Psychology as a field is often misrepresented in modern cinema and Martin Scorsese’s latest film, Shutter Island, is one that may leave a negative impression of psychology on the viewer. In the story, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo Dicaprio) sets out to find an escaped patient from Ashcliffe Insane Asylum on Shutter Island. However, in a radical twist, we find that Teddy is himself a patient at the asylum. He suffers from Delusional Disorder, creating a false world to escape the dark reality of his past. Shutter Island is one of the many films that present the ethical considerations of psychological treatment to a mainstream audience.
[My question is how do these different aspects influence movies and the characters within the movie?] The [films] I’m going to talk about that are affected by these things are Beauty and the Best by Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, The Blind Side by John L Handcock, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Ron Howard. These movies have characters that show fear of abandonment, fear of intimacy, and low self-esteem. Not all the movies have these anxieties in them but they have two or three that are spotted throughout the movies with the characters. [In the Psychoanalytic chapter of the book Critical Theory Today author Lois Tyson does a wondering job defining Fear of Intimacy.]
This can be seen through the lighting of Norman’s face, half-light, half dark, and the dialogue. “It's not like my mother is a maniac... We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?” These techniques have been cleverly assembled by Hitchcock to subtly hint at the idea of madness and help us to get to know Norman, but is not yet prepared to reveal the extent of Norman’s madness due to Psycho being a horror film. The complex relationship helps us understand Norman as a character and the idea of madness in the fruit cellar scene. The director reveals the situation when Lila, Marion’s sister, goes down to the fruit cellar to hide from the murderer and finds Mother’s corpse.
Nicole Nixon Ron Davis Judicial Process April 17, 2012 Are You Insane? When you watch crime shows on television you see defense attorneys always use an insanity defense when they go to trial, the insanity defense is one of the most popularly depicted criminal defense strategies in television and film culture. The issue with this depiction is that the public is given a distorted view of who uses the defense and how it is employed. An inanity defense can be defined as “A defense asserted by an accused in a criminal prosecution to avoid liability for the commission of a crime because, at the time of the crime, the person did not appreciate the nature or quality or wrongfulness of the acts.” (Legal Dictionary) The truth about the insanity defense is that only one-percent of criminal defendants employ the defense. Also, criminals rarely “get away with it” by pleading insanity.
Historical Perspectives of Abnormal Psychology PSY 410 September 28, 2011 Abstract “The blunt realities of mental illness shatter our most deeply held convictions about the nature of human consciousness and behavior. The mentally ill are more different than us than we can imagine and more like us than we care to admit.” (Valentine, 2011) This quote paints a poignant and provocative picture of Abnormal Psychology. Its eloquent phrasing leads us to look at the concept of abnormality through multifaceted lenses exposing the fine line that defines normal and abnormal. In the fairly young science of Abnormal psychology we are asked to consider thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as viable ways to determine the mental wellness of an individual. It is through the understanding of the past that we may move forward into the future.
We examined numerous examples of different types of insanity. For example, in the 2005 Jan Svankmajer film Lunacy, the main character, Jean Berlot, experiences frequent nightmare hallucinations of being put into a straightjacket. Despite these disturbing nightmares, Jean rarely displays any other signs of madness. In fact, the antagonist, Marquis, convinces Jean he needs to be institutionalized when in reality he is saner than the Marquis. Furthermore, in the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel Notes from the Underground, the main character, or the unnamed narrator known as the Underground Man, feels extremely alienated from society.
Insanity can be defined as a level of craziness or mental illness that disables one from normal human activities; it also can be very irrational. The main characters of both stories experience some sort of hallucination. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the audience can clearly see that the narrator is hallucinating about a woman being trapped behind the wallpaper. However, it is not as clear that the tapster is hallucinating in “What the Tapster Saw”. In the story, Okri does not state that what the tapster saw was a hallucination.
As he tries to convince authorities of what he believes really happened, he is ignored as merely spewing another crazy tirade. Romulus becomes fixated on the death and undertakes justice all the while battling the internal and external conflicts of his disorder. The effects of paranoid schizophrenia are examined in the context of the character as are the effects of the disordered on the disordered, his family, his friends, and the general public. Possible treatments are introduced as well as purported causal factors and possible outcomes. The Caveman’s Valentine is a psychologically charged mystery thriller that follows the main character Romulus Ledbetter, played by Samuel L. Jackson.
INDIVIDUALISM IN DEAD POETS SOCIETY The movie Dead Poet’s Society explores the concept of individualism in great depth. The numerous conflicts that the characters face throughout the movie demonstrate the fundamental principles of existentialism and transcendentalism. Neil Perry’s suicide, for instance, illustrates the disturbing existential consequences that can transpire when an individual’s authority is allowed to prevail against tradition. On the other hand, however, the triumph of the individual spirit may sometimes have a positive outcome—as in the case of Knox Overstreet, an example of transcendentalism. When Knox becomes obsessed with a certain girl named “Chris”—without actually meeting her—he ends up risking his life to win her heart.
Stigma is the product of superstition, old belief systems, lack of knowledge and empathy, and the sustained distortion by the media. Television or movie characters with aggressive and dangerous behaviors are associated with mental illnesses; "psychos” are killers in popular movies and terms like "lunatic" or "crazy" are often used to joke about the mentally ill. These representations and the use of discriminatory language distort the public’s view and reinforce inaccuracies about mental illness. Thus, educating the public and the media about mental illness is a first step to combat the stigma. In fact, twenty percent of Canadians will personally experience a mental illness during their lifetime.