Donaldson addressed the portrayal of madness in comic books.\nOne of the examples that struck out the most to me was the Batman comics\u2019 Joker\nand Harley Quinn. I think this was a great parallel because these two\ncharacters are so popular in our culture. Arkham Asylum was originally Arkham Hospital\nin the 80\u2019s rendition of Batman. The Hospital looked normal, like any other\nhospital. However, in the later comics, the hospital developed into a darker portrayal,\nArkham Asylum. The Asylum is very gothic and dark; it portrays the madness\ninside, feeding into the idea that criminals are all insane. Popular culture\nuses movies\/music\/art to process thoughts\/feelings\/events\u2013This is very\nproblematic because the growing stigma of mass shooters coming from backgrounds\nof mental health issues is thriving from these media representations of mental\nillness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Schizophrenia is a misunderstood illness that was often misdiagnosed as Bipolar disorder in the late 1900s. Donaldson enforces the idea of \u201cNothing about us, without us,\u201d and stressed that media depictions of schizophrenia are often from people without the illness. Which leads to the question\u2014How can you represent something accurately if you do not truly understand this? The answer is simple, profit does not need a \u201chow\u201d. The consequences are dire for people with mental health illness, because they are stuck between two hard options\/risks: keeping the illness a secret to avoid stigma but risk being misunderstood for illness-related complications, or be open about their condition in an effort to be more understood and free but risk being misunderstood for every unpleasant action they do\/don\u2019t do being intensely judged\/analyzed based off of their illness. It\u2019s a gamble. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem cannot just be attributed to these bad portrayals in the media though. Media is something people can choose to indulge in and the opinions they form on real-life situations from the show is out of anyone\u2019s control. Changing media and a person\u2019s art will only cause controversy. What could be beneficial is changing the education system. Why is it that only college students are required to take Psychology? You would think only requiring \u201ceducated\u201d people to learn psychology would be a bit problematic. Everyone needs to learn to understand their fellow human being. Psychology, Sociology, and the like should all be required in K-12 education. Science and some math really serve no purpose for most people\u2019s long term career paths, especially in blue collar jobs. With the way math is taught, it is only catered to math that is not functional on an everyday\/every person basis. With this in mind, wouldn\u2019t it be monumental to introduce social sciences to the public? The average person could learn far more about human behavior and decency from these classes than the gamble of \u201cfollowing someone\u2019s example.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Education is not accessible to everyone, but pop culture is.\nWhen Suicide Squad<\/em> came out, I was\ndisturbed by how many teenagers were romanticizing Harley Quinn\u2019s relationship\nwith Joker. Ride or die devotion is idealized, even if the partner is abusive,\nwhat matters is sticking through the rough spots. The problem is Harley does\nnot stick up for herself and challenge the Joker\u2019s bad treatment in this movie,\nshe ultimately goes along with whatever he says because of her love for him. Having\na partner in crime is an equal exchange, not a one-sided relationship of devoted\nobedience and tolerance of questionable treatment. Joker never attempts to\nunderstand Harley; he only cares about her understanding him and forces her to\nbecome mad to do so. Once she is devoted, he takes it a step further and presses\nher to dive into a basin of chemicals to physically mutilate her skin to being\npale to prover her loyalty. He does nothing to meet her as an individual separate\nfrom him. The Joker manipulates Harley into absolute loyalty for the sole\npurpose of self-gratification and a more effective tool for his bidding. Everything\nis a one-sided test of loyalty, ensuring his tool is effective. Despite all of\nthis, popular culture loves this pairing and I can\u2019t help but wonder how this\nwill affect their idea of a good relationship\/partner and only romanticize mental\nhealth issues being untreated and used as a tool for abuse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n K-12 education needs to be better, so people can be aware of something being wrong\/inaccurate because ultimately the stigma has more risk to fueling more problems than people with mental health issues themselves. Media is consumed by all classes and will form stigma about mental health issues if there is no other context\/exposure to the topic in a person\u2019s mind. Keeping knowledge to the people that can afford it only deepens the divide between the working class and white collar\/educated workers, which only fuels more tension and more problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donaldson addressed the portrayal of madness in comic books. One of the examples that struck out the most to me was the Batman comics\u2019 Joker and Harley Quinn. I think this was a great parallel because these two characters are so popular in our culture. Arkham Asylum was originally Arkham Hospital in the 80\u2019s rendition … Continue reading “April\u2019s Response to Elizabeth Donaldson\u2019s Psychographics: Graphic Memoirs and Psychiatric Disability”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/papJgd-lr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1330,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1329\/revisions\/1330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.chris-foss.net\/dislit19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}