Mental Health and The Icharus Girl or...I Will Work Psychology into Any Class Given the Opportunity.

We are hard pressed to say that a child might suffer from a mental illness.  We are much more likely to blame behaviors and moods on a “phase” and think they will grow out of it.  Sadly, that doesn’t always work out.

Everyday each of us faces stress.  How we manage to cope with that stress is a test of our mental health.  As we are all different in our genetic makeup, education, and emotional hardiness, we all react differently to stress.  When we are unable to effectively manage stress, it begins to manifest itself in different defense mechanisms or outlets for the mental “pain” caused by the conflict. (A good example of a defense mechanism is an imaginary friend.)  I call it pain because that’s what the anguish is.  The pain becomes more intense when the sufferer realizes that they are experiencing events differently than everyone else and the defenses get more complicated; lying about events, reclusiveness, etc.

Being or feeling different is difficult for anyone especially a child who already has many obstacles to overcome when trying to fit in with their peers.  Unfortunately, we are still a global society that stigmatizes mental illness and sees it as weakness or flaws in a person instead of as an illness that can be treated.  Children are especially vulnerable and may not receive proper care because they are reliant on parents and adults for their care and parents and adults don’t want to admit mental illness could be a factor contributing to changes in behaviors or moods.  Some interesting statistics on mental health in the U.K. can be found here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/22028518.

Would Jessamy’s story have been different if she had been scrutinized more closely by a mental health professional early on?  Her behaviors initially were benign but eventually became harmful to others and herself.  If she had been more closely attached to her mother, her primary caregiver, would her insecurities have needed to manifest themselves in the form of an imaginary friend?  Fiction leads to more fiction….

Why Won't India Take Care of Its Women??

Her parents reported her missing to the police and the police didn’t act.  This tiny, 5 year old girl was kidnapped, held for two days, raped, and left for dead in an apartment in the same apartment building that she lived in.  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-22260209)

She was 23 and had just been to see a movie with her boyfriend.  She had no idea that the men on the bus that she wanted to take to her next destination, would beat her and her friend, rape her repeatedly, and leave them both for dead at the side of the road.  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20765320)

For a better understanding of the subjugation of women in India read this:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20863860.

That article, written by BBC Dehli correspondent Soutik Biswas, spells out the horrors faced every day and in every stage of a woman’s life in India.  The culture in India demonstrates being more vested in men beginning at birth; selective abortion based on gender is commonplace.  Women in India are not regarded as humans; rather they are viewed as property, if that.

India’s very public outrage has brought to light one of the biggest hindrances to protecting the female population; the men of the police forces of India are slow or don’t respond to crimes against women.  The men of India are very well versed in how they currently have very little regard for women, and men have traditionally outnumbered women.  However, women now are starting to catch up to men; in 2011, there were 940 women to every 1000 men in India.  In recent history, women have started holding powerful positions in Indian government and society.  The death of the woman gang-raped on the bus inspired a rush of new legislation to protect women and punish the men that perpetrated these crimes.  (See an outline of new laws in India here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20863860)

Are these changes enough?  Would India need to have its own French Revolution to have any type of social reform needed on such a mass scale?  Tradition and history are hard to escape and even more difficult to change.  India can hope for change, but it needs to work for it, too.

Foreign Film Viewing

The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman 1957 (Sweden)

            A knight returning from the Crusades finds his homeland Sweden being ravaged by the plague.  He meets Death and challenges him to a chess game, inevitably only postponing his own death and preventing Death from finding a family with a small child.

Ojos Que No Ven (What Your Eyes Don’t See) by Beda Fejioo 1999 (Argentina)

            Murder mystery in the publishing industry of Buenos Aires; the story and the acting aren’t that great.  Reminiscent of a 1990’s Cinemax movie or a Lifetime movie with sex and subtitles.

Unfortunately, I watched Ojos Que No Ven first.  The plot, the murder of a magazine publisher and then an employee of the magazine, was thin, and the acting matched.  The lead investigator seemed to be a portrayal of a stereotypical American police officer; poor diet, out of shape, and did a lot of yelling at lower-ranking officers.  The ending had a little bit of a twist, but overall, it was a poor selection on my part.

Fortunately, I also rented The Seventh Seal.  Watching this one was like watching an actual movie.  The action and expressions of the actors meshed with what the subtitles conveyed.  There was dark humor and even some uncomfortable effects.  I’m not sure if I watched it as man’s questioning of the meaning of life, but I was able to understand the storyline well.

Both movies were in a foreign language and I think the most glaring realization I had was how much translation matters.  In the Argentinian film, the translation was clearly made by a native Spanish-speaker, as there were many misplaced exclamation points and the grammar wasn’t always correct.  The subtitles distracted from the movie.  Bergman’s film had a better flow with the subtitles; they made sense in English which was why the movie was so well-received world-wide.  However, I learned after I watched it that Sweden was never really all that impressed with the film; that in actuality the film in Swedish was very philosophical and “out there”.  The translator that composed the subtitles may have been a native English-speaker and made the words more relevant.  (Bergman wasn’t really recognized for his accomplishment in Sweden until his death when the Swedes were overwhelmed with the outpouring of grief from his worldwide audience.)  Subtitles can either make or break a foreign film watching experience.

(A friend of mine maybe said it best when she stopped by my house the night I was watching these films and asked “Why couldn’t you find a foreign film in English?”)

The Waiting Years....Fumiko Enchi (What about the male geisha??)

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi:  Close read of page 20, paragraph 2, Zenko’s thoughts about Tomo

Zenko, a male geisha, when confronted with the task of finding a suitable concubine for Tomo’s husband Shirakawa, feels notable disdain for Shirakawa; “Privately, he was wondering with disgust just what part of the provinces had produced the kind of man who would have his legal wife search for a concubine for him.”  However, he did not hold the same disdain for Tomo. 

To better understand this passage, and much of the sexual complexity of this book, I investigated male geishas and geishas in the late nineteenth century in general.  Geishas were originally men; they got their start as taikomochi (or houkan), or feudal attendants.  To the feudal lords of Japan, these men were dancers, storytellers, tea ceremony experts, and even military strategists.  Eventually, as war became less common, these men needed to find work elsewhere and they became entertainers, kind of the “warm-up act” for popular courtesans of the time.  Courtesans entertained their customers by singing, dancing, playing music and reading poetry; some also indulged clients with sex.  The taikomochi that entertained clients of courtesans would come to be known as “geisha”.  To make a long story short, since women are traditionally more popular with men, and men in Japan were the patrons of these establishments, the male geisha eventually became nearly extinct.  (To read more about it, visit www.tofugu.com/2012/12/03/how-women-ruined-the-lives-of-male-geisha-everywhere/)

In researching the geisha, I found out that since very early on in Japanese history, men were not expected to be faithful to their wives.  “Pleasure Houses” were filled with licensed “entertainers”; prostitution was illegal outside of these establishments.  Some of these women would sell sexual favors, some would only entertain through singing and dancing and such, and some were specifically for platonic companionship.  Historically, if a Japanese man wanted sexual enjoyment or romantic attachment they did not go to their wives; they visited the pleasure houses.  The Japanese wife was the spouse that took care of the children and the household, not her husband’s love life. (Look up “geisha” on Wikipedia for more info and a timeline of geisha history.)

When Zenko met Tomo, it was a time of change for Japan and the geisha; they were both witnessing the slow transformation and eventual death of traditions and Zenko and Tomo shared that feeling of “pride” at following closely to the “old ways” no matter how awkward.  The discomfort caused Zenko by Tomo’s husband having her find his concubine is only temporary as Zenko is probably no stranger to arranging these relationships.  Tokyo culture hadn’t completely surrendered to looking down on men being publicly unfaithful to their wives and this instance was the ‘same old, same old’ just done in a different way.  In a way, they also shared the turmoil of watching their roles change; Zenko was in a profession that was becoming women-centric, while Tomo was about to face a change in her role in her home and with her relationship with her husband.