Introduction: “Maybe I was just crazy, or maybe it was the 60s, or maybe I was Girl Interrupted,” is one of the first lines from James Mangold's beautifully directed 1999 film Girl, Interrupted. This film follows Susanna, a carefree and depressed teenager, admitted to Claymore Hospital following a failed suicide attempt in the mid-1960s. hoping to return a young soul, we are taken to the girls' ward of Claymore Hospital where we are confronted with many characters living a parallel universe of mental illness, ultimately hindered by society. In a time when modesty was about hiding one's anger, the women in this film have no shame in smoking, swearing, and harassing each other while sneaking out at night breaking the rules of the room. Mangold portrayed the darkness of this film so perfectly using repeated motifs, music, and flashbacks, all while capturing the true difficulty of womanhood given societal norms. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Background: To begin and understand the overall meaning of this film, we need to understand the 1960s and how society itself viewed mental illness. At a time when mental illness had only just earned the labeling title, it was a harsh distortion between deviance and real illness, leaving treatments and diagnoses poorly done, scholar Thomas said J. Scheff: “psychiatric diagnoses were just practical labels attached to individuals. who violated conventional behavioral norms.” Susanna, who appeared to be a normal girl, was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, when in reality she ultimately seemed depressed, even stating that "the line between normal and crazy is so wavy that our insistence on making her is indeed blurred." Thesis Statement: The legitimacy of mental illness in the 1960s was a fine line between social control and conduct rather than a true medical diagnosis. Topic Sentence: It seems like each girl in the movie wasn't a person at all, but rather a label for their illness and the story behind their reason for being there. Evidence and citation: At the forefront of labeling in the 1960s, "the hierarchical structure of the hospital facilitated depersonalization, and labeling led to stigmatization, which was indistinguishable from healthy people." spirit and the insane in psychiatric hospitals (Rosenhan 1973). Society's tainted view of mental illness is greatly represented in Mangold's film when all the girls are brought to an ice cream parlor and a woman, who Susanna knows, shows up and wishes Susanna to be locked away forever , in this scene. all the girls start committing outrageous and crazy acts on purpose to make the woman leave, alienating them all from normal spectators. While the scene may not be a real-life example, it shows viewers the mental illness behavior that society expects and labels. Topic sentence: Could it also be that society's labeling of this era led to such scandalous behavior? Evidence and Citation: For example, Lisa, the queen bee of the room, did not necessarily seem to suffer from mental illness, but rather from a taste for getting everyone, including the doctors, excited just to put on a show . It seemed that Lisa, more than anything, liked the idea of ​​being crazy, was opposed to actually being crazy, she did things that were ultimately expected by a person withmental illness, but which also seemed shamelessly staged. Without a proper diagnosis from that time, who really called these girls crazy? Commentary: The labeling of this era ultimately allowed people to create a deviant self-image reflecting each individual's expected outcome, even though there may not have been a true cause. The mental illness was in turn treated by institutionalization, which brings us to Claymore Hospital, where Susanna spent a year for a suicide attempt. In this film, we are first presented with a scene of opening which focuses on a window and which appears dark on the outside, the camera is then pointed downward towards the main character, Susanna whose inner emotion suggests the emotion of the weather outside the window. The camera then pans down to show Lisa, another girl from the hospital lying on Susanna's lap, still and sad. Evidence and Quote: Director James Mangold describes the mood of the rest of the film perfectly, presenting a kind of darkness and disquiet for the viewers. In this view it also uses a musical score that reflects the girls emotions, melancholy, even though no words were said we are able to feel the emotion rather than being told the emotion. Also implying the implications, we see later in the film the pent-up emotion that each girl feels with the labels of her mental illness, but is unable to say it directly to herself. In the opening scene, Mangold also cuts to a cat to heighten the mood, while foreshadowing the cat's importance later in the film. The cat returns towards the end of the film, when a friend of Susanna's from Daisy Parish commits suicide, the cat belonged to Daisy then Susanna took it, so the opening scene may also suggest a sadness over the death of Daisy. We then see, at the very end of the film, Susanna giving the cat to another patient as she prepares to leave the hospital. In reality, this cat is also a symbolism of illness. Mangold also uses cigarettes as a motif throughout the film. dark humor is presented. Evidence and Quote: Every time Susanna feels reckless throughout the film with her humor, we will inevitably, each time, see her portray that humor by lighting a cigarette. This is especially enjoyable in the film about Mangold's part, as it depicts the true nature of Susanna's carelessness for her life and well-being. In one scene, she inhales smoke from her cigarette and blows it into another patient's face as a test, where in return the woman turns around and scorns the "asshole", and Susanna reacts by apologizing and leaving the room. scene. What is most interesting is that Susanna, throughout the film, "decides what kind of woman she will be, and in this area there are indeed contradictory and exasperating messages, but more for the viewer than for the character” (Cross, Alice. “Girl, interrupted”). Suanna, once selfless, showed sympathy for his actions. Throughout the film, we also see Susanna experience flashbacks, or time jumps back to moments before she was admitted to the hospital. Evidence and Citation: The majority of these flashbacks show things she regrets or things she did that were not modest in relation to her self-image, such as a specific flashback between a conversation of her and a married professor with whom she slept. Within these time jumps, Mangold seems to use them as a transition from one scene to another. At one point, he also abruptly changed scenes to the sound of a dog barking to establish the next scene. Mangold also uses costumes very carefully to identify with the characters, Susanna wears ?.