Mental illness on the stage and screen is often portrayed in extreme ways, and not just for dramatic effect. In Western culture psychic pain has tended to be seen as the territory of the artist, visionary, rebel and genius, from Emily Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Friedrich Nietzsche to John Forbes Nash Jr. So it should be no surprise that madness is often used to signify creativity, sensitivity or spiritual and intellectual depth.
In “Proof,” for instance, a troubled math prodigy fears she will unravel like her brilliant father, and in “Equus,” recently revived on Broadway, an emotionally flattened psychiatrist envies his young patient’s creative religious passion, however warped. In “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” mental illness is portrayed as the only refuge of the social misfit.
“Depression can appear to embody an aesthetic or moral or even political stance,” the author and psychologist Peter D. Kramer writes in his book “Against Depression.” In our culture, he added, it “is what tuberculosis was 100 years ago: illness that signifies refinement.”
Brian Yorkey, 38, and Tom Kitt, 35, the creators of “next to normal,” were keenly aware of that romantic strain and studiously worked to avoid it. “Someone said to make her a painter,” Mr. Yorkey said of the protagonist, Diana. “I said no. She’s a suburban mother.”
[blockquote]Mental illness on the stage and screen is often portrayed in extreme ways, and not just for dramatic effect. In Western culture psychic pain has tended to be seen as the territory of the artist, visionary, rebel and genius, from Emily Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Friedrich Nietzsche to John Forbes Nash Jr. So it should be no surprise that madness is often used to signify creativity, sensitivity or spiritual and intellectual depth.[/blockquote]
So, will mental illness become the new “alternative lifestyle”? Then of course it will be, it’s normal to be abnormal and finally the TEC version will be it is Blessed to be mentally ill. Now we see a possibility for what the “Q” in LGBTQ was holding a place for. [blockquote]Brian Yorkey, 38, and Tom Kitt, 35, the creators of “next to normal,†were keenly aware of that romantic strain and studiously worked to avoid it.[/blockquote]I don’t buy it. Woody Allen tried to make neurosis funny and hip. The mentally ill and their families often experience a living hell on earth. Treatment for many only commences when they become dangerous to themselves or someone else. Then it has become more of a legal than a medical issue.