Final Paper Proposal

For my final paper, I've been going through a battle with myself about what interests me, and what I'm passionate about when it comes to choosing a topic to research. My heart keeps telling me to go with what I'm passionate about, but I'm afraid that it will be impossible. But I'm going for it. So I finally found a topic that I really am passionate abAout, that does have to do with technology, at least a bit. My topic is movie portrayals of mental illness. I thought long and hard about this topic, and I came to this conclusion because of a little story I'd like to share with you.

When I was about 10, my brother who was about 15 at the time, started to hang out with the wrong crowd, get into trouble at school, partied a lot and his grades started to drop dramatically. When he got to high school, this all increased by a lot. By his senior year, my parents took him out of the high school and transferred him to another high school, away from the group of friends he hung out with. When he finished high school, he went off to college in Indiana. Not even a semester into school, my parents got a call from him. He was frantic and I knew it wasn't good news. My brother is now 26 years old, and has schizophrenia. He's been incarcerated several times, on several occasions for many different reasons. He has never been able to keep a job, and without his medicine, he wouldn't survive. So the jist of my story is that my mom and my brother were watching a movie called, "A Beautiful Mind." I was not here for this, but my mom told me that she saw my brother tearing up because he felt so connected to this movie because the main character also has schizophrenia. I think the portrayal of the characters disease touched my brother because it was like looking at himself from the outside. But on the other hand, I've read people's responses to movies that have mentally ill people in them, and they've said how unrealistic these portrayals of mental health are in movies.  So for my final paper, I would like to delve into this idea a bit more, and find out if movie portrayals of mental health are accurate, and maybe see if there are racial and/or gender discrepancies between portrayals of mental health.

For my final paper I would like to research movie portrayals of mental health. I would like to research if movies depict mental health differently across race and gender as well. My thesis for this paper will be, Movie and Television portrayals of mental health show inaccurate depictions of mental illnesses and create a negative perceptions of people with mental health illnesses. I plan on reading reviews of movies, watching a few movies myself, and doing research on mental health symptoms and behaviors, and one thing I would really like to do is interview/talk to my brother to see his feelings on this concept. I want to know if when he watched "A Beautiful Mind" if it was an actual accurate depiction of schizophrenia. Hopefully I'll find all of this out throughout my research, because I would love to know if my thesis is correct.

Self Reflection

Rereading all of my blog posts, I noticed a few themes.

The first theme I noticed was about activism. I discussed, throughout the majority of my blog posts, ideas about technology and feminism and how I've become more aware and how we should improve our footprint on this earth. I stated a lot of ideas that mention things like, "Just hop on a plane and travel the right way"  or "just meet someone new and get to know them" or "just don't abuse the internet like we are." All of these statements to me, reflect a sense of activism, and forward motion on my part to start to be conscious of my actions. It's more of a self activism more than societal, but starting small is a necessity to starting anywhere.

Another theme I noticed while rereading my posts was the idea of inequality; specifically gender and class inequalities. Throughout Joelles blog post that I wrote and the AIDS video blog post, I mentioned several things about gender and class inequalities that in our society, seem to be not spoken about, but only by activists.

One last theme that I realized I spoke a lot about was my whole life in connection with each of these readings and videos. I saw many connections between my life and people in these readings. Although I have not gone through any of what Joelle Ryan has, I still consider myself a struggler and becoming stronger because of it just like her. I also related myself to the use of the internet that was spoken about throughout the readings. I noticed that I was like the people that were talked about in the readings. I am always on the internet. I am always using facebook. I am distracted from my social and daily life because of the internet. This is where my self activism comes into play. This is where I notice my actions and try to reevaluate how I live my life via the internet.

It Gets Better...Not for Everybody!

In Joelle's blog about "It Gets Better", she argues that it, in fact, doesn't get better, at least not the way that Dan Savage says it does. Joelle Ruby Ryan is a Professor here at UNH. She is a trans-gender woman, with a PhD. She is a very dedicated activist in the LGBT community and works extremely hard to make a stand in what she believes in. 


Joelle argues that, it doesn't get better, refuting Dan Savages statement. As a privileged, white, heterosexual, male, Dan Savage can in no way, tell people who suffer everyday of their lives, that it will get better. Until he has walked in their shoes, he has no right to tell people to "hang in there." Joelle quotes herself as being, "fat and I am trans-gender and I am a feminist and I am queer" (Ryan, 2010). She also states that she is working class, a "first generation college student, a person with six figure loan debt who has no class privilege to fall back upon" (Ryan, 2010). Dan Savage is trying to tell her that "it gets better"? She has spent her whole life working her ass off to make things better, and she has only seen a fraction of success. How long does she have to wait for it to get better? Joelle is a suicide survivor, and makes a very true statement that people who don't understand her situation would think. "Just work hard and you too can get ahead and climb the ladder of success! Just keep on living and don't kill yourself and the world around you will magically improve" (Ryan, 2010). This statement resonates with me so much because I feel that it is what our oblivious, naive, arrogant society thinks about people who do not fit into their white, heterosexual, middle class, american mold. I agree with Joelle in that this is what people think if they don't understand. But part of this problem is the part where people don't even WANT to understand. They don't want to learn about other people and they don't care to look deeper than the cover of a book. It's sad, but true. As humans, we have a tendency to judge, but lets get past this. Next time you meet someone, take some extra time to get to know them. Ask how they are, who they are, and find out more than just what brand of clothes their wearing. Actually get to know someone without judging them. 


Joelle says something that screams truthfulness. "It's not that things get better, it's that we get stronger" (Ryan, 2010). For the past few months, I've struggled with the balance of my life, and the stress and strain being put on me. I'm not by any means trying to compare it to Joelle's strife, but in the same sense, the only reason why I'm still coping is because I've become stronger. The world hasn't changed. The world is the world, and it is what it is. But as an individual, I've become much more aware of my surroundings, feelings, inner thoughts, and I've learned how to deal with them. I feel as though Joelle has done the same. She is in credibly strong, courageous, empowered woman who has started to build her wall of self esteem. We can tell because she is still the amazing activist that she is. She has gotten stronger and stronger as time goes by, but the world has not gotten better.