Media Analysis #2: Stranger than Fiction June 8, 2008
Posted by fs2004 in Uncategorized.trackback
Yeah, my first blogpost ever was on Stranger than Fiction. But it fits well here, too. The trailer to the movie is found here, for those of you who haven’t seen this great movie….
Harold Crick hears voices-someone narrating his life. He begins to worry about the voices, and seeks help from a psychologist. The psychologist tells Harold that he has schizophrenia since she has never heard of someone with a narrator telling a patient about his life, but Harold is convinced that he does not have schizophrenia, and that this something else.
Though this movie has been also been produced by Sony Pictures for entertainment, it takes a more serious approach than the last Media Analysis topic did. This movie scene, however, does dismiss the idea of psychologists. Harold is convinced that the psychologist in the movie is wrong, and so are the movie viewers. “It’s not schizophrenia,” Harold repeats throughout his visit to the psychologists’ office.
I don’t think this movie stigmatizes mental disorders much at all. Though it does make psychologists seem a bit less credible, no jokes are made directly attacking those affected by schizophrenia or any other mental disorder. This movie scene will probably not have too much of an effect on its audience because there are no stigmatizing references. If it has any effect at all, it will cause viewers to be less trusting of their psychologists.
You like that movie, don’t you? I’m going to have to watch it again since I confess I slept through parts of it–I saw it late at night. Perhaps a film that makes people less trusting of their psychologists is stigmatizing in its own way. It labels therapy as useless at best, dangerously misdirected at worst. Let’s face it: hearing voices narrating your life? Occam’s Razor says the most likely explanation is mental illness. An author controlling your existence is pretty far down on the list.