After rereading all of my posts from this semester, I noticed a several themes as well as a few trends and themes that changed and developed as the semester progressed. First off, I noticed the broad theme or pattern in my posts where I attempted to write about things that I noticed from my life and how they relate to the day’s readings or assignments. While this was not prevalent in my first and second post, probably because I wanted to make sure I wrote enough about that day’s assignment, my third post included a reference to an event that I followed this past summer and how it related to the grief troll trend. My fourth post included a reference to two recent celebrity deaths that I was able to connect to our readings and class discussion that we had during the previous class. Lastly, my final post linked a trip that I took while abroad last year to a theme explored in that day’s assigned readings. Overall, I would say that they nature of my posts have changed in the past fifteen weeks by becoming more broad and far-reaching about the topics I cover and how much I have branched out from the days assigned readings/movies/shows. I think that this is a positive change as I have been able to make what we are studying in class more applicable to my real life observations.
Another theme that stood out to me and surprised me was how different my blog post writing is from other academic work that I have completed during my four years at Davidson. I believe that I fully embraced the blogging spirit and treated it as a blog rather than an analytical paper, presentation, or report that I complete for my other classes. I think this type of platform has still allowed me to analyze our class readings, however, we are given the freedom and flexibility to do it in a way that allows us to connect with the text that enables us to lean best.
Ultimately, I was surprised with my creativity in this class. I was not expecting to be so engaged and excited about the readings or to enjoy the material I was writing about for the four assignments. I really have appreciated this blogging platform and the structure of the class and the assignments as a whole, and think that they have pushed me both creatively and academically. I also appreciate how blogging was able to extend the 50 minutes of class, and give us time and space to explore what we are learning in our own individual ways. If I wasn’t graduating in three weeks, I would have loved to take a similar class to this one.
While reading the article for Wednesday, I was particularly interested in the section on Edward Burtnsky’s Shipbreaking #4 and how the picture and what it represents was used to discuss the themes of breakdown, maintenance, and repair. His picture captures what happened to 80 percent of the world’s ocean fleet once the ships “die” or go out of commission. While this process is routine and normalized, it is still shocking to read about because the process is visibly removed. Overall, I appreciate how this article draws attention to and argues that breakdown, maintenance, and repair are understudied and under represented both physically and digitally today.
Burtynsky’s picture specifically reminded me of a place I visited a year and a half ago. While I was abroad in Greece, I visited the island of Zakynthos which is famously know for Ship Wreck cove (pictured below). Navagio or Ship Wreck cove is where a ship wrecked in 1980 and has been untouched ever since to serve as a tourist attraction. As seen in the pictures, the ship is placed aesthetically in a beautiful untouched and isolated cove where visitors can explore history, absorb beautiful views, travel to a remote area while simultaneously viewing a rusted and decomposing old ship.
In comparison to the scene in Burtnsky’s Shipbreaking #4, Ship Wreck cove is similar because it shows the breakdown process of an old and decomposing ship. However, it situates the ship in a public and very visible manner that the tourist industry is able to make money from. Therefore, this is a counter example or potentially even an exception to the main argument of the article. I think it is even ironic how the breakdown process is being celebrated and recognized as beautiful, when a majority of ships are sent to breakdown in a remote and isolated part of the world.
Pictures taken from my visit at Ship Wreck cove in Zakynthos, Greece.
After Wednesday’s class on digital resurrection, I was particularly interested in many of the moral or ethical questions that were brought up when we discussed our dead celebrities in small groups. The questions we explored about how we would treat the celebrity or interact with their art or music or image differently after they died compared to when they were alive were interesting to me.
After class I also began to explore more of the specific moral and ethical questions that are asked in the #metoo era that we are in, especially in regards to celebrities. My group discussed Michael Jackson and I found it interesting when the larger class discussion was brought up about whether or not it was morally wrong to still listen to or buy his music. My first thought was “he’s dead, why does it make a difference” but then I thought of what it stood for and what kind of image I was supporting and I started to change my mind. After a quick research session I found that writers had very strong options on either side. Suzanne Moore believes that Michael Jackson’s music is dead to her, while the Admin Team from MJ Vibe believes you should play his music now more than ever. Two very polarizing viewpoints that I think capture both sides of the debate.
I also started to think of the opposite digital resurrection of Michael Jackson, where a celebrity comes back after they have died with a better and more profound reputation based off of something that happened while they were alive but there was increased awareness of that action/circumstance after their death. My first thought was Robin Williams due to the mental illness he suffered from before taking his own life. I think he was digitally resurrected in a much stronger and positive light after people found out about his suicide and all that he was going through leading up to his death. Everyone was amazed with how much joy and energy he put into his films, while also experiencing a dark and terrible time of his life. Therefore, I noticed that digitally resurrecting someone in a different light than when they were alive, is normally based off of events that happened when they were alive, that are now being more highlighted once they have died.
For my Haunted Media Project, I chose to create five different text message conversations with “Joe” who is a dead father, friend, brother, and husband that has recently died from an opioid overdose. The conversations purposely start out vague with his conversation with his son Daniel which reveals that Joe is gone, however why he is gone or where he went is unclear. All that is known is that he is not coming back. As the texts progress the audience is given more clues as to what happened to Joe and it is eventually revealed that Joe died from an opioid overdose. This text messages story is meant to raise awareness and show the personal side to the opioid crisis through a personal narrative. In the media and health reports there is an emphasis on pure numbers because there are so many people that die from drug overdoses. However, in my project, I dig deeper into one personal story that shows how the opioid crisis is impacting individuals after their family member or friend has died. This project also uncovers how individuals grieve and interact with the dead after they are gone.
There are two theories of how the living (Joe’s family and friends) are able to communicate with the dead (Joe) and this ambiguity leaves the audience to decide how to interpret it. The first theory is that Joe’s ghost is texting his living loved ones. This theory represents the modern-day Dial-A-Ghost phone that Thomas Edison created with the incorporation and utilization of text messaging and cell phones (Zarrelli). This theory also resembles several applications that can be downloaded on one’s phone to interact with ghosts in various ways. In this theory, the living is able to interact with the spirit of the dead in a casual way that is also used to communicate with living people as well. This double purpose of using the phone to interact with the dead and the living adds a creepy and ominous layer to an everyday task and device.
The second theory is that Joe’s texts are coming from a bot that uses information from when Joe was alive. Now the bot is being used as a grieving tool for his friends and family to cope with his sudden loss. An example of this bot can be found in the Black Mirror episode, Be Right Back, when Ash’s digital data is used to create a virtual version of himself so his living wife can still interact and communicate with him (Brooker). In this project, the digital version of Joe is not intended solely for one person. Instead, the bot is meant for five different people that were close to him and the bot acts differently towards each of them because they are all grieving differently. This effect alludes to the possibility that Joe programed who he wanted the bot to contact and what words and interactions he thought would be comforting to each individual. This application could become a reality in the future as a coping tool that people leave behind especially if they know they are dying soon, and they want to leave something for their loved ones. This theory also leaves the audience wondering if Joe’s friends and family know that they are texting a bot.
This story was intentionally enacted through text messages to highlight the hidden and private nature that surrounds death and grieving today. In Philippe Aries’ book, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, he reveals that we are currently in the forbidden death phase where there is a closed awareness of dying (Aries). Death and grieving are privatized, and mourning happens individually instead of collectively. The use of text messages incorporates the privatized death that Aries described in 1975, but it also incorporates modern technology and how it has influenced how we grieve and mourn the dead today.
A review of Kübler-Ross’ newer work, Grief and Grieving, illuminates that “grief is oftentimes a private experience that is revealed to few” (Bolden 237). The text conversations represent this observation as multiple family members and friends of Joe are reluctant to talking to others or seeking help, and instead want to keep to themselves and their phones. The use of cell phones and technology in general allows one to easily keep to themselves and turn to their phone for various distractions instead of facing non-virtual reality. Technology also creates a separate grieving space since individuals will use social media to grieve the loss of loved ones or even use it to evoke sympathy from their friends and followers. Therefore, the use of text messaging for this project was not only intentional but it also shows how technology can play a role in the privatized grieving era we are currently living in.
The five conversations represent different people in Joe’s life, but they also represent the five different stages of grief, as first introduced in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ book, On Death and Dying. Through these five different stages of grief represented in the different text conversations, it is revealed how different people who are all currently grieving interact differently with the dead.
The first stage, denial, is represented by Joe’s son Daniel. He is simply denying that his father is gone forever and even asks if he will be there to take him and his friends to a basketball game. In his mind, his dad is immortal, and he refuses to let go of that belief. He completely rejects the idea that anything could take his dad away from his life and is very adamite that his dad is not gone. Kübler-Ross’ section on denial explains that “since in our unconscious mind we are all immortal, it is almost inconceivable for us to acknowledge that we too have to face death” (Kübler-Ross 42). Daniel’s case shows that this also applies to the death of our family members. The audience notices Joe’s ghost or Joe’s bot makes the effort to gently try to convince Daniel that he is in denial and that his father is never coming back.
Secondly, anger is represented by Joe’s wife, Ashley, who is clearly distressed and scared that she no longer has her husband as a partner to parent their children or to support her. She directs this anger towards virtual Joe directly and blames him for her current situation instead of blaming herself. As Kübler-Ross also explains it, it is clear that Ashley is reacting with rage and anger because she has always been in control of her life and now she has no control over her husband’s death and there is no way to fix it so she is enraged (Kübler-Ross 54). This reaction is especially apparent when she tells her dead husband that “You are incredibly selfish. You think that what you did only hurt you? That’s not true or fair. You got the escape, I am the one now living in hell.” After examining these first two interactions, one can begin to uncover how the grieving process interacts with the process of communicating with the dead and how the living are directing their emotions onto Joe who is virtually there for them but can never be there physically again.
Thirdly, bargaining is portrayed by Joe’s best friend Brian who clearly regrets not doing enough to save Joe when he was still alive. Kübler-Ross describes the motive behind bargaining when she states that “the bargaining is really an attempt to postpone; it has to elude a prize offered ‘for good behavior’” (Kübler-Ross 83). Brian is offering different solutions to fix the irrevocable situation so he can postpone Joe’s death. In the text messages, he offers these solutions to Joe himself because he knows Joe is the only one that could have stopped his own death, by not taking the drugs. This interaction is only made possible through the haunted texting that has enabled him to communicate with Joe. Without this haunted media, Brian might have tried to bargain with someone else that had no control over the situation that happened.
Fourthly, his daughter Debra embodies depression as she is struggling to see the purpose of living after learning that her father is now dead. It is clear that she had a close relationship with her father and now that he is gone “there is no one left to live for.” Debra’s interaction with her dead father through text messages does not change her depressed tone and mood, which is not surprising because depression is not fixed in a singular conversation. The conversation does however at least expose her to the idea that her father’s death was not her fault and there are other ways to cope and deal with his death which is what Joe could have programed his bot to do.
Lastly, acceptance is portrayed by Joe’s sister Alice who has begun to accept Joe’s death after a period of shock and surprise. It is important to note that “acceptance should not be mistaken for a happy stage” (Kübler-Ross 113) because at no point does Alice seem happy. Instead, she has come to terms with what happened and is ready to move on with what that means for her and the rest of the people in Joe’s life. The review of Kübler-Ross’ new book also highlights how she continues to explore acceptance in the grieving process. She explains that “finding closure [means] that a loved one’s death is put into perspective so that one can live with the loss” (Bolden 236) which is illuminated when Alice recognizes that Joe is in a better place now.
Overall, this project hopefully gives the audience some perspective in how different people grieve and how introducing technology into the grieving process can help them to express their emotions and feelings in a privatized modern world.
Works Cited
Ariès, Philippe. Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History). Translated by Patricia Ranum, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
Bolden, Lori. “A Review of On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through The Five Stages of Loss.” Counseling and Values, vol. 51, no. 3, Apr. 2007, pp. 235–37.
Brooker, Charlie. “Be Right Back.” Black Mirror, Season 2 Episdoe 1, Netflix.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. 1969.
Nationa Institute of Health. “Overdose Death Rates.” National Institute on Drug Abuse, Jan. 2019, https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates.
Zarrelli, Natalie. “Dial-a-Ghost on Thomas Edison’s Least Successful Invention: The Spirit Phone.” Atlas Obscura, Oct. 2016, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dial-a-ghost-on-thomas-edisons-least-successful-invention-the-spirit-phone.
On February 14th, I checked my phone to find the following notification: “Experts say a fatal disease causing ‘zombie’ symptoms in deer may be transmittable to humans. Here’s what to look out for.”
We had recently finished watching Dead Set for class which immediately came to mind. I remember thinking, maybe this is how the characters first contracted their zombie like disease in the show. This led me to wonder if that then meant we had the possibility of contracting something similar. The part of that notification that really struck me was the last sentence: “Here’s what to look out for”. This sentence evoked a sense of urgency and danger as I found myself wondering if there was something I needed to be on the look out for so I could avoid becoming a zombie like the characters on Dead Set.
As my curiosity continued I opened and read the Huffington Post article in its entirety. The author, Nina Golgowski, warned about the dangers of Chronic wasting disease (CWD) and also admitted that there has been no recorded transmissions from animals to humans. I also discovered that “‘To date, there is no strong evidence for the occurrence of CWD in people, and it is not known if people can get infected with CWD prions,’ the CDC’s website states.” After reading the article in it’s entirety I realized that there is not real threat on contracting this zombie disease especially because I never come in direct contact with deer and I do not eat deer meat.
This realization lead me to question zombie rhetoric and what it is used for. In the case of this article, I noticed that Golgowski used the word zombie to catch the reader’s attention so they would actually read the article. Just like the creators of Dead Set, Golgowski noticed that people are scared and terrified of not only zombies themselves but also becoming a zombie. Therefore, Zombie rhetoric can be used not only in TV shows like Dead Set, but also in the media and in scientific articles to spark interest and awareness of a phenomena.
After reading the two articles for Wednesday’s class, I was immediately reminded of an incident that I followed closely this past summer. On July 18, 2018 Mollie Tibbetts went missing from her small town in Iowa after she was last seen on a run. From the time I saw the news notification about her disappearance until the day that her body was found on August 21st, I was constantly checking the news and the facebook page created to help find Mollie for updates.
After reading about the Chelsea King incident in Whitney Phillip’s article, LOLing at Tragedy, I began to notice both differences and similarities in their incidents. They were both young women who disappeared on a run and were unfortunately not found until they were already dead. Both young women also had Facebook pages made for them to help authorities, friends, and family help find them after their disappearances.
As we can see the basic facts remain similar, however, the specific use of facebook for each case differs vastly because of the eight year gap of their disappearances. As explained in the article, Chelsea King’s online presence after her death was extremely problematic as the emergence of “Facebook Trolls” arose. These incidents were insensitive towards her family and those who cared about her, even if they were just intended to be light hearted like the “I Bet This Pickle Can Get More Fans than Chelsea King” page.
Eight Years later, Mollie’s internet presence was much more dignified with a lack of “Facebook Trolls” exploiting her death for funny or demeaning comments. However, her death was exploited instead by politicians. When it was discovered that Mollie’s killer is an undocumented immigrant, politicians such as President Trump began to use her death as a platform to advance their anti-immigration platform. Mollie’s father was outraged and publicly shamed the politicians for using his daughter’s death for their political agenda.
Therefore, I believe that facebook trolls are not as prevalent on online memorial/remembrance pages as they were eight years ago around the time of Chelsea King. Instead, I think that the “trolling” has moved into politics and current events where people are using tragic deaths to advance their own personal motives and agendas.
Additionally, I also think that it is interesting to compare celebrities and non-celebrities memorial/grief pages. Megan Garber’s article illuminates what occurred online when David Bowie died, however, I think it would be interesting to do a direct comparison of how people react to a celebrity and a non-celebrity death online.
The Sixth Sense, directed by the famous horror/thriller director M. Knight Shyamalan, follows the journey of a distinguished phycologist, Dr. Malcom Crowe, and his interactions with his patient, Cole Sear. This film is famous for blurring the lines between the living and the dead along with reality and unreality. In the middle of the film, we discover that Cole has a sixth sense, where he can see dead people.
Throughout the film Cole interacts with his phycologist and the audience assumes that he is alive and simply doing his job, however, in the final moments of the film we discover, along with Dr. Crowe, that Dr. Crowe has actually been dead all along and was simply one of the dead people that Cole was seeing and helping. In this analysis of The Sixth Sense, I will explore one of the main characteristics of post-modern horror and it manifests in the film to blur the lines between the living and the dead and how it reflects on mental health.
Transgression of Boundaries in The Sixth Sense
In The Sixth Sense, the lines between who is real and who is dead are blurred throughout the movie. Throughout the movie, the audience believes that the director has made it clear and obvious about who is real and who is dead. At the end of the film the audience questions everything that they have seen when they find out that Dr. Crowe was actually dead during the entire narrative, even though he looked alive and well, just like Cole and Dr. Crow’s wife who are still living. This film is a great example of the postmodern element of horror, a transgression and violation of boundaries, because there is a complete violation of the boundaries between the living and the dead. In Isabel Pinedo’s article, Recreational Terror: Postmodern elements of the Contemporary Horror Film, she describes how the transgressions of boundaries is an essential element in postmodern horror. She explains how “the post paradigm blurs the boundaries between… normal and abnormal, and the outcome of the struggle is at best ambiguous” (Pinedo 22). In The Sixth Sense, this element is manifested through Shyamalan’s muddled and indistinct portrayal of the living versus the dead.
This transgression instills fear and horror on the audience throughout the film because of Cole’s interaction with the dead/ghosts. For example, when Cole is going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he stumbles upon a dead woman in his house who died from suicide, cutting her wrists specifically. In this scene we specifically see the living Cole with the dead women who is haunting his living life. This lack of separation of the dead and the living is a great example of the blurring paradigm that Pinedo explains in her article. A narrative is created where both Cole and the audience become fearful when the dead crosses over and interacts with the living/Cole.
Another example that represents a transgression of boundaries is when we witness Cole’s interaction with the young dead girl in his house one night. We see her physically get sick through the process of vomiting the organic matter that we shed in the process of living. This violation of the interior and exterior along with the crossover of living traits to the dead, also blurs the lines between the living and the dead.
Reflection on Mental Health in The Sixth Sense
It is notable that the transgression of boundaries also reflects on Cole’s mental health. Many of his classmates call him a freak and everyone, including his teacher and mother, think that something is mentally wrong with him. The movie portrays what is occurring in Cole’s head in a negative light through the way that others treat him. In John Goodwin’s article, The Horror of Stigma: Psychosis and Mental Health Care Environments in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film (Part II), he reveals that 18.18% of psychosis-related films feature clients that who were telling the truth. This statistic is important because it discredits those with a mental illness and takes away their credibility. While it is debatable that Cole has a mental illness (mainly because seeing dead people does not fit in a specific category), other characters treat his behavior as a mental illness and their actions toward him reflects negatively on his mental health.
M. Knight Shyamalan’s depiction of Cole’s mental illness is concerning throughout the film. He portrays Cole’s peers negatively reacting to him being different and having a mental illness, which illuminates the tone and the lens towards mental illness in this film. Goodwin explains that this is important to recognize because it is common for people to refuse treatment of mental disorders because of the negative stigma created in horror films (Goodwin 230)
Shutter Island
In the film Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese takes the audience on the journey of a federal agent, Teddy Daniels, and his partner auditing a Mental Health Care Facility (MHCF) on an isolated island, referred to as “Shutter Island”. Throughout the movie, the audience receives snippets into Teddy’s past through several flashbacks or hallucinations that make the viewers question his personal narrative and story. It is not until the end of the film that we completely realize that Teddy is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient at the MHCF. In this analysis of Shutter Island, I will also explore how a transgression of boundaries manifests in the film. Additionally, I will analyze the way that he depicts mental health and how it reflects on how the public views and treats people with mental health.
Transgression of Boundaries in Shutter Island
There is a transgression of boundaries between the living and the dead in Shutter Island, mainly through Teddy’s hallucinations throughout the film where he interacts with his dead wife and three dead children. While Scorsese does indicate when a hallucination is occurring mainly through the use of lighting, there is still a lack of separation between the dead and the living as we see Teddy’s dead wife, interacting with him on Shutter Island and in other scenes from his past.
Pinedo would describe Scorsese’s tactic of the surprise ending in Shutter Island as “nothing is what it seems to be in postmodern horror… it operates on the principle of undecidability” (Pinedo 22). The audience discovers that Teddy is not who he says he is because of his multiple personalities’ mental illness. He has created the identity of Teddy Daniels to cope with the pain associated with remembering that he murdered his wife who murdered his children. This tactic transgresses boundaries because in the last moments of the film, the viewer finds his or herself questioning everything that he/she was told during the film.
Goodwin’s article also highlights that horror films use a specific geographical frame/boundary to prevent the mental health patient from returning to normality (Goodwin 227). This transgresses the boundary of the mental health patient because even if the patient does show signs of improvement, there is a physical barrier that prevents them from leaving, and in this example it’s miles and miles of ocean. The poster of the film even says “some places never let you go” which reinforces the geographical limitations on the patients and the characters of the film.
Reflection on Mental Health in Shutter Island
The theme of Mental Health in Shutter Island is prevalent and noticeable throughout the entire film. Similar to the depiction of mental illness in The Sixth Sense, Scorsese also frames mental illness in a negative light which ultimately stigmatizes mentally ill patients as problematic, dangerous, violent, and incapable of contributing to society. In Shutter Island, the setting itself stigmatizes mentally ill patients by exiling them on an isolated island where the most ill are kept essentially in cages as if they are wild animals that cannot control themselves.
The portrayal of these patients in cages as animals that cannot control their actions, discredits and creates a false representation for people who are actually mentally ill in real life. This film will ultimately deter them from getting help because they do not want to end up locked away on an isolated island with animalistic treatment. As Goodwin recognizes, film is an influential form of media, therefore, when a film misrepresents the field of mental health, it is essentially creating a negative stigmatized belief of the mentally ill (Goodwin 230).
Comparison of The Sixth Sense and Shutter Island
Similarities and Differences of Boundary Transgression
As I have explained in the context of both films, they both use the post-modern element of a transgression of boundaries to instill horror and fear between the living and the dead. Additionally, both films transgress the boundaries between what is real and what is unreal. One flashing similarity is that they both have surprise endings that make the audience reconsider and rethink everything that they have spent the past two plus hours believing and accepting. After watching both films once and then re-watching them knowing what the ending will be, the film is completely reframed, and the ending does not come as a surprise as it is easier to notice and recognize the subtle clues that were hidden underneath what we believed to be real. This tactic of blurring what is real and what is not real manifests horror in both films in a very similar light that makes the audience self-reflect to the point where they are questioning if they are living amongst the dead and are not event aware of it, just like the characters in both films.
Both films transgress the boundaries between not only reality and unreality, but also between the living and the dead, however, the way they do so differs. In The Sixth Sense, the living and the dead are interacting in every scene even though the audience is not aware of that until the end of the film. They essentially interact in the same world with no barriers between them as we see Cole and his psychiatrist interact. In Shutter Island, there is still a blurred boundary between life and death, however, it is easier for the audience to recognize it due to the directors use of lighting. For example, Teddy Daniel’s Hallucinations where he interacts with his dead wife and children, are well lit and brighter than the dark and stormy island where there are only those that are alive. I think the light hallucinations represent the common theme of “stepping into the light” that directors commonly use to represent someone dying or entering into the afterlife.
Similarities and Differences of Depiction of Mental Health
Both films also address mental health issues through the way that they depict the characters that have mental “illnesses.” I also noticed that they both depict the mentally ill as ostracized, violent, temperamental, and disruptive to society. This negative portrayal affects both mentally ill people but also how society is going to treat them. This situation is problematic and should be addressed by leaders of the horror industry along with leaders in psychiatric care.
It is important to recognize the time gap between the two films, which makes them distinctly different in content and in context. The Sixth Sense, released in 1999, addresses mental health in a subtle and discrete manner without explicitly talking about Cole’s mental illness in every scene. Shutter Island, released in 2010, approaches mental health in an upfront and invasive way, where mental health drives the whole narrative. In Shutter Island, the audience also witnesses mental health impact and affect the characters physically through the way they behave and how they are treated on the island by the staff. The 11-year gap between the two films is partially responsible for this difference. Our society is constantly shifting how mental health and even recently celebrities and public figures have spoken about how mental illness has impacted their lives. Therefore, since Shutter Island was released later, it would make sense why they are more open and upfront with the way they approach and discuss mental illnesses. If we have seen this big of a difference in just eleven year, I wonder how the film industry will change in their approach to addressing mental health and illness.
Works Cited
Goodwin, John. “The Horror of Stigma: Psychosis and Mental Health Care Environments in Twenty-First-Century Horror Film (Part II).” Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, 2013, pp. 224–34.
Pinedo, Isabel. “Recreational Terror: Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 48, Spring/Summer 1996, pp. 17–31.
qu0tes. I See Dead People Quote from The Sixth Sense. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YppxEYkqTU.
Scorsese, Martin. Shutter Island. 2010.
“Shutter Island.” FILM ART Dreams – a Series of Thoughts, Images or Sensations Which Occurs in a Person’s Mind during Sleep., 16 Mar. 2016, https://dreamdocumentaryas.wordpress.com/2016/03/06/shutter-island/.
In class, we have discussed the meaning and the role that hypermediation plays in different contemporary horror and non-horror examples. For example, we discussed hypermediation in A Head Full of Ghosts, the Office, Deadpool, and more. In all of these examples, the main characters draw attention to the medium that is being used to view their current scene. This makes us as a viewer conscious of our role in the story and evokes a sense of immediacy since we recognize our relation to the scene and the characters acknowledge it as well.
In the article we read for class today by Ewan Kirkland, he explores the role of hypermediation and immediacy in horror video games. While he emphasizes the difference between hypermediation and immediacy, to me they seem to both achieve the same goal of drawing in the audience and making their experience feel real and immediate. However, I do understand the difference of the two, as Kirkland unveils that hypermediacy is more technical and achieves a different reflective outcome.
Kirkland uses a specific example of hypermediacy in horror video games: the use of CCTV as a lens in the game. He explains the use of CCTV as “camera reality” because it narrates the game in a surveillance lens rather than a lens as if you are the actual character in the video game and fighting your own battle. Kirkland gives a variety of examples of “camera reality”, and they all remove the audience from the actual character in the video game. This creates a “big brother” like situation where the video game player is more aware that they are an actual outsider and not actually a video game character.
The examples Kirkland offers also showcases technology’s role in the video game itself. I think that technology is used to give the audience just enough of an insight into the game while still remaining removed and detached from the actual player itself, which will alter the player’s behaviors and actions while playing the game.
This weekend’s reading in A Head Full of Ghosts, focused on the buildup and the actual scene of the exorcism of Marjorie. I thought that the buildup to the exorcism was especially interesting because of Marjorie’s involvement and knowledge of what was going to happen and how the exorcism was actually going to work. To me, it was very counter-intuitive that Marjorie would be in the know of how the process was going to work since she was the main subject of the event.
In the movie, The Exorcist, Regan was not a part of the preparation for the exorcism at all. In fact, she was completely out of the loop and not involved in the process at all. This is what I expected out of the exorcism build up in A Head Full of Ghosts due to the similarities that we have discussed in class of the two stories. However, after processing and thinking about the differences in the two, it is clear why Marjorie would be involved in the buildup to her own exorcism. Since they are filming a reality TV show, those are normally planned ahead of time and it would make sense why all characters would be involved. Merry even whispers in her ear, “You’ll do great, Marjorie” thereby reinforcing the idea that this is a show or performance, rather than a real exorcism. This comment contributes to the question we are all asking ourselves as we read the novel, “Is she faking it”?
Another question we as readers consider throughout the novel is wondering if the exorcism really is done to help Marjorie or is now just for the benefit of the show. I found myself questioning this even more throughout the actual exorcism scene. Specifically, when Father Wanderly address Marjorie as a creature and she responds, “I’m not a creature. I’m Marjorie, a fourteen-year-old girl, scared of everything, who doesn’t know why she hears voices that tell her confusing things. And I try to be good and I try.” This exclamation reads as a plea for help and left me wondering, is this exorcism hurting her as a young girl for the benefit of the show, or is it hurting the demons inside of her, therefore helping her escape them?
