Crazy isn’t being broken. It’s you, or me, amplified. Hollywood is full of examples of
the, quote, “Crazy Woman”: an uncontrollable, dangerous woman who’s often equal parts
mesmerizing and terrifying. Though in recent years
there have been more nuanced depictions of women with personality
disorders onscreen, mental illness is a difficult
topic to portray accurately in stories written for entertainment. And just as the label “crazy” is itself
pretty offensive, there remain many
problematic or reductive versions of this trope. “All you did was destroy
the dreams of young women all over this country.” “And you think that dream
was to get blown up? You know you’ve got a really good shot
at that insanity plea.” But looking at how
film & TV has portrayed the so-called “crazy woman”
through the years can tell us a lot about
what mainstream society sees as threatening and deviant,
especially in females. “You won't answer my calls,
you change your number. I mean, I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan!” Comparing a number of iterations
of this character, we can see some
common patterns: She’s haunted by
something in her past “You’re a loser, Sue Ann... Some people just don’t change, do they?” “Ma” “No. They don’t.” She’s suffering from delusions--
and her detachment from reality can make it hard for audiences
to sympathize with her, especially because the screenplay
frequently doesn’t encourage us to understand her
point of view. "You are completely delusional. I'm gonna have the cops
deal with your crazy ass.” In fact, the “crazy woman”
has long been villainized onscreen. She’s frequently
portrayed as violent. And while her uninhibited behavior
or unusual beauty can make her initially appealing to men… “I liked having sex with him;
he wasn’t afraid of experimenting.” eventually the narrative makes most characters regret
getting mixed up with her. On closer inspection,
this woman’s issues are often caused by men, whether because someone hurt her, or because she’s been more
systematically oppressed by stifling gender roles. "She's not crazy,
so don't say she's crazy. This woman cooks, sews,
makes the bed, washes the bathroom, what the hell is crazy about that?" Fundamentally, this character
is painted as a danger to the status quo
and the family unit. “I don't want to lose my family.” Here’s our Take on Hollywood’s idea
of the “Crazy Woman,” the forms she takes,
and how she’s evolving in today’s representations
of mental illness. “I'm crazy. I'm a crazy person. There is something
really wrong with me.” You’re watching The Take. Thanks for watching,
and be sure to share and subscribe. This video is brought to you by Mubi, a curated streaming service showing exceptional films from
around the globe. It’s like your own personal Film Festival,
streaming anytime, anywhere. Broadly speaking,
we can break down the “Crazy Woman”
trope into three different types. The Obsessive Woman, whose extreme violent behavior
often casts her as a villain. The Woman Having a Nervous Breakdown,
who gradually loses touch with reality over the course of the story. And The “Cool Crazy” Girl
whose edgy nonconformism makes it seem appealing
to be unhinged. Let’s start with type 1:
The Obsessive Woman. “You Ever find yourself being completely
smothered by somebody?” The obsessive woman is often
a male nightmare of female craziness. “Don’t leave me.” “I love you.” Part of the crazy woman’s
power onscreen is her ability to upset
the social equilibrium, and one of the ways she does this
is by threatening the family unit. “When your husband makes love to you,
it’s my face he sees…” Perhaps the definitive example
of the obsessive woman is Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest
from Fatal Attraction “Didn’t you see Fatal Attraction?" "You wouldn’t let me!" "Well I saw it! And it scared the shit out of me! Scared the shit outta
every man in America…” Married protagonist Dan’s “no strings”
affair with edgy colleague Alex turns out to be anything but -in fact,
Alex is the original “bunny boiler” “Daddy!” Costuming is used to cleverly signal
Alex’s insanity; as we become more aware
of her mental state, her earlier highly fashionable
‘80s clothing gives way to a shapeless
white, straitjacket-like dress. When he meets Alex,
Dan has the perfect life: a beautiful, doting wife,
cute daughter, and successful career. “How long have you been married?" "9 years… I’m lucky." "So what are you doing here?” So why would a man like Dan
risk everything for Alex? According to male psychology expert
Dr. Herb Goldberg, “Achievement-oriented, aggressive,
dominant, success-driven males have a very low tolerance
for boredom and passivity. The crazy woman keeps them
on their toes.” “You're here with a strange girl
being a naughty boy.” This partly explains viewers’ enduring
fascination with a woman like Alex; we like to watch her, because we,
or someone we know, would be attracted to her. But Fatal Attraction
sends a clear warning to anyone who might be drawn
to this “dangerous woman", and in the process, it issues
a damaging and regressive condemnation of the single, working female. Alex, the unattached,
sexually emancipated career woman, challenges the traditional family structure
through her very existence. “I was wondering, why is it that all the interesting guys
are always married?” "Or maybe that's why you
find them interesting, the fact you can't have them.” And it’s significant
that Alex’s bitter end comes at the hands of
another woman -- Dan’s wife, Beth --
who destroys this unhinged challenger to restore her own
perfect family life. If you ever come near my family again,
I'll kill you. Do you understand? Moreover, in revealing Alex’s carefully
constructed, carefree persona to be false, the movie implies that the
emancipated career woman who wants a different kind
of life doesn’t really exist. She’s a mirage,
lying in wait to trap a man “I won’t allow you to treat me
like some slut you can just bang a couple of times and
throw in the garbage.” The Obsessive Woman can also
be fixated on another woman. This could be because
she perceives another woman as a rival for the male gaze “then I'll be fairest
in the land!” (laughs) Or it could be because she’s
lacking her own sense of identity. "Look, I'm not a psychopath or anything. I just... want to be her friend." "Come on. Your password to your phone
is my sister's birthday, for f-(beep's) sake." That's like, 'Single,
White, Female' shit.” In Single White Female,
Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Hedy essentially tries to
become her roommate “Everything I’ve done,
I’ve done for you, don’t you understand that? The people you hated, I hated…” This person can also be devoted
to an idea or powered by religious zeal ‘Hoho, look what you
brought out to play!” In Carrie, the protagonist’s
devoutly religious mother is so consumed with
religious fear of sexuality that she psychologically
tortures her daughter just for being a young woman
going through puberty "I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will." "Breasts, Mama. They're called breasts.” Misery’s Annie Wilkes is
the nightmare of the angry fan "I'm his number one fan." she takes her favorite author hostage
and tortures him because she’s mad that he’s killed off
her beloved character. "I know you didn't mean it
when you killed her, and now you'll make it right." The Obsessive Crazy Woman
is often portrayed as violent “Now don’t be afraid” even though, in reality,
violent women are the exception to the rule. Perhaps because the violent
mentally-ill woman is an anomaly in real life, she’s particularly frightening
in the collective imagination. As sociologist Belinda Morrissey states
in her book When Women Kill, the female killer is the “embodiment of some of Western
heteropatriarchy’s greatest fears.” Yet it’s striking that, traditionally,
Hollywood has turned this woman who’s suffering from severe issues
into an outlet for filmmakers’ or audiences’ misogyny, and little more than an unsympathetic,
one-dimensional villain. “It's nice to finally meet your mother. What do you mean finally? I mean, You just met me.” Fatal Attraction actress Glenn Close
said of Alex (and the public response to the character), “she’s considered evil more
than a person who needs help, which astounds me.” In fact, test audiences
disliked an original ending where Alex killed herself because they felt she wasn’t
sufficiently punished. Part of the problem is that
especially in a fast-moving feature film it can be a challenge to get
most audiences to relate to characters who are delusional. As author Orson Scott Card puts it
in Elements of Fiction Writing, “We are terrified of people
who don’t live in the same reality as we do…” A key step toward making this character less one-note is
privileging her perspective. In the 1847 classic novel Jane Eyre,
Jane’s love interest Mr. Rochester is revealed to have a
crazed secret wife locked in his attic -- but the 1966 follow-up
Wide Sargasso Sea and its film adaptations later tried to get inside this character’s
point of view, completely changing how we might
view that situation. "Never make promises." "Why?" "Then they'll never be broken." In Gone Girl, the violent woman gets
a chance to tell her side of the story, and while Amy remains fearsome,
we’re hardly encouraged to sympathize with the husband she’s torturing. “And my lazy, lying, cheating,
oblivious husband... Will go to prison for my murder.” In recent years, more nuanced, sympathetic
versions of the obsessive woman are finally becoming mainstream. Lorna on Orange is the New Black
fixates on a man she barely knows, who clearly views her
as a Fatal Attraction-esque nightmare. “I don't know this woman, okay? We went on one date! One! She's a f-(beep)-ing stalker!” but the show acknowledges that
Lorna is suffering from a debilitating
medical condition -- which the actress Yael Stone
has called erotomania, the delusion that someone
is in love with you, despite all evidence. Lorna’s inability to face
painful realities and failure to get
the help she needs -- especially after she loses a child,
the kind of event that anyone would
struggle to accept “That's the kind of pain
that a lot people never recover from! is treated as heartbreaking. "I'm writin' to my baby. The father's keepin' him away from me.” And when we first meet Suzanne,
aka Crazy Eyes, on Orange is the New Black, she’s initially feared as
the violent obsessive type, through the eyes of a
middle-class white woman. “Because you light a fire inside me.” But that first impression
is completely disproven as the show devotes time to the way
Suzanne has been let down by a system that’s failed to treat
her mental illness. "Mom. Do I deserve to be here?" "You deserve to be in a facility that
can help you with your cognitive difference," "But..I'm not, I'm here," as well as to her many gifts
and special way of viewing the world. "You're not dumb. You got a special brain, like me." She’s also a notable example because
onscreen explorations of mental illness so frequently overlook
women of color. A second type of “crazy woman” onscreen is the one who’s in the midst
of having a nervous breakdown. This story shows the character’s
journey into delusion, so we get more insight into why
she’s losing touch with reality. Crucially, this second category
allows us to sympathize more with the character, in large part because her perspective
is (in moments) comprehensible to us. Sometimes this type 2 narrative lets us
participate in the character’s mind state, making it hard for us to tell
what’s real and what’s imagined. Other good examples of this narrative
pay careful attention to the sources of the
woman’s distress. John Cassavetes’ nuanced
A Woman Under the Influence makes us feel greatly for Mabel, played by Cassavetes’ wife
Gena Rowlands. “Do you ever think of me
as dopey or mean?" No, you’re smart, you’re pretty
- you’re nervous, too.” As we closely observe her life
as a neglected mother and housewife, to an insensitive husband
who’s out of his depth and doesn’t understand her needs, Rowlands’ performance subtly illustrates
how her mental deterioration is a response to her
claustrophobic situation. "Just tell me what you want me to be,
how you want me to be. I can be that, I can be anything. You tell me Nicky." A Woman Under the Influence
also belongs to a powerful subtype of this genre: The Woman Driven Mad by
Living in a Man’s World. One of the most classic
examples of the woman losing her sanity due to male cruelty is Blanche DuBois in
A Streetcar Named Desire. “I don't want realism. I want magic!" “Magic?” “Yes, yes, magic!” Blanche’s brother-in-law Stanley
provokes her breakdown by sabotaging a potential engagement that could rescue her from
dire financial straits, before eventually
assaulting her himself. “There isn't a thing but
imagination and lies and deceit and tricks! And look at yourself
- take a look at yourself in your worn out Mardi Gras outfit.” Even Blanche’s snobby affectations
and vanity “Will you think it's possible
that I was once considered attractive?" "Your looks are okay." "I was fishing for a compliment.” are reflections of how
her society’s gender norms have messed with her mind,
by conditioning to be dependent on male attention and forcing her to repress
her true desires under a front of southern belle
gentility. "Want a shot?" "No, I rarely touch it." In 1965’s Repulsion,
a woman is unable to function because she’s so intensely
afraid of men. The aggressive male attention that
follows her is indeed menacing “I just, I had to see you that’s all” and her paranoia is all
the more understandable in light of the suggestion that
she was abused as a child. In 2003’s Monster,
Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning turn as real life serial killer
Aileen Wuornos is gritty and terrifying, but it lets us understand why this sex worker is driven
to murder her Johns, after the extreme abuse
she’s experienced at the hands of men. "And no one could imagine the will power it took to do
what we do.” In 1944’s Gaslight,
Ingrid Bergman’s character is psychologically abused by a husband who strategically plots to
convince her she’s going mad. If I could only get inside
that brain of yours and understand what makes you do these crazy, twisted things. "Gregory, are you trying to
tell me I'm insane?" The film, which gave birth
to the term “gaslighting” exemplifies what film critic
Emanuel Levy terms the ‘Don’t Trust Your Husband’ genre 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby
is a later example where it might seem
like the woman is going mad "This is no dream! This is really happening!" but really she’s got pretty good
reasons to be upset: her husband has joined a bunch
of Satanic worshippers and has impregnated her
with the devil’s baby. "Come with us quietly, Rosemary. Don't argue or make a scene. If you say anything more about witches or
witchcraft we'll take you to a mental hospital." Most recently, The Invisible Man
follows Elisabeth Moss trying to prove she’s not insane as her toxic husband continues
to torture her seemingly from beyond the grave. "Someone is doing this to me,
he's, he’s doing this to me." "You need some medication,
Adrian is dead." Another common factor in women having
a nervous breakdown is aging. Sometimes, the female midlife crisis
story is merely a shallow condemnation of the villainous older woman whose stereotypical female sin
of vanity makes her evil. But more interesting versions
explore why aging is such a catastrophe for females in a society
that discards women of a certain age. In Sunset Boulevard,
which portrays Norma’s obsession with chasing youth as grotesque "You're a woman of 50. Now grow up. There's nothing tragic about being 50…
not unless you try to be 25," the script points out how
she’s a product of Hollywood culture "You know, a dozen press agents
working overtime can do terrible things
to the human spirit." Frequently the
woman-having-a-breakdown story leads to a larger commentary on what’s truly crazy
about her society. In Blue Jasmine,
a modern update to Streetcar, rich Jasmine’s descent into insanity represents the delusions of the 1% and the elite lifestyle
they’ll do anything to protect. "I can wear the Dior dress
I bought in Paris. Yes, my black dress. Well, Hal always
used to surprise me with jewelry." In Ingrid Goes West,
as the title character embarks on a quest to become
real-life friends with an Instagram influencer,
the story gets at the way that social media encourages us all to relate in false, unhealthy ways. "We were never friends,
because everything about you is such a f-[beep]-ing lie." "You just are some weird freak
that found me on Instagram." "Everything about you is
a f-[beep]-ing lie, ok." “She’s crazier than him,
and more fearless.” The third type of “Crazy Woman”
is romanticised for her devil-may care attitude
and uninhibited sexuality "Have you ever f-[beep]-ed
on cocaine, Nick?" This character, who tends to be played
by an extraordinarily attractive actress comes across as ‘cool’ because she
doesn’t care about what society thinks of her "I’m Tommy’s crazy whore widow…
minus the whore thing, for the most part." Look at the modern
interpretation of Harley Quinn. This beautiful, deranged woman has elements of
Category one’s obsessiveness, and Category two’s pattern
of being driven mad by men “She’s like a bottomless pit of issues” but with her dyed hair, unique style,
and backup squad of hot, angry girls in Birds of Prey “Hair tie? Yeah” she’s portrayed as fun
and aspirational "I mean, how do I be like you? Well, except for the crazy part…" "Number one, no one is like me." Glamorous, beautiful sociopath Lisa, Angelina Jolie’s character
in 1999’s Girl, Interrupted, draws both the viewer
and protagonist Susannah to her. And even after Lisa’s dark,
evil streak is fully spotlighted “I need an ambulance! - Make it a hearse," She becomes vulnerable at the end,
upset that Susanna has told her “No one cares if you die, Lisa,
ecause you’re dead already” Her beauty, vulnerability
and breakability soften her, making her more attractive
than challenging to audiences. “I’m not really dead” Around the time when Jolie
won an Oscar for this role, the actress also played up something of a “Cool Crazy Girl”
persona in real life. "Freedom is pretty to me. Things that maybe are dangerous,
make you feel alive, make you feel, you know, free." This Type 3 character represents
an appealing level of danger to the status quo. She refuses to play by the rules,
but she’s cute and playful enough that the sense of threat
isn’t truly terrifying. And while her story might emphasize the gravity of her
mental issues at points "I'm just the crazy slut
with a dead husband!" (laughs) more often than not it tends
to resolve by making her feel relatable Even in a film like
Basic Instinct, where Sharon Stone’s femme fatale
is clearly a murderous psychopath, the audience is encouraged
to focus more on the beauty and sex appeal that make her
more alluring than alarming. The “Cool Crazy Girl” underlines
how central sexuality is to this trope overall. Despite her fearsome qualities, the unhinged female character is
frequently very attractive to men, with some going so far as to claim that this woman is
automatically better in bed. “How come the deeply troubled women,
you know, deeply, deeply troubled, they're always the best in bed?” In the past, the crazy woman type
has frequently been linked to any sexual preferences that
were labeled as “deviant” or “other”. The very label of “crazy woman”
is not only offensive to people suffering from mental illness, but also has very
gendered connotations. Even the word “hysteria” derives from the
Greek for “of the womb” and was historically thought to
be a purely female condition. "Who is it?" -" A hysterical woman." "Are you insane? I don't take
calls from hysterical women." In an article called Men Really Need to
Stop Calling Women Crazy, the Washington Post’s
Harris O’Malley writes, "'Crazy' is such a convenient
word for men, perpetuating our
sense of superiority. When women are too emotional,
we say they are being irrational. Crazy. Wrong.” “What are you, a crazy woman?” In the aftermath of the Me Too
and Time’s Up movements, women’s so-called craziness - and their desires to challenge
and change systems that harm them - are finally being
perceived differently. Each time the crazy woman
appears onscreen, she sends a flare up,
helping us to see that perhaps it’s not these women
who are crazy but the society
they live in. "Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is." If you’re new here,
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