Mental Illness and Humanity:
An Attempt to Establish a Relation
Akhil Rodrigues

            From the very beginning of time we as a human race have sought to classify not only the creatures around us, but also our fellow men (and women) into what a small number of us believes to be inferior or superior. Until very recently in the United States, people of African American descent were considered inferior to White people. Adolf Hitler, the former dictator of Nazi Germany, sought to eradicate Jews in an effort to purify the "superior" Aryan race. Only a few decades ago in India, people born into a "lower caste" were socially ostracized, and denied some of the most basic human rights, this being justified by the claim that they were not "pure." The reasons for these classifications are not clear: some believe that they stemmed from misinformation and misinterpretation of accepted beliefs, practices and religious texts. In this, our twenty first century, the media has achieved the unparalleled ability to shape our society. America stands now as a reflection of the inaccuracies portrayed through television and cinema screens, magazine and newspaper articles, and the World Wide Web. Today it is politically incorrect to discriminate against Blacks or Jews or people of any ethnic background. So whom have we made our next victim of social discrimination? I say "we" because while the media portrays its images and ideas, we, the public at large in "our equality, liberty and fraternity," take it all in and subconsciously imbibe it into our way of life. One group of individuals socially discriminated against today are mentally handicapped people.

            To what extent do we believe what we see on the television or in a motion picture theatre? To try to answer this I watched the film The Silence of the Lambs, starring Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins, based on a novel by Thomas Harris. In the film, Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, once a respected psychiatrist, is now imprisoned for murdering several of his patients. He is approached by Clarice Starling, an FBI agent in training who must gain his confidence to get him to lead her to a psychopathic serial killer. This killer on the loose, nicknamed "Buffalo Bill," is infamous for skinning his victims after their death to make himself a woman’s body suit from actual skin.

            That both the cold and calculating Dr. Lecter and his counterpart Buffalo Bill suffer from mental illness is never in doubt, but as I watched the film I began to see a pattern that the filmmakers used in their portrayal of these much-hated people. We first see Dr. Lecter in a maximum security institution, where Clarice is warned by Dr. Fredrick Chilton not to touch the glass of his cell or hand him any sharp objects. He refers to Hannibal Lecter as a "monster" and a great resource in the field of psychological research. Lecter’s cell is dark and desolate, lined with old bricks, much like a prison ward. He is at the end of the long line of mentally ill prisoners, all of whom are kept alone in their desolate cells like caged animals. Lecter’s cell is dimly lit, with the one source of light directly above his head giving his face a sinister appearance. Later in the film when Lecter is transported to Memphis, his living quarters are far from what one would expect for a psychotic serial killer. Lecter is promised a "room with a view" in exchange for information on Buffalo Bill, but his temporary habitat is a large room, with Lecter’s cage in the middle. The room itself is comfortable, and we see Dr. Lecter reading. His conversation with Clarice at this time is intensely dramatized, contrasting Lecter’s insanity, his white clothes, his deep, cold eyes, his wrinkles, his almost crouched posture with Clarice’s "normal" appearance. With her beautiful "sane" eyes brought to gentle tears in her effort to find Buffalo Bill (not quite typical for a professional FBI agent), she convinces the audience of the dangers Lecter poses.

            Buffalo Bill, on the other hand is portrayed as a mentally sick person with very weird sexual fetishes. His desire to become a woman was not fulfilled as he was rejected by the hospitals that perform the necessary surgery. Lecter’s hypothesis on Bill was that extreme abuse had led him to hate humanity and himself, hence the desire to change his physical appearance. However, two characteristics about Buffalo Bill struck me as those befitting any "normal" person. The first was his fascination with the cocoons. Undoubtedly he went to great lengths to acquire them, seeing that they had to be imported from another country, but his desire to see them transformed into creatures of beauty (something he himself wanted to do through the sex change) could ordinarily be interpreted simply as a fascination with "bugs." However, the cocoons are used as his calling cards, and it is this use that makes him seem psychopathic. Another trait that struck me about both Buffalo Bill and Lecter was their ability to love. Buffalo Bill certainly loved his little dog "Precious;" we see this when his victim attempts to use the animal as a bargaining tool to gain her freedom. Lecter certainly had strong feelings of affection for Clarice and led her to Buffalo Bill. Nor did he attempt to harm her once he had escaped. Had these people not been psychopathic I doubt that their ability to love would have further served as a means of character assassination. I think the key word in my last sentence was "people." That is exactly what Lecter and Bill were: they were human beings, and I believe that this aspect at the core of each character’s essence was not portrayed effectively enough, if at all, in the film. Behind both these obviously crazed people was a beating heart, and somewhere in a deep abyss a soul lurked too. Why does the media seem to ignore this crucial fact in its portrayal of mental illness? Does mental illness have the ability to take from these men their very humanity? Certainly it is unfair that people who wear the badge of mental illness must be dominated entirely by this label. Dr. Lecter and Buffalo Bill are extreme cases, but what about the one out of every five American citizens who suffers from a mental illness? What about their humanity? We often go along with the media, labeling a person as mentally ill, and that is the extent of that person that we wish to see.

            The Silence of the Lambs is a film meant for mature audiences only. The reason for this is the very graphic nature of the film. It has made extensive use of violence to portray the central theme of mental illness. The victims’ bodies are shown completely decapitated, with chunks of skin missing; their nails are sometimes broken, and bits of bone line the well in which Buffalo Bill imprisons his victims prior to brutally hacking them to death. In one scene Clarice describes the state of the body of a victim in extreme detail. This scene serves, I believe, simply to increase the audience’s hatred for the villain. Since the villain is a "Psychopath," with none of his other traits focused on, it would not be unreasonable to expect the audience to transfer that feeling of hatred or at least ill will and fear onto mentally ill people at large. Another very horrifying scene in the film was Lecter’s escape from his temporary quarters in Memphis, where he is kept under the constant and direct supervision of two security guards. Here he bites the skin of one of the guards, and a bloodstained Lecter is seen thrashing the life out of the other, while soothing instrumental music is playing in the background. Lecter moves on to crucify one of the guards and peels off the face of the other to slip it on his own and pass off as a wounded policeman. We are human, and no matter how strong-willed and objective we claim to be, the images we see do indirectly affect us. A constant barrage of violence committed by mentally ill people would undoubtedly lead us to associate these people with violent acts. The book Media Madness by Dr. Otto Wahl suggests that the public’s association of mental illness with violence is not only destructive to our society but also lacks any foundation. Given the fact that more than fifty million Americans suffer from a mental illness every year, the crime rate here would far exceed its already high numbers if the majority of these mentally ill people were prone to violence. The book further suggests that while some people with mental illness are dangerous, these people are extremely rare, and that mental illness alone does not account for violence by the mentally ill. For some individuals who are both mentally ill and violent, the mental illness may be irrelevant to the violent or criminal behavior shown (Wahl, 1995, p79).

            A film about psychopaths certainly warrants a discussion of the nature of this illness. The word "psychopathic" originates from the word "psychopathy," a diagnostic label no longer in use today. The disorder is now referred to as the Antisocial Personality Disorder, and is a "pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood" (DSM IV, 1994, p 645). The patients fail to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behavior, and may repeatedly commit acts that warrant their arrest. They tend to disregard the wishes, rights or feelings of others and are frequently deceitful and manipulative in order to gain personal profit or pleasure (like obtaining money, sex or power). Another characteristic of this illness is a total lack of any remorse for wrong doings on the part of the patient. While Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter certainly fit the above description and could thus be classified as suffering from the "Antisocial Personality Disorder," the issue in question here is whether the portrayal of these characters was not only accurate, but also comprehensive. The film never seeks to gain an understanding of why Lecter and Buffalo Bill became the way they did, nor does it focus on any therapeutic measures that could help these sick people. From a filmmaker’s point of view only those aspects that entertain an audience on a specific issue must be included in the film if it is to be acclaimed a success. The false projection of ideas and facts is ignored and even overridden by the disclaimer or warning that precedes most films.

            The world we live in today is far from perfect. However, it is essential to realize that with the rapid development of communications and the integration of the world into the "Global Village," our work reaches far more people today than it did a few years ago. The human race is constantly bombarded with vast amounts of information through numerous sources that traverse the information highway. This information certainly affects our way of thinking. The film "The Silence of the Lambs" serves two purposes: it gives its audience a thrill and its makers a vast amount of money, but more importantly, it helps to shape the way the audience will think about mental illness after watching the film. Undoubtedly the use of excessive violence in the film would lead most people to believe that the mentally ill are indeed violent and not human. If the media has got this power to shape the mindset of the people, I feel we would be far better off if we could channel this resource to bring the mentally ill into a more positive light in our society. Our branding of the mentally ill as different has very dangerous connotations, much like the branding of Blacks and Whites, Jews and non-Jews, pure and impure: it leads me to ask the question "Who is next?" Who will be affected next by this need for classification based on false principles? Given the opportunity to answer this question, I would hope that in doing so we consider our actions carefully. Distinctions based on physical or mental ability have only led to bitterness in the past. Is it too much to ask that history not repeat itself?

Works Cited

American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM IV), 645

Wahl, O. (1995). Media Madness, 79,16.