MHA's Blog: Chiming In

Does familiarity with a story dim its effects on a person?  If over 400 years have passed since its creation, can a play still encourage a person to self-harm?  With William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it seems that question is still very open.  The numerous movies made of the story help keep it in the public consciousness, like Baz Lurhmann’s 1996 adaptation, Romeo+Juliet.

The play centers on Romeo and Juliet, two young lovers from warring families who fall in love at a party.  After marrying in secret, Romeo is involved in a fight with Juliet’s cousin and kills him.  He is banished from the kingdom.  In order to be together, the friar who marries them gives her a potion that mimics death.  Romeo never gets the message that she’s not dead, and comes back into the city.  He eventually kills himself at her side.  When she wakes up, she sees him dead and also kills herself.   The play ends with the Prince telling the families of their responsibility in their children’s deaths. 

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Perception, the TNT television show, has an interesting hook. The main character, Dr. Daniel Pierce, is a neuroscientist who assists the FBI with cases. He also has paranoid schizophrenia. Instead of making him an empty shell of nervous tics, the show makes Dr. Pierce a fully formed person.

Entering its second season, Perception focuses on Dr. Pierce, played wonderfully by Eric McCormack, and Agent Kate Moretti, played by Rachel Leigh Cook. She’s a former student of his who brings him in to help with cases. Together, they solve crime and try to understand the brain. Dr. Oliver Sacks, the world renowned author and neuroscientist, is an advisor on the show, which helps with the accuracy of science and with the portrayal of brain disorders of all kinds.

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I’ve often written about how positive images of mental health appear in odd places in pop culture, and this week’s topic, the USA show Necessary Roughness, is one of those places. USA is known as a lightweight network, where all of the shows have a certain soap opera aspect to them, and Necessary Roughness is no different.  It also has something interesting to say underneath it though.

Just starting its third season, the show is about psychologist Dr. Danielle “Dani” Santino, who is hired by the New York Hawks football team to help their star receiver, Terrence King. Through her work with T.K. and the Hawks, she is suddenly in demand with other sports figures, celebrities and politicians. The show is split between her long term work with T.K. and the case of the week stories. In addition, the show follows Dani’s personal life, which includes dating after a messy divorce and raising two teenagers. She’s involved with one of the Hawk’s trainers, Matt Donnally, and drawn to the team’s mysterious fixer, Nico Careles.

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I’d been on a roll with this blog, watching movies that present good depictions of mental health conditions, or at least, weren’t as awful as I thought they were going to be. That streak is over now, having watched Girl, Interrupted. This movie is not just bad; it’s just about as bad as it can get.

Girl, Interrupted is a 1999 movie based on a book by Susanna Kaysen. Susanna is the main character, a young woman put in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt. She spends a year there, learning about herself and getting into adventures with the other consumers, including Angelina Jolie’s Lisa and Brittany Murphy’s Daisy. After becoming close with Lisa, the two break out of the hospital and this leads to disaster and Lisa’s disappearance. Susanna begins to get better and finally is scheduled for release, but Lisa’s reappearance threatens to derail her progress. This leads to a bitter confrontation before Susanna leaves.

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In my review for A Beautiful Mind, I complained that the movie switched points of view once John Nash’s schizophrenia was diagnosed, and that was the interesting point of view. I believe that I said that there are no movies that keep the main character’s point of view when his or her illness is identified. I was wrong.  Spider does and does it very effectively.

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