Actions for Mental illness in popular culture
Mental illness in popular culture / Sharon Packer, editor
- Published
- Santa Barbara, CA : Praeger, [2017]
- Copyright Date
- ©20
©2017 - Physical Description
- 1 online resource (xxiv, 364 pages)
- Additional Creators
- Packer, Sharon
Access Online
- Contents
- Part I: Cinema: the big screen. Psychoanalytic renditions and film noir traditions -- The meme of escaped (male) mental patients in American horror films -- Filming hallucinations for A beautiful mind, Black swan, Spider, and Take shelter -- Dissociative identity disorder in horror cinema (you D.I.D.n't see that coming) -- Spirit possession, mental illness, and the movies, or what's gotten into you? -- Hitchcock: master of suspense and mental illness -- McMurphy the Trickster, Foucault, and One flew over the cuckoo's nest -- "Nature played me a dirty trick": illness vs. tolerance in gay-themed film -- Part II: Television: the small screen. Women's agency as madness: "The yellow wallpaper" to Penny dreadful -- Orange is the new color for mental illness -- Suffering soldiers and PTSD: from Saigon to Walton's mountain -- Mirth and mental illness: television comedy and the human condition -- Mentally ill mobsters: from Cagney's White heat to Scarface to Bugsy and Crazy Joe -- How traditional holiday TV Movies depict mental illness -- Cotard's syndrome in True detective, alien invaders, zombies, and pod people -- House, Monk, Dexter, and Hannibal: "super-powered" mentally ill TV characters -- Part III: novels, poetry, memoirs, and short stories. Sanity and perception in Philip K. Dick's Clans of the Alphane moon -- Medea, mothers, and madness: classical culture in popular culture -- Narratives in The snake pit, I never promised you a rose garden, and Girl, interrupted -- Edgar Allan Poe's unreliable narrators, or "madmen know nothing" -- Lovecraft and "an open slice of howling fear" -- Part IV: Comics, art, graphic novels, and video games. Mind games: representations of madness in video games -- Graphic narratives: Bechdel's Fun home and Forney's Marbles -- The X-Men as metaphors: when gayness was illness -- Arkham Asylum's criminally insane inmates and psychotic psychiatrists -- Halfworld's loonies in Rocket Raccoon comics--serious or satire? -- Van Gogh and the changing perceptions of mental illness and art -- From the Beats to Jean-Michel Basquiat: cultural madness and mad art -- "Autists" and merchandising "autistic art" -- Slipping into Silent hill: transnational trauma -- Part 5: Music, musicians, and musical theater. Kurt Cobain, Nirvana, and Generation X's suicide symbol -- Metallica, heavy metal, and "suicide music."
- Summary
- "Mental health professionals and advocates typically point a finger at pop culture for sensationalizing and stigmatizing mental illness, perpetuating stereotypes, and capitalizing on the increased anxiety that invariably follows mass shootings at schools, military bases, or workplaces; on public transportation; or at large public gatherings. While drugs or street gangs were once most often blamed for public violence, the upswing of psychotic perpetrators casts a harsher light on mental illness and commands media's attention. What aspects of popular culture could play a role in mental health across the nation? How accurate and influential are the various media representations of mental illness? Or are there unsung positive portrayals of mental illness? This standout work on the intersections of pop culture and mental illness brings informed perspectives and necessary context to the myriad topics within these important, timely, and controversial issues. Divided into five sections, the book covers movies; television; popular literature, encompassing novels, poetry, and memoirs; the visual arts, such as fine art, video games, comics, and graphic novels; and popular music, addressing lyrics and musicians' lives. Some of the essays reference multiple media, such as a filmic adaptation of a memoir or a video game adaptation of a story or characters that were originally in comics. With roughly 20 percent of U.S. citizens taking psychotropic prescriptions or carrying a psychiatric diagnosis, this timely topic is relevant to far more individuals than many people would admit"--Publisher's description.
- Subject(s)
- Genre(s)
- ISBN
- 9781440843891 (electronic bk.)
1440843899 (electronic bk.) - Bibliography Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 29673446