Mentally Ill" Women, 1942-2003
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Narrativity, Emplotment, and Voice in Autobiographical and Cinematic Representations of "Mentally Ill" Women, 1942-2003 Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Wiener, Diane Rochelle Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 24/09/2021 13:11:09 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195156 NARRATIVITY, EMPLOTMENT, AND VOICE IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF “MENTALLY ILL” WOMEN, 1942-2003 by Diane Rochelle Wiener ________________________ Copyright © Diane Rochelle Wiener 2005 A Dissertation Submitted to the Facu lty of the GRADUATE INTERDISCIPLINARY PROGRAM IN COMPARATIVE CULTURAL AND LITERARY STUDIES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2005 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Diane Rochelle Wiener entitled Narrativity, Emplotment, and Voice in Autobiographical and Cinematic Representations of “Mentally Ill” Women, 1942-2003 and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 12/10/04 Barbara A. Babcock _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 12/10/04 Susan M. White _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 12/10/04 Mark Nichter _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 12/10/04 David M. Robinson _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 12/10/04 Beverly Seckinger Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: 12/10/04 Dissertation Director: Barbara A. Babcock 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Diane R. Wiener 4 Acknowledgments My deepest appreciation goes to my Dissertation Committee: Barbara Babcock, Susan White, Mark Nichter, David Robinson, and Beverly Seckinger, who saw me through. I am grateful to Ana Ortiz, Yvonne Reineke, Susan Philips, and Rudi Gaudio, who served on my Comprehensive Examination Committee. My heartfelt and abiding gratitude is conveyed to Kathleen Powers, who shared conversations with me about countless aspects of this layered project, and without whose input and assistance I could not have crafted my ideas into their present form. Liz Kennedy, Miranda Joseph, Caryl Flinn, Janet Jakobsen, Laura Briggs, and Susan Craddock helped me fine tune theories and metholodogies both inside and outside of classrooms, in the context of independent studies, and during private interactions. A special thank you is extended to my undergraduate mentor, Barbara Munson Goff, of Rutgers University’s Cook College, credited with being the first person within an academic setting to encourage me to become a rigorous interdisciplinarian. Thanks to Adele Barker, Jerry Hogle, and Annette Kolodny for their investments in the Graduate Program in Comparative Cultural and Literary St udies at the University of Arizona. Thanks to my mother and stepfather, Joan and Leonard Brikman, and to my aunt and uncle, Joan and Jerry Fallert, for keeping my mind and heart engaged. Thanks to Lane Van Ham, who read my work and provided extensive fee dback. Thanks to Kathleen Powers, Clark Pomerleau, Jess Weinberg, Lane Van Ham, Lori McAllester Schultz, John Schultz, Mo Bobrovnicky, Liz Socolow, Max Beck, Tamara Beck, Anne McDonnell, Beth Harrison, Ericha Scott, Judd Ruggill, Abby Clouse, Gary Gibson, Sharon Parker, Amy Harrington, and David Rubin, who joined me in screening films, helped me think through a variety of arguments, and encouraged me to have fun and feel good in my life. Thank you to the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Ar izona for allowing me to teach “Women and ‘Madness’ in American Film” during the summer of 2002. The students in this class were among the first to help me engage the theoretical stances presented herein. I thank them, and all of my present and former students. I thank my readers for bearing witness as I continue to critically examine my roles as a social services practitioner, scholar, and educator, in negotiating the fraught terrain of late capitalism in the United States. Considering the lives and stories of the many mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors I have served over the years helps me to advocate for ethical and equitable “care.” This dissertation is offered to these individuals, with my admiration, gratitude, and respect. It is also offered to the social workers and staff members with whom I have labored in agencies, union halls, and elsewhere, and to the antipsychiatric feminist activists who strive for a just world. 5 Dedication “We can never entirely recover what has been forgotten. And this is perhaps a good thing. The shock of repossession would be so devastating that we would immediately cease to understand our longing. But we do understand it; and the more deeply what has been forgotten lies buried within us, the bet ter we understand this longing. Just as the lost word that was on the tip of our tongue would have triggered flights of eloquence worthy of Demosthenes, so what is forgotten seems to us laden with all the lived life it promises us.” – Walter Benjamin, “T he Reading Box” (“Berlin Childhood around 1900” [395]) “Survival is a matter of avowing the trace of loss that inaugurates one’s own emergence.” – Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power (195) “A circle, a circle, a circle, a circle. A circle, my family. My family is a circle and it goes around and around.” – Miles Arthur Holmes, the author’s cousin (comments verbalized at age 5) “This is the time. And this is the record of the time.” – Laurie Anderson, “From the Air” This dissertation is dedicated to the ones I love, and is in memory of my father, Martin Jay Wiener (1930 -1980) 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….......8 CHAPTER 1 “You May Be Right, I May Be Crazy”: Introduction and Discussion of Interdisciplinary Methodology…………………………………………………….....9 Introduction………………………………………………………………………….......9 Narrativity, Voice, and Emplotment…………………………………………………...21 CHAPTER 2 “You Freud, Me Jane”: From Melodrama to Marnie (1942-1964)……..42 Chapter Overview……………………………………………………………………..... 42 Introduction: Feminist Psychoanalytic Critique and Melodrama…………………... 44 Take One: On Needing Now, Voyager, and Melodrama Today……………………....50 Take Two: The Snake Pit from Page to Screen………………………………………...58 Take Three: Marnie Talks Back…………………………………………………….......65 CHAPTER 3 “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle”: Frances Discourse and the Many Lives of Frances Farmer………………………………………...…...77 Introduction and Chapter Overview…………………………………………………...77 Frances Discourse……………………………………………………………………......80 CHAPTER 4 “I’m Not Completely Insane, I’m Maybe Just a Little Bit Crazy”: Representation in an Age of “Pharmacracy” (1990-2003)…………………….….. 107 Introduction and Chapter Overview…………………………………………………...107 Take One: On Autobiography, Antipsychiatric Activism, and Feminism: Reading Kate Millett’s The Loony-Bin Trip……………………………………………………........113 Take Two: Complicating Racial Tropes in Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted…....126 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS – Continued Take Three: Girl, Interrupted from Page to Screen…………………………………..140 Take Four: Sam, Benny & Joon meet Oprah Winfrey’s David and Lisa………….. .148 Take Five: Sylvia: The (Latest) Tropification of Sylvia Plath……………………….165 Take Six: A Meditation on Narrative Peregrinations in The Hours……………….....172 CHAPTER 5 “I’ve Always Been Crazy, but it’s Kept Me from Going Insane”: Emergent Words and Images; Plans for the Future…………………………………………...184 APPENDIX A: PERMISSIONS………………………………………………………........200 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………......202 8 ABSTRACT This dissertation presents an historical overview of the interdependent representations of gender, class, ethnicity , race, nationality, sexuality, and (dis)ability in a selection of films and first -person written autobiographical texts from the 1940s to the early twenty -first century. Cinematic and written autobiographical representations of “mental illness” reflect and shape various models of psychological trauma and wellness. I explore the ways that these two genres of representation underscore, exert influence upon, and interrogate socio -cultural understandings