Full Description
Whether in movies, cartoons, commercials, or even fast food marketing, psychology and mental illness remain pervasive in popular culture. In this collection of new essays, scholars from a range of fields explore representations of mental illness and disabilities across various media of popular culture. Contributors address how forms of psychiatric disorder have been addressed in film, on stage, and in literature, how popular culture genres are utilized to communicate often confusing and conflicted relationships with the mentally ill, and how popular cultures around the world reflect mental illness and disability. Analyses of sources as disparate as the Batman films, Broadway musicals and Nigerian home movies reveal how definitions of mental illness, mental health, and of psychology itself intersect with discourses on race, gender, law, capitalism, and globalization.
Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Jonathan M. Metzl
Introduction by Lawrence C. Rubin
SECTION
MENTAL ILLNESS DEPICTED IN POPULAR CULTURE
1. The Hero with a Thousand Dysfluencies: The Changing Portrayals of People Who Stutter
by Jeffrey K. Johnson
2. Representations of Attention Deficit Disorder: Portrayals of Public Skepticism in Popular Media
by Elizabeth S. England Kennedy
3. Smooth Operator: The Compensated Psychopath in Cinema
by Debra Merskin
4. The Most Dangerous Deviants in America: Why the Disabled Are Depicted as Deranged Killers
by Shawn M. Phillips
5. Off Their Rockers: Representation of Postpartum Depression by Laura Tropp
6. Lesbianism and the Fourth Dimension: The Psychotic Lesbian
by Julian Vigo
7. "The Veteran Problem": Examining Contemporary Constructions of Returning Veterans
by Alena Papayanis
SECTION
POPULAR CULTURE GENRES AND MENTAL ILLNESS
8. Musical Storm and Mental Stress: Trauma and Instability in Contemporary American Musical Theater
by Esther Terry
9. Bad Girls: From Eve to Britney
by Wanda Little Fenimore
10. Evolving Stages: Representations of Mental Illness in Contemporary American Theater
by Sarah J. Rudolph
11. New Media as a Powerful Ally in the Representation of Mental Illness: YouTube, Resistance and Change
by Katie Ellis
12. On the Wings of Icarus: Exploring the Flawed Superhero
by Lawrence C. Rubin
SECTION THREE
MENTAL ILLNESS AND POPULAR CULTURE ABROAD
13. The Aesthetics of Mad Spaces: Policing the Public Image of Graffiti and Mental Illness in Canada
by Kimberley White
14. Beyond Beyond Reason: Images of People with Mental Disabilities in Australian Film Since the 1970s
by Philippa Martyr
15. Representing "Tradition," Confusing "Modernity": Love and Mental Illness in Yoruba (Nigerian) Video Films
by Saheed Aderinto
16. Reframing Mental Health and Illness: Perspectives from the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival
by Lee Knifton
Afterword
About the Contributors
Index
