The Romantic American "Psycho": You's Complex Storytelling

this video contains spoilers of you seasons one through three and mention slash in-depth discussions that may be triggering to some viewers such as mental illness eating disorders ableism satanism self-harm suicide and domestic violence if you or someone you know is struggling please reach out for help viewer discretion is heavily advised as we've seen the story of the guy who's charming but ultimately is like really possessive but his motivation for killing his reason why he would stalk someone the reason why he would do due diligence on someone like back is totally gendered there's there's obviously this pattern where like young men seem to really believe that they're they're owed a form of attention that they feel they're not getting it's not in i don't think it's intrinsic amen i actually think it's because of the stories we're told by the media we've we've we've consumed over our lives a lot of these things that we've just sort of lazily accepted and consumed in the past and passed off as as like a like a desirable relationship model is crazy how do you get back into the mindset of this uh sociopathic psycho what do you think it says about our society that people are attracted to this uh yeah i have to say he to me is an allegory he's a metaphor he's a commentary he's not a real person i don't think that we could actually clinically diagnose joe how much we are willing to be patient and forgive someone who inhabits a body that looks something like like mine the color of my skin my gender these sorts of things these sorts of privileges points the finger a little bit at the viewer to make them question their own allegiances to these characters and you know maybe take that into you make the decision yeah hello you out of all the long and pretentious videos you could have clicked on today you clicked on mine are you flirting with me sorry hello hello i'm shanspear not shakespeare and it's easy to tell the difference between us because i have a hat to cover my big ass forehead unlike some people if you're new here you're an associate i avoid eye contact with when i see you out in public don't wave at me i don't know you but if you're returning hey bestie how you doing what are you getting for christmas what are you getting me for christmas so i recently finished watching season three of the hit netflix series you you don't usually hear the words hit and netflix series in the same sentence for legal reasons but the show is doing well like really well the mark season one alone left on social media when it first came to the platform was enough to cause the rapture i'm talking tom and jerry memes to the left and misogyny to the right we were very busy that day but there's something really great about you i mean for one you're really pretty and you're smart and so funny but enough about you let's talk about the show for a minute oh brother this guy stinks i don't know if it's the social media presence surrounding it or the hilariously dislikable characters but it's one of those series that i feel pop culture will be loyal to no matter what happens the way most people are about stranger things or more recently squid game on the surface it reads like your run-of-the-mill psychological thriller right it was a typical lifetime slot filler with drama and sex and serial killer love interest but once you dive deeper you find that everyone has a different opinion on what the show is really about so i want to explore that with you today discussing four main sources what caroline kepnes the author of the book series thinks what sarah gamble the co-producer and writer of the television adaptation thinks what pin badgely who plays joe goldberg on the show thinks and then we'll do a brief analysis of what the fans of the show think spoiler alert it's just stigma and bad vibes sort of like my entire college experience for the purpose of this video i'm going to pretend the book and the adaptation are the same thing think of the book like an extension of the show where we get to see more of joe's thoughts in relation to the adaptations portrayal of his actions i'm going to be focusing primarily on season one but we'll get into some season three shenanigans when it feels right so buckle up go get some snacks play some christmas music i don't give a [ __ ] this is the result of a month straight of work 37 pages of notes 42 sources hundreds of submissions to sift through and 45 pages of script so i ask you again what are you getting me for christmas i'm not a big fan of the romance genre especially not the infamous romantic comedy they're usually laden with cringy moments and face sucking grotesqueries sure i've watched clueless and i've read much ado about nothing i've watched john chavolta and olivia newton john drive off into the sunset literally drive off into the sunset and i've seen romantic comedies come to life before my very eyes remember when blake lively and ryan reynolds got married on that slave plantation so romantic that's what i dislike about the romance genre the saliva the formulaic plots the fact that they all have one thing or another to do with blake lively because here's pin badgely and penn badgley plays joe goldberg a hopeless romantic and sappy gentleman seemingly out of place on a show dedicated to blood near-death experiences and used tampon hoarders but that's the thing about not really caring much for the romance genre you find it in media you're not really looking for it in horror slapstick comedy psychological thrillers romance has become such a cultural touchstone that we gauge our own success by it and judge others if they don't have it joe goldberg knows exactly what i mean always the lover never the loved he goes to extraordinary lengths in order to be the perfect boyfriend for his love interest bec he's a great listener he pays attention commits and he commits intensely but like summer at the end of 500 days beck is gone unreachable to the man who desperately loved her at the end of the book as joe listens to a wedding happening on the other side of the woods that he stands in he understands this loneliness he makes peace with it i will probably die alone he says as chet and rose the wedding goers on the other side of the trees vow to spend the rest of their lives together of course he'll die alone he's a tragic hero after all his one true love beck is lying dead in a grave at his feet dead because he strangled her twice an unspecified amount of time prior and he'll never get to reap the benefits of all of his hard work and aggressive dedication she will die loved and he well at its core you fits the mold of any classic romantic comedy and this is not unintentional caroline kepnes the author of the original book as well as its two sequels hidden bodies and you love me set out to make a love story that could rival the greatest she wanted it to be full of whimsical dialogue and star-crossed lovers joe takes center stage as the intelligent sensitive male lead his words not mine and checks off boxes that hollywood puts in fine print when they green light these sort of things he's conventionally attractive in the patrick dempsey dr mcdreamy sort of way he's able-bodied as most leads across genres are and he's white so very white he is the essence of what hollywood requires for romantic comedies in rom-com our failure to see black romantic comedies soraya roberts examines how cultural whitewashing has caused audiences of the classic romantic comedy to look the other way from black lead romance movies despite their being in abundance sometimes an overabundance depending on who's making them of black lead romance movies they rarely reach broad audiences even when these movies do well in the box office like 2002's brown sugar they're still met with reluctance as a studio executive said of a possible brown sugar sequel quote love does not really resonate with black people comedy does end quote did did he just call me in this narrowing and other ring of blackness as well as the narrowing and othering of all divested identities like people of color queer people neurodivergent people plus-sized people mentally ill people and disabled people has led the classic rom-com genre to be overwhelmingly whitewashed cis able-bodied able-minded and heterosexual so joe is all of these things because he has to be in order for wider audiences the characters he seduces and everyone pulling the strings to find him appealing and disarming enough to star in a romantic comedy he is also resilient in his quest for love as most male leads are no is not a word in his vocabulary just like jake gyllenhaal getting anne hathaway's number from someone who was not ian hathaway in love and other drugs therefore foregoing consent or how martin lawrence takes the license plate number off the back of his partial love interest car and shows up to her job unwelcome in a thin line between love and hate joe goldberg will do anything to make sure he and beck are together as he says in chapter 2 of the novel before he tells the audience that he's been staking out beck's house without her knowledge quote love takes work in quote this is where you as a romantic comedy become subversive in my opinion it takes these quirky original tropes of bygone romantic comedies like cute stalking moments and it turns them on their head it bloodies them suddenly joe is not the dashing wise doctor mcdreamy suddenly he's patrick bateman staring at himself in the mirror as he has sex with an unnamed woman this is what caroline kepnes intended she wanted to make a romance novel without the gloss or fog that usually mask predatory behaviors in all of our favorite films she wanted to create a love and other drugs where jake gyllenhaal straight up murks anne hathaway after stealing her number you know before taylor swift gets to him first she wanted to create a twilight where edward cullen stalked bella swan watched her while she slept climbed into her window without her knowing or consenting and gas lit her for like what six months before he ultimately caused her death oh sorry did i summarize the actual plot again in other words caroline kepnes wanted to create a novel that stephanie meyer would write unironically and i think she succeeded in that while also creating a novel that would ruin every romance that came before it because now we can't look away from how similar you is to the classics even while it remains subversive on page 23 joe states quote sometimes you have to play around with the facts in order to get the girl i have seen enough romantic comedies to know that romantic guys like me are always getting into jams like this in quotes the way in which joe gets into these jams usually comes about through his use of social media which is ironic because joe often laments about how society stares at their screens until their eyes pop out and how we're all becoming slaves to the internet and yada yada yada let me look at instagram for 18 hours in peace but he utilizes social media and his phone in general just as much as say beck but the way in which he uses it makes joe and by extension the audience think that he's so much better than these shallow vapid city girls of the peach salinger persuasion spoiler he's not joe uses social media to get closer to his love interests which sounds harmless in theory the first thing most people do when they meet someone new is to try for their socials especially because giving out phone numbers in this day and age is like telling someone where you live which is nothing at all like the empty house tours or posts with your new keys on social media seriously try to refrain from doing that joe starts by searching beck's name she's somehow the only guinevere beck in the world according to him and this proves that quote the internet was designed with love in mind from there he consumes information about her that he finds in bios that accompany her writing on various platforms and he makes sure to knock her down a peg as we soon find is something he does a lot with his love interest by saying she writes blogs and thinly veiled diary entries as opposed to the more highbrow essays and short stories he finds out that she was born on nantucket that her father passed away due to addiction that she was wait listed and accepted into brown university that she has a brother named clyde and his sister named anya and then ever so easily joe finds out where beck lives she lives on bank street a quote tony sleepy ridiculously safe and expensive west village area end quote the housing is provided by brown university for winners of their essay contest it's a parlor level apartment which matters because beck doesn't have curtains like not even the useless sheer ones that are used more so for decoration than privacy not even blinds not even a sheet and this matters not because i'm blaming back for the subsequent ease joe experiences with watching her every sometimes naked move but because it wiggles out another theme within the show everyone thinks they're safe this is a romantic comedy where it's okay for men to banish no from their vocabulary not only does beck's decision to throw it back like that tom and jeremy reflect her alleged desire to be watched making everyone around her a voyeur to the inner workings of her personal life it also reveals that she doesn't really expect anyone to be standing outside her window with malicious intent and if she does joe is quite possibly the last person on that list it's not just because he's a disarming lead in a romantic comedy but it's because joe rarely gets the time of day from his leading lady beck sure romantic leads may be reluctant to fall in love they may start off with the infamous enemies to lovers trope but they always always drift back together by the end of the movie that's the romantic part of the romantic comedy in the television show the attempt to paint their relationship as a similar love story is clear much of beck's characterization has been watered down from the distant wonton woman she was in the book she seems to genuinely like joe in the television adaptation and it makes me sick of course regardless of medium joe is an unreliable narrator it's possible we're viewing his projection of beck rather than the real beck this is harder to convey in a television show where we expect to be able to trust our own eyes rather than a book where we're forced to realize everything joe sees is biased but going strictly off of dialogue and direct feelings that beck relays to her friends which we have access to thanks to joe's stalking we see that beck was not into joe the way typical women leads are in romantic comedies she goes days sometimes weeks without talking to him even when her friends urge her to she very rarely calls or texts she stands him up on numerous occasions in favor of other people sometimes even lying to him and saying that she has school assignments that need finishing or class meetings that don't exist for much of the novel beck remains distant from joe she quite literally calls him a maybe not a definite yet he concocts this idea in his head that she's all over him for instance when they have sex for the first time joe finishes within 8 seconds and that's whatever it happens after they finish beck begins to distance herself even further from joe telling her friends that she got too deep too fast again end quote referencing her last premature relationship even after jo kills peach who he thought served as a blockage in the relationship beck still goes weeks without reaching out as she confides in her therapy letters to herself she quotes reels in men and loses interest when she has them in quotes that's why she imagines herself getting married to different men despite not really wanting a marriage or why she hooks up with people like dr nikki who has a wife and kids she quotes loves to be wanted she loves new things end quote and joe is just one of those things that's new to her until he isn't caroline kepnes created a female lead in her romantic movie that didn't ascribe to traditional romantic dynamics she didn't fall head over heels and dedicate herself solely to joe upon meeting him she didn't wait by the phone for his call throughout most of the novel she acts in her own very best interest or as joe would say as he strangles her she was solipsistic to the bone and she was blasphemous because all she wants is her beck was selfish that shouldn't be a death sentence but we can at least admit that her actions especially in the novel makes her a bad person and that's not something you see every day in romantic comedies the fact that joe doesn't end up with any of his love interest throughout all of the seasons despite giving it his all is probably the most subversive part of the book and television adaptation true love in this world doesn't conquer all like it has in so many romantic comedies before joe is alone a male romance lead without his leading lady i wonder whose fault that is i think one of the juiciest things about being a human being is diving into your own problematic desires and the contradictions within ourselves seeing what's fun in a fantasy and what's scary in real life sarah gamble joe goldberg is scary not just because of that emotionless yet feral face pin badgely excels at come on buddy unclench but because he represents something menacing that everyone regardless of gender identity has known or will come to know at some point in their life the comments under this video i can only imagine for the record i am one hundred percent joking i mean i love men i love jungkoos wait i should i should put my man before that i love my man i love jungkook sock i love jeff goldblum these are all very valid men joe goldberg on the other hand is on thin [ __ ] ice the thing that joe represents is much more than his gender identity in fact it's something that can be perpetuated by anyone not just men in the past we've used words like machismo or male chauvinism to describe men who behave and think like joe more recently however the term toxic masculinity has taken center stage it first popped up in academic circles specifically feminist circles but has gained a footing among the general population from signs at protest to incorrigible dialogue on arguably the best show on television right now toxic masculinity has become ingrained in our understanding of gender roles well kind of despite its usage on social media and in political spheres the term toxic masculinity has become more of a buzzword and like all great buzzwords the public's understanding of it is very low now i love a good discussion about toxic masculinity watch any of my videos and you'll probably hear it mentioned once or 34 times it's a very vague word that allows us to dip our toes in critical theory if only for a second the more i read about it the more i realize just how vague it could be in the problem with a fight against toxic masculinity michael salter argues that though its use is familiar in both progressive and conservative circles neither group really has a true understanding of the forces at play within the toxic aspect of toxic masculinity salter asserts that beneath the general discussion of rigid gender guidelines and a culture that champions violence are other forces at play that sustain the entire structure of toxic masculinity forces that often go overlooked one example that salter uses is that the alcohol industry allegedly funds research that purports violence being linked to masculinity and drinking culture rather than alcohol itself despite the fact that studies show that domestic violence rises in places with a dense amount of liquor stores as heidi matthews an assistant professor of law at osgoode hall law school at york university states toxic masculinity like what the scholar catherine rottenberg has called neo-liberal feminism quote recognizes gender inequality while simultaneously denying that socioeconomic and cultural structures shape our lives in quotes as a result those who oppose toxic masculinity see it as systemic but they don't seem to see the system end quote toxic masculinity is about power and it's about who has this power matthew cites the police industrial complex as another hidden force beneath the more general label of toxic masculinity i would argue that race plays a big factor specifically in terms of white supremacy therefore the toxic masculinity joe represents hides a system of power beneath it a power that i would argue is characterized by his white male privilege and society's investment in upholding whiteness as superior this is one of the themes penn badgley who plays joe picked up on in the show he states i think what joe is meant to be is an embodiment and a portrait of the parts of us that can't escape rooting for him in a more just society we would all see joe as problematic and not be interested in the show but that's not the society we live in if anyone other than a young white man were to behave like these characters behave nobody's having it in quotes parenthetical note here i think what pin badgely is talking about leans more towards white supremacy rather than white privilege i don't know if it's a privilege that white people can be protected or rewarded for acting like joe i think it's more so an entire white supremacist system that allows them to be protected but i view it like a fruit of the tree a lot of people are using white privilege in reference to that one kid who was just found not guilty of murdering protesters because they see an obvious inequality black and brown kids are executed by police and civilians for much less than what he did but i don't think the situation is just white privilege at work white privilege is becoming something we're finally willing to name which is great don't get me wrong but there's an entire system of power at play that we're failing to see in certain situations power that you reap if you're a white person power that will continue to protect you and continue to oppress people of color picking up the fruit when it falls does nothing in the long run because the tree is still there it's going to continue shedding fruit the only way we can see action is by digging that [ __ ] up you have to go for the roots i'm not solid in my theory so i don't want to talk at length about that yet so for now white privilege if you even so much as think that chad has white privilege he will be knocking your door down at 1am with a 5-page research paper about how tough his life has been how hard his family has worked for their wealth and real estate how racism no longer exists in america because by golly the declaration of independence says all men are created equal the same declaration that was penned by slave owners in favor of the colonies that were 20 enslaved black people at the time if you think like chad i'm really not going to argue with you oh wait yes i am people make understanding white privilege harder than it needs to be and white people failing to see it or refusing to see it is by design peggy mcintosh wrote in a 1989 journal titled white privilege unpacking the invisible knapsack quote my schooling gave me no training and seeing myself as an oppressor as an unfairly advantaged person or as a participant in a damaged culture i was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will my schooling followed the pattern my colleague elizabeth minich has pointed out whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral normative and average and also ideal so that when we work to benefit others this is seen as work which will allow them to be more like us in quote macintosh compares white privilege to an invisible knapsack a knapsack she was given at birth and one that she carries around with her without even having to think about it this knapsack holds everything from advantages to pleasantries she may take for granted it's important to note that people of color are not born with this invisible knapsack and yet we're able to see it swaying on the backs of our white counterparts macintosh makes a list of things she attributes to white privilege taking care not to include things that may be impacted by class religion or geographic location but she notes that these things are inherently linked a few items on the list include quote i can go shopping alone most of the time pretty well assured that i will not be followed or harassed i can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented i can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race i can criticize our government and talk about how much i fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider i can choose blemish cover or bandages in flesh color and have them more or less match my skin end quote some of these seem harmless right they're mostly about being represented in the media being left alone when you go shopping never having to fear race plays a role in everyday interactions that's what i mean when i say white privilege isn't as hard to understand as people make it seem it doesn't mean you have a hard life it doesn't mean you hate people of color it doesn't mean you and brad pitt are besties it means that society invests in you it invests in you because it was built to uphold white supremacy you are the expectation not the exception and look i get it you may be asking yourself why society would want to uphold systems of discrimination in a country founded on equality and freedom but the answer to that is also simple who is free when the country was founded and who does the country continue to protect think of it this way i come from an immigrant father who came to america at 17 without his family and without much money i also grew up in an abusive household as a black woman i faced what scholars have called double jeopardy where not only am i discriminated against for my gender but i also face structural and individual racism i grew up for a portion of my life in poverty there were times when we didn't know where our next meal was coming from times where we had to sit in dark or cold homes because our lights got turned off and yet there are still parts of my identity that make me privileged i am cisgender meaning i am privileged because systems in our society protect me more than they would protect a trans person i'm able-bodied meaning i am not discriminated against by our ableist society the way a disabled person is for instance i don't have to worry about losing my benefits when i get married the way disabled people in america have to i'm also college educated which is something a large portion of our world will never experience due to finances or what have you and as of now i am financially stable if there were an emergency i would probably be able to cover it unlike people who are impoverished my blackness womanhood family immigration status or abusive childhood doesn't negate my other sources of privilege this privilege seems harmless but on the other side of that privilege is an entire system a system that discriminates violates and oppresses underprivileged people you reap the benefits of structural racism while i suffer from it for example if we're both applying to the same jobs with the same resume the same talent or hard working skills as one another and the only difference between us is that your name is sally and mine is shania did you know you have a higher chance of being chosen for the job or at least called in for an interview because you have a stereotypically white name and i don't or to use the series u as an example if people were to look at marion played by tati gabriel who is a korean and black woman and then they were to look at joe goldberg played by penn badgley who is a white man did you know people are more likely to view marion as the villain in the show rather than the actual serial killer stalker and misogynist just because of her race no well it's happening on the youth subreddit as we speak i think the idea that joe goldberg's power lies within his white male privilege is evidenced perfectly by the way people treat the women on the show especially the one woman of color i'm not counting karen minty from season 1 because the show treated her bad enough and no one on reddit seems to remember her anyways but i digress let's start with joe's first fixation on the show guinevere beck she has been called annoying shallow unspecial and mediocre she was so unlikable in fact that people cheered at her death some people even thought she deserved it this reception can either be attributed to her characterization as an imperfect victim of domestic violence which makes it harder for people to sympathize with her or it can simply be because she's a woman i do admit that she does come across as annoying sometimes more so in the book than in the series but damn did i want the girl to die as shannon zutorius explains and i can fix you why we love joe goldberg and hate gwynevere beck beck and claudia are very similar characters this matters for both claudia and beck's reception because it reveals something about us outside of viewership it reveals something about us as people claudia was a character created especially for the series as she doesn't exist in the books she's the mother of paco joe's makeshift sun figure whom he protects feeds and loves possibly the only authentic love joe experiences in the entire show claudia is addicted to drugs which she uses to cope with the violent abuse she experiences at the hands of her white ex-law enforcement boyfriend the similarities between beck and claudia really stop at the domestic abuse aspect of their characters if anything claudia and marion are almost identical in their characterization but sutoria states quote like claudia admitting to putting her own child in harm's way and letting a man who beats her get away with it beck admits to being a woman with complications and harmful intentions she admits to her faults and issues and by doing this she shatters the view of innocent domestic abuse victims that society seems to accept for those wishing to report their abusers she did not do what we deemed as quote right for a victim in quote and therefore her death is justified to us end quote marian's reception is similar she's a recovering addict who endangered her child's life by driving her around while under the influence despite cleaning her life up and trying her hardest to correct her past awful behavior people still view her as a villain she gets called boring unnatural annoying they theorize that she's the one manipulating joe with little to no evidence they believe she was the one who acted violently against her ex-husband in the library even though it was clear that he was the aggressor they also think she just so happens to be the only you fixation that joe doesn't have chemistry with despite you know natalie existing and don't get me started on how everyone treated love she was also called boring until she turned out to be just like joe and then season 3 came around and people started saying things like this quote love is easily the most stressful wife any man can ever have i completely don't blame joe for losing interest in her and eventually killing her love caused most of the issues in this show end quote viewers began saying that she was setting joe's progress back that she was at fault for joe killing people in this season despite joe killing people in every season regardless of what woman he was fixating on love didn't make him push marion's ex-boyfriend off the parking garage and stab him 34 times outside of a yoga class love didn't make him break into marion's apartment and hide under her bed without her knowing love didn't make him cheat on her with the neighbor within three minutes of moving into their home you know who made joe do that joe made joe do that and love just put an ax on the side of his mistress and bludgeoned her teenage boyfriend and tried to kill joe and thought about killing marion and got rid of candice somehow and delilah and by extension ruined ellie's life am i missing any we can blame her for those those are valid you can also find power aka joe's white male privilege in his entitlement in a patriarchal society especially one that favors men who look like joe men are conditioned to see themselves as the dominant identity this leads to entitlement i'm sure you've seen the news articles or survivor stories where women are attacked or killed for refusing a man's advances you see it in the racialized attacks carried out by white men against people of color because they feel entitled to that person's life or that person's submission society is conditioning primarily white cis men to believe that everything in this world is theirs for the taking we further condition them when we give them three months in jail for an unconscious girl behind a dumpster when we allow them to go home and watch television after lynching a man on video when we send them home to sleep and party at bars after shooting protesters we tell them that they matter more than the person they harmed and that is exactly what's happening with you to a lesser extent for a large portion of the book as well as in the television show joe goldberg subscribes to this entitlement of power not only over the women he romanticizes but over other men who he perceives as feminine or weak being a big macho man or feeling low and emasculated are running themes throughout the novel they're spoken much more explicitly and i would even say more frequently than in the show on page 78 joe rings up a customer who's buying doctor strange the new stephen king book that everyone within a 20 mile radius is raving about and he states quote the next [ __ ] is rummaging through his wallet for his credit card to buy his stephen king so he can fingers crossed read about a sicko doing sick things because he's too much of a bee to do all the sick things he wants to do things he probably wanted to do since he was a kid in quote and on the same page joe says of benji who he has locked down in the basement quote i'm doing the kid a favor when he gets out of here he's going to be pissed about being locked up but he's also going to thank me for making him into a man in quote he calls benji a princess a [ __ ] and on numerous occasions three very feminine coded words that allude to his weakness and says that when mr mooney locked him up in a cage as a kid he didn't quote fuss and shake like a little girl in quote side note but i also think it's great that the novel and television series shows this conditioning of young men taught through generations mr mooney and joe's dad were two abusive violent individuals teaching jill that this is how men show love he even states in the book quote mr mooney cared enough about me to teach me a lesson i learned in quotes this ties back into a major theme sarah gamble claims to explore in the first season as she states quote what messages are we feeding our little boys and what's the worst case scenario of that end quote when joe and beck are on their first date joe stretches to quote remind beck that he has biceps and he's ready to kill anyone who dare look at her in that he would quote [ __ ] kill hugh grant in quote because beck once watched a movie with him in it he feels entitled to beck especially to her body his desire for her in so many words made me want [Music] to or put simply it made me want to vomit he leers at her chest and separates their time spent together into categories based on how sexual it was there's the sexless category like listening to her feelings or getting lunch in the middle of the day and there's the sexual category where beck looks at him longer than three seconds i guess joe states on page 168 quote your body is an offering a payment for all of those hands-off phone calls those lunches your body and your hair and your lips and your thighs everything is for me end quote he complains when she asks him to run errands with her or spend time with her doing anything other than having sex stating christmas shoppers walking by probably think i'm your gay best friend my dick hurts back where's my holiday end quote when they do finally have sex for the first time and joe busts like a canned soda in a freezer he feels he feels emasculated powerless he turns to the idea of self-harm in order to punish himself for being weak quote i was going to [ __ ] myself and everyone in the shop and take out the eric carmen cd and smash it into bids because i stopped believing in myself and our future in quotes later that day he and beck have date plans but she bails joe throws a vase at the wall but fails to break it quote i must be the olympus limp dick in the world i can't even break a vase he ends up setting his hand on fire with a candle as punishment and states quote i'd set my dick on fire if i could but we know that i'm a limp dick i don't have the balls i don't have the balls to do that end quote i'm sorry i really have to lay off the analysis for a second because some sentences are just better off heard than explained like this one if i had a folding tv dinner tray i would hurl it out of the window and pound my chest like a barbarian like a thick [ __ ] alpha gorilla none of these words are in the bible not a single one the second time joe and back have sex he says that he quote owns her when he's inside of her in quotes he goes into the bathroom afterwards and quotes pees all over the floor of the shower and marks his place his home and back in quote he is declaring her as property claiming ownership over her like she's a possession to be had on page 367 he states you should own what you love this is what the cage represents joe's entitlement the final stage in owning someone and exerting power over them he keeps them enclosed like one of his rare books deciding for himself what they are allowed to eat drink and do within the cage the cage is more or less a last chance for his victim to acknowledge him as the dominant one in the dynamic the true man that they should respect beck's last moments within this box represent this idea as well in the book joe has her read a dan brown book with him to respark their relationship nerd beck seduces him lures him into the cage and they have sex for a final time as joe leaves the cage he leaves the door open behind him because quotes in this new world end quote she's fully submitted to him allowing him to own her even while she was trapped signifying that his plan worked or so he thought because beck didn't mean that [ __ ] [ __ ] that [ __ ] and [ __ ] joe she said she seduced him in order to escape which she does attempt yet fails to execute in this scene of the book we finally get deeper insight into beck's character and it sits at a complete opposite of the romanticized version joe made her out to be quote you always look at me like i'm so amazing beck states and i don't know i don't know why you'd do that because i'm not end quote joe is incensed by this point because he now understands that beck will never fully submit to him even after all he did to exert his power over her he states i killed for you i deserve you end quote we end up in the same place we ended up in the first section with joe standing over beck's dead body lamenting over the loss of his true love [Music] there is a medical condition called misophonia which causes its sufferers to react with panic or even extreme rage and everyday sounds like chewing humming even breathing not everyone who hears the sound is going to react violently but given the right set of preconditions violence is absolutely possible [Music] this is a quote from cbs's criminal minds and their 2018 episode mixed signals mixed signals follows the bau's quest to track down a devolving unsub who kills his victims by drilling into the left side of their skull this area as the episode's medical examiner explains is a temporal lobe which houses the primary auditory cortex it's in control of receiving auditory information and translating it for us to understand this is significant because like most criminal minds episodes the mo often points to a motive and that motive also like most criminal mind episodes is usually based on a mental disorder in this case the unsub has a condition called misophonia a disorder that causes individuals to have heightened reactions to auditory stimuli the episode depicts the unsub killing people due to a low frequency ringing in his head a ringing that his victims can't seem to hear it also serves as a double reference to the hum phenomenon which has people all over the world including in taos new mexico where the episode is set reportedly hearing an unexplainable low buzzing or droning noise while clinical reports suggest misophonia may cause people to lash out if they hear certain noises it's said to only occur in extreme cases and even then according to dr jennifer j brout there is no scientific research that backs this up the portrayal of misophonia leading someone on a random killing spree sat uncomfortably with dr browd as a psychologist who specializes with the disorder she decided to question brain frazier a writer for criminal minds about the portrayal of which he stated quote writing the show is a collaborative process and ideas often flow from real life and personal experiences of the writers and actors someone may casually mention a psychological or psychiatric disorder that a relative or friend suffers from and the writer's job is to explain how this particular disorder or sometimes traumatic event might lead to serial murder in quote frazier's response calls into question what andrew berecki calls the show's frail attempts at sympathetic betrayals in quotes where they try to emphasize that not everyone with a mental illness commits violent acts of murder while simultaneously striving to pervert the mental illnesses of their friends or family in order to fashion it into a stigmatizing portrayal for tv entertainment these portrayals lead to a spread of misinformation via sensationalism and eventually leads to the fear and discrimination of mentally ill people in music and the monster sounding fear and mental illness in criminal minds andrew bureki argues that the way in which criminal minds uses its musical score during scenes directly involving mentally ill people committing or alluding to violence further adds to the stigma of mental illnesses as it creates a negative reaction for audiences who hear the music coupled with the sensationalized violence carried out on screen what a long sentence but not every stigmatizing portrayal of mental illnesses or disabilities requires what berecki refers to as quotes conflicting images and sounds in quote simple acts of stereotyping or exaggerating mental illnesses for the sake of entertainment leads to stigma according to kirsten fawcett these stereotypes and exaggerations can include portraying mentally ill people as dangerous different in appearance such as portraying them with wild eyes or a deformity portraying them as childish or silly negatively portraying them as all severe cases insinuating that mentally ill people cannot strive for recovery or portraying mental health facilities as creepy and haunted the problem with these stereotypes and exaggerations is that they're often untrue especially in terms of violence in reality mentally ill people are less likely to harm others than they are likely to be harmed caitlyn o'callahan states that quote only three to five percent of violent acts are attributed to individuals with mental illness in fact people with severe mental illnesses are 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population in quotes yet media depictions insinuate otherwise quote diven bach analyzed the portrayals of psychological disorders on prime time television he found that characters who are identified through behavior or labeled as having a mental illness were 10 times more likely than other tv characters to commit a violent crime and between 10 to 20 times more likely to commit a violent crime than someone with a mental illness would be in real life end quote this leads to tangible consequences for mentally ill people in real life as social stigmas surrounding their disorders results in them losing social status job opportunities and even medical care this is evidenced by the fact that people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder one of the most stigmatized mental disorders may be turned away from treatment according to sandra h sulzer quote the majority of providers described my sample openly excluded the bpd patient population from care colleagues don't touch it one provider reported all clinicians who described seeing these patients had stories of interacting with colleagues who didn't understand their decision i mean and they the colleagues literally said i won't put any border lines on my case are you crazy you treat people with borderline are you nuts end quote this is the stigmatized culture surrounding such shows like you despite joe not being formally diagnosed on the show informal diagnosis is a whole other beast fans have theorized that joe has borderline personality disorder narcissistic personality disorder erotomania anti-social personality disorder or obsessive-compulsive personality disorder informal diagnosis include the following sarah gamble the executive producer and co-creator of the show refers to joe as unhinged on at least two occasions another flattening word often used as a synonym for crazy interviewers casually throw around words like psychopathic and psycho in the book beck calls joe a rush of names like [ __ ] sick and creep among other more stigmatizing names like psycho loon nut job and freak in the sequel hidden bodies joe states in chapter 2 i picked this song because i'm taking it all back all the beautiful things in the world that were corrupted by my tragically ill girlfriend gwynevere beck i see now that she suffered from borderline personality disorder you can't fix that end quote although pin badgerly tries to amend this by saying the show is not a quote clinical approach end quote there still seems to be a culture surrounding mental illness and you so you may be asking yourself like i am after writing 20 pages of script so far what the [ __ ] is the point the point is that you is not immune to portraying or insinuating negative stereotypes about mentally ill people even if they pretend they aren't linking joe's actions to a disorder by not diagnosing him i want us to look at the different informal diagnoses provided for joe goldberg on social media and by the crew and then i want to look at stigmas that are often associated with these specific disorders because i've got the time do you to start elizabeth nabitha esmeralda rihee explores the psychology of kapnus's version of joe goldberg citing such studies as bernadetta and nandita's 2019 thesis that evaluates the perceived histrionic personality disorder occurring in amy dunn as well as the dsm-5 entries for anti-social personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder it is rihi's argument that joe goldberg portrays both of these personality disorders concluding that quote out of seven criteria of antisocial personality disorder joe goldberg shows six of them in quote including failure to ascribe to social norms deceitfulness impulsivity lack of remorse irritability and aggression and reckless disregard for the safety of self or others rihee goes on to state quote or as for narcissistic personality disorder joe goldberg shows seven criteria out of nine they are a grande sense of self-importance believe they are special or unique require excessive admiration preoccupied with fantasies of ideal love sense of entitlement often envious of others or believes that others are envious of them and shows arrogant or haughty behaviors or attitudes end quote the choice to conflate joe's actions with anti-social personality disorder directly feeds into the swarming culture of stigma surrounding personality disorders anti-social personality disorder has sort of been deemed the evil disorder with diagnosed individuals being compared to cold-blooded murderers i've mentioned how clinicians react to personality disorders like bpd but recent studies as of 2016 show that even the general public's perception of mental illnesses haven't improved too much there is a continued report of prejudice and discrimination carried out against people with mental illnesses for personality disorder specifically the public assumes that these individuals are manipulating others and into feeling sympathy for them that they choose to commit certain actions and that they may misbehave or be difficult out of choice instead of something out of their control this sort of stigma is especially harmful as it can lead to a rise in police violence against people with personality disorders as they are viewed as being intentionally difficult instead of mentally ill obsessive compulsive personality disorder is another fan favorite with kepnus's version of joe goldberg even telling his therapist that he has ocd ocd and ocpd are two different diagnoses but the general population's knowledge of ocd is far greater than most mental illnesses leading ocpd to be a well-known disorder by association in a personal essay written for headspace nadia schmidtke explains what it's like to live with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder a thick atmosphere of panic sets in because i have so much to do today i'm falling behind in my studies do the dishes run the errands start on the publication find a way to have fun and relax the irony buy groceries improve my lazy attitude and carry myself with more confidence all this before breakfast panic turns quickly to dread as i revise my schedule and wonder what was making me feel so bad i know i need to relax but when i'm not productive my mind squirrels with thoughts of what i have to do how to fix myself and navigate working with others ocpd is not a diagnosis we hear about overworking and perfectionism can sound like really positive traits in quotes and yet these traits landed nadia in a psychiatric hospital for three weeks where she was formally diagnosed with major depressive disorder and ocpd the fact that ocpd is considered a well-known disorder simply because of ocd being a well-known disorder doesn't mean that people understand the complexities and hardship that these disorders bring people throw around phrases like i'm so ocd because they like to clean their room or in the case of you karen minty says joe is ocd on her according to caitlin o'callahan these offhand mentions quote ignore the realities and seriousness of these illnesses end quote next we have erotomania or declaring bowel syndrome named after french psychiatrist declarable this syndrome is explored at length and declarable syndrome revisited a case report of erotomania and a male by maria valadas and lucilia bravo they defined erotomania as quote a psychiatric syndrome characterized by the delusional belief that one is loved by another person generally of a higher social status end quote in the media erotimania is as rare as the condition is in reality however nods to it exists though many don't name drop the specific disorder for example glenn close who played alex in 1987's fatal attraction states that she wasn't aware her character's actions were related to any disorder let alone erotimania in the film alex was a book editor who had a sexual encounter with dan a married man that's called [ __ ] bars you know nothing about that when she couldn't rekindle the relationship alex began threatening and eventually attacking dan his daughter and his wife glenn close said that she prepped for the role by speaking to two psychiatrists both of whom never mentioned a disorder by name it wasn't until the movie was released that close first heard her character's actions being conflated with erotimania i was in fatal attraction she stated and that played into the stigma i would have a different outlook on that character i would read the script totally differently end quote alex from fatal attraction is not the only eroti mania coded character in the media for starters there's like 24 different versions of fatal attraction including a film starring beyonce giselle knows carter so there's that all of these films typically show quote unquote obsessed women who create large romances out of brief encounters and will stop at nothing to get their love interest to notice them though the plot will get tweaked here and there across the films these movies all have in common the quest to position mentally ill coded characters as the antagonizers while joe is noted to have erotimania if the wikipedia page is of any merit he's still portrayed sympathetically a point that was brought up in a submission i got for this video quote i haven't seen you so i can't speak of portrayals of euronomania there but i just wish i could have female presenting characters with eurotomania that were portrayed just as sympathetically as that guy end quote another thing you has in common with these movies is the intention to position mentally ill people as the other as opposed to the innocent safe default main characters let me explain you know how in the previous sections we talked about how structures of white power have essentially flattened blackness into something unfamiliar while whiteness as a whole remains relatable to everyone and default in society the same occurs for all divested groups including disabled and mentally ill people using the work of mary beth oliver in a theory known as effective disposition theory berecki analyzes how perceived others are treated in the media both in regards to race and mental illness mary beth oliver of whom he draws information from details how the media often depicts non-white characters as aggressors or criminals furthering preconceived notions about minorities to white audiences when these notions are confirmed by the media especially by crime reality shows like cops white audiences further themselves from minorities placing them as the other in opposition to their white self or default berecki argues that mentally ill and disabled people are treated this way in the media as well with abled-bodied and neurotypical people serving as the self and disabled mentally ill and neurodivergent people serving as the other this is a big theme in the horror genre which i failed to mention in my last video it reminds me of halloween's reception by the general public when lori strode rips the mask off of michael myers the antagonist of the film we get a glimpse of the actor who plays myers audiences everywhere believe that myers was disfigured in some way so much to the point that the director of the movie had people coming up to him saying how brilliant the scene was for showing the killer's disfigured face it added to the creep value many of the fans said yet michael myers was not disfigured in the first movie he was played by tony morin and that's just tony's face when i first read about that i instinctively laughed because why did so many people think myers was disfigured when he wasn't but then i realized that there is almost an expectation for mentally ill people to be different from non-mentally ill people in order for non-mentally ill people to feel secure in themselves in the media's eyes and therefore the eyes of society the other is coded as different from the self and is more likely to perpetrate crime or violence burrecki uses dr spencer reed as an example since matthew great goopler the actor who betrays reid claims he shows quotes hints of schizophrenia asperger's syndrome and minor autism in quotes just for the record there are a few autistic people who have issues with that specific quote from matthew gray gubler not because they don't believe reed is on the spectrum but because of the insinuation that aspergers and autism are separated as aspergers is now believed to be on the autism spectrum i tried researching more into that but i haven't found a lot of sources directly from autistic people so if any autistic people specifically people who have been diagnosed with asperger's in the past before it was taken out of the dsm-5 have the energy or are comfortable doing so and comment your thoughts about this that would be amazing alright back to it the hints of schizophrenia are especially concerning to read in the show as his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and he quotably apprehends a lot of schizophrenic unsubs in his line of work because of this spencer fears that this diagnosis will cause him to lash out violently or in turn be hunted down by the very fbi team he works with bracky states reed's fears of becoming a killer and being hunted by the bau demonstrate that the characters themselves consider the mentally ill as primarily violent criminals in quotes this is also true of disabled representation in the media berecki references an analysis of dancer in the dark which is about a woman who is actively losing her vision and resorts to violent murder after someone takes advantage of her blindness her son is also at risk of losing his vision if she can't afford the medical costs for surgery in time at the end of the movie her son receives successful treatment and she is convicted of murder and faking her blindness in order to exploit the american health care system which is just wow she is subsequently sent to the gallows for execution the study of this movie conducted by jennifer iverson concludes quote films typically depict disability as a pathology of individual bodies rather than a construct of social stigma and discrimination if the disabled character cannot pass or be miraculously cured filmic narratives eradicate the character thus implying that the external disability is a sign of internal deformities and that the character must be removed for the good of society in this way the incurable disabled character is commodified institutionalized demonized ignored or murdered in longmore's words better dead than disabled in quote further stigma can be found even in more recent films like 2019's joker i really hate to even bring this movie up because i just know i'll get a commenter who's like actually joker was a cinematic masterpiece and got my divorced parents to remarry me and gave me eight billion dollars so i can retire at the age of six we get it we get it but we live in a society and why joker's depiction of mental illness is dangerously misinformed annabel driscoll and mina hussein argue that despite its attempts to start a conversation about mental health todd phillips joker only adds to the stigma surrounding mental illnesses by correlating the joker's descent into violence alongside the deterioration of his mental health and his slow reduction of medicine intake the film can be considered yet another cog in the wheel of stigmatized portrayals driscoll and hussein state arthur's supposed loss of grip on reality is suggested by a peppering of nods to psychotic symptoms delusional ideas of a grandoice nature and hallucinations of his neighbor which are confirmed by his eventual admission to a psychiatric institution the result of this is to disappointingly remove arthur's agency and divert attention from a potentially more stimulating conversation about wealth inequality and its responsibility for societal collapse end quote driscoll and hussain also argue that the movie flattens arthur's symptoms making it seem like a conglomeration of many different illnesses furthering the belief that mental illnesses are all the same and you fans think joe is a psychopath but mental health experts say they're wrong julian afterline interviews social scientist pamela rutledge who states joe quote seems to be an amalgam of personality traits at abnormal levels that are constructed to make a good story and create a character that elicits a certain amount of empathy but the reality naftalin goes on to say is that quote very few people with mental illness behave like this in real life end quote mental illness of course is a spectrum two people who are diagnosed with the same mental health disorder probably won't exhibit identical symptoms but the point of all of this is that misinformed or outright offensive portrayals of mental health disorders and disabilities only aid in the normalization of sanism and ableism in our society ableism is tentatively defined as quote discrimination in favor of able-bodied people sainism on the other hand refers to the discrimination of mentally ill or neurodivergent people sayingism tends to get absorbed under ableism especially for those who have mental illnesses that are disabling i think for this video i will refer to them separately while keeping in mind that there can be overlap between them one easy way to see how normalized ableism and sanism is in our society is to look at everyday phrases and words we use as casual descriptors words like tone deaf stupid crazy the arsler and bipolar according to sumatri banerjee words have power and often able-bodied and neurotypical people have the ability to wield that power against disabled mentally ill and neurodivergent people quote in such an environment where misconceptions about mental health abound ableist language helps perpetuate negative stereotypes about those suffering from psychosocial disabilities and further stigmatizes any helpful talk around mental illness after all a person suffering from anxiety or depression would be much less likely to come forward and discuss these issues when their very illness is trivialized and treated as a joke another way we see ableism and sanism being normalized is the prison industrial complex mentally ill people make up a larger population in prison demographics than they do mental health facilities it has been argued at length by academics that our culture's insistence on stigmatizing and betraying mental illnesses as a catalyst for violence has led to the rising population of mentally ill people in the prison system i know there are people out there who will say well they're there because they committed a crime and i mean there's a lot to be said about that statement i'm not saying mentally ill or disabled people aren't capable of committing crimes however stigma a lack of proper training and education for police as well as ableish structures that lead to lack of resources for mentally ill and disabled people directly funnel them into the system it reminds me of the school to prison pipeline where black and brown people especially young black boys are disproportionately funneled into the prison system from their school there are so many levels that aid in this disappearance of black and brown people including high police presence and predominantly black schools zero tolerance policies and even the dependence on disciplining children with on-campus police for minor offenses they committed in the classroom like disobeying the teacher we see this happen and we automatically think it's justice because of the historical demonization of these identities speaking of historical demonization the stigma associated with ableism and sanism has been weaponized against people of color queer people and trans people for years because mental illness is seen as this horrible evil thing to have it seemed like a fitting label for queer people trans people and people of color just because they were perceived as different from white straight cis people it became a thing where mental illness was synonymous with being a social outsider therefore everyone who didn't fit into acceptable categories had to be mentally ill in the late 19th century psychiatrists began analyzing the possible mental illness behind queerness this led to queer people being lobotomized or treated with conversion or aversion therapy the american psychiatric association even considered being gay a mental illness until 1987 when they took it out of the dsm altogether trans people face these same discrimination who listed being transgender as a mental health disorder in a 1990 edition of icd which stands for the international classification of diseases in order to be considered a mental health disorder it has to cause you distress and dysfunction so they viewed being transgender as a cause for those feelings i think although mental health disorders are common within the lgbtq plus community especially depression and anxiety it doesn't stem from their gender identity or their sexuality it stems from the fact that queer and trans people are treated with such violence and dehumanization that it impacts their mental health we have a history of being lobotomized and forced to vomit at pictures of our loved ones to scare the gay away for god's sake i think who revised the icd in 2018 and now trans identity is no longer classified as a mental health disorder specifically for race black people were disproportionately diagnosed with various mental disorders as a way to explain our inferiority to white people or to keep us enslaved david r williams at all authors of race and mental health patterns and challenges states quote a report based on rates of mental illness in the 1840 census falsified black insanity raids to show that the further north blacks live the higher their rates of mental illness this was interpreted as evidence that freedom made blacks quote crazy in fact blacks were regarded as so constitutionally suited for slavery that the very desire to escape slavery was defined as a mental illness called drapetomania in quote or because racist people are so good at being contradictory they even argued that freed slaves would have less chances of developing mental illnesses because they were treated with such care and supervision while they were enslaved more recently is the racialized shift in schizophrenia diagnoses as explained by jonathan metzel this source was sent in to me by a subscriber so i greatly thank you because this [ __ ] is [ __ ] up metal explains how he went through hundreds of patient charts from a closed down asylum called iona state hospital for the criminally insane an interesting side note here is that iona state hospital for the criminally insane shut down in the late 70s where it reopened as a correctional facility funny how that works metzel notes how previous diagnoses of schizophrenia were at times assigned to women who weren't considered good mothers or wives based on the gender expectations at the time in fact one of the patient charts described a woman with schizophrenic traits as getting confused and talking too loudly which embarrassed her husband then at the height of social unrest in the mid to late 60s a shift occurred in diagnoses more black men were getting diagnosed with schizophrenia and they were often related in some way or another to the civil rights movement even the dsm revised its criteria in dsm-2 including aggression and hostility as requirements for someone to be diagnosed with schizophrenia this disproportionately impacted black people especially those who were arrested during protests they became more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than their white counterparts medtel even argues that this racialized shift is how schizophrenia came to be stigmatized as a violent disorder in the first place that's some [ __ ] up [ __ ] i would highly recommend you go read that source lydia brown author of why the term psychopath is racist and ableist also notes how antisocial personality disorder or the psychopath label disproportionately affects people of color one of the requirements of being diagnosed with this disorder is to have a history of criminal arrest and misconduct quote aspd cd and odd are recognized and codified as psychiatric conditions by the medical establishment and who are the people typically diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder they are overwhelmingly poor students of color especially dark-skinned people of color who frequently have other disabilities end quotes brown goes on to state quote aspd is most often a tool for criminalizing poverty blackness brownness and disability it is the diagnostic label that legitimizes non-compliance as a mental health problem refusal to take medications non-compliant failing math class non-compliant stemming in public non-compliant if you are non-compliant you are anti-social you are mentally ill you are a psychopath end quote this normalization is why people feel so damn comfortable diagnosing joe goldberg and celebrities and strangers on the internet they don't really see mentally ill and disabled people as people and i'm not saying that i'm above participating in inherently ableist or sanest things i think my ted bundy video is a great indicator of that because i primarily used sources from academics and clinicians and a lot of that information was steeped in sanest rhetoric even though i'm trying to learn more from disabled and other mentally ill people i still have moments where i fail to be wholly inclusive for instance in the community post where i asked disabled people to chime in with their experiences i didn't even think to add alternative text to the image so people who it needed would be able to know what the [ __ ] i was talking about it really made me realize not only how privileged i am to the point where i don't have to think about these things and don't notice when other people leave these things out but it makes me realize how normalized and ingrained into our society it is for us to essentially disregard disabled or mentally ill people and without a shadow of a doubt it was not my work or my own thought processes that led me to these conclusions i think no matter how much i read about something or try to educate myself i will never be able to fill every gap because experience is the most important part of knowledge this was taught to me by disabled people other mentally ill people chronically ill people and neurodivergent people i would like to take this time to share some first-hand experiences that were so thoughtfully provided by you guys about ableism in the media and i just want to say that i appreciate you taking the energy and the time to further educate me and to allow me to share these stories with my audience in order to educate them as well because as annaleigh says a lovely subscriber who sent me a submission the absence of lived experience means that the monotonous despair of coping with disability under a system that seeks to further disable you is never present instead an able perspective of disability is given where the disability itself is the tragedy and not the social and economic implications that follow in quotes i asked can you define ableism in the media apollo a black trans neurodivergent chronically ill and physically disabled teenager replied for me ableism and media is a lack of effort in correct portrayals slash languages slash references hi i'm sarah i have autism so define ableism in media well honestly i would say the main issue with ableism in media and the way that i would define it is just feigning representation while still lacking representation so for example wanting to portray autism but not having anyone who's acting actually be autistic you know none of the actors are actresses also none of like the directors the producers the writers anyone involved in the process it's like a really big issue of like we want to portray this thing but we're not going to ask anybody about it anneliese uses they them pronouns and their disabilities include quote the formal diagnoses of adhd dyslexia neurosensory deficit type 2 diabetes and unspecified eating disorder unspecified anxiety chronic depression ocd and asthma their self-diagnosis include quote autism dyspraxia emetophobia visual snow syndrome and cptsd in quotes annalise concludes their introduction with quote i am intersex and fat in quote aspects of ableism in the media include but aren't limited to the non-disabled gays industrial complexes which make money off of disabled body minds being consulted with on disability representation non-disabled actors portraying disabled characters dissemination of pseudo bad science resulting in stigmatization of already stigmatized disabilities normalization of the incarceration of disabled people such as those with addiction diseases or stigmatized neurodivergences like schizophrenia or personality disorders as being for the greater good of the non-disabled public magnification of majority populations white non-queer non-intersex as being disabled prioritization of neurotypical holistic and abled forms of movement communication and ways of being the next part of the problem asks how do media portrayals of your specific disability or mental illness impact you r says i have been diagnosed with disassociative identity disorder since 2019 and have experienced the symptoms since childhood the id is when a child usually ages five to seven experiences repeated trauma before the age of integration of one's personality and identity and compartmentalizes into separate states of consciousness alter is short for alternate states of consciousness ableism in the media towards this disorder are very hostile and willfully ignorant ranging from are you going to hurt me or others to i wish i had that disorder doctors and nurses are not even taught updated terms and symptoms and they are still going off of those from the 90s did is not rare and is at the same percentage of the population of people with red hair at about two percent worldwide anonymous says for reference i am professionally diagnosed with some mental illnesses which are anxiety depression adhd bpd and mild psychosis i think media representation adds more stigma to mental illnesses because we are often portrayed as weird or the outcast either that or they are often portrayed as babies who can't take care of themselves they also like to glamorize these mental illnesses especially depression to make it seem like some sort of quirky disease when in reality it destroys you from inside it makes it difficult to do daily tasks like getting out of bed showering etc on the other hand other mental illnesses like psychosis bpd or did are often demonized by the media to make it seem like people who have these illnesses are inherently evil in reality we aren't these comical villains who would pounce on any chance to act violent hello okay my name is leah tourette syndrome and i'm here to talk about ableism for information purposes in media i feel like ableism has always shown i feel like ableism was always there i feel like showing disabled people for the sake of comedy was always a thing everywhere and now it's circled to to talk in modern age you know society and media whether you're on youtube tik tok or whatever you will see ableism and it's usually from the perspective of a more in-depth and harder to read type of ableism which is type that romanticizes the easy parts of a disability and then fully negates the hard parts of the disability which is romanticizing people saying i really want to have ticks this has happened online and also irl people seem oh ticks are so cute what i really want ethic disorder i've heard it everywhere and that leads into people spamming words and lives to get the person to take that word cheyenne says hello my name is cheyenne lankford and i'm blind i was born with non-hereditary glaucoma when we are portrayed it goes one of two ways where superheroes are pitiful so we can be someone else's inspiration porn they use the blindness itself as the character's personality the only show to write a blind character as a person with thoughts and feelings is avatar the last airbender while toff does technically fall under the blind person with superpower stereotype the writers worked very hard to make sure that her blindness wasn't her whole personality i really wish other writers producers would use toff as a model of how to write blind characters anonymous says hi i wanted to write in about my experience as a jewish lesbian with near debilitating borderline personality disorder i've had to confront the comfort that the representation gave me because sadly i saw my worst traits in these characters and that gave me a weird sort of validation but i had to examine why i saw that representation in only villains because neurotypicals want my disorder and in turn my experiences to be villainized i wish more people understood that bpd isn't a character flaw or a villain origin story it simply makes you kind of annoying lol but not irredeemable what i was consuming also led to internalized hatred and belief i was undeserving of love because behaviors i can't control be viewed as villainous but i found comfort in what i saw because that was all i saw this revelation has also led me to deconstruct the importance i used to place on representation as i've gotten older i realize i don't need to be seen by people who aren't like me to see myself if that makes sense i am me and that is enough i don't need to see myself to be validated as long as any portrayals of me aren't villainized as both a jew and a sapphic i have been led to believe that every aspect of myself is villainous wrong trickery manipulative and the portrayal of my mental illness through villains and bad people made me see my mental illness in the same way unlearning harmful stereotypes is hard but i try madison states so i have asthma moderate to severe when not controlled mild to moderate with my meds and depending on the time of the year and my other health and all of that jazz i was born eight weeks early with severely underdeveloped lungs and i've been medicated for asthma for as long as i can remember there is genuinely no good representation of respiratory disabilities that i can think of you can probably find plenty of characters that have asthma but if it is ever brought up it's almost exclusively as a joke the number of scenes where the character typically kid puffs their typically his inhaler as a like silly haha look they can't breathe bit is just silly for plenty of people asthma is something they've grown out of or whatever but for people like me i'll never be able to breathe right having people think i'm lazy or not trying hard enough or making a big deal out of nothing sucks especially as a fat person where those ideas slash traits are automatically applied to me because of my weight i'm not a person of color but i can only imagine how having an invisible chronic illness slash disability like asthma feels when you're already in a marginalized community black americans have the highest rates of asthma in the country and the aafa have done some good research into racial disparities in respiratory illness end quote maria says my name is maria my pronouns are she they and i'm the host of a dissociative identity system we saw your post on instagram and thought we'd contribute if that's all right we are physically disabled half blind half deaf chronic fatigue epilepsy anemia we have a stutter if that counts etc etc neurodiverse autistic and struggle with mental disorders such as depression derealization ptsd and anxiety and obviously we don't speak for the communities we are a part of as if we are the end-all be-all everyone's experiences are incredibly specific and diverse for us specifically ableism in the media comes across as demonization and misrepresentation specifically of did and people not taking our physical disabilities seriously and using them as comic relief or ignoring complex disabilities because quote they're too hard to work with in quotes and also acting like there is only one way to be disabled the media is fond of the trope of characters having a secondary side that controls them and usually is evil this is particularly harmful because when i try to explain the id to people so they'll treat us as more than subhuman they assume that there are evil alters and in some cases we have been asked so which one of you is the evil one outright in hindsight i realized that it would also benefit to hear from disabled and mentally ill people about their lived experiences outside of media stigma and character representation so i want to dedicate this section to a spur of the moment prompt how have people treated you since they became aware of your disability or mental illness i do know that i started hearing more about fibromyalgia between 2012 and 2016 before i got my diagnosis um and during that time period i remember that there were people that would come up to me and talk to me about uh a friend of a friend of a friend or like a long-distant family member or something like that and they would absolutely come up and share that that that person said they had fibromyalgia or was diagnosed with their fibromyalgia and very much related them to making it up to uh talking about them in the vein of them being lazy of them being a hypochondriac i heard that kind of relation a lot when i was younger when i realized that i did have fibromyalgia and i was realizing that the daily pain and the extreme detriment to my quality of life were connected to fibromyalgia thought about those comments and the people who those comments were made against and realizing that there were these people who were experiencing fibromyalgia and were being called by their friends and family lazy or liars and it was an intensely sad period of my life battling my own inner thoughts for not having the same kind of mobility that i used to and scared that i would be accused of the same things behind my back with from the people that i knew and cared about lauren is a person with schizophrenia who runs the youtube channel living well with schizophrenia she makes videos as educational resources on schizophrenia schizoaffective disorder for quotes people with the diagnosis their loved ones and for people who just want to learn more about the illness she didn't submit anything but i found her videos while researching and i thought it would be a welcome inclusion in a video titled conservatorships and mental illness lauren discusses the free britney movement and whether conservatorships slash guardianships are ethical in regards to mentally ill people quote so i have been in the position multiple times before where i have been deemed incompetent and unable to make decisions for myself as i pertain to my care i cannot begin to tell you how dehumanizing and condescending this felt i felt like i was being told i wasn't a real person and that others would be making all my decisions for me going forward which was essentially what was happening in quote the lauren acknowledges that there may be situations where it could be unsafe for someone with a debilitating mental illness to be in charge of their financial and personal life she states quote i'm not sure if this process is always this ethical however and deciding whether someone is capable or not of managing their own affairs and lastly shania says i was diagnosed with bipolar 2 and generalized anxiety disorder around the end of 2017 or sometime in 2018. according to the dsm-5 bipolar disorder is described as quote a clinical course of recurring mood episodes consisting of one or more major depressive episodes and at least one hypomanic episode a major depressive episode may feature quotes depressed mood for most of the day every day insomnia or hyperinsomnia nearly every day fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt and recurrent thoughts of death bipolar 2 is characterized by hypomania instead of the full-blown mania associated with bipolar 1 the manual emphasizes that bipolar 2 is not a quote milder form in quotes of bipolar compared to bipolar 1 because bipolar 2 individuals quotes have greater chronicity of illness and spend on average more time in the depressive phase of their illness which can be severe and or disabling in quotes when i was diagnosed it felt like something awakened not only in me but within everyone around me something that was tangible and i could see it on everyone's face when i told them about it i could feel them tense as if i just told them i murdered someone five minutes prior and i needed help hiding the body and in a way i assume i did bipolar disorder is often conflated with violence in television shows and movies people ask what drove a serial killer to slaughter a bunch of innocent people and bipolar floats up in the conversation this diagnosis has been used against me in order to invalidate my feelings i'm not allowed to show irritation or annoyance or have my face set up in any kind of way because certain people think i'm going through a mood swing even if my emotions were caused by a direct valid reason the word bipolar was still used against me like an accusation i think the world has a very unclear idea of what bipolar is i think the constant use of it as a buzzword has sort of watered down the very real and scary aspects of the disorder i don't just laugh one second and cry the next i have severe bouts of depression i have to force myself to act lively especially for work even if all i want to do is lay in bed and stare at a wall i'm left fatigued and empty and nothing interests me not even youtube which has been my dream since starting it last year the beginning of 2020 was maybe the last most intense depressive episode i've experienced it lasted from january to march and i know this because i thought it was smart to document every last detail in my journal she's depressed but she still has time to write i know that's right and the funniest part funny to me maybe not to you is that the last entry of my episode that i wrote down was a reasons to live chart and a reason to die chart and you can assume which one outweighed which on the very next page maybe a month later the first sentence is okay wow miss drama queen i'm alive i'm sorry if this is not funny to you i understand it's really heavy but i think it's great to be able to look back on that and realize that i'm still here so what does this all mean for joe goldberg the series you and the people who are probably getting tired of hearing me talk at length about something that could have been summarized in about 20 minutes it means that one i was an english major and we had word counts up to here if i can talk for 40 plus pages i'm a talk for 40 plus pages second it means that negative associations between mental illness and violence as well as misrepresentations of mental illness leads to unfair discrimination and further isolation for these individuals who are already systematically oppressed via an ableist and sanes society as megan smith states so what's so dangerous about portraying criminals as objectively different it helps create an us versus them barrier that isn't real criminal minds assumes there are criminals and then there are normal people these suspects are so profoundly other that we can assure ourselves that we will never be like them in any way but all criminals are human and we the viewers are human so what separates us from the killers the answer for most people especially the bau is that they must be sick end quote that's the thing i dislike the most about the mentally ill theory that fans on reddit have proposed that it implies only a mentally ill person would commit these sort of atrocities when really that's not the case it's very possible for you to be a commentary on white supremacy ableist culture the patriarchy all of these systems that perpetuate violence against people of color women disabled and mentally ill people it would take a bit of restructuring in order to make these themes undebatable but i think it does have immense possibility it also makes me wonder how much responsibility should be given to the writers and cast for this i don't think they can control what viewers say about the show obviously but i wonder if it's possible to make their stance on the subject clear rather than brief mentions about how it's not a clinical show if that makes sense i don't really have the answers to that because you know i'm still learning about all of this myself i just think the show loses its luster and a great majority of the audience loses their empathy when we fall into age-old rhetoric about mental illnesses anyways thank you guys for watching if you even made it this far like all of my videos the topics i covered here are all tentative i'm still in the process of learning as i will forever be because learning doesn't end at a certain stage or at a certain attainment of knowledge if i missed anything or if anything in this video needs to be clarified or corrected by all means leave a comment down below so i can make sure to keep it in mind going forward thank you to everyone who submitted something and thank you to the hundreds of comments i got under that original community post i wish i could have included them all please go check those out for more first hand stories and thank you again i'm gonna go drink some water take a goddamn nap and finally peel off the skin of this alter ego because baby it was draining me have a good day or night or afternoon and i will see you in my next video [Music] yeah i don't think i have anything else to say what do i do now

Channel: Shanspeare

Views: 775,473

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Id: TPzFAUKkReM

Length: 93min 19sec (5599 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 04 2021