion slows down to turn. Through the rear window we see Michael spring up out of the darkness and jump ontop of the station wagon. The roof sags in and out with the weight of Michael on top.
Marion: Something fell on the roof. The roof continues to buckle in and out wildly.
Lomis: Something jumped on the roof…
Marion stops and rolls down her window to look outside. Loomis opens his door and steps out. Suddenly he is punched in the face by a powerful fist from the roof. Loomis staggers backwards and falls by the side of the road. and lunges at her and grab her hair. The fingers tighten around her hair and the hand pulls Marion roughly to the window. Twisted around in the seat, Marion’s foot jams down all the way on the gas pedal. The station wagon drives forward. Marion claws at the hand desperate to save her life until the car crashes on the side of the road. Marion is hurled across the seat against the passenger door. Suddenly the hand slams against the passenger window, shattering it. .Marion scurries across the front seat, open’s the driver’s door and scrambles out.. The camera tracks her as she slides down into the muddy shoulder. From the shoulder we see the station wagon take off and disappears down the road into the darkness. Loomis runs up out of the rain and helps Marion!
to her feet. She screams hysterically. Loomis stares off down the road at the disappearing tail-lights.
Lomis: You can calm down. The evil’s gone.
You begin to see the similarities in the portrayal of the mental ill in Americian cinema.
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