Madness, Power and the Media: Class, Gender and Race in Popular Representations of Mental Distress

245 Pages·2009·1.08 MB·English

by  Stephen Harper (auth.)

Madness, Power and the Media
AlsobyStephenHarper:
INSANITY,INDIVIDUALSANDSOCIETYINLATE-MEDIEVALENGLISHLITERA-
TURE(2003)
CONSTRUCTING ‘THE WICKER MAN’: Film and Cultural Studies Perspectives
(co-edited,2005)
THEQUESTFORTHEWICKERMAN(co-edited,2006)
Madness, Power and
the Media
Class, Gender and Race in Popular
Representations of Mental Distress
Stephen Harper
SeniorLecturerinMediaStudies,UniversityofPortsmouth,UK
©StephenHarper2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-21880-2
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1 FramingMadness:HistoricalandCulturalDebates 1
2 Stigmatisation,ViolenceandMediaCriticism 32
3 TheSufferingScreen:CinematicPortrayalsofMental
Distress 59
4 ChannellingAffliction:TelevisionDiscoursesofDistress 103
5 ANewLeaf?:ChangingRepresentationsofMental
DistressinPrintMedia 151
Conclusion:Media,MadnessandIdeology 186
Bibliography 200
Index 221
v
Acknowledgements
So many individuals made the writing of this book easier and more
bearable that it is impossible to mention them all here. I would partic-
ularlyliketothank,however,thefollowingacademicswhocontributed
advice and encouragement during the period in which this book was
conceived and written: Emma Bell, Simon Cross, Ben Franks, Angie
McClanahan and Sophia Wood; regrettably, none of them can be
blamedinanywayforthebook’sdeficiencies.Severalotherfriendsand
students pointed me towards media texts that eventually made it into
thebook;Ithankthemall.
Finally,IamgratefultothestudentsattheUniversityofGlasgowand
theUniversityofPortsmouthfortheirideasandinspirationoverseveral
years.
This book is dedicated to my mother, Sandra, and to the memory of
myfather,Tony.
vi
1
Framing Madness: Historical and
Cultural Debates
This book is about the representation of mental distress in the media
today. Any critical analysis of public images of madness must first
engage, however, with some controversial and long-standing epistemo-
logical,terminologicalandmethodologicalquestions.Whatismadness
or‘mentalillness’?Isitabiologicalfactoraculturalconstruction?How,
historically,hasmadnessbeenregardedbyitssufferersanditsobservers?
What terminology ought to be used in critical discussions of madness?
These are large questions and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to
provide an exhaustive response of any one of them. In order to set the
scene for my subsequent theoretical discussions and textual analyses,
however,Ishallbrieflyoutlinemyperspectiveontheissuestheyraise.
The aim of this chapter is to address the questions raised above with
a view to establishing some of the key propositions underpinning this
book.Theyareasfollows:
• that mental distress has always – and continues to be – constructed
both ‘negatively’ and ‘positively’ in Western culture and that media
critics ought to analyse the supposedly ‘positive’, as well as the
overtly‘negative’constructions;
• that public and institutional discourses around psychological dis-
tress have proliferated in advanced capitalist societies, in response
toshiftingeconomicinterestsandsubjectiveinvestments;
• thatmadnessisbestunderstoodinrelationtoitssocial,politicaland
economiccontextsratherthanthemedicalmodelof‘mentalillness’.
While none of these propositions is wholly original, each is contro-
versial. In arguing in support of them, I hope to create a conceptual
frameworkthatwillinformmylateranalysesofmediatexts.
1
2 Madness,PowerandtheMedia
From stigmatisation to glorification: Changing Western
perceptions of madness
Ifhistoriansofmadness–andmostmediacritics–agreeononepoint,it
is that madness has been systematically stigmatised in Western culture.
The cultural suspicion of madness has its origin in the ancient associa-
tion between mental distress and spiritual turpitude. Greek and Roman
medicine developed rational explanations and cures for madness, rang-
ing from physical remedies to music therapy, which persisted into the
Middle Ages and beyond (Graham, 1967). From the beginning of the
medievalperiod,however,therationalistapproachwassupplemented–
although never completely ousted – by irrational and superstitious
explanations and cures for madness. The religious and didactic writ-
ers of the Middle Ages tended to regard illness, whether physical or
‘mental’(althoughmadnesswasseeninsomaticterms),asadivinepun-
ishment for sin and as a dire warning to others to avoid temptation
(Doob,1974).ThemedievalchroniclerBede(1968:108–9),forinstance,
relateshowtheseventh-centuryAnglo-SaxonkingEadbaldwasstricken
with madness after an incestuous marriage. The Old Testament books
of the Bible also frequently connect sin with madness. Zechariah, for
instance, prophesises that those who attack Jerusalem will be punished
with insanity: ‘On that day, says the Lord, I will strike every horse with
panic and its rider with madness’ (Zechariah 12: 4). In Deuteronomy,
which rests on ancient tradition, Moses warns his people that if they
‘will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all
his commandments and his statutes [...] the Lord will smite [them]
withmadnessandblindnessandconfusionofmind’(Deuteronomy28:
15, 28). Designating madness as a punishable abdication of God-given
reason,theChristianBiblecanbeseenastheearliest‘mediatext’tostig-
matise mental distress. The medieval religious perspective on madness
wasappliednotonlytoindividuals,butalsotogroupsandwasadopted
bysecularaswellaschurchauthorities.ThePeasants’Revoltof1381,for
example, was described within official discourse as an outbreak of dia-
bolical madness which threatened to overturn the supposedly natural
anddivinelyordainedfeudalhierarchy(Patterson,1990).
Medieval attitudes towards madness have proved to be remark-
ablyenduring.Whilepost-Enlightenment,psychiatricpracticestowards
mental distress – such as ‘moral therapy’ – were ostensibly less bru-
tal than earlier ones, they nonetheless involved subjecting the mad
to constant scrutiny and punishment, instilling in patients a sense of
guiltwhichwouldeventuallybeinternalisedbythem(Foucault,2005a).
FramingMadness 3
Today, religious ideologies powerfully shape constructions of men-
tal distress, both explicitly – demonic possession remains a common
‘schizophrenic’ fantasy, for example – and implicitly, as manifested in
thepervasivestigmatisationofmadnessasshameful.
Yet to focus on the stigmatisation of madness is to consider only one
half of the history of madness. From the Middle Ages onwards, mad-
ness has been revered as much as feared. David Cooper (1978: 155), in
his introduction to Foucault’s Madness and Civilisation, goes so far as
to claim that madness in medieval Europe ‘was respected as a differ-
ent way of being and knowing, perhaps a privileged way with a more
direct access to heaven’ and that it was only in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries that madness began to be excluded. In itself, this
seems a partial account of early conceptions and experiences of mad-
ness; after all, medieval and early modern experiences of madness were
oftenasdistressingastheyaretodayandviolentindividualswerecom-
monlyconfinedinsecurebuildingslongbeforetheseventeenthcentury
(Midelfort, 1980: 253). Yet it is true that medieval accounts of madness
often conceive of madness as a blessed state, paving the way for the
secularre-evaluationofmadnessasheroicandprogressive.
The growing influence of medical education in European universi-
ties in the later Middle Ages contributed to a massive preoccupation
with the theme of madness and may have enabled a certain separa-
tion of religious and secular perspectives on madness (Clarke, 1975). In
Europe from the twelfth century onwards, fictional narratives contain-
ing spectacular tales about mad heroes proliferated. Alongside religious
denunciationsofmadnessasthemanifestationofspiritualtaint,Europe
developed a tradition of poetry, prose fiction and autobiography deal-
ing with the tribulations of disturbed characters, from the Celtic hero
Suibhne to the ranting King Herod of the Mystery Plays (Doob, 1974).
While many of these stories attest to the Christian abhorrence of mad-
ness, many also prefigure a new, humanistic understanding of madness
as a condition that involves suffering and demands sympathy and
even admiration rather than condemnation. The Arthurian romances
plainly describe the wilful, intemperate heroes Lancelot and Tristan,
for example, as mad; but these heroes are also rebels who contest
and confound an oppressive social order (Merrill, 1987). It is per-
haps not too fanciful to suggest that the immoderate behaviour of
the Arthurian heroes foreshadows that of Hollywood’s troubled mus-
clemen, such as the Vietnam veterans Travis Bickle and John Rambo,
who–likeArthur’sbestknights–serveaschampionsoftheverysociety
from which they are later outcast. At all events, from the later Middle