Girl, Interrupted Film Analysis: Girl,

Girl, Interrupted

Film Analysis: "Girl, Interrupted"

Despite the fact that it is based upon Susanna Kaysen's memoir of the same name, the film "Girl, Interrupted" (1999) makes frequent use of the stock cliches of films representing female madness. All-female asylums have promiscuous and foul-mouthed inmates. The therapists are no saner than the people whom these so-called professionals are attempting to help. Medicine is dispensed like candy, rather than insight and real treatment. The 'good' are the sane, yet harshly judged and misdiagnosed patients like Susanna or the wise nurse Valerie, and the 'bad' are the really crazy inmates, and the psychiatrists who dispense pills and platitudes.

Although she has a diagnosis of "borderline personality disorder" Susanna, as played by Winona Ryder is not 'really' mad. She is an intelligent, sensitive poetic young woman who is encouraged to commit herself to an asylum because of her defiance of adult norms and sexual precociousness. She is depressed, hence her botched and half-hearted suicide attempt, but society is to blame for her depression rather than an inherent defect within Susanna's own character, despite the label that is placed upon her, a kind of catch-all terms for a difficult-to-understand adolescent. Worse still, she is mislead to voluntarily sign her self into the madhouse, only to find out like the Hotel California, that she cannot leave until she is judged to be stable by the insane powers-that-be.

After her commitment to the mental hospital, Susanna meets people who are 'really' crazy, like the sociopath heroin addict Lisa, and Daisy. Daisy might be the craziest of all, as Daisy appears deceptively the most normal of all of the inmates in terms of the way she dresses and acts. The insanity of the inmates such Polly, who is scarred from an attempt to set herself on fire, belie the superficial claim made by the film, that society is 'bad' and the inmates are the truly sane. In fact, most of the inmates seem to have serious problems, except for Susanna. The real, not very radical claim of the film is not the psychological establishment of America is misogynistic, but that it is bad to call gentle and creative girls insane simply because they are having a rough time, and to force them to live amongst the insane.

The insanity of the therapists at the asylum is highlighted by the fact that the main problem Susanna's therapist has is that Susanna sleeps with her boyfriend and kisses an orderly while incarcerated. Susanna sees this as an act of proto-feminist defiance and points out that if she were a boy, she would not be labeled as promiscuous. Her stuffy therapist disapproves, of course, but the audience is meant to cheer. Obviously, the really crazy character is her uptight therapist, not the young woman. This is a fairly easy ideological victory for the film, as essentially it is penalizing the therapist for not embracing contemporary norms of female sexuality. What seemed abnormal for a girl in the 1960s is no longer abnormal today, but this says little about the so-called madness of the other characters. It merely states that some harmless behaviors were once called insane, even though the behavior of most of the inmates, like self-immolation, laxative abuse, and drug addiction, are not harmless.

The most positively portrayed member of the staff is Valerie, played by Whoopi Goldberg. This woman has more insight about madness and the inmates' behaviors than any of the doctors. Valerie encourages Susanna not to see herself as crazy, and stresses Susanna's difference from the other inmates, again belying the suggestion that this is a film about collective empowerment of the marginalized, like women and the insane, despite its celebration of Susanna's sexual experimentation. Valerie provides a lower-class, often ignored voice of common sense and wisdom that Susanna needs to listen to, the film argues, if she is to escape from the confines of the asylum. She says that Susanna is just spoiled and over-privileged, not really sick like the other girls.

Thus, even Valerie singles out the protagonist as special from her insane peers. Susanna's conflicts are seen as more, rather than less compelling than the other women's struggles because Susanna is 'really' sane, and able to take the advice of good people like Valerie. In contrast, the problems of people such as Daisy, who has a flip hairdo and an enmeshed relationship with her sexually abusive father, are used more as shock value (like Daisy's fondness for chicken) rather than as evidence that the less mentally stable girls are worthy and compelling subjects.

Susanna's worthiness of subjectivity is further underlined by her constantly reiterated desire to writer, and her parent's inability to appreciate her ambitions and creativity. Of course, many young people have artistic aims and defy their parent's expectations that they go to college and fulfill conventional aspirations of success. This does not make them crazy; the film rightly says (and pats itself on the back for saying). This reinforces once again the idea that Susanna is like the normal audience member, in contrast to the other women. Her clever reply that she took aspirin because she had a headache shows her wit, not her insanity in contrast to the cruder insults of Lisa. Lisa ultimately uses her intelligence to manipulate Daisy into committing suicide, rather than to free herself like Susanna. This underscores Valerie's caution to Susanna that Susanna must try to hold herself aloof from the other girls and get out, before she catches the madness of the other inmates. The repression of society makes sane people mad, but that does not mean that some people are not mad, rather it means that special people like Susanna must be treated with greater care, as precious and fragile objects deserving of better aid than they receive by the mental health establishment. Treatment makes the sane crazy, but the viewer is meant to feel uncomfortable at the prospect that Daisy is released onto 'the outside.'