CineMania click-on Gallery Night Runner Pressbook The promotional pressbook for this 1957 movie offers the following suggestions: "This is the sort of picture that can gain real momentum from endorsement by governmental and community leaders. Dealing with a genuine and terrifying problem of first importance, it should evoke real praise from such leaders. For that reason you should arrange one or more special screenings to which you should invite law enforcement authorities, hospital officials, psychiatrists, newspaper editors, television and radio commentators, and officers of civic organizations which have a special concern with problems of mental health, delinquency, and criminality. Out of this list of guests try to get one or more of them to make a statement for publication that applauds the merit of this picture in dramatizing a really important problem of the day. Contact all law enforcement agencies, Federal, State, County and Municipal, and ask them to furnish you with all the 'wanted' posters they have in which the criminal being sought has a history of mental illness. Such psychopathic tendencies are generally mentioned on such posters. Tell the law enforcement authorities that you are willing to display these posters in your lobby. After you get them, mount them on as big a square of campo board as is necessary to carry them, print some heading over them, such as WHY ARE THEY AT LARGE?... Try to get the editor of some local paper to assign a reporter to do a special feature story, showing the percentage of former patients of mental institutions who have been guilty of various crimes following their discharge from these institutions. This story should cover some specific period of time, such as the preceeding year or the preceeding five years, and the chances are it will have to include some of the most lurid crimes in your community." (The Night Runner ©1956) ***************************************************** Hollywood's latest psycho-drama poignantly sums up what CineMania is all about. View the trailer for "Gothika" and hear the psychiatrist (Halle Berry) confirm the words of one of her patients: "You can't trust somebody when they think you're crazy!" Click-on to view trailer. ***************************************************** WHO ARE THEY REALLY SPEAKING FOR? Please note: This is a website about the media's practice of stereotyping "mental patients." If you are easily offended by the media's portrayal of "mental patients", then this is not the site you're looking for. If, however, you are looking for a first-person account that is not censored by organizations who claim to speak "for the mentally-ill", be prepared to see and hear the undiluted facts. Because of the sleight of hand that cleverly takes place under the guise of advocacy, much of this information is either suppressed or distorted and is never seen by the general public. Consider the irony that the budget of cinemaniastigma.com is less than 1/1000th of 1% of the nation's "voice of the mentally-ill" and ask yourself why this well-funded organization is whitewashing the media's role in perpetuating these stereotypes? Considering that their constituents are routinely denied housing, employment, and their most basic constitutional rights as a result of these stereotypes, one is left to wonder: "Who are they really speaking for?" In fact, their so-called anti-stigma webpage on their website even encourages their constituents to "have a sense of humor" and to embrace these stereotypes - in flagrant violation of their own opening statement which says that they are dedicated to: "fighting pervasive, hurtful prejudice and discrimination that exists toward people with mental illnesses..." David @ mentalhealthstigma.com ***************************************************** Thumbnail images: Click-on to Enlarge Excerpts from the Night Runner and other Pressbooks the Night Runner Paranoiac! Bloody Murder Paranoiac Devil Times Five Schizoid (1972) the Psycho Lover (1977) Maniac (1980) Maniac (1963) Night Runner Schizo (1977) Schizoid (1980) Deranged (1974) "Psycho" spin-off Schizoid (1972) Paranoiac (1963) Twisted Nerve Repulsion (1965) Psychotic Sisters Mania Manic Maniac Schizoid Strait-Jacket Mania + Manic = Maniac ***************************************************** To view more excerpts from the Night Runner pressbook and other pressbooks click-on to the "Along Came A Spider" page. ***************************************************** David @ MentalHealthStigma.com reviews David Cronenberg's "Spider." ***************************************************** To read more reviews, view more posters or hear other audio clips that are part of our archives visit the Fact or Fiction page. ***************************************************** STEREOTYPING MENTAL ILLNESS, by RON SCHRAIBER, M.A. As an "ex-mental patient" I'm really quite disturbed. I'm disturbed by the dehumanizing way the media portrays people identified as "mentally-ill" as quintessentially violent beings. The mass media are far and away the American public's primary sources of information concerning people identified as mentally-ill - and it isn't nice. From the ubiquitous "psycho" and "mad bomber" story lines to the sensationalistic headlines of "Ex-Mental Patient Kills Two," violence incarnate goes by the name of "psychotic" and it's variant terms. Playing into the cultural myth of the crazed murderer (I have never heard of a crazed peacemaker), the latest of many movies to fall into this stereotypical trap is "Just Cause," which offers the serial killer role of Blair Sullivan as played by Ed Harris. Although The Times' Peter Rainer pans the movie, including the characters played by Sean Connery, Laurence Fishburne and Blair Underwood, as unbelievable, he finds the one convincing role to be the out-for-blood Harris. Favourably comparing Harris' character to Anthony Hopkins' Academy Award-winning role as Hannibal Lecter in "Silence of the Lambs," Rainer writes that Harris has "never before been this scary" and with head shaven "looks like a skinned rabbit, and when he goes into one of his crazy-man trances, his eyes seem to slide upward into his skull." Such pernicious stereotyping with all the grotesqueness that Rainer so lauds bears little resemblance to real human beings. Such distorted and formulistic images of the "homicidal maniac" impoverish the lives of people diagnosed with mental illness, who, research shows, are overwhelmingly not violent. The effect of such media stereotypes is to create for people identified as mentally-ill a pariah status in a world made increasingly hostile to them. These portrayals are as dehumanizing and unacceptable as any racist or sexist stereotype and should be scrutinized accordingly. Persons identified as mentally-ill have been embraced by the media as the secular version the devil, transmogrified into the out-of-control madman bent on a rampage of seemingly inexplicable death and destruction. While recent research has shown a modest correlation between major mental disorders and violence, people diagnosed with such mental illnesses are, by far, not the most violent group in American society, and, in fact, according to the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, are responsible for no more than 3% of the violence in the United States. Such factors as age, gender, substance abuse and educational level are, among others, significantly greater contributors to violence than mental disorders. Now, as a person who has been diagnosed with such major mental disorders as manic-depression and schizophrenia, I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I really have nothing against "normal" people. Just because normal people started World War I, World War II, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, committed genocide against the Native Americans and instituted slavery, I have nothing against "normal" people, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one. Unforunately, malevolent and fear-invoking stereotypes of people identified as mentally-ill are not limited to theatrically released movies. In the realm of television, a study of network dramas covering more than 25 years by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School for Communication found that "mentally-ill" characters were portrayed as the single most violent group on TV. Furthermore, only two out of ten characters identified as mentally-ill were considered good, while about six out of ten "normals" were depicted as good. But, perhaps, the award for the most stereotypical statement goes to The Times when it proclaimed in a Feb. 27th, 1985 editorial, "A mentally disturbed person with only the thinnest streak of violence can produce disaster any time, any place!" The Times, continuing to be no stranger to throwing out psychiatric epithets to define global conflicts and social dislocation, called terrorism The True Face of Insanity (3/10/94), and homeless people labeled as mentally-ill as The Specter Haunting America and this around Halloween, no less (Oct. 24, 1991). Actually, according to the publication "Science News" studies have found members of identified terrorist groups from Ireland, the Mideast and South Africa to all have personality scores that fall within the "normal" range. And I thought that the purpose of responsible journalism was not to validate popular prejudice, but to elucidate the truth. So much for my delusional thinking! I'm not mad... I'm angry! (Los Angeles Times 4/3/95) ***************************************************** "The culprit here is not the entertainment industry which routinely exploits "the mentally-ill" for the sake of profits. That's what they're in the business of doing... manufacturing fiction. The real culprit here is the media which makes every attempt to validate these fictional stereotypes when reporting the news." MentalHealthStigma.com ***************************************************** Recommended Reading Swastika: Cinema of Oppression by Baxter Phillips (1976): When the jackboot stamped across Europe, the cinema was one of its most important means of spreading propaganda. Mussolini called it his "best weapon." This book examines the horrors of the totalitarian cinema. It covers movies made under Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, and the Emperor of Japan to the brief period of McCarthyism in Hollywood. An absorbing book with riveting and rare illustrations of how oppressive governments used the cinema to spread their propaganda. ***************************************************** PsychoMedia Message Board ***************************************************** Copyright © 2007 MentalHealthStigma.com, All Rights Reserved Fair Use Notice: Please note that MentalHealthStigma.com contains copyrighted (©) material, the use of which has not necessarily been authorized by the copyright owner. These materials are presented strictly for educational purposes only and therefore constitute a fair use of copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. MentalHealthStigma.com does not sell any products of any kind and does not profit in any way from the use of these copyrighted materials. 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