On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 8:41 AM, donz5 <[email protected]> wrote: > > As to your hypothesis: it wouldn't surprise me at all that Redford > shot that deliberately as a throwback to an "earlier" Mary. > > Do you include other films for this course? Like "Good Will Hunting," > for example?
Well, your speculative agreement is good enough authority for me, Donz, I am going to start weaving that thought into the after film discussion... For structural reasons I don't have time for other films in that particular class - though in the past I have shown two episodes from "The Sopranos" (didn't work as well as I had hoped - it turns out Sopranos is more of a narrow-band product than Ordinary People). I have considered Good Will Hunting - though its depiction of therapy is more controversial and problematic, but for that reason would be a good source of useful discussion, so I continue to look for ways to find time for it. In my Abnormal Psychology course (which I will be teaching this term, starting Monday) I show 4 or 5 films each year. I have one core film that I show every year (As Good as It Gets, which, like Ordinary People, has several television connections before and behind the camera). That works really well for my purposes. The remaining films I rotate around, depending on my mood and the focus of the course. For several years now I have shown Psycho, less for the depiction of DID than for its illustration of "the male gaze" and several other feminist themes discussed in a text I assign. This year I am also showing Fatal Attraction (Borderline Personality Disorder) and Sophie's Choice - the latter for the first time, but I am also having students read Stryon's memoir of his own depressive episode, so I thought it would be interesting, and the there is a useful ambiguity about Nathan Landau's true diagnosis. In the rotation, but not being used this year, is "Born on the 4th of July"; "Girl, Interrupted", "A Beautiful Mind", "House of Games", and "Three Faces of Eve". Last year I screened the original, 187 minute television mini-series of "Sybil", because I also spent a day going over the recent critical re-evaluation of that case and the book that popularized it. I am interested in any suggestions folks might have for other films or television episodes I could consider illustrating either a specific mental disorder or the psychotherapeutic treatment of it. There is some distaste among many college and university psychology teachers for using this kind of media in clases like these; the fear is that hollywood distorts and oversimplifies and sensationalizes mental disorder and treatment. I am less worried about this than many of my colleagues, because my approach to undergraduate psychology courses is to use them to equip students to critically challenge and examine both their own everyday experience and popular culture. So the simplistic epilogue to Psycho, in which Hitchcock has a psychiatrist give a pat and just so explanation for Norman's actions and disorder, provides useful practice for exercising critical skills. I wish I could find easy access to the entire episode catalog of the Bob Newhart show, as I would love to see if I could find an excuse to show 2 or 3 good Mr Carlin episodes. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
