Thứ Tư, 22 tháng 10, 2014
25 hours) in a Californian convention center with 18,000 other people. These have been the best three days of her life.
She’s met Zoe and Joe Sugg, Caspar Lee, Tanya Burr, Shay Butler, and Troye Sivan. These people (who you probably won't have heard of, unless you are under 16 or an adult who subscribes to multiple YouTube vlogger accounts) are her idols, people she believes it was worth waiting six hours at a time to meet—and, of course, take a selfie with.
What you might have heard of is VidCon, the event Ashley is attending. This annual online video convention in Anaheim sees YouTubers gathering, hosting panels and shows, selling merchandise, and meeting with their fans. Worldwide, there are many other YouTuber events: Playlist Live on the East Coast, Buffer Festival in Canada, ITAtube in Italy, VideoDays in Germany, and Summer in the City in the UK.
YouTubers meeting with their fans is, of course, nothing new. But the scale, price, and drama of such events has all taken a turn in recent years. Humble gatherings between people with a common interest have evolved into expensive, excessive events, with swarms of security forcing screaming fangirls and fanboys into orderly lines so they can meet and spend 30 precious seconds with their floppy-fringed favorites. As the cult of YouTube celebrity grows, fan interactions have been rapidly monetized.
conversion disorder?
Taxi Driver is a pretty violent film, but I’ve always appreciated Bickle’s slow descent into madness. A lot of movies tend to jump from sanity to insanity pretty quickly.
Oh, it's one of the greatest films of all time. Scorsese’s an amazing director. I think Taxi Driver is a fairly accurate portrayal of what mental illness looks like. In general, most categories of mental illness are insidious, with a gradual and slow onset. A disease like schizophrenia may start in your late teens and fully manifest in your mid 20s, other illnesses like Alzheimer’s may start very slowly in your 60s
Oh, it's one of the greatest films of all time. Scorsese’s an amazing director. I think Taxi Driver is a fairly accurate portrayal of what mental illness looks like. In general, most categories of mental illness are insidious, with a gradual and slow onset. A disease like schizophrenia may start in your late teens and fully manifest in your mid 20s, other illnesses like Alzheimer’s may start very slowly in your 60s
and fully manifest in your 70s. Some disorders have an immediate onset. Are you familiar with the term conversion disorder?
No.
Well, occasionally someone will be in a situation where they’ll develop, for example, hysterical blindness. So a classic example would be a woman who sees her child get run over by a car in front of her, and she goes blind and she can’t see, and she’s examined by ophthalmologists and optometrists and experts and neurologists, and there’s no reason for her blindness, but her blindness is very real; she can’t see. The presumption is that on some psychological level it’s a way of undoing this terrible thing she saw happen.
Well, occasionally someone will be in a situation where they’ll develop, for example, hysterical blindness. So a classic example would be a woman who sees her child get run over by a car in front of her, and she goes blind and she can’t see, and she’s examined by ophthalmologists and optometrists and experts and neurologists, and there’s no reason for her blindness, but her blindness is very real; she can’t see. The presumption is that on some psychological level it’s a way of undoing this terrible thing she saw happen.
What are some other causes of mental illness in the real world?
Mental illness is such a broad area it’s kind of like saying, “What is the major cause of disease?” There are lots of things that cause mental illness. We know that genetics plays a huge role; if you look at something like suicide, the likelihood of having a child commit suicide increases by about four-fold if a parent has committed suicide. We know that stress certainly plays a role; experience with trauma plays a role. We have lots of mentally ill soldiers coming back from Iraq, in part because they’ve been exposed to trauma. So, there are a lot of different causes for mental illness, and often times these make for fairly interesting films.
Mental illness is such a broad area it’s kind of like saying, “What is the major cause of disease?” There are lots of things that cause mental illness. We know that genetics plays a huge role; if you look at something like suicide, the likelihood of having a child commit suicide increases by about four-fold if a parent has committed suicide. We know that stress certainly plays a role; experience with trauma plays a role. We have lots of mentally ill soldiers coming back from Iraq, in part because they’ve been exposed to trauma. So, there are a lot of different causes for mental illness, and often times these make for fairly interesting films.
So who do you think did it best?
So who do you think did it best?
There’s a Canadian film called Clean, Shaven. It’s about schizophrenia. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, it’s not all that well known, but that’s a movie I frequently recommend when asked that question. Actually a recent film that was real popular was Silver Linings Playbook, and I thought it was a pretty accurate portrayal of what bipolar disorder looked like. Did you see The Hours? It’s a film about Virginia Woolf, and without question Virginia Woolf had bipolar disorder. I thought it did a really nice job of portraying what that looked like.
There’s a Canadian film called Clean, Shaven. It’s about schizophrenia. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, it’s not all that well known, but that’s a movie I frequently recommend when asked that question. Actually a recent film that was real popular was Silver Linings Playbook, and I thought it was a pretty accurate portrayal of what bipolar disorder looked like. Did you see The Hours? It’s a film about Virginia Woolf, and without question Virginia Woolf had bipolar disorder. I thought it did a really nice job of portraying what that looked like.
Do you think films have gotten better over the last few years in this regard?
I think they really have. I think Ron Howard did a remarkable job with A Beautiful Mind. He’s an amazing director. It’s a very sympathetic portrayal of John Nash, who was a brilliant man but, of course, it showed John Nash having visual hallucinations whereas most people with paranoid schizophrenia have auditory hallucinations. Ron Howard took some license and it’s much more creative and much more vivid and powerful to show visual hallucinations in a film medium.
I think they really have. I think Ron Howard did a remarkable job with A Beautiful Mind. He’s an amazing director. It’s a very sympathetic portrayal of John Nash, who was a brilliant man but, of course, it showed John Nash having visual hallucinations whereas most people with paranoid schizophrenia have auditory hallucinations. Ron Howard took some license and it’s much more creative and much more vivid and powerful to show visual hallucinations in a film medium.
What about the connection between violence and mental illness?
Yeah, perhaps the most common myth is that people with mental illness are dangerous and violent, and the evidence is very clear that somebody with a disease like schizophrenia is far more likely to be the victim of violence than to be the perpetrator of violence. People with mental illness, homeless people who you see on the street typically, they are victims. They’re robbed, they’re raped, they’re murdered, but they’re not robbers, rapists, and murderers. Usually when violence occurs, it occurs with family members, it doesn’t involve strangers, and usually involves people who are mentally ill and abusing drugs or alcohol.
Do you think that people like yourself—psychologists—are also misrepresented?Yes, but it’s getting better. There are a number of recurring motifs. Sometimes mental health professionals are presented as being incompetent and buffoons… Did you see the movie What About Bob?
Actually I just watched that recently. With Bill Murray?
Yeah, right. I think it’s a great movie, but Richard Dreyfuss plays a psychologist and he’s kind of bumbling and incompetent, and I think there’s a lot of humor, but often times therapists are portrayed as looking foolish, looking silly, and not having much to offer. Sometimes, in movies like Hitchcock’s Psycho, they are portrayed as omniscient, they can see into the deep, the dark, and dirty. They see things that no one else can see. Sometimes, in movies like Silence of the Lambs, they’re portrayed as murders—Hannibal the Cannibal was a psychiatrist. In a movie like The Prince of Tides, they’re portrayed as unethical. Frequently in films, psychiatrists and psychologists are shown sleeping with their patients, having affairs. There’s a movie called Tin Cup in which a therapist trades psychotherapy for golf lessons and winds up seducing the golf pro. That portray therapists as being unethical or ineffectual or having powers that they really don’t have, like a special ability to see inside somebody’s personality and to make predictions about behavior, and the fact is that psychologists and psychiatrists really aren’t much better than anybody else at predicting future behavior.
Yeah, right. I think it’s a great movie, but Richard Dreyfuss plays a psychologist and he’s kind of bumbling and incompetent, and I think there’s a lot of humor, but often times therapists are portrayed as looking foolish, looking silly, and not having much to offer. Sometimes, in movies like Hitchcock’s Psycho, they are portrayed as omniscient, they can see into the deep, the dark, and dirty. They see things that no one else can see. Sometimes, in movies like Silence of the Lambs, they’re portrayed as murders—Hannibal the Cannibal was a psychiatrist. In a movie like The Prince of Tides, they’re portrayed as unethical. Frequently in films, psychiatrists and psychologists are shown sleeping with their patients, having affairs. There’s a movie called Tin Cup in which a therapist trades psychotherapy for golf lessons and winds up seducing the golf pro. That portray therapists as being unethical or ineffectual or having powers that they really don’t have, like a special ability to see inside somebody’s personality and to make predictions about behavior, and the fact is that psychologists and psychiatrists really aren’t much better than anybody else at predicting future behavior.
ictitious link between mental illness and violence.
Look at any classic horror film—Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, The Shining—and you're likely to find mental illness. It's a convenient, if inaccurate, explanation for the maniacal violence that makes up the backbone of these stories. But in most films portraying mental illness, especially violent and bloody horror films, real life pathology is willfully abandoned in favor of melodramatic storytellling. At best, it's lazy; at worst, it publicly and repeatedly demonizes the people who need the most help. In a recent article I wrote about the mentally ill being killed in disproportionate numbers by police, many people commented along the lines of “Well, of course, they’re much more dangerous,” which anybody working in mental health can tell you is not only untrue, but is the direct result of the media’s focus on a fictitious link between mental illness and violence.
I spoke with Dr. Danny Wedding, a former director of the Missouri Institute of Mental Health and co-author of Movies and Mental Illness: Using Films to Understand Psychopathology, to learn more about some of the more common movie myths.
I started out taking photographs of people on the street to see if I could capture interesting moments, and that somehow grew into my testing how far I could pry into others' lives. I found that not letting my subjects see me gave a more powerful effect to the final image and raised more—or at least different—questions. The more removed I am as a photographer, the weirder, more voyeuristic, more sinister the images become.
I began looking at unsecured security cam streams that are used by skiing centers, car parks, or highway officials. Every now and then, somebody's home would pop up. Then a hospital bed. And with uncomfortably regular frequency, children's cribs. I felt strange but weirdly empowered playingRear Window, and that was a feeling I wanted to transfer to others.
We all like to look at pictures of other people doing various things, whether it be the antics of drunk people or naked celebrities. When it's a normal guy eating breakfast, or a woman taking her dogs out for a walk, however, there's a nagging thought that says, Maybe I shouldn't be witnessing this. I think that's what makes these images interesting. In a strange way, I see this as street photography's morally questionable Little Brother.
See more of Zachary Pointon's work here.