Feminist Review - Silver Linings Playbook
Nov. 18th, 2013 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkI actually wrote this some time ago, but forgot to post it here. So here it is:
Silver Linings Playbook is a romantic comedy that brings up a lot of interesting issues, most notably that of mental illness, but ultimately glosses over them in favor of focusing on the feel-good romance story.
It’s not often that you have a movie that features characters’ struggles with mental illness, and one could argue that the fact that the audience is asked to sympathize with a protagonist who has bipolar might help to alleviate the social stigma of having mental illness. However, the film itself does not address the problem of stigma. It’s alluded to a few times in the film, but never explored in any meaningful way. Mental illness stigma is a huge problem in our society, and the film’s lack of awareness of this important issue is pretty disappointing.
I’ve seen reviews of the movie that wondered whether the film was ultimately propagating a “love (not medication or therapy) conquers depression” message, and other reviews that pointed out the protagonist was taking medication in one scene (but whether he did so throughout the rest of the film is not shown). Just the fact that there is confusion on this point is problematic, as a common misconception about depression is that if people “try harder”/meet the right person/whatever, they can “get over” it, which can be a harmful assumption.
While the romance is sweet, I’ve seen the point brought up that it implies that only people with mental illnesses can understand each other (as the two leads are both bipolar, I think, and actually bond over their shared experiences), and I think that’s a valid concern.
I’m not at all an expert on mental illnesses (what experience I have is related to depression), but I wonder whether bipolar was sensationalized in the film. The protagonist, Pat, is shown to be somewhat violent on two accounts. I can’t say whether people with bipolar are never violent, and to be fair the audience effectively “forgives” Pat’s outbursts because he’s the protagonist, but I worry that these depictions reinforce common assumptions that people with mental illnesses are violent and dangerous. Also, the way Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence’s character) apparently slept with everyone in her office while depressed because of her husband’s death struck me as somewhat…odd, to say the least.
In terms of other issues, the film is not terrible with female characters, but certainly not great. There are far fewer female than male characters in the main cast, and only one of them (Tiffany Maxwell) gets any significant screen time. There’s also the fact that while protagonist Pat idolizes his (ex-)wife Nikki, she’s the direct cause of his mental breakdown and subsequent institutionalization for 8 months due to infidelity, and Tiffany is indirectly the cause of her husband’s death by car accident when she stopped wanting to have sex with him. I’m not really a fan of the implications here.
Silver Linings Playbook is a romantic comedy that brings up a lot of interesting issues, most notably that of mental illness, but ultimately glosses over them in favor of focusing on the feel-good romance story.
It’s not often that you have a movie that features characters’ struggles with mental illness, and one could argue that the fact that the audience is asked to sympathize with a protagonist who has bipolar might help to alleviate the social stigma of having mental illness. However, the film itself does not address the problem of stigma. It’s alluded to a few times in the film, but never explored in any meaningful way. Mental illness stigma is a huge problem in our society, and the film’s lack of awareness of this important issue is pretty disappointing.
I’ve seen reviews of the movie that wondered whether the film was ultimately propagating a “love (not medication or therapy) conquers depression” message, and other reviews that pointed out the protagonist was taking medication in one scene (but whether he did so throughout the rest of the film is not shown). Just the fact that there is confusion on this point is problematic, as a common misconception about depression is that if people “try harder”/meet the right person/whatever, they can “get over” it, which can be a harmful assumption.
While the romance is sweet, I’ve seen the point brought up that it implies that only people with mental illnesses can understand each other (as the two leads are both bipolar, I think, and actually bond over their shared experiences), and I think that’s a valid concern.
I’m not at all an expert on mental illnesses (what experience I have is related to depression), but I wonder whether bipolar was sensationalized in the film. The protagonist, Pat, is shown to be somewhat violent on two accounts. I can’t say whether people with bipolar are never violent, and to be fair the audience effectively “forgives” Pat’s outbursts because he’s the protagonist, but I worry that these depictions reinforce common assumptions that people with mental illnesses are violent and dangerous. Also, the way Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence’s character) apparently slept with everyone in her office while depressed because of her husband’s death struck me as somewhat…odd, to say the least.
In terms of other issues, the film is not terrible with female characters, but certainly not great. There are far fewer female than male characters in the main cast, and only one of them (Tiffany Maxwell) gets any significant screen time. There’s also the fact that while protagonist Pat idolizes his (ex-)wife Nikki, she’s the direct cause of his mental breakdown and subsequent institutionalization for 8 months due to infidelity, and Tiffany is indirectly the cause of her husband’s death by car accident when she stopped wanting to have sex with him. I’m not really a fan of the implications here.
