This post may contain plot spoilers.
I recently went to see the new Martin Scorcese film, ‘Sutter Island’ in which I have a particular interest because it involves the subjecct of mental illness.
I went expecting to be disappointed becuase the trailer implies that the mentally ill would be used in the film as monsters. Once I saw the film I was pleasantly surpised that this was not the case, however I was dissappointed in how the subject of mental illness was handled generally.
What I specifically take issue with is the lack of care in providing an accurate portrayal of indivuduals with psychiatric and psychological conditions. I have high standards for the portrayal of mental illness and for a film to get my seal of approval it must satisfy several criteria.
The plot itself more than satisfies one of the criteria I expect from films with mentally ill characters, that the audience be put in the position of the mentally ill. This technique was used successfully in such films as ‘A Beautiful Mind’, and ‘Momento’ where the audience is induced into perceiving what a character with a mental defect perceives.
We all interpret the world around us through our perceptions, and when our perception of the world fails us, this is considered mental illness. When the thoughts get disordered enough, this is called psycosis.
But one of the main criteria for determining a particular belief as psychotic is that it be a private belief. In other words, clinically speaking, the only difference between eccentric beliefs and psychotic thinking is the ability to convince others to see it your way.
So when the audience is induced to experience what the mentally ill character experiences, the disordered thinking becomes a shared experience and is no longer seen as frightening or strange.
In this fictional world it ceases to be psychotic until the truth of the plot is finally revealed and by that time the audience has believed the misperception for so long that we find it hard to judge anyone who would believe it.
Another of my criteria is that a film either choose to portray a fictitious mental illness, in this case ‘criminal insanity’, or to take great care to accurately portray an acutal illness or condition.
In ‘Shutter Island’ the character suffering disordered thinking never had a named illness and seemed to display an range of symptoms that don’t really amount to any acutal diagnosis that I am familiar with but served the purposes of the plot.
I was satisfied by this as regards the main character but when it came to one of the supporting characters, the film named her illness as bipolar disorder and attributed behaviour to this condition that at the very least would be atypical of those who live with the condition.
The suposed bipolar character was someone who murdered her children, and the character displayed delusional symptoms which are not characteristic of bipolar disorder.
This brings me to my next criteria an my main point. In my opinion it is tiresome and unacceptable that the entertainment industry continue to foster the stereotype that people with mental conditions are likely to become murderers.
‘Shutter Island’ fails on this point because the main character is considered so dangerous to staff that he is sent off for a barbaric surgery. This is clearly protrayed as plausable and acceptable.
Perhaps one of the most common groups to be treated as murderers in popular culture are those living with schizophrenia to the point where most people believe them to be dangerous. It is my understanding however that those with schizophrenia are statistically the least likely to commit murder.
So why does the entertainment industry continue to create storylines as the expense of a truth that can liberate a significant minority from the pain of misunderstanding?
Because people will do anything for entertainment.
A documentary in France recently recreated the famous Milgram experiment in which people were asked to administer electric shocks to others.
In the orignial experiement 62% of subjects were convinced to administer what they thought were leathal doses of electricity simply because someone they saw as an authority figure asked them to, in the French documentary 82% were convinced to do this.
In the original study the participants were convinced they should go along because they were being asked to do so by someone dressed as a scientist. In the sixties scientists were considered infallable.
In today’s cynical world in which most people are aware of the Milgram study, how could people possibly be lead to believe that someone had the authority to ask them to administer leathal doses of electricity?
The unfortunate answer is that these people believed themselves to be participating in a game show pilot and had signed a contract stating that they would not interfear with the production.
Of these people 82% would rather kill someone than interrupt the filming of a television pilot. And yet by standards of psychiatry this is not considered insanity.
Why not? Because so many people were willing to do it. It is simply considered to be unfortunately normal for people to be willing to kill someone when asked to do so by entertainers.
Perhaps the entertainment industry should wake up to the reality that there is more to fear from sainity than insanity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsgRXRBdExA&feature=related
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