Mental Illness Representation

Our Opening Idea

I think that the way in which we have proposed to represent mental illness in our film opening is very outdated and stereotypical as showing a young woman/teenager has connotations of vulnerability. Therefore by basing the entire opening around the effects of this character's disability in the genre of horror/thriller, we are implying that it is negative and something to be feared or fascinated by.
In order to create a gripping and interesting opening I think that we should subvert the audience's expectations by using the motif of continuously circling the protagonist to draw more attention to her memories and experiences rather than how sympathetic she is.

I think that the suggestion to set the present-day part of our opening in a prison is unique but also reflective of real life as 95% of minors who are imprisoned have a mental disorder, and our character could potentially be a minor, allowing us to use the sign of a young, 'innocent' character to refine our opening.

Past Representations of Mental Illness

In the past, mental illness has been presented to us as confusing and scary as very few understood how sufferers are affected by their disability. For example, in Halloween (1978), the villain is an escaped mental institution patient, and is shown to be particularly violent. This feeds into the public assumption that people with mental disabilities are dangerous, which is an inaccurate representation.

We can see this in an episode of the US TV show 'Will and Grace'; 'Crazy in Love', in which Grace attempts to get out of jury duty with a fake doctor's note stating that she has Borderline Personality Disorder. In particular, that she is 'prone to aggressive outbursts' and some characters refer to her as 'psycho'. This is regressive as it enhances the stigma of people with this disorder or a similar one being violent. She also says that it was 'brilliant' to pretend to have a mental disorder to avoid jury duty, which trivialises this illness.

Present-Day Representations of Mental Illness

In the modern day, mental illness is often romanticised as those with any type or severity of one is seen as someone to pity or admire for their 'bravery'. Although it is true that those with mental illness may require more attention and care than someone without, this view creates some desire to have a mental illness. This could potentially have a bigger impact than the negative portrayal as if our target audience is of a similar age to our main character, they may be more susceptible to the influence of this glamorised representation. 

Nowadays, we see mental illness mentioned in a wider variety of media texts, such as music, particularly in the pop-punk genre. Because of this, we are shown a more realistic and accurate representation of mental illness as artists can tell stories of first-hand experiences. However, this is not always progressive, for example Fall Out Boy's '7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)' contains the lyric 'I'm having another episode, I just need a stronger dose', which could reinforce a common assumption, of the past and present, that all mental health issues can be solved with medication. We would want to subvert this when creating our opening in order to make sure that how we present it is accurate and realistic. Mental illness can also be normalised which in some cases is progressive, and in others not, again because of the romantic light it is shown in.