Tara Ison - Reeling Through Life - How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies

But I hear Janet’s beautiful, resonant, cautioning voice:

JANET

Talk of suicide must always be taken seriously. Such talk came readily to me as a shortcut to ensure action.

I don’t want to ensure action, I realize. That’s why I can’t cut. Action means hospital . I think hospital and I see pills and needles and too many shuffling people in bathrobes. I see leather restraints on cotlike beds and stained ceiling tiles and drooling and basement rooms. I feel the conductive gel on my temples. I see Ratched and well-meaning Montgomery Clift and a sign that reads PSYCHIATRIC WARD, where Randle, Frances, Catherine, Olivia, and Janet are waiting their turn for the machine. I hear: Tap. I think hospital and I hear Charlton Heston screaming, “You took his identity!”

And that’s my image of hospital : It’s the place where they steal away what makes you human. Where they silence not only your voice so you cannot tell your story; they silence your brain so you cannot even know what your story is.

I put the blade away and get back into bed. I’m not going that crazy tonight.

At the beginning of Girl, Interrupted, pretty, smart, twentysomethingSusanna Kaysen is getting her stomach pumped after an overdose of aspirin, while she keeps swearing to everyone that she wasn’t really trying to kill herself. 7Her parents and doctors convince her she needs “a really good rest”; she signs herself into a mental institution, which, again, just shocks me — doesn’t anyone ever realize what signing those papers means ? I was nervous to see this movie; I’m not a convict guy or a 1930s movie star or a housewife or a New Zealander, but I am Susanna-like, a middle-class young woman with a nice life and no apparent problems and a history of minueting with suicide. And Susanna’s also a writer — like me, like Janet, like housewife Olivia in The Snake Pit . Writers are starting to seem overrepresented as crazy people, I think, although it ultimately was Janet’s salvation; I suppose, like arsenic, it can be both poison and cure.

On her way to the institution, Claymoore, the cabbie tells Susanna:

CABBIE

You look normal.

SUSANNA

I’m sad.

CABBIE

(shrugging)

Well, everyone’s sad.

And he’s right, I think. But when does one person’s sadness become another person’s lunacy?

One significant difference between Susanna and me, of course, is that Susanna actually swallowed those pills, which puts her in a whole different league — she’s the real, impressive thing. But if she’s crazier than I am, fellow patient Crazy Lisa (early, unhinged Angelina Jolie) is way crazier than either of us, and puts us both to shame; Lisa is the Randle P. McMurphy of the place, the charismatic, glamorous wacko who brings with her the edge, the danger, the restraints and injections. Lisa takes Susanna under her wing, showing her how to fake-swallow those meekness-inducing pills. She even steals her psych file for her, where Susanna reads that she’s been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, defined by:

SUSANNA

(reading)

“. . an instability of self-image, relationships and mood, uncertainty about goals, impulsive activities that are self-damaging, such as casual sex. Social contrariness, and a generally pessimistic attitude are observed.”

(to Lisa)

Well, that’s me.

LISA

That’s everybody .

The Crazy Girl is the voice of reason — if that’s the definition, who doesn’t have Borderline Personality Disorder? At least sometimes. We should all be in Claymoore. We should all keep Camarillo on speed dial. The arbitrary and generic nature of this labeling reminds me of Janet Frame, Schizophrenic ; it confirms every fear I’ve ever had about behaving yourself, and being very, very careful not to sully your permanent record.

The movie offers lots of evidence how normal Susanna actually is, in comparison with all the other women there, and she finally decides she wants to leave. But, as the Chief Doctor points out, “You signed yourself into our care. We decide when you leave.”

However, the Doctor also indicates the decision, ultimately, is Susanna’s; she needs to decide between two courses of action, namely: Am I sane? Or, Am I crazy? Susanna says those aren’t courses of action, but the Doctor insists:

CHIEF DOCTOR

They can be, for some. Will you stay or go? It’s the choice of your life. How much will you indulge in your flaws?

This takes me aback, confuses me — it’s paradoxically empowering and chastising. I like the confirmation that there’s an element of choice here, that Susanna can reseize control of herself, choose just how far along on the crazy continuum she will go. But I’m embarrassed by the categorizing of depression or emotional fragility as an exaggerated form of self-pity or weakness. A flaw. It echoes Olivia’s vengeful, sadistic Nurse: “All you have is an exalted view of your own importance!” Meanwhile, Lisa, the legitimately Crazy One, has run off on a destructive rampage, been dragged back, given electroshock (off-screen, it isn’t her movie), and is roaming around shell-shocked with the twitches and the drool.

Susanna’s real showdown/reality check comes during a confrontation with her head nurse, Valerie, a no-bullshit Whoopi Goldberg:

VALERIE

You are not crazy!

SUSANNA

Then what’s wrong with me? What the fuck is going on inside my head?

VALERIE

You are a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy! And you’re just throwing it away. .

Of course, that’s me, too. All that sitting around and crying on a brown velour couch. . just pure self-indulgence, pure laziness, as I’ve always suspected. Again, it is empowerment combined with admonishment. I’m annoyed; I’m reassured. And added to this a scene from The Wizard of Oz , on television in the hospital lounge the day Susanna leaves the institution — Dorothy, at the end of the movie, begging Glinda: 8

DOROTHY

Oh, will you help me? Can you help me?

GLINDA

You don’t need help any longer. You always had the power to go back to Kansas!

Fine. The categories are a bit clearer. The lesson: There’s real mental illness, the Crazy Lisas who are genuine in their craziness. And then there’s the rest of us. Who sometimes feel sad (angry, lazy, awkward, trapped) and don’t seem to realize that all we’ve ever needed to do is simply click our heels.

I’ll try to remember that, next time.

SUSANNA

When you don’t want to feel, death can seem like a dream. But seeing death, really seeing it, makes dreaming about it fucking ridiculous. . Was I ever crazy? Or maybe life is. Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s just me, amplified.

I’m thinking about the images of crazy people in films, and how those images have imprinted on my mind, and my own flirtatious history with bouts of a minor craziness I’ve been able to stave off, and I realize I have forgotten all about A Beautiful Mind . 9I saw the movie when it came out in 2001, and at first I loved it, and then I hated it, and now I go around and around, because it makes me crazy.