in Girl, Interrupted

Discourses of Adolescent Girl and Normality

Outline Introduction Film:

Madness and Causes Treatments Back to Normality Solution and Compromise

The Film and the Novel The Novel’s Critique of Discourses on

“Girlhood” References Next Time

Introduction (1): Intertexts

Novel: Girl, Interrupted (1993)written by Susanna Kaysen (1967 McLean, 2 yrs) – a best-seller on New York Times chart for many years

Film: Girl, Interrupted, directed by James Mangold (1999), Winona Ryder as executive producer

Title: from the painting Girl, Interrupted at her music by Johannes Vemeer

Novel: McLean as a “parallel universe”; another Ivy League school

The film: TV & The Wizard of Oz – Dorothea finding her way “home”

Introduction (2): Background and Theme

Background: 60’s – an age of revolution and political upheavals—Vie

tnam War, assassination of Martin Luther King Girls go to girls’ college

Plot: a girl (would-be writer) finds her way back to society after staying in Claymoore/McLean for two years.

Questions: Interrupted by what? At what place? Return (向前走 ) to what?

Madness vs. Normality

Are they sane? Or Mad?

The characters: Susanna Kaysen –borderline personality Lisa--sociopath Georgina—pathological liar Daisy --anorexia Polly Clark –burns victim ? A dyke

Sane or Insane? (Susanna Kaysen)

(monologue) “Have you ever confused a

dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60's. Or maybe I was just a girl... interrupted.”

Sane or Insane? (Susanna)

events “sanity” “insanity”50 Aspirins and a bottle of Vodka

“killing the headache” Attempts to suicide

No bones in hands;

“they (bones) come back”

laws of physics can be suspended;

No control of time

Insane

Stoned?

Need rest

“You’re hurting everyone around you.”

Reading medical profile (BPD)

“That is everybody” Lisa (50:00)

Psychoneurotic depression…

Sane or Insane? (Daisy)

Diagnosis: Eating disorder and other unspecified (chap 10)

Symptoms: Eating in private, father’s chicken only, keeping bones under bed, attempted suicide (later after moved out)

Claims: Eating=Dumping (privacy—sexual implication)

Possible causes: Incest (father)

Suicide (button being pressed)

Sane or Insane? (Lisa Rowe)

Diagnosis: Sociopath

Symptoms: Indifference, disregard for the consequences...

Susanna: “Her eyes are empty now”

Sane or Insane? (Georgina Tuskin)

Diagnosis: Pathological liar

(“my father is the head of CIA”)

Susanna: “G lies to people who want to keep her here…Sometimes I think she wants to live in Oz forever.”

Sane or Insane? (Polly Clark)Diagnosis: Unspecified

Symptom: Refuse to grow up

Possible Cause: Childhood trauma (burn victim) Innocent? Curious about sex trigger her memory

Susanna: “sweetness and purity aren’t genuine at all, but a desperately attempt to make it easier for us to look at her”

Dependence & Escape Dependence Lisa: rebellion against the institution; oth

ers’ dependence. Daisy: Colace (a stool softener); chicke

n; her father. Polly: doll; Ruby Georgina and many others: LisaEscape, Regression and Mutual Support They smoke constantly, swear, bully an

d console each other. Susanna: finds no comfort from her fam

ily finds Lisa a pal. Play child games. Rebellion: reading the diagnoses.

Causes? Constructions of “Girlhood” 50s -- relatively conservative

“viewed their children's world with alarm and confusion and

embraced few of the cultural changes.” 60s – Peace, love and sex.

-- drafting, death and Anti-war hippy

-- Rise of feminism 70s Conservative

Women’s Choices

More opportunities?1) Education -- Going to college (RadcIiffe.

WeIIesIey) Pro.’s wife: “Women should make up their mind.”

Teacher: “Women nowadays have more choices.”, S: “No they don’t.”

Between being like her mother and burning bras and going for demonstration, Susanna is forced to make a choice. Bias on females:

2) Definition of “promiscuity”

Suzanne’s Diagnosis

Diagnosis: “Increasing patternlessness of life, promiscuous might kill self or get pregnant” (11).

(film: chap 18) “How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label “compulsively promiscuous”? Three? No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That sounds more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess—if they ever put that label on boys, which I don’t recall their doing.

And for seventeen-year-old-girls, how many boys?” (158)

Treatments --

Hospitalization: Necessity? Susanna Admission Voluntary? She signs herself in

has no right to leave. Discharge qualification Daisy? Standardized management:

(medicine administration, name calling, room checks, indifferent attitude and no privacy. “fascist torture chamber”)

Treatments

Exercise, Narrative therapy

Medicine: Necessary?

abused in treatment

cause abuse (e.g. addiction to Valium)

Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and Seclusion: treatment or punishment?

ETC: possible permanent amnesia.

damaging neurons

Treatments Counseling:

(“Ther-rapist,” “their-rape-me,”

“diag-non-sense,”

criticizing Freudian therapy: confessing one’s secrets. clip 40:00))

Dr. Melvin: unsuccessful, without understanding patients.

Dr. Wick: understanding, insightful?

“Alternative” Treatment

Interpersonal bonds like being in a girls’ school (chap 15) -socializing Nurses & orderlies: Valerie (talks about her

family), the other one, about her boyfriend; Sisterhood (Tunnel Adventure, Ice Cream Shop,

Playing Guitar) Others

pet -- Ruby

TV

Turning Points for Susanna Toby’s visit: Susanna decides to stay

because “[she has] friends in here.” (Sisterhood / Toby is not the one) Runaway with Lisa borderlines – drug,

homosexuality / Returning: start to realize the deadly consequences seeing “death”

(“Jamie” / Daisy’s death / Lisa’s cruelty)

Valerie: narrative therapy; Susanna learns to “get it out and put it away” –”talk cure”

2nd Tunnel: “Press others’ buttons”

The Film’s Conclusion—Finding her Way Back (1)

1. Self-Correction: Dr. Wick and Valerie – S as a "lazy, self-ind

ulgent little girl driving herself crazy" The girls have to find their ways home (Wizar

d of Oz) Sympathy for Daisy: (how it hurts to smile); k

nows the seriousness of death Avoid Self-Distortion:

Lisa"So many buttons to press …so why is nobody pressing mine?"

To Lisa: “You’re dead already.”

The Film’s Conclusion—Finding her Way Back (2)

2. Self limitation (“The point is control”) in order to “fit in the fucked-up world” Others: pretends to not see “purple

people” anymore; Lisa: “Florida—Cinderella and Snow

White”. Suzanne: works at a bookstore, stays in

touch, sees Dr. Wick twice a week, and plans to write.

The Film’s Conclusion—Finding her Way Back (3)

Definition of madness: Matter of degree. Social standard: majority = norm.

“Crazy isn't being broken...... or swallowing a dark secret. lt's you or me......amplified. lf you ever told a lie......and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect...but they were my friends.”

Deleted Scenes in Film

Susanna’s hallucination

(blood flood in supermarket, boneless hands) She looks more normal in the film’s final version

Fewer coincidences Film is more realistic

No museum scene no explanation to the topic

From the Memoir to the FilmDramatization and Addition: Going to Daisy’s house and Lisa’s final threat to

Suzanne The memoir – juxtaposition of the hospital diagnosis Introduction Lines:

Fiction self in “parallel universe” more social critique Film “unclear boundaries” self-development

Endings: The film: Lisa -- "I'm playing the villain," "They were not

perfect but they were my friends." The memoir's endings:

Suzanne: out of the hospital because of her engagement

seeing Lisa with her baby on the street

“Parallel Universe”

“There are so many of them: worlds of the insane, the criminal, the crippled, the dying, perhaps of the dead as well. These worlds exist alongside this world and resemble it, but are not in it” (Kaysen 5). those excluded by “normality” in social discourses.

Kaysen’s disa Kaysen’s Resistance: the social views

My self-image was not unstable. I saw myself, quite correctly, as unfit for the educational and social systems. But my parents and teachers did not share my self-image. Their image of me was unstable, since it was out of kilter with reality and based on their needs and wishes. They did not put much value on my capacities, which were admittedly few, but genuine. I read everything, I wrote constantly, and I had boyfriends by the barrelful. (155)

Kaysen’s Resistance: Borderline Personality & Gender

Re. the doctors’ views: Many disorders, judging by the hospital population,

were more commonly diagnosed in women. (157) In the list of six “potentially self-damaging” activities

favored by the borderline personality, three are commonly associated with women (shopping sprees, shoplifting, and eating binges) and one with men (reckless driving). One is not “gender-specific,” as they say these days (psychoactive substance abuse). And the definition of the other (casual sex) is in the eye of the beholder. (158)

A chapter on “”

Borderline Personality

“something of a catchall, describing people with intense narcissism, unstable personal relationships, self-damaging behaviors, and a need to create conflict among those around them. People receive the diagnosis because they manage to succeed at basic life tasks even though they often appear to be crazy.

Some psychotherapists will say, however, that the term borderline personality disorder is just another way of expressing that they hate the patient. Unfortunately, borderlines do not respond well to pharmacotherapy, unlike people suffering from more common diagnoses such as depression, now treated almost exclusively with medication. (Krin Gabbard)

Interrupted by Whom? The Teacher

It’s the painting from whose frame a girl looks out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose proprietary hand rests on her chair . . . I looked intoher brown eyes and I recoiled. She was warning me of something— she had looked up from her work to warn me. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had just drawn a breath in order to say to me, “Don’t!” (166) the affiar with the teacher

Vermeer’s “Girl Interrupted at Her Music”

Interrupted by Whom? Painting as a Social Discourse

Interrupted at her music: as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that?” (167). (ending) –we can’t see her clearly.

Vermeer’s “Girl Interrupted at Her Music”

Reference

Marshall, Elizabeth. “Borderline Girlhoods: Mental Illness, Adolescence, and Femininity in Girl, Interrupted.” Lion & the Unicorn 30. 1(2006 Jan): 117-133.

Gabbard, Krin. "Therapy's 'Talking Cure' Still Works—in Hollywood." Chronicle of Higher Education (11 Feb. 2000): B9+.

Next Time

Two Chapters by 林芳玫 ; “Faces of Madness” Quiz – due in two weeks (very likely at

EngSite).