Posted by pretty_paints on February 1, 2005, at 13:15:32
Hi guys,
I thought you might like some light ammusement. I know I always do when I'm thinking about heavy therapy stuff, etc.
Weeeeell, the other day I came across this essay on the web. It was very official, and stated that the aim of the essay was to assess mental illness in movies. Particularly, DISNEY movies!! Okay, I thought, fair enough.
The essay starts off fine, going through the way that mental illness is referred to in a derogatory way, for example by the phrases "going nuts", "crazy", "lunatic". They found that in 85% of Disney films, there are references made to mental illness. Disney films are of course big with kids, so if the subject of mental illness is not handled in a suitable way, this leads to children growing up with not much tolerance or understanding of the mentally ill community.
Aaaaanyway, I understand all of this in theory and TOTALLY AGREE WITH IT. However, I did think it was quite funny when the writer went on to actually assess particular disney characters for mental illness!!
In the end, she concluded that 21% of the characters in disney movies suffer with a mental illness! For example (yes, she gives examples!) Mrs Jumbo in Dumbo, Jafar in Aladdin, Cinderella and Maurice in Beauty & the Beast. Ha ha ha. This really made me laugh!
Anyway I thought you guys might like to hear about it. It's not meant offensively, it's just meant to cheer people up a bit! xxxxxxxx
poster:pretty_paints
thread:451054
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050129/msgs/451054.html