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Notities Mediating mental health : contexts, debates and analysis door Michael Birch

Een aantal interessante notities die ik gemaakt heb bij het bestuderen van deze literaire bron. 

Historically, film representation has addressed the spectator through the dominant theme of ‘dangerousness’ and the positioning of the stereotypical ‘mad’ identity. Problematic knowledge content in film has implications for the relationships which the spectator has with the topic of mental health. Specifically, the problem is the relationship between mental concepts and signifiers about mental health and/or madness which lie at the heart of ‘representing’.

In the making of any film genre, its production process is ultimately social in its practices. Various personnel help make representational decisions not only about what these meanings are but also how they are communicated. ‘How’ meanings are communicated for our seeing, hearing and reading play a part in what is known from them. This leads us into understanding about the consequences of representations and how they can locate and specify cultural identity and mental health realities. Subsequently, in the analysis of meanings, the Barthesian couplet of denotation and connotation is used in conjunction with myth, a component at work in many mental health texts.

In Mabuse, Lang further constructed the enigma of the dual-personality character theme, developing it through formal image components in the ‘look’ of madness. Aided by German expressionism and using dramatic codes in facial expressions, Lang employed ‘point of view’ camera shots portraying a subjective new mad world – an inner mind state that was corrupt and perverse.

Fertile significations in ‘looks’ of madness and visual formal conventions generated a multiplicity of themes about subjectivity, the ‘point of view’ frame referencing odd realities about the internal world of mad characters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpx0e9i6pE8

“the point of view shot actually limits what the spectator can easily know about the character. Though a POV shot may appear simple and straight-forward in comparison with ‘objective’ narration, it actually requires the spectator to hold together a great number of assumptions – corresponding to the descriptive assumptions of all of the levels of narration above it – and hence is more restrictive than higher-level narrations. For example, the specific angle of view on the object is normally irrelevant to our comprehension of the object in space – any one of several angles would suffice in nonfocalized narration. However, in a POV shot the specific angle of view is importantly tied to the attention and awareness of a specific character and thus the angle must be captured and held in the working memory by the spectator.”  (Branigan 1992: 157)

Gilman proposes that art, whatever form it takes, is ‘an icon of our control of the flux of reality’

‘Diseased’ meanings about a mad Other are propelled in the film, these external images of disorder, momentarily tantalizing not only as elements of danger but also potentially threatening to internalized feelings of security about the self. In every human psychology, deep structures of stereotypes reside about things we fear or glorify. Where anxiety and fear reign, a potentially destabilizing effect to our sense of self-security demands self-protection from dangerous fears.

According to Kernberg, during the early moments of human development, the world is just an extension of the self, where ‘The organization of intrapsychic reality [is constituted] in terms of love and hate’ (Kernberg 1984: 237). Humankind is both anchored to and driven by these two constituents. Initially, a sense of security is seen as coming from the world in the shape of love, warmth and food and is felt as an extension of the self, security and expectation. Soon, however, difference with the world is produced in the child as s/he becomes more accomplished in distinguishing between ‘self’ and ‘world’ and during early stages of development a sense of identity begins to take place through ‘difference’ determined through experiences of the child with the world. Also, at this time, anxiety about perceived loss of control of the world is raised through adjustment of the child’s mental picture of people and objects in it. Combating this anxiety evolves through defeat in dealing with conflicts in the child’s world via attempts to make adjustments through replacing a mental picture of objects and people; so they appear good even if they are perceived as bad. Through this mode, the child’s sense of self is styled even more to accommodate this way of being but across time it eventually splits between a good and bad ‘self’; this single splitting stage is the root and route from which all stereotypical associations will eventuate.

At the beginning of the split, the good part of the ‘self’ is in complete control of its world and is free from anxiety. The ‘“bad” self however, is unable to control the environment and is thus exposed to anxieties’ (Kernberg 1984: 17). As a child matures, not only do its increasingly sophisticated and complex perceptions of the world but also, the abilities to differentiate between goodness and badness,

Where pathology is concerned, meaning about mental illness is all powerful because it directly confronts the self and identity with its own potential loss of control. As Gilman relates, it raises the frightening (also thrilling) possibility of a ‘loss of control over the self, and loss of control is associated with loss of language and thought perhaps even more than with physical illness’ (Gilman 1985: 23).

The horror form has developed unchecked concepts about ‘madness’ and functioned as a significatory vehicle to introduce, evolve and manifest, irregular themes that reference mental health with ambiguity, providing little or no understanding about it. Few fictional films deal with mental health in an informative or entertaining way to dislodge mad concepts, but those that do use a range of conventions and codes to illuminate meanings useful to mental health understanding. In Angel Baby, formal properties work to convey rare realisms and strong themes representative of the schizophrenic condition, classifying people’s identities in original ways. In Family Life, a naturalistic narrative critiques the institutions of mental healthcare, family and state, objecting that the needs of the citizen are not adequately met. In Rain Man, the melodramatic comedy form helps type qualities associated with autism accurately; this film proves to be an iconic text for popular culture in terms of its representational qualities. These broadly allow for a factualization about mental health in a fictional form. Indeed, these mental health genres operate to effectively portray mental health at the expense of madness.

 

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