http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_good_as_it_gets

This is another film that deals with a mental illness of some sort that also stars Jack Nicholson, like in The One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.  Unlike The Cuckoo’s Nest, this film was made in 1997 which is much more current making the view on mental disorders slightly different.  The Cuckoo’s Nest deals with many different types of mental disorders while As Good As It Gets only deals with one.  This movie is about a man named Melvin who is a romantic novelist who suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder and lives alone in his apartment in Manhattan. Melvin eats breakfast at the same diner where he brings his own utensils and is waited on by the same waitress (the only one who will agree to serve him), Carol Connelly (Helen Hunt). Despite his eccentricities, the two form a sort of unspoken understanding of each other. Meanwhile, Melvin’s neighbor, Simon Bishop, a homosexual artist who is often the object of Melvin’s bigoted comments, entertains the elite art circles of New York.  Simon’s dog forms a further divide between the two when Simon drops him down the trash chute to stop his barking.  When Simon is attacked in his home and left beaten and unable to create his art, all of his friends abandon him and the bills are left unpaid. Melvin, having reluctantly agreed to take care of the dog in Simon’s absence, develops an attachment to the dog.

Meanwhile, Carol Connelly leaves the diner in order to better take care of her sick son. Distraught, Melvin offers to pay for treatments in order to have Carol back as his waitress once again. With each character struggling with personal tragedies, the three slowly develop a respect for each other and a friendship which only grows.  Jack Nicholson, like in the other movie, plays the main character who suffers from a disorder, which in this movie is OCD.  He does things in the movie such as flip the light switch 5 times before actually turning it on, turning his house lock 5 times before actually locking his door, avoiding all sidewalk cracks, disposing of a bar of soap after one use, etc.  Obsessive compulsive disorder happens differently to different people and it can come in many forms as did Melvin’s in the movie.  All people who have the disease feel they must perform rituals or routines on a daily basis to neutralize their obsessions; not doing them can cause stress, tension, and/or anxiety for the individual.

The producers of this product are the entertainment industry because they created this movie for entertainment purposes as any movie is, as well as to inform people about the mental disorder OCD.  The entertainment industry likes to use mental disorders to base their movie on or use in the movie because it adds more interest and uniqueness.  The language of the movie is up to date with the time the movie was made in 1997 and Melvin talks in the movie as if he had that mental disorder.  The movie kind of makes judgements of people with mental disorders and that they are weird as well.  There is a scene in the movie when one of the characters comes knocking on his door while he is trying to write a novel, and he answers the door and makes a big, elaborate scene about not disturbing him under any circumstance.  He doesn’t want to be bothered, but this makes mental people seem short tempered like he is.  The viewer of this movie will be entertained by the dramatic comedy, as well as be informed of how a random person with a mental disorder such as OCD can act.

http://www.nami.org/

While searching on google, I came across the above website about mental illnesses.  The website listed above is a website that deals with people with mental illnesses or people looking for information on mental illnesses.  It has good information on the website about all disorders ranging from bipolar disorder to stress related disorders.  NAMI is the National Alliance on mental illness, the nation’s largest grassroots organization for people with mental illness and their families.  Founded in 1979,  NAMI  has affiliates in every state and in more than 1,100 local communities across the country.  NAMI is dedicated to the eradication of mental illnesses and to the improvement of the quality of life for persons of all ages who are affected by mental illnesses.  In addition to the website, this organization includes a help-line, educational programs for family and patients, support groups, walks, action center, a monthly magazine, and more things to help aid those affected by mental illnesses.

The homepage of the site includes current news on what activities are happening for that month or week to inform the participating patients.  If you are a member, you can login, there are quick links to certain disorder or disorders in the news to inform you, and there are top stories, ways to find help, newsletters, surveys, and more.

The source of this product, or who produced it, is a organization dedicated to helping/ informing people affected by mental illnesses.  This product has been produced as a tool for the affected people to use when they need information on anything mental health related.  This product has strickly been produced for information on the subject; it comes in many forms, such as articles, brochures, surveys, video clips, and more.  The website is not made to entertain, but to rather show information in different forms to help inform you better.  The content of this product is endless because there are so many different links to go to for information, as well as being a search bar to be able to search the whole site for the mental related topic you are looking for.  The home page is very well constructed because it looks busy like an active website would, and it looks very helpful and reliable.  The language on the page shows that the writer’s of this material are educated on all they are talking about.  They use language, phrases, and terms that are related to and that a person with a mental illness would be aware of.   This website overall is easy to read and navigate around as it is very clearly written and simple to understand.  The viewer who is looking at the website would like it because of how complete and thorough it is about the mental illness information.  For example, it has lists of medications the patient can take for what illness, as well as what it is, what the symptoms are, causes, how it is treated, side effects, how to prevent it, etc.  It is intended to influence the reader of the website to make them want to read on in their throughout the links, and to go to this website when they need any advice/information on the mental illness subject.  This product is effective to the viewer  because it is an ideal source to turn to to gain knowledge on any subject of mental illness.

From watching the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest movie in class today, it made it much clearer for me to understand what happened in the book as the movie was clearer than the literature, and it was visual which helps me comprehend anything better.  The movie gave me a better idea of who each character was and how they acted.  Even though the story is about chief Bromden and he was the narrator of the story in the book, in the movie he didn’t even talk for a whole first part of the movie as he pretends to not talk.  When McMurphy comes in the ward for the first time, he stirs the whole place up by being loud, spontaneous, daring, and determined to have some freedom and to gain power over the ward.  Nurse Ratched is the head and leader of the ward and whatever she says everyone there has to listen to; this becomes McMurphy’s problem in the end as he doesn’t give up the fight, but the nurse gains complete control over him by giving him a lobotomy.  McMurphy changes and/or affects every patient in the ward by influencing their actions somehow by his rebel-like attitude.  By the end, the patients all reach some kind of personal achievement and improve in some way from the influence of McMurphy, for example Billy Bibbit has his first sexual encounter with a woman as he went  on the fishing trip where that helped him bond with her and open up.  The nurse looked down upon what Billy had done even though there is nothing wrong with it and it is completely normal; she also threatens to tell Billy’s mother, making his feel ashamed and weaker.  The Chief also learns to break out of his shell and he begins to talk more and become more outgoing like his friend McMurphy.  McMurphy is the christ character in this story leading his disciples to paradise/holy land.  McMurphy throughout the book and movie also makes nurse Ratched more worried that she may lose control over the ward and the patients because McMurphy encourages everyone to cut loose from her clutches and to do what they want for once.  The fishing trip outing is a big step for all the patients who go because it gives them more independence and more self-confidence.  In the movie, the nurse had an evil stare that cut through you like knives, and she had a firm, strict, emasculating tone that she used all the time when talking to the patients.  She spoke with a tranquil volume of her voice, as that showed her commitments to the schedule and consistency of everyday.  She manipulates the patients in the ward stronger than when McMurphy arrives, as he tries to change everything up- the music, the schedule, the television, the fishing trip, escaping, etc.  In the end of the movie (I finished watching it on youtube because I couldn’t wait till Monday), I was shocked and saddened when McMurphy had to get a lobotomy; it made him like a chronic and a complete vegetable.  After trying to strangle the nurse when seeing that Billy Bibbit had killed himself, the nurse took this as the last straw and the only option to suppress his actions.  Through the whole movie, Chief’s personality and independence developed a lot causing him to almost break free from the ward after being there the longest out of anyone, for ten years.  When McMurphy comes back to his bed in the end, it is sad when chief is all ready to escape with him, but he can’t because he is a complete vegetable.  Chief then feels he has to kill McMurphy to put him out of his misery in the ward to set him free like he wanted.  After that, Chief goes over to lift the heavy object thing that McMurphy couldn’t lift and he throws it out the window, cheers, jumps out, and starts heading for the hills.  He escapes and gets away in the end as I realized that he was the one to fly over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

In the comedy movie Me, Myself, and Irene starring Jim Carry, he plays the role of a Rhode Island state trooper named Charlie who has had people take advantage of him his whole life.  His newly-wed wife also has done that as well by cheating on him with their black dwarf limo driver right after they got married.  His new wife leaves with the limo driver and Charlie is left to raise the three mixed-race sons by himself.  After some time, his anger builds up and Charlie develops a rude and violent split personality named Hank.  He is fed up with being walked all over and taken advantage of, and when he gets mad enough, the other side of his personality breaks free revealing the honest, cruel, ruthless side of him where he feels nothing holding him back from getting back at the people that have treated him badly.  One side of his personality is the docile, kind-hearted, pushover that doesn’t stand up for what he believes in, and the other side that is forward, rude, and does what he wants to whom he wants.  This movie deals with a mental illness, but it has a comedic spin on it showing the funnier side of having a mental illness such as Charlie’s, and Hanks.  Since he has two split personalities, he cannot differ what he does while under the influence of each personality; it’s like he has two separate lives.  His multiple personality disorder is made fun of in the movie as one side of him is aggressive, while the other is the laid back one.
The entertainment industry is the producer of this product because it is a movie that was made to poke fun at mental illnesses, while still entertaining the audience.  This movie isn’t really an accurate representation of the split personality disorder, but it is thrown in the plot to make the story more interesting and funny to the audience.

In the movie, as I mentioned, Jim Carry plays the state trooper in Rhode Island and he develops his split personalities and gets an alter-ego when he has had enough with people taking advantage of him.  Charlie is assigned on a routine mission to return alleged fugitive Irene back to upstate New York, but they wind up on the run from corrupt police officers.   Their escape would be a lot simpler on everybody involved if Hank didn’t keep stepping in at the most inopportune times.  A series of unfortunate events happen as both Charlie and Irene run into Irene’s abusive ex-boyfriend, in the middle of it all Charlie loses his medication and now fears that Hank will come out and makes the situation worse. While running, Charlie and Irene fall for each other (and so does Hank).  Now, Both Charlie and Irene must stop the dirty cops, Irene’s ex-boyfriend, and to stay one step ahead of Hank.

In the movie, the directors accentuate the disorder by making them completely opposite of each other and by putting them in the most dramatic situations to make the movie more dramatic and comedic.  The language of the movie adds more crude humor and makes the disorder seem more twisted and funny.  There are collective judgements made as well in the movie about people with split personality disorders. The influence of this movie in intended to make the audience laugh at the situation in the movie; their main focus isn’t really to focus on the mental dissociatively disorder and what it can do to you, but rather they add it in there to make the movie more interesting and more unique so that it isn’t like every other movie.  The viewers watching this movie don’t tend to focus on the disorder all the way in a serious sense because in fact it is a comedy movie, where many things are inaccurate anyways.  The aggressive personality known as Hank in the movie does many things that no one should do, but to get rid of his other half, Charlie has to overcome him and beat the people in the movie who are causing conflict and tension.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me%2C_Myself_and_Irene

In part III of the Cuckoo’s nest, the main event that occurs that acts as a turning point in the book is when the patients decide to take a trip to go fishing.  It allows them to temporarily break free from the demanding clutches of the hospital, where they are being monitored all the time.  Doctor Spivey allows McMurphy and nine other patients to go on the trip, however Bromden is hesitant about going.  McMurphy makes a deal with Bromdem and says he will pay for his ten dollar fee of the fishing trip if Bromdem promises to build his body and get strong enough to lift the control panel in the tub room.  Bromdem goes on the fishing trip along with two imposter “aunts” who are really prostitutes.  While they all are on the boat, they catch big fish and drink together.  The captain of the boat and McMurphy get in a small fistfight, but then they share a drink to make it better.  Billy seems to like one of the prostitutes that have come along on the trip, leading
McMurphy to arrange a date for them on a Saturday night.  This whole fishing trip for McMurphy was a chance to show the nurse that she does not have total control over him, and he doesn’t think of her as the highest authority as he asked Doctor Spivey for permission to go on the trip in the first place.  From the trip, Chief Bromdem also gains more self confidence by bonding and talking more with the patients and getting influence from McMurphy’s bold actions.  McMurphy believes that by bringing in the prostitutes to hang out with the patients, it will make them feel stronger by boosting their sexuality, rather than having it oppressed and neglected like it is in the ward.  Throughout the whole trip and more and more in general, the patients rely on McMurphy to be their leader telling them what is right and what to do next.  Out at see at the fishing trip however, he forces the patients to lead now after he has “taught them well”; they don’t need his help and they can control, run the boat, and catch big fish themselves.  This trip also helps all of the patients develop and mentally improve as they gain more independence, confidence, and hope of reaching their goals and the top of the mountain.

In a recent magazine I saw in the supermarket on the shelf, the cover of the Us Weekly was labeled with a heading in bold letters that said “Living With Mental Illness” with a photo of Britney Spears smack dab in the middle.  From getting married 55 hours to an old friend in Las Vegas to having two baby boys, so many things in her life have contributed to her downfall where she ultimately was diagnosed to have a mental illness.  After her first divorce, she married one of her backup dancers who had a previous wife and a kid with her and another one on the way.  Britney then had two baby boys with her new husband, and then they got divoced, she lost custody of her children leading her to be under so much pressure and in a state of confusion that she shaved her head.  These are just some of the highlights that made her ultimately go mad and out of control.  She really rushed too many things too soon with little guidance and support from her family.  She thought by having her baby boys as well would make everything better and make her happy, but it in fact made things worse because then all she wanted to do was go out and party and have a wild good time.  Some even say that she suffered from the mental illness known as postpartum depression which occurs after you have a baby, you get extremely depressed and overpowered when dealing with the many responsibilities a baby comes with.  She also has become mentally disconnected from herself by other pressures such as stress, publicity, the paparazzi, media, authorities, etc pushing her in every which direction on how to run her life.

The entertainment corporations have produced this product on the magazine cover to get people’s attention in the store to get them to buy the magazine because it is a suggestion of what has been happening to Britney Spears mental state.  The writers of the magazine write all of this juicy information to sell to the public for a common intention of solely making money.  This product’s intention was produced for entertainment and the gossip of the stars and celebrities, and the more interesting or far-fetched a story is, the better it will sell to the public and therefore the more money it will make.  From all of the information that is produced, not all of it is always true; the writer’s just want to make the story the most interesting to point out every detail that makes the person, in this case Britney Spears, look bad.  Now that she has plummeted, her father who is divorced from her mother, steps in to help control her with a new day-to-day schedule to help set her straight, and thinking/ focused on the right path, as stated as a subheading on the cover.  Also, starting over with her boys, and under close watch to make sure she doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary, as also stated on the cover as a subheading.  Other items included in the article of the magazine suggest that she might even have bi-polar disease where she has two very diverse personalities, she is voted the most unhealthy celebrity, and that she is just plain “sick”.  From all the negative points of her that are emphasized, people begin to think that that is all there is to the story, when in fact that isn’t the entire story at all.  The writer’s of the magazine create biases and judgments unintentionally by trying to make the stories informational and interesting.  The articles infer that her state and condition she is in is all because of her, but really other outside forces that are not mentioned contributed to her downfall as well; it is not only her fault.  With the comment of being voted the most unhealthy celebrity, that puts even more pressure on her just reminding her of her failures and how she is portrayed to all other people.  The public all used to think that Britney Spears was just plain crazy, but now that this “multiple mental illness theory” has been suggested, the situation gets more serious and people want to know what happens and where things go from there.  The influence of the ad is supposed to make the public see what people to not role model or idol after, such as her.

http://www.britneyfans.org/britney-spears-living-with-mental-illness-come-on.html

From reading about the Stanford Prison Experiment on the online website, I noticed how it could relate to the books we read (Bell Jar) or are reading (Cuckoo’s Nest).  For the experiment, average college students were selected to participate (volunteered) in the study where they act out the atmosphere and environment of a real prison.  They were separated into groups of guards whose job it was to enforce the rules, and the prisoner who obeyed what the authoritative figures said.  The place where all of this testing took place was like in an institution where they were all isolated from the outside world.  The institution provided confinement, commitment, and a structure of running the system while subordinating the rights of the individual to the needs of the group.  It can be debatable whether examples of institutions are more restrictive or less restrictive, however they behave like organisms where their main goals are to survive and reproduce.  In the Stanford Prison Experiment, it acted exactly like that, and to keep the prisoners in line and keep order of the place things were done to the prisoners to make them obey the rules; things such as wear dresses, shave their heads, be identified by an i.d. number, wear blindfolds, stripped naked and sprayed with de-germ spray, chains on their ankles, had physical punishments inflicted on them and many more things done to humiliate, degrade and emasculate them.  The prisoners were also restricted in many ways by not having any clocks or windows in the building for one, so they wouldn’t be aware of the time and the guards controlled and monitored the prisoner’s movements as well through intercoms.  This experiment was made to function just like a real prison, however I think it got slightly carried away/ out of hand because it was very restrictive  to the prisoners, and they had no control over what they were able to do.  This experiment can also relate to the environment of the hospitals and wards in the two books we have read (reading) because they make the prisoners (patients) feel confined, controlled, and restrained in some way that eventually affects the patients (prisoners) mentally.

My first media analysis post is going to be about a song that immediately came to mind when I thought of a media product that displays mental illnesses embedded in the real meaning of the song.  Like many country songs, they all have passionate meanings that are about loving one another and finding love, etc, but once I really noticed the lyrics of a particular song, I really saw how there could be meaning of a mental illness deep within the meaning.  The song is “How Do I Live Without You” by Leanne Rimes and even the title in itself is a little possessive now that I think about it.  Here’s the lyrics to the song:

How Do I Live

How do I,

Get through the night without you?

If I had to live without you,

What kind of life would that be?

Oh, I

I need you in my arms, need you to hold,

You’re my world, my heart, my soul,

If you ever leave,

baby you would take away everything good in my life,

and tell me now

How do I live without you?

I want to know,

How do I breathe without you?

If you ever go,

How do I ever, ever survive?

How do I, how do I, oh how do I live?

Without you,

There’d be no sun in my sky,

There would be no love in my life,

There’d be no world left for me.

And I,

Baby I don’t know what I would do,

I’d be lost if I lost you,

If you ever leave,

Baby you would take away everything real in my life,

And tell me now,

How do I live without you?

I want to know,

How do I breathe without you?

If you ever go,

How do I ever, ever survive?

How do I, how do I, oh how do I live?

Please tell me baby,

How do I go on?

If you ever leave,

Baby you would take away everything,

I need you with me,

Baby don’t you know that you’re everything,

Real in my life?

And tell me now,

How do I live without you,

I want to know,

How do I breathe without you?

If you ever go,

How do I ever, ever survive?

How do I, how do I, oh how do I live?

How do I live without you?

How do I live without you baby?

… So in essence, someone would write these lyrics and really sincerely mean them if they truly had no independence whatsoever and if they really needed this one person in their lives to survive.  It is a nice ballad if you take the song lightly, but otherwise, pretty much every line of the song can be related to something someone would say with a mental illness.  Everyone in the world can be independent and no person really needs another to survive because we were all made to breathe on our own.  The entertainment industry would be the producer of a work like this because it is a song that is meant to be made for two significant others to enjoy together, not to realize the real meaning/obsessiveness of the song.  This work has been made to be a romantic song between two people who have a relationship together.

The redundant words of the song, “how do I live without you, how do I breathe without you, how do I survive, you are my world, my heart, my soul, don’t you know that you’re everything”…and the list goes on and on.  A big ego boost and confidence is given to the person this song is being sung to, and it makes them feel good that they mean this much (the world) to one person.  A person with a mental illness could write this song because the content is very much so obsessive, infatuated, or even neurotic as one feels that they must have this one person to survive.  The person singing the song with the illness could be caging the opposing person in by stating that they always have to be by their side at all times and that they must live for this one person and no one else.  The song may feel confining and uncomfortable to the other person because no one really wants to be loved or rather obsessed over as much as this song really portrays.  The language in the song makes it clear as to what the motive is of the person singing the song; it is clear that they have to be with their loved one until the day they die and they must always be by their side, kind of like the idea of Siamese twins when they are attached at the hip for example- being that you literally need that other person to live- they are your lifeline.  The song almost forces the other person to be with you whether they like it or not because the singer has a selfish tone and is only concerned with their needs.  We can make judgments that  whenever people hear this song they take it lightly and not too literally because they know that is isn’t an obsessive mentally ill person singing it.  Another statement of the song that stands out to me as stigmatizing is the line, “I’d be lost if I lost you” is the ultimate in depending on another person- they literally can’t live/function as a being without the other because they would be in a state of confusion and unable to do anything-they can only live if the person is there, like you can’t have one without the other such as a plant needing water to survive/grow.

http://www.youthink.com/forum.cfm?action=read&forum_id=7&q_id=2237322&archive=0

This link is interesting because it has some songs that people thought were about mental illnesses, and in a way many songs can be stretched to be interpreted that way such as the one I chose.  People first tend to think that only metal/rock songs are about mental illnesses maybe because the people that wrote them had illnesses, but in fact, more songs with an “illness” connotation are written by normal, perfectly sane people.

In this poem that parallels a biography of Sylvia Plath, she writes about her father whom she describes the relationship she has with him in two very different ways.  It is evident that her dad has passed away, and she is thirty years old when she is writing this.  She first says in the poem that she must have killed her father, but then in the next stanza she says how she prayed to try and recover him.  She has a love-hate relationship with him as her feelings towards him keep switching back and fourth throughout the poem.  Also within the poem are many references to Jewish terms, German terms, and things that lead you to think that her father was a Nazi such as Frisco seal, Nauset, Ach du, ich, Dachau, Belsen, Auschwitz, Tyrol, Taroc, Luftwaffe, swastika, fascist, Meinkampf, etc.  Deep down it seems like she misses her father, but in contrast she is also in someway mad at him and herself that he is gone.  Towards the end of the poem she says how she even tried to get back to her father, meaning that she was going to commit suicide to once again reunite with him.  Since her attempt failed, she tried to “make a model of him” or put someone in her father’s place, meaning she married a man who she thought would replace him.  After many attempts of getting her father back to her, in the end she finally gives up on him and is “through” with him.