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shutter island

Posted on September 3, 2020

The Evolution of Mental Illness’ Monstrosity in Horror Films

Guest Post

Horror cinema’s engagement with mental illness has evolved tremendously from the 20th to the 21st century. These periods of growth are in conjunction with the growing understanding and awareness of mental illnesses within the professional field of psychology, as well as the general population. The increased knowledge reinforces the concept that people with mental illness are not innately monstrous – something taken up in contemporary horror films.

In his essay in Monster Theory, Jeffrey Cohen explains that the purpose of a monster’s existence is to represent a fear rooted in the attitude and culture at the time of its creation or revival.[i] Fear of disease was captured with zombies; fear of immigration was represented by extra-terrestrials; fear of nuclear weapons created Godzilla; the list goes on.[ii] I propose that the fear of the unknown, the “other” or an alter ego to society’s normal state of being, is explored through mental illness – a disrupted state of being.

Unknowability creates a fascination that can be described through the idea of privacy. Psychoanalyst Josh Cohen, the author of The Private Life: Our Everyday Self in an Age of Intrusion, says that the “guiding principle of our culture might be formulated not so much as ‘I should know everything’ as ‘nothing should remain unknown to me.’ It’s not, in other words, a question of wanting to know so much as a fear of what might remain unknown, inaccessible, in the dark.”[iii] Mental illnesses, however, are not an easy concept for general audiences to wrap their brains around. Nevertheless, cinema provides an opportunity to explore mental illnesses visually – making the unknown known. “Nothing should remain unknown to me”; therefore, if it won’t reveal itself, the cinema will make it so.[iv] Mental illness has always produced fear, but how has cinema in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries represented this fear to capture the cultural temperament? How has this fear changed from one century to another? Read more

Posted on April 27, 2016

Shutter Island, Invasion of The Body Snatchers, and H.P. Lovecraft

Dawn Keetley

The central point of debate about Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island (2010), as well as the 2003 novel by Dennis Lehane, is whether the main character (played by Leonardo Di Caprio) is insane or not. Is he Teddy Daniels, a US Marshal who has uncovered a terrifying conspiracy involving experiments on patients at Ashecliffe Hospital? Or is he Andrew Laeddis, a man suffering from a profound delusion that he is a US Marshal because he is unable to confront the truth that two years ago he murdered his wife after she drowned their three children?

I think you can make a convincing argument for both interpretations—part of the brilliance of both novel and film. Here, I just want to point out one specific moment in the film, one that resonates with a classic horror film and that may (or may not) help tip the scales.

Two-thirds of the way through Shutter Island, Teddy Daniels/Andrew Laeddis is in Ward C, where the most violent prisoners are kept, and he hears someone call out “Laeddis.” Moving toward the voice, he repeatedly lights matches in the darkness, trying desperately to “see” (in all kinds of ways). In the frame above, he has arrived at the cell of George Noyce (Jackie Earle Haley)—a man at the very heart of either Andrew Laeddis’s delusion or Teddy Daniels’s conspiracy. We have a shot of Teddy/Andrew’s face, match lit, looking, and then we have the shot below of Noyce, curled up, features indistinguishable. As the two men talk, we’re not sure what Teddy/Andrew learns. Does he learn that the conspiracy exists (that Noyce has been drugged and experimented on by the doctors at Shutter Island)? Or does he find evidence that he (Andrew) has brutally beaten Noyce for confronting him with the truth that he murdered his wife? The frail flame of the match, the darkness, Teddy/Andrew’s confused and horrified expression, Noyce’s indistinct features, and the ambiguity of their words all render the scene fundamentally indeterminate. Read more

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