I have always had a curiosity on other people’s perspectives. People’s thoughts on religion, conspiracies and just the daily thought process of a person. Escape your world and enter a lens of someone else’s. I am fascinated on how television has entered the lens of mental illness. Going behind the thought process of a murderer or someone clearly insane. The crazy thing about television is how these perspectives are so vivid to viewers they start to feel empathy or clarity in these people’s minds when the outside perspective is closed.
Recently I watched a Netflix movie called ‘Horse Girl’. First of all, I just wanted to say the title of the movie sucks. It’s super cringy if you live in this generation of horse girl memes you wouldn’t want your curser to touch that movie with a 10-foot pole, but I watched it! And it was a mind f***. The movie is about this woman, Sarah. Sarah has a family history of mental illness. The movie begins with Sarah being shy and socially awkward like most people can be.
Sarah’s mental state started deteriorating quickly and through this process it was scary how you can think she was being pretty rational from her perspective. She starts to notice bruises and claw marks on her body when she wakes up. Looking up things on the internet she finds conspiracy theories about aliens that she believes to be true. During this age where conspiracies are very popular, even I love conspiracies, and the way she was diving in these theories was extremely relatable. Throughout the movie you would think that her actions were reasonable or maybe just a little out of proportion but on the outside, she was INSANE.
Sarah wakes up in random places and sees things that didn’t happen. Sarah doesn’t know she’s delusional and the viewers have a hard time realizing what’s real. The movie literally got in the mind of someone with mental illness. The way you saw her perspective you would probably act the same way which is the scariest part of all of it. Through these kinds of movies, you start to understand mental illness and how real things can be for these people. I just want to give Alison Brie a shout out for playing Sarah in this film. She did a phenomenal job breaking the barriers of mental state being able to perform something so hard and real.
Your mind can change and have different forms of mental illness. This TV show gets behind a lens of a serial killer. The TV show ‘Dexter’ goes in depth of what a murderer is thinking. One thing I like about these shows is that you only get the view of the killer, no one else. There is no persuasion to think what they’re doing is wrong. Dexter kills other serial killers that prey on the innocent to make him self-consciously feel like his doing good. Through out the show you emphasize for Dexter and there were moments where I felt so bad and thought ‘why do I feel so bad for him? He’s a serial killer?’ or another thought that I’m sure everyone that watched the show was thinking, ‘I hope he doesn’t get caught.’
A recent TV show about a serial killer is ‘YOU’. The show is very popular and is still going. The TV show goes in the mind of a man that has obsessions over women he’s dating and murders negative people in their lives. With only his point of view he justifies each person he had killed. Thinking killing these people is better for everyone. Some of his crazy actions actually went viral on the internet because it was so RELATABLE but also out of proportion; but the same thought occurred to me and probably everyone that watched the show, ‘I hope he doesn’t get caught.’ With these kinds of shows you start to understand the minds of mental illness, their thought process and maybe they aren’t as crazy as you thought they were…
Ask Ariana Vanders 