Most of you that know me will have a good understanding that I have had my fair share of psychological trauma mixed with long periods of stays within psychiatric institutions. Long story short, and if you don't know me that well yet, then at 22 I was diagnosed as a Paranoid Schizophrenic and I was detained for over six months in a psychiatric hospital.
Health care in Britain is a bit different from the USA if you're reading from those parts. My care at point of entry was completely free, and it has been since then. This can be a good thing, and also a bad thing depending on which way you want to look at it. I met people in the system that had been in there for most of their lives and had zero hope of ever getting out. What had happened to them to deserve this fate I have no idea, but the thought of it was rather frightening to me.
Anyway, the first film I want to talk about it one of my favourites. Shutter Island.
This film was truly awesome, and not only because of the way it was written, but because of the in depth knowledge it had about these types of institutions. I'm not entirely sure why it hasn't been widely documented, or critically screen written before -- but my experience in psychiatric hospital was not too dissimilar to Teddy's. Granted I didn't have the luxury of a whole hospital play acting to indulge my delusions but what I had experienced was on a smaller level.
One of the most important parts in the film was when Dr. John Cawley was explaining to Teddy that his hospital dealt with patients in a revolutionary way. So, rather than medicate them to the hilt, in his mind, he would rather talk to them, enable them, listen to them, and perhaps then he might be able to reach them. In the timeframe for this film the idea wasn't mainstream, and was quite the fringe idea.
Yet, interestingly, this is how most psychiatric hospitals work in the modern world (that I'm aware of). The entire experience in these institutions are constructed in a way to better your mental health, albeit each patient has different targets to meet. For me, the idea was to first get me better, and then equip me with the tools to prevent me from landing back in the same position a year later. So for example one of my steep hurdles to overcome was conflict. They were able to manufacture conflict around me so much that I was eventually able to deal with it to a certain extent.
And with Teddy in this film, his medication was important to keep him balanced as such, but the main aim was to help him overcome his delusions -- to make him breakthrough to reality. Quite the revolutionary act I understand, being told myself about "the mad mile" -- an act when only 20 years prior to me being hospitalised they would gather all inpatients in the hospital and walk them, in chains, for a mile. I was lucky to be born in this time really.
Secondly, I want to talk about The Joker.
Now the Joker spoke to me in different ways. There was a lot of stuff to understand in this film that society really doesn't ask themselves. Here is a perfectly happy white heterosexual man. Why isn't he living in his ivory tower?
The world right now has a deep inconsistency with measuring whiteness as a characteristic determining your success in life. The popular narrative is that if you're white then you're going to succeed. Why is this man literally at the bottom of the stack?
Again, there are a lot of similarities with The Joker and myself growing up. Single family, deluded self worth, inconsistent perceptions of self placed in reality, and a whole stack of other things. And the kicker? No-one was listening. No-one cared. No-one gave two shits. That's the world over, and not limited to race. If you want to be heard in this world then you have to take the responsibility on your shoulders of being heard. No-one is going to do that for you.
Anyway, shat on and walked over by almost everyone and everything it all tips Joker over the edge where he literally turns into a criminal. It was an expertly written build up of a thousand paper cuts that eventually killed the man he once was. Reality came crashing down upon him.
Both of those films I have experienced in my own ways to a certain extent. From the joker being pushed over the edge (god knows how I'm not a criminal) to being co-erced in psychiatric hospital to help me overcome my boundaries. It's all hyper interesting stuff, and probably why I have such a fascination with psychology.
I'm sure treatments and disorders have moved on since I was there though. I am fully healed, and haven't dealt with any of this for at least ten years!
Fingers crossed!