EPISODE 9 - donnie darko
Guest: Jonah Bossewitch

Sandy and educator, technologist and activist Jonah Bossewitch ring in spooky season with a discussion of the cult classic film Donnie Darko. They talk about the portrayal of psychiatry (which includes hypnosis for some reason?) and whether all the movie's talk of time travel could be seen as a meditation on suicide.

[This episode contains the brief sound of gun shots at 1:36] 

SOME SUGGESTED RESOURCES FROM SANDY

• Buy and read We’ve Been Too Patient. Of course read our guest Jonah Bossewitch’s essay in it, an ethnography of the radical mental health movement called “Dangerous Gifts” (adapted from his dissertation). WBTP be the third Mad Chat Book Club pick so I encourage you to pick it up and check it out. We’ll have that conversation at some point in early 2020. 

• Other resources / organizations Jonah mentioned during our chat: 

  • The Icarus Project

  • The Institute for the Development of Human Arts or IDHA 

  • NYC Respite Centers 

  • Piece up at Mad in America by Leah Harris on “The Rise of the Digital Asylum”

  • Publication by the British Psychological Society about understanding psychosis

• I mentioned our episode about Six Feet Under with Hearing Voices movement activist Caroline Mazel-Carlton. I also mentioned our latest episode, with Yassir Lester, about Batman: The Animated Series. 

• We briefly mention asylums; check out my new piece for 99 Percent Invisible, about asylums historically in America. 

• Listen to my breb, which is frequently what’s helping me today. Tell us #whatshelpingtoday and Chris Ritter may illustrate your suggestion. 

• 🎃🎃🎃 We’re still soliciting your spooky stories about mental health and Halloween. Have you encountered psychiatric patients/treatments used at haunted houses/as costumes/decorations etc.? Tell us your stories — send a minute-or-under voicemail to madchatshow at gmail. 

• Our final episode of Season 1 will be our Halloween Special on Halloween — with a very special guest. Chat with you again in *two* weeks.
  

TRANSCRIPT

SANDY ALLEN: This movie’s funny, you know — that’s one of those things I was thinking about rewatching it was like, it is dark, and it’s got horror stuff in it, and it’s got alien stuff in it, but it’s also, like, a funny movie, which I think is maybe also one of the reasons it’s kind of had this lasting sort of, like — you know, it’s — it’s — it’s lingered in our culture, Donnie Darko. 

 JONAH: We should talk about its cult status. It’s — it’s fascinating, it’s still playing on — on — on the big screen in New York, much like Rocky Horror.

[CLIP FROM THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW]

DR. FRANK-N-FURTER: (sung) I’m just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania.

JONAH: Or — or Evil Dead.

[CLIP FROM EVIL DEAD (1981)]

LINDA: (sung) We’re gonna get you, we’re gonna get you, not another peep, time to go to sleep.

JONAH: Which is actually featured in the film, and, you know, I — I was thinking about it, you know, it’s not like there are many quotable quotes, or that people throw around the quotes. It’s not like Lebowski.

[CLIP FROM THE BIG LEBOWSKI]

THE DUDE. I’m The Dude. So that’s what you call me, you know? That or His Dudeness or Duder or, you know, El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing.

JONAH: Pulp Fiction.

[CLIP FROM PULP FICTION]

JULES WINNFIELD: And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee (gunshots).

JONAH: Although there are some very Tarantino-like scenes, like the Smurf scene, like, you know, the dialogue in that Smurf scene.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

SEAN SMITH: Smurfette fucks all the other Smurfs. Why do you think Papa Smurf made her? Because all the other Smurfs were getting too horny. 

DONNIE DARKO: First of all, Papa Smurf didn’t create Smurfette. Gargamel did. She was sent in as Gargamel’s evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village. But the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her. Smurfs are asexual. They — they don’t even have reproductive organs under those little white pants. That’s what’s so illogical, you know, about being a Smurf. What’s the point of living if you don’t have a dick?

JONAH: There’s so much, you know, especially in its, like, depiction of the ‘80s that just also rang really true. And maybe — maybe it’s just, like, being a child of those years that — that tracked — my development, you know, would’ve been around the same time in high school, I guess. And — and there was something that rang so true about, yeah, its — its mockery and taking to task.

[MAD CHAT THEME MUSIC]

SANDY: This is Mad Chat, a podcast where we unpack what our pop culture is telling us about madness and mental health. I’m your host, Sandy Allen. Today I am delighted to be talking about a movie that I believe introduced me to one of the first and truest loves of my life, Jake Gyllenhaal — according to me at 14, at least — that is, Donnie Darko. 

[“MAD WORLD” BY GARY JULES PLAYS]

SANDY: Donnie Darko focuses on a teenager in the late ‘80s in suburban Virginia named Donnie Darko who one night has an airplane engine fall out of nowhere onto his bedroom — fortunately he’s not home. It was first released in theaters in October 2001, a particularly unlucky moment in time to release a movie that heavily featured a plane accident. Made by a 25-year-old newcomer named Richard Kelly, Donnie Darko was initially a total flop at the box office. And it then became a cult classic, remembered for its creepy imagery of a man in a bunny costume, its sort of totally mysterious ending, its soundtrack, and its awesome cast. It featured Jake Gyllenhaal, who at the time was relatively unknown, as well as his sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal, who played his sister. His girlfriend, Gretchen, was played by Jena Malone, and it was Seth Rogan’s first movie — he played Donnie’s bully. It also featured some nostalgic casting picks, like Patrick Swayze and Drew Barrymore. Now, before I go any further, here is a big spoiler alert. This movie came out nearly 20 years ago. It’s widely available for purchase and it’s streaming on Amazon Prime with ads — if you can stand giving money to Jeff Bezos and you can stand ads. But anyway, if you’ve never seen Donnie Darko or just want a refresher before listening to this chat, I encourage you to pause here and go check it out. All right. Here today to talk about Donnie Darko with me is Jonah Bossewitch. [5:00] Jonah, welcome to Mad Chat.

JONAH: Hello, Sandy. I’m so happy to be here.

SANDY: Thanks so much for picking Donnie Darko, I’m really excited to get into it. But before we do that, I would love you to introduce yourself to our listeners. Do you mind telling folks a little bit about yourself and your activism?

JONAH: Absolutely. So I’m an educator, software developer, and longtime activist — I mean, I care a lot about climate and privacy, but I really focus a lot of activism in the last decade on mental health issues. I do a lot of work with radical mental health activists. My day job now is at a mental health nonprofit, and we work on the National Suicide Lifeline and the New York City crisis center NYC Well, and I also am very involved in organizing with the Institute for the Development of Human Arts, which is an organization that — that develops alternative workshops for practitioners to think about transformative practices that are based and built on experience. I spent over a decade working at Columbia University and the job came with free tuition, so I was chipping away for a really long time on a PhD and wrote a dissertation that was an ethnography of radical mental health activists.

SANDY: Yeah. And we’ll talk a little bit more about kind of some of your — your ideas in this space as you put them down in that thesis. And then there’s a new version of some of that material which is out in this exciting new collection called We’ve Been Too Patient, which we’ll talk more about as well. I think the last time I saw you we were both at the protest outside the APA in New York, right?

JONAH: Yeah, we had — we had a great brunch in a — in a garden — in a garden cafe at a Turkish restaurant, I remember, and we also were protesting the APA.

SANDY: Yeah. You were the one who suggested that we talk about Donnie Darko. I was excited when you brought it up in part because it’s one of those movies that I think I saw when I — when it probably came out, you know, in 2001 or 2002, something around that — I would’ve been in high school, like, early high school, around the age, actually, of the characters in the movie. And I don’t think I would’ve understood it at all, you know what I mean? Like, I’m pretty sure me as a teenager understood this movie, like, zero percent. So watching it again now, it was, like, a totally new experience for me, I was completely surprised by the ending, everything. And so I’m wondering what was your life like when you first saw Donnie Darko, and what did you think of the movie at the time?

JONAH: Right. So, I guess I’m a little older than you — I graduated college around ‘97 and was working at the time. I — I grew up in New York City and — and was here for — for 9/11. And I saw this movie in the theaters. I couldn’t actually place exactly when, but I think it was an indie release, and I’m pretty sure I saw it at IFC or something. And — and I was blown away at the time, I was really, you know, completely caught off guard, surprised, related to so many of the characters. Generally speaking, I’m a sucker for time travel flicks, for starters (SANDY laughs). Yeah, I mean, so that’s, you know — that’s always there, and we can talk more about allegories for psychoanalysis, you know, to begin with. But I like sci-fi, I like — but this one had, you know, this really incredible deep dive into his psyche and emotional disturbances and there were just, you know, some key lines in there. It’s — it’s been remarkable. I remember seeing it in theaters, you know, I remember the DVD coming out. I spent some time on the website, as well, which was, like, you know, an incredible moment in media at the time, and the website had all these —

SANDY: Yeah, can you explain about that a little bit, because until you brought that up with me, I’m not sure I knew about the Donnie Darko website sort of as a phenomenon, but this is interesting.

JONAH: So I guess it’s 2001, (laughs) you know, there were websites — it was pre-Web 2.0, so there wasn’t a ton of interactivity on the web yet, maybe a little e-commerce. But we’d have to look up the dates, I’m pretty sure it’s pre-YouTube, pre-Wikipedia, pre-Flickr, pre-Delicious. And most movie sites at the time at, you know, if they had one, were marketing sites, you know, trying to get folks, entice them to see the film, maybe include the teaser. The Donnie Darko site along with, like, a handful of others, you know, was actually seemingly meant for the fans. So, you know, there were things in there that only made sense if you had seen the movie; in fact, there were these puzzles, and if you had seen the movie you could get to the next level. It was — I think at the time people talked about convergence or transmedia experiences, it was like — it was like another world. It didn’t — it actually added facts to the film. You could dive in deeper. The pages of The Philosophy of Time Travel, you know, were on the site, but not discussed really in the film. And there were even —

SANDY: Which is a fictional book that’s in the movie about time travel.

JONAH: Right. Well, we don’t know if it’s fictional (laughs).

SANDY: (laughing) Fair. [10:00] So — so you — you were like a fan of — of — of this movie back then.

JONAH: I loved it, yeah. I guess I’ll add, you know, it has been many, many years since I’ve seen it. I have — I have the soundtrack on — on, you know — in my music collection, and I revisit that. It’s — it’s a phenomenal soundtrack, I think.

SANDY: The soundtrack is so good, yeah. 

JONAH: Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean so much of the movie is about nostalgia, and also I think a critique of the ‘80s in — in many ways. But the soundtrack really nails it. It’s got, you know, some Joy Division —

[“LOVE WILL TEAR US APART” BY JOY DIVISION PLAYS]

JONAH: — some Echo & the Bunnymen —

[“THE KILLING MOON” BY ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN PLAYS]

JONAH: — and Tears for Fears.

[“HEAD OVER HEELS” BY TEARS FOR FEARS PLAYS]

JONAH: It’s just — it’s just such a great mix that I feel like the movie has stayed with me over the years. And I, you know — I always recommend it, but — but it’d been a really long time since I’d seen it, and revisiting it —

SANDY: Yeah. And then you rewatched it to do this podcast.

JONAH: Yeah, yeah, a couple times (laughs). 

SANDY: Yeah. How did it look to you now?

JONAH: It sat differently. There are some, you know, stereotypical depictions of madness that — that I’m more critical of at the moment. I still really like it. I — I — I see myself in it, I think I understand exactly what I loved about it, you know, almost 20 years ago. And in particular there’s just, like, you know, these — these moments of dialogue and — and, you know, I’ve heard this story that — that Jake, you know, when they were looking around trying to cast his sister, like, recommended Maggie who — who he — he, you know, touted as a great, great, great actress. And — but, you know, their banter even in that opening dinner scene where, you know, he’s like: 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DONNIE DARKO: Maybe you should be the one in therapy, then mom and dad can pay someone $200 an hour to listen to all your thoughts so we don’t have to.

ELIZABETH DARKO: Okay. You want to tell mom and dad why you stopped taking your medication?

JONAH: Just, like, the open exchange and stigma of therapy but, like, you know, talked about the shame of, like, taking meds or not, like, you know, some of that dialogue seemed authentic, and — and still does. Like, those are the kinds of conversations that at my age at the time people in therapy, you know, would have to struggle with. Like, what did it even mean to be paying somebody to listen to your problems, that kind of thing. You know, when he meets Gretchen and, you know, she’s talking about, you know, her stepdad’s emotional problems: 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DONNIE DARKO: So, why’d you move here?

GRETCHEN ROSS: My parents got a divorce. My mom had to get a restraining order against my stepdad. He has emotional problems. 

DONNIE DARKO: Whoa, I have those too. What kind of emotional problems does your dad have?

GRETCHEN ROSS: He stabbed my mom four times in the chest.

DONNIE DARKO: Oh.

JONAH: That’s his, like, way of flirting, to like, open up and disclose, like, and relate to her with his — with his emotional problems. So I think — I think it was likely dialogue like that that really, really, really hooked me, and — and helped me relate, you know — you know, strongly, to Donnie.

SANDY: Yeah, let’s talk about Donnie. What’s — what’s Donnie’s deal in this movie?

JONAH: (laughs) I mean, you know, he’s the cutest guy in the class, right? Like when — when — when Karen, the teacher, you know, forces Gretchen to sit — to sit near — near — near her favorite: 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

GRETCHEN ROSS: Um, where do I sit?

KAREN POMEROY: Sit next to the boy you think is the cutest. (Excited murmurs through the class). Quiet! Better choose.

SANDY: (laughing) Yeah, that’s a pretty fucked up thing for a teacher to do (JONAH laughs). I was like, what is this, like, this is so wild. But yeah, Donnie is cute, he’s the cutest guy in the class according to Gretchen, and he’s also kind of — I mean it seems like he’s a bit of a Holden Caulfield figure. He’s kind of a, you know — he doesn’t care what people think of him, he’s willing to kind of, like, speak up and, you know, call out bullshit. And he also is, like, in trouble, like, with a lot of different authority figures for that sort of proclivity. 

JONAH: In trouble and troubled. I mean, it comes out that, you know, he’s in therapy because he got involved in — in a house burning down, right? And so I had actually misremembered some of the ambiguity in this film — the, you know — the actual depiction of him with the ax, you know, conclusively demon– or showing that — that — that he flooded the school and — and dousing, you know, the home in flames. Like, for some reason I had — I had remembered the movie as leaving more of that up in the air, and — and — but regardless, yeah. Like — like, he’s got problem, and he’s — and he’s — and he’s, you know, a threat to others and himself, really, ultimately. I mean it’s tough to avoid that characterization. I mean, we don’t need to use the clinical terms or even, you know, diagnostic categories, [15:00] although they do sneak into this film, although I don’t think as strongly as they would nowadays. 

SANDY: Yeah. We’ve got a diagnosis mentioned at one point by the psychiatrist. She calls him a paranoid schizophrenic.

JONAH: I think she says that the hallucinations are characteristic of paranoid schizophrenia. 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DR. THURMAN: Donnie’s aggressive behavior, his increased detachment from reality, seem to stem from his inability to cope with the forces in the world that he perceives to be threatening. Donnie is experiencing what is commonly called a daylight hallucination. This is a common occurrence among paranoid schizophrenics.

SANDY: Voice-hearing is — is — is figured in the movie in — in the form of this sort of distorted sound that, you know, the audience is clearly meant to experience as Donnie Darko’s character’s experiencing this giant bunny rabbit named Frank, who starts talking to him, and who, as the film progresses, the audience realizes who exactly this figure is.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DONNIE DARKO: How can you do that?

FRANK: I can do anything I want. And so can you.

SANDY: This is like an archetype, right? The kind of, like, misfit teenage boy who’s struggling in the world and internally. And I guess one of the things I found interesting is that often-case that character wouldn’t be your lead, he would be kind of the — maybe someone off to the side. But it does seem like one of the maybe, like, quietly radical things about this movie is that it is centering somebody who’s, you know — in the John Hughes-ish world of this movie, he doesn’t seem like the most popular or kind of most exciting guy, other than that moment where he’s kind of singled out as being cute. He’s kind of, in fact, like, pretty clearly bullied at school and has a couple of friends, but they kind of seem, you know, like, they’re not doing the best socially as well. I wondered — you mention, like, back when you, you know — you — you felt a sort of affinity for this character, what were some of the aspects of his, like, story or biography here that, you know, you were like, “Oh, this really resonates with me”?

JONAH: You know, it’s so interesting you characterize his role in school in that way, and I think that’s accurate, and we should talk about his image of himself. Like, you know, in that same, you know, opening flirtation with — with Gretchen:

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

GRETCHEN ROSS: Donnie Darko. The hell kind of name is that? It’s like some sort of superhero or something.

DONNIE DARKO: What makes you think I’m not?

JONAH: Like, I really do think that — that he — he does see himself as a superhero in a lot of ways. And, you know, his indignance, and his righteousness, and — and his takedowns of hypocrisy, I mean, he’s so furious, you know, with — with Patrick Swayze, and — and also the gym teacher, and also just, you know, like, bullshit and lies. I know in the director’s cut, for example, there’s a really touching scene with him and his dad in the garden, and — and you learn that, like, his dad was also crazy or thought of himself as crazy or, you know, at various points in time, and reassures Donnie that he’s not, and then just, you know, tells him outright that, you know, he should just say “Fuck you” to, like — to the bullshit in the world, and that he’s smarter than all of them. You know, we’ve got that scene with the — with the principal. 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

PRINCIPAL COLE: Donald, let me preface this by saying that your Iowa test scores are intimidating. 

SANDY: Yeah yeah yeah.

JONAH: He’s really smart and knows it. And — and, you know, maybe that combination of just sort of, like, misfit, outcast, you know, kind of a loser, but still got, like, a group of friends and, you know, just — just looking for love in high school kind of thing, like — yeah, I think I could relate to that.

SANDY: I mean, who couldn’t? (JONAH laughs) I should say, there are actually two versions of Donnie Darko: the 2001 theatrical release, and then the director’s cut, which was released in 2004 and added about half an hour of material and was widely disparaged by fans. You’re someone who has a strong opinion in terms of which of the two versions is superior, right?

JONAH: Yeah. You know, I think it started with the budget, you know, like, it’s — it’s clear in the director’s cut that he could afford a couple more songs, and I had been very attached to the original soundtrack. And so, you know, from the opening scene when in the director’s cut he starts with INXS instead of the Echo & the Bunnymen “Killing Moon,” like, you know you’re in a different movie, and that’s one of the ways to know you’re in a different movie. But I think what makes the movie so different systematically is that the director’s cut just takes away all the mystery. It introduces these title cards, like, throughout, that explain, you know, the metaphysics of time travel [20:00] in this film world, and, you know, the original film, like, just left so much open to interpretation: Was he hallucinating? You know, was the rabbit real? Was this, like, actually, you know, time travel, like, you know, in — with the rules of this game? Like, you know, because there really is, like, a reading of the film in which Donnie’s not hallucinating. You know, the rabbit was real and, like, you know — I mean, when — when — when you really, you know, break it down, there’s like — there’s very specific rules, and the plot is kind of almost too simple, and, you know, when you — when you put it together, like, the film with the website and the puzzle and piecing it out and trying to, you know, figure it out, interpret it for yourself, like, I think that was a lot of the draw and the allure of the original version. You know, the director’s cut has, you know, more special effects. There’s — there are these title cards with, like, visual hallucinations, I guess you could say — zooming in on the eye and stuff. There are a couple of really — really good scenes that deepen character development. There’s more scenes with the teachers, there’s more scenes with his parents. But I would say the biggest plot twist and mind fuck of the director’s cut is that the pills were placebos, like — 

SANDY: Yeah, so —

JONAH: — what?!

SANDY: So let’s explain this, yeah. So basically, the — the movie — so one of the things you learn about Donnie Darko from that first scene at dinner — you learn he is in therapy, and that he’s on psych meds of some kind. Like, that idea is introduced regarding him right away, and then there’s multiple scenes between Donnie and his psychiatrist. It definitely seems to be a pretty big part of what the movie is about, and in the original version there is not this insinuation which is added into the director’s cut where the psychiatrist, after this really intense sequence, just kind of tells him out of the blue, “By the way, your pills have been placebo this whole time.” 

JONAH: It’s mind boggling because, you know, we hadn’t talked prior about, you know, Donnie’s struggle with the pills. Like, he’s taking them, he’s not taking them, he’s, like, looking in the mirror trying to force himself to, you know, like, everyone’s encouraging him. And then there’s the scene when his parents come into the psychiatrist and she recommends upping the pills. So she’s upping the placebos, right? And —

SANDY: Yes.

JONAH: Yeah, it just doesn’t even, like — it barely coheres, I mean, you know, to whatever extent coherence makes any sense in — in a time travel film, you know, with paradoxes. But — but that — I had to watch that over again just to make sure I heard it right, you know?

SANDY: No, it’s really weird when she says it. I — I finally just watched the director’s cut and I was like, wow, that — but it’s kind of one of those things where, you know, when I see Donnie Darko, and I’ve seen it a few times — I haven’t seen it, you know, dozens or hundreds of times, you know, the way that some people have — I’ve never gotten to the end and really understood what just happened, you know what I mean? Like, I think I’m always a little bit confused about what exactly has occurred. But that addition just, like, adds to that sense to me. It doesn’t help anything. As the brain, or at least as my brain is sort of searching for some way to resolve the — the — the plot of the movie so that it makes sense, or to just understand the thing, having those pills be fakes just makes it even more confusing on some level. Like, why would a psychiatrist do that, first of all?

JONAH: I know. He’s not part of a study, I mean (SANDY laughs), so I mean that’s another thing — I mean, another thing to say about this film in terms of the complexity and nuance is that in my — in my experience or estimation, like, so many popular cultural depictions of madness, you know, just, like, adhere to this metanarrative that when you’re taking your drugs you’re fine and when you come off you act out, right? And so — you know, Silver Linings Playbook, kind of that runs through it, you know? Like, his life falls apart every time he — he stops taking his meds.

SANDY: Yeah, and I guess, like, I would like to hear you explain what’s wrong with that sort of narrative, because I think there’s probably listeners who think that that’s right, yeah, if someone’s on their meds that’s good, if someone’s off their meds that’s bad and dangerous. Like, why is that not necessarily a very accurate thing to believe?

JONAH: Yeah, I guess I would challenge or encourage anybody who — who thinks it’s that simple to try one one day for themselves, you know? I mean, there’s a lot of folks out there that put anything in their mouths in college, you know, whether it’s legal or not. And, you know, one antipsychotic’s not gonna kill you, right? But — but I honestly, like, wish that more providers and psychiatrists, you know, would — would — would actually sample some of their own wares before handing them out like candy like that. So, I think ultimately, you know, these drugs are so potent and powerful and — and people underestimate just, like, how bad they make people feel. I mean, you know, people talk about adherence, they talk about compliance, I mean, talk about — there’s an article [25:00] in Mad In America that spotlights the new sensor-based pill, which is like a pill that talks to your phone to tell your psychiatrist if you’ve taken it or not. And the first pill that’s gonna include that — that new digital feature is Abilify, which is a really potent antipsychotic. So, studies have shown that folks taking a lot of these psych pills have, like, on average ten, fifteen less years of life. There’s long term meta-studies that show that, you know, the so-called developing countries that are not aggressively dispensing these drugs, like, people actually do better over time. I mean there’s a big difference between acute treatment and long term treatment, for example, but many of these drugs are awful. Now, drugs can help a lot of people, and they do help a lot of people, and a lot of people will attest to ways in which drugs, you know, have helped them through something. And ultimately I think people really need to become their own doctors in the sense of nobody cares more about yourself than you, and you just need to do the research and also just pay attention to how it makes you feel. And — and I think, you know, when — when — when looked at from that perspective, it — it really sheds a lot more light into a lot of the controversy and struggle. Donnie’s struggle in this film, I mean, you know, he — if they were placebos, and I’m not sure how we want to — how we want to read the film in this case —

SANDY: I — I would like us to proceed discussing the theatrical release version.

JONAH: Yeah, let’s stick with the theatrical.

SANDY: — which, you know, I think we both prefer, and I think a lot of people prefer in part because it, you know, it doesn’t mess up the music, but it also, like, I think allows us to — it is a more ambiguous work of art, and I think it’s more interesting to engage with, for that reason.

JONAH: Yeah. I mean, I like — like I said, I like sci-fi, but the rigid rules of this movie-verse that are laid out in the director’s cut really — really take a lot of the fun out of it, you know? And I think there’s still room to play with more varied interpretations, even within the confines of the director’s cut, like, I mean, I — I, ultimately — and this does not come up in the film — but I have thought about this film as like a meditation on suicide.

SANDY: Right, which you mentioned the other day and I’m fascinated to ask about. So because it’s not the most obvious interpretation, could you explain it. When you say it’s a meditation on suicide, what do you mean?

JONAH: I mean, the first time that thought had occurred to me years back, I had imagined that the whole film was like, you know, a vision or a premonition or a depiction of what Donnie feared. And effectively this, you know, engine falling through the roof, and just, like, ripping this family to shreds, literally, was an allegory for their son taking their own life, you know? And not necessarily that those kinds of things — that the things in the film happened, but that was, like, the pain Donnie was experiencing, and that led to him effectively taking his own life. In the director’s cut version of reality, and I know we’re not talking about it, but still it’s, like, one read on the film — like, Donnie saves the primary verse, the primary universe, by returning this artifact to the primary universe. Like, he — he throws the jet engine back on himself. Like, he has to kill himself in order to save Gretchen and save Frank. And, you know, he chooses — he chooses that. Now, there’s so much in this film that, like, you know, kind of, like, leads up to and alludes to that — his parents talking on the bed about whether or not Donnie’s doomed, you know, the physics teacher talking about, you know, whether or not you actually have choice — I mean, there’s a weird undercurrent of, like, you know, religion that I didn’t even pick up until two, three, you know, times in with the therapist — and she’s really, really, really devout in a lot of ways, you know, God’s channel and all that —

SANDY: She is! 

JONAH: Yeah, it’s weird.

SANDY: Yeah, and — and even in — I was watching the director’s cut more recently, so I forget if this is in the theatrical one, but she, like — after that moment where she says the placebo thing, she then gives a sort of explanation of the difference between atheism and agnosticism, which I thought was very, I don’t know, again just bizarre for a therapist or psychiatrist to be sort of weighing in on those topics.

JONAH: She is inappropriate in so many ways, you know, like, that depiction of a therapeutic relationship is so broken. But —  but just to close a parentheses on — on a suicide, if you can close a parentheses on one, you know, just the — the idea that he really did choose to take his own life to save Gretchen and Frank, basically, by rewinding that whole timeline and kind of going back then. So — so it works, like, both within, you know, the materialist, sci-fi reality as well as just as, like, this more symbolic allegory in terms of —

SANDY: Yeah, let’s talk about that allegorical interpretation, because I think that’s what you’re referring to, and I think it’s a really interesting take on what this movie is actually about. And definitely not one that, like, is in reviews of this movie. Like, I don’t think people saw this movie or critics or whoever didn’t go, “Oh, this is an allegory for suicide.” I don’t really think that’s, like, a very well known interpretation [30:00] of the movie. You said it to me, and then rewatching it since, having that idea in my head I was like, wow, that’s a really compelling thesis. So I’m curious for you to kind of, yeah, just talk about perhaps what is more sensitive in this portrayal of — let’s say, for, you know, just for the sake of argument that your interpretation is correct. Like, what is unusual about this portrayal of suicide, I guess as opposed to a lot of how pop culture tends to take up that issue?

JONAH: I think, again, it comes back to complexity, nuance, ambiguity, like, in the sense that — I mean, to me, as an allegory, the idea of just, like, a jet engine, like, falling out of the heavens from out of nowhere, you know, to take your son, and then just seeing, you know, the family grieving like that is — is what I would imagine, you know, suicide often feels like, that somebody is just ripped from your life, seemingly out of nowhere, right? And yet the clues were everywhere, you could say. And so in a lot of ways, like, if you read this as a depiction of, like, the pain he was experiencing and — and his, really, his most deep-seated fears. Like, not necessarily that he did those things, but maybe that he wanted to, and that he felt himself compelled to, and I mean there’s, you know — suicide is — is — is often understood as, like, anger or violence directed inwards, you know? And — and, you know, there’s often ways in which that flips and it’s directed outwards and, you know, just that dichotomy of, like — of — of anger and violence and ways in which that’s captured in — in this tangent universe, or in this alternate, you know, premonition or vision or depiction of what he just went through that led him to this, if you really want to play with the timeline, some of this stuff led up to his, you know — to his — his — his death by jet engine, or death by, you know, the God machine, the deus ex machina.

SANDY: Yeah, act of God. And it seems like that’s kind of what it’s meant to be. It’s like, without explanation there’s a jet engine here, you know. 

JONAH: And I think — I think that’s what suicide often feels like to folks, like, they just — they’re desperately seeking answers. And I don’t even know if — if — if there’s a single, you know, simple answer. I mean, you know, when you do read the reviews, people talk about how, you know, if the tangent universe didn’t happen and — and Donnie did reverse time, then Patrick Swayze is never caught and, you know, so for example on the website, you know, they talked about how in the future, ten years out, Swayze takes his own life and, you know, and is guilty for, like, you know, his kiddie porn dungeon. But he’s never caught. And so, you know, just the back and forth. And I guess that comes right up against, you know, what is it, the life line (laughs) or the — the one-dimensional description of all of emotional life, you know? 

SANDY: Oh, we should explain what this is. So in the world of this, like, private school in apparently Virginia — but it’s, like, very clearly shot in Los Angeles — so in this private school there is this gym teacher who’s, like, a big fan of this local author who’s a motivational speaker played by Patrick Swayze, and he’s got this, like, scheme for how all of human emotion works where it’s basically a line, and on one end of the line says the word “Fear,” and on the other end of the line it says the word “Love.” And it’s called “attitudinal beliefs.”

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

KITTY FARMER: As you can see, the life line is divided into two polar extremes: fear and love. Fear is in the negative energy spectrum, and love is in the positive energy spectrum. 

SEAN SMITH: No duh.

KITTY FARMER: Excuse me? “No duh” is a product of fear.

SANDY: And it seems like it’s — it’s clear, right, that, like, these characters and, like, I don’t know, some of the other kind of, like, ‘80s normie stuff in the movie is definitely, like, being looked at less kindly than, like, the way that the movie is very sympathetic with Donnie or even his sister, to a certain degree — his mom, to a certain degree. But like, so these characters very much seem like they’re kind of the villains or the clowns kind from the beginning of the movie. And yeah, in — in the course of the plot, there’s this revelation after Donnie has lit his house on fire that this, you know, very shall we say popular or sort of, like, charismatic figure, Jim Cunningham, played by Patrick Swayze, has actually got a kiddie porn dungeon of some kind, and, like, that revelation comes to light. What did you make of all this, in the movie? This whole love versus fear — what’s this all about? Especially because there’s all this other stuff in the movie, right, that we’re — we’re talking about, like this, you know, young man deciding whether or not to take medication, who’s potentially contemplating suicide, who’s got, you know, a history of — of violence, who’s got — you know, violent acts that he’s committing during the course of this movie. We’ve got all this kind of, like, very serious stuff, [35:00] and then on the other hand — even, like, tonally it feels quite different — we’ve got this love versus fear schema and these folks kind of, like, advancing this very black or white sort of idea of how emotional reality works. Like, what’s the function of that in the wider scheme of this movie, as you see it?

JONAH: Yeah, I mean that’s a great question. I think, you know, for starters, Donnie himself, you know, take — you know, takes down the attitudinal belief system when he tells Kitty:

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

KITTY FARMER: I’ll tell you what he said. He asked me to forcibly insert the lifeline exercise card into my anus. (Stifled laugh that turns into a fake cough.)

JONAH: He talks about, you know, how you can’t sum life up, like, in two dimensions, and it’s, like, full of complex emotions. And, you know, I think — especially in his takedown of Cunningham, you know — Cunningham comes into — into the school and is, you know, giving self-help to — to — to an auditorium full of kids.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

STUDENT: What do I do to learn how to fight? 

JIM CUNNINGHAM: What do I to learn how to fight? Son, violence is a product of fear. Learn to truly love yourself. 

STUDENT: Okay.

JONAH: And then Donnie gets up at the mic and he’s — he’s really nervous. And he gives alternate advice to the other — to the other three kids that — that actually seems, you know — has a lot of wisdom, although is still, you know, teenage naive in terms of, you know, its simplicity.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DONNIE DARKO: You want your sister to lose weight? Tell her to get off the couch, stop eating Twinkies, and maybe go out for field hockey. You know what? No one ever knows what they want to be when they grow up. You know, it takes a little — little while to find that out, right Jim?

SANDY: Yeah.

JONAH: But, you know, Cunningham tries to take him down and say he’s full of fear, he’s full of fear. And — and Donnie owns it. Like, he actually says:

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DONNIE DARKO: You’re right, actually, I am pretty — I’m pretty troubled, and I’m pretty confused. And I’m afraid. Rally, really afraid. Really afraid. But I — I — I think you’re the fucking anti-Christ. (Crowd gasps, someone shouts “Get him out of here! Who do you think you are?”)

SANDY: It seems like the movie is sort of, like, highlighting something, which is almost, like, maybe pop cultural manifestations of, like, how mental health gets discussed or kind of, like, self help-y culture. It’s highlighting that in order to lampoon it, right? Like, we’re clearly supposed to not take this dude and his whole philosophy very seriously.

JONAH: I — I, yeah, I agree, and I’d even want to push that further into a critique of, like, the ideology of the ‘80s and — and really of society. And so in the sense that it’s not so much that Donnie’s troubled, it’s that the world is, in so many ways.

SANDY: Mad world.

JONAH: Mad world. Mad world, exactly. And like, you know, when you think of it in those terms, I mean, you know, Kitty is — is — is — is training Sparkle Motion, we need to talk about Sparkle Motion. 

SANDY: Yeah, we should talk about — I’m — I’m worried about our commitment to Sparkle Motion (BOTH laugh) that we haven’t already discussed Sparkle Motion.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

KITTY FARMER: (nearly in tears) This has been a dream of Samantha’s and — and all of ours, for a long time. I made her lead dancer. Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion. 

SANDY: Yeah, so Sparkle Motion is the dance troupe that Donnie Darko’s younger sister is —

JONAH: His 8-year-old sister and this gym teacher who’s, like, you know, this, you know, Puritanical, like, you know, law and order, you know, fear or love — has completely sexualized, like, these young girls. She has them dancing to “Notorious” and, like, it seemed like the parents were so uncomfortable at this performance that they have to start, like, clapping to make it folksy instead, you know — I don’t know. But — but really, you know, from the opening scene where Elizabeth states:

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

ELIZABETH DARKO: I’m voting for Dukakis.

JONAH: And, you know, her father’s like:

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

EDDIE DARKO: Hmm. Well. Maybe when you have children of your own who need braces and you can’t afford them because half of your husband’s paycheck goes to the federal government, you’ll regret that decision.

ELIZABETH DARKO: My husband’s paycheck? 

JONAH: It feels like, you know, there’s a critique of, you know, the — the entire Reagan era, which like on the surface was superficially, you know, a happy place to be, and — and you just scratch and then there comes the hypocrisy and the bullshit and the contradictions. And so I’d love to read this as, like, you know — you know, it’s not Donnie that’s troubled, it’s — it’s the world in this movie.

SANDY: Yeah, and I guess why it’s tough to do that with this movie is we see Donnie do stuff like flood the entire school and drive an ax into the head of a sculpture and burn down Patrick Swayze’s house. And so, I mean I — I — you’ve alluded to sort of kind of like problematic madness-related tropes that this movie does take up, and I was curious to hear you kind of talk a little bit about that. I guess particularly stuff that [40:00] maybe it didn’t bother you back then, but now watching the movie again it does bother you a little bit more.

JONAH: Absolutely, though before I do, flooding the school led to him talking to Gretchen, which never would have happened otherwise, and burning the house —

SANDY: Oh, yeah. From Donnie’s point of view — yeah, I mean we see how these things have sort of, like, a positive outcome in the world of this movie. We even see how, like, Frank, you know, ends up being a figure who in some interpretation is kind of a positive figure in this movie, you know, and there’s something, yeah, kind of interesting in that. But — so really I mean we can go either way with it, I guess. Like, what are ways in which this movie is kind of breaking stereotype or kind of elevating kind of beyond what we might expect of like a flick from 2001, slash how much is this movie kind of reenacting or taking up or leaning on kind of, like, stereotype that pop culture just loves to repeat?

JONAH: Yeah, so — and I’m — and I’m happy to critique this momentarily, for sure. But — but I do want to point out that — and this is where the director’s cut kind of gets weird — is that in the director’s cut version of the universe, like, all of those things are happening specifically so that Donnie can save the world, you know, and that’s like, it’s guiding him in those directions. But — but ultimately, like, kind of just reading it as a text, the trope of knife-wielding psychotics and, you know, ways in which folks who are mad are — are — are more prone to violence is — is a really dangerous one. It’s more dangerous now than ever, with the prevailing mainstream media narrative of mass shootings, you know, ultimately being caused by mental illness. Like, not even examining the role that the psych drugs play or can play and have played in many of these shootings because, you know, these antidepressants not only cause suicidal ideation in a small percentage of patients but also homicidal ideation and it’s like, you know. So — so there’s all of that, I mean, leading up to, as a crescendo, the administration now calling for artificial intelligence to actually identify the mentally ill to prevent mass shootings. You know, you — you think about where that comes from, you think about the — the proposition of the Mad Chat show, if we want to, like, zoom out and go big, it’s like, just think about —

SANDY: Yeah. Go big, Jonah.

JONAH: Yeah, yeah, you just think about, like, you know, the depictions of — of — of mental — of mental health and illness in the ‘80s and ‘90s and it’s just like every horror show is like got — or horror movie has the asylum scenes in it and — and it’s just — I think I’ve always dreamt of crowdsourcing a project where we actually collect all these fragments of the depictions of — of folks diagnosed with mental illness in pop culture, and I think you quickly have an answer as to why, you know, the cops are so quick to shoot anybody with a diagnosis. I mean, if you have a diagnosis, you’re — you’re — you’re sixteen times more likely to be shot by a cop interaction, and that’s before, you know, a racial breakdown. I mean, one in four police fatalities involve somebody with a mental illness. And there’s a lot of reasons why, and pop cultural depictions of the mentally ill have to have a lot to do with that, have to have, like, you know, seeped into our understanding and our psyche of, like, what this is all about. All that said, you know, there’s not an asylum scene in Darko. He never officially receives a diagnosis. He’s actually — I mean, the cops show up at the end, and like — but he shot someone, you know, like, so I don’t love that, you know, he actually is depicted as doing all those things, and it’s so stereotypical in that sense, but, you know, at the same time he does walk between some raindrops, I mean, by undoing time and history, you know, like — (BOTH laugh)

[SPOOKY INTERSTITIAL MUSIC]

SANDY: I have a favor to ask of you, dear Mad Chat listeners. Have you run into instances where amusement parks or haunted houses or Halloween movies or Halloween parties or Halloween costumes are appropriating and using psychiatric and mental health and madness-related stuff in a problematic way? If so, I’d love to hear from you. Please send us a voice memo to madchatshow@gmail.com. Try to keep it under a minute, if you can. But tell us your stories. What have you run into out there in the world in terms of how Halloween likes to take up mental health-y stuff in order to make it into a horror trope? What have you encountered out there in the world? I’d love to hear it. Again, send a voice memo to madchatshow @gmail.com. Try to keep it under a minute. Thanks so much and, you know, happy Halloween-ish, I don’t know. Halloween, it’s — it’s kind of problematic. 

[SPOOKY INTERSTITIAL MUSIC]

SANDY: And I guess I was curious for us to think about some of the ways in which the portrayal of mental healthcare, you know, in this movie, is including some stuff, not including other stuff, is maybe kind of a fiction. Like, the hypnotherapy strikes me as — it’s — it’s such a Hollywood-y way of showing what a psychiatrist is, and I’m not sure that there’s — I’ve at least never read anything about, like, [45:00] this being a real, like, wave in psychiatry in the late ‘80s, that psychiatrists were busting out, you know, little clocks and making people go into trances. Like, I don’t think that that has any relationship with reality, does it?

JONAH: I don’t think so, either. I mean, it barely has a relationship with the — the — the Viennese routes of psychiatry, right? The, you know — it’s totally disingenuous, and I guess first question is is like, is it — ’cause it certainly wasn’t the case in 2001 that therapy looked like this, I mean 2001 you already, you know, the DSM-IV is already out, the, you know, the biomedical model, you know, is — is — is dominant and prevailing and, you know, psychiatry is not yet at 15-minute appointments, but is pretty much, you know — you know, collapsing into almost the exclusive treatment of — of — folks in — in crisis with — with medication. And so I don’t know if the director is playing with, like, his fabricated memory or conception of what that was like in the ‘80s, you see what I’m saying? Like, as opposed to like —

SANDY: Yeah, that’s kind of what I wondered. Like, was it a thing in the late ‘80s for a moment where psychiatrists were doing hypnosis? I for one have never read anything about that, and it at the very least, as you say, I think it’s disingenuous. I think it does — it — it takes our attention away from, like — like what would a portrait of psychiatry in the late ‘80s actually look like, I think is part of what we’re alluding to here. Like, what’s not being shown that probably would be in the life of somebody like Donnie Darko, you know, if — supposing this character were — were real.

JONAH: I mean she is such a weird character. I think her opening, you know — their opening session, you know, Donnie says: 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DONNIE DARKO: I made a new friend.

JONAH: And then she jumps on him and she’s like: 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DR. THURMAN: Real or imaginary?

JONAH: (laughing) You know, like, which is such a funny opening. And, you know, I don’t know if this is, like, a cinematic challenge in portraying therapeutic scenes, I mean — in the ‘80s, there definitely were psychiatrists who did do therapy also, did do talk therapy, and there’s a lot of stories now about psychiatrists lamenting the fact that their profession has, you know, completely degenerated into just being pill-pushers. But — and I think that —

SANDY: They’ve noticed!

JONAH: Yeah, they noticed. Some. (BOTH laugh). And I think, you know, this is, you know, for example, probably one of the reasons that The Sopranos is — is really admired for having these incredibly authentic depictions of — of — of therapy scenes. So I don’t know if that’s coming up anytime soon —

SANDY: It’s — it’s on my shortlist of — of stuff that I want to do for season two of Mad Chat for sure is The Sopranos.

JONAH: And to the best of my knowledge I think they consulted, you know, extensively with therapists. Now those settings nowadays would most likely be treated by a psychol — or, is more what a psychologist would be doing with — with a patient than a psychiatrist. But — but in the meantime, I just — I just wonder to what extent, like, filmmakers like either don’t know or don’t know how to, you know, cinematically depict in a — in a compelling way what a therapeutic scene would look like. It just seems like — it’s a short-cut to getting at people’s, like, deepest emotions. So, maybe it’s not plausible or believable that Donnie would admit to doing the things that he did or, you know, not plausible or believable that he would be, like, so forthcoming about, like, you know, his sexual desire for Christina Applegate, or, I mean, you know, there’s — there’s actually, I have read some stuff about this film that talk about his infatuation with his sister and — and like, you know, all this stuff that’s — that’s going on in their family. Another way of relating to this film for me is that I’m also, you know, one of three children, and — and the dynamics of that film, it’s — they’re not entirely dysfunctional, although in the director’s cut there’s that funny scene where — where Rose, the mom, actually, like, threatens to divorce Eddie. 

SANDY: And then they just smile at each other.

JONAH: Yeah (BOTH laugh). I think that’s really funny.

SANDY: I think that’s really charming. 

JONAH: Yeah.

SANDY: Yeah. It’s interesting because it’s clear that, like, Donnie is the reasonable figure to the audience. He’s the most reasonable one compared to a lot of the other characters around him. And sort of some of the acts that we see him committing and even some of the experiences that he’s having, like the visions, the voices, you know, these things notwithstanding I think the audience is asked to really kind of see things from Donnie’s point of view. I’ve been thinking about kind of the limit of that, in a sense, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the character of Cherita, who I’d like to talk about for a second. I’d like to specifically talk about the racism in this movie because it seems like [50:00] that’s potentially another of the kind of characteristics of this society that is being critiqued in the course of the movie is just the overwhelming whiteness and the kind of — the unquestioning racism that we really see figured in terms of this one character who’s Asian-American and the kind of, like, white bullies who are pretty free with their bullying of her.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

RONALD FISHER: Hey Cherita, you want a cigarette?

CHERITA CHEN: Chut up! 

RONALD FISHER: (mocking) Chut up!

SEAN SMITH: Go back to China, bitch.

DONNIE DARKO: Just leave her alone.

SANDY: I was curious what you thought about Cherita in general.

JONAH: I cringed ‘cause it wasn’t just, you know, the bullies, like, you know, Seth Rogan and the other one that were after her. I mean it was also Donnie and his friends at the bus stop, right? That’s when — that’s when it got really ugly. And I mean, he came to their defense, and in some ways it’s a set-up for his heroism or, you know, salvation — he does come to the rescue of a couple of women in this film, right? That was jarring. I didn’t remember — remember that.

SANDY: And that’s who I meant by bullies was I guess Donnie Darko’s friends are the ones who are kind of lobbing insults at Cherita when we first meet her. And then there’s this interaction between her and Donnie later where he comes up to her, and she’s always wearing earmuffs, he comes up to her, he kind of grabs her earmuffs —

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DONNIE DARKO: I promise that one day everything’s gonna be better for you. 

CHERITA CHEN: Chut up!

SANDY: And so he still has her earmuffs. And I guess I was thinking about that, I was like, this movie is so narratively biased toward Donnie Darko that we understand that what he’s intending to do isn’t steal her earmuffs, but I was like, he just stole her earmuffs, you know what I mean? I think he’s also somebody who I don’t think she’s, like, looking at him as a savior. Do you know what I mean?

JONAH: I do, I do, although in that same scene, you know, her notebook drops and, you know, she’s got hearts around his name, so she has some kind of crush on him, right?

SANDY: That’s true.

JONAH: He does that little double-take. I think that’s really important, you know. I do want to also bring up that this conversation has made me think more about another depiction of emotional disturbances in this film that we haven’t really touched on which is Gretchen’s stepdad, who stabbed her mother four times, and then her mother is basically disappeared at the end of the film and, you know, she’s horrified — they move to another town and change their names because he has a restraining order that wasn’t enough, and so she is totally a stalker victim of domestic abuse. 

SANDY: And I mean I think in addition to the racism something that was very striking in the world of this society that’s being portrayed is the misogyny. Donnie’s friend, you know, calls Cherita a bitch. Like, right away we hear Donnie call his mom a bitch. We hear that kind of word echo, you know, kind of like, male violence toward women is one of the kind of things that’s in the world of this story, but especially through that — that backstory with how Gretchen’s mom and they’ve moved to town, they’ve changed their names. And then as you alluded in that last Halloween evening party sequence, Gretchen shows up, she’s really distraught, she tells Donnie, hey, my mom is missing.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

GRETCHEN ROSS: I don’t know, she — she didn’t leave a note and the house was all messed up. 

DONNIE DARKO: Did you call the cops?

GRETCHEN ROSS: Yeah, they said I should leave the house, and that I should go to a safe place. 

SANDY: And then they go upstairs and have sex! (Laughs) Which, I don’t know man. I was like, wow, I don’t know, Donnie Darko, I don’t know if this is a very good moment to, like, go have sex with this girl. But anyway. I mean, that — that, for me, was maybe the single — like, that was one of the aspects of this movie that super didn’t age well, I — I felt was just the kind of, like, if we were to imagine what Gretchen’s emotional reality was at all, like if the movie were centered around her, I don’t know. That doesn’t — that doesn’t play very well, You know, like, maybe give her a minute if she’s — if she’s about to maybe learn that something terrible has happened to her mom, you know, like, it felt very much like it had to be kind of sidelined by the movie. It couldn’t be the movie’s plot, it had to kind of be window dressing.

JONAH: Hmm. Yeah no, I completely agree, I mean even — even the Smurfette banter I think totally illustrates the taken for granted misogyny of that era and that circle of friends, like, throughout the school. And you know it’s — it’s really interesting to think about Elizabeth, who doesn’t really have a big — a big role in the film, although, you know, she gets into Harvard, but I’m not sure if you picked up on this, I certainly didn’t the first couple of takes, but Frank is her boyfriend, right? So —

SANDY: Whoa. Really?

JONAH: Yeah. I had — I read about it, (SANDY laughs) and then I noticed it the first time through, like — when she comes into the house —

SANDY: Is that who she’s talking to on the phone? [55:00]

JONAH: So — so when she — when she walks in at midnight and leans against the door when the engine comes through the house, he’s dropping her off. He’s dropping her off.

SANDY: What?!

JONAH: And then he’s honking his horn and that’s what wakes up Donnie. Like — (BOTH laugh)

SANDY: It’s so funny. I love that this movie is that way, you know? And I think that must be part of why it has sort remained like catnip I think for some people, because it has that, like, just — it’s — it’s just vague enough, you know? Like it’s just sort of leaving you out of maybe a few of its most major considerations, and how that can be so pleasurable as an audience member. But man, I had never caught onto that at all. That just blew my mind.

JONAH: I had to read it. I had to read it this week when I was catching up. And so — so he’s her boyfriend, and he’s going out for beer, and I don’t know if you — you noticed, like, in the handwriting on the —

SANDY: Frank went out for beer! 

JONAH: Frank went out for beer, that’s what he’s doing in the car. And he wrote on — on the — on the refrigerator, and that’s the same handwriting as, you know, the — outside the — outside the statue. They’re testing the handwriting — so the handwriting on the refrigerator that Frank scribbles saying he went out for beer is a match, a dead match, for the — for the — for the handwriting around, like, the ax and the mascot.

SANDY: What do you make of that?

JONAH: That’s where the reading where Donnie is not psychotic, you know — you know, can play out, that the rabbit is real. But then another layer of that psychoanalytically actually comes back to his potential infatuation with his sister, and kind of an Oedipal thing between him and Frank, and he admires Frank and like, you know, but at the same time he’s pretty jealous of him, too. In terms of — I don’t know if I’d call it misogyny but just even the place of a woman it kind of comes up at dinner, you know, Eddie the father telling, you know, Elizabeth that like, you know, her husband’s gonna be, you know, taking all the money. But Elizabeth got into Harvard and deferred for a year to hang out with Frank. She’s like — she’s hanging out in town, what is it, the video store? I forget — I forget which store at the mall. 

SANDY: The Yarn Barn.

JONAH: The Yarn Barn, exactly. Instead of — instead of, you know, following her dreams and going to Harvard. So that — that really seems to be the reality of the time. And in the director’s cut there’s also a scene with Rose, the mother, and I don’t know which other mother, I think it must’ve been another Sparkle Motion mother, that are drinking wine and kind of redecorating the house and they’re talking about Patrick Swayze’s hair and that he’s still single. You know, there’s not — there’s not a ton of strong women depicted in this film — that’s not true. Drew Barrymore is I think an incredible character —

SANDY: Drew Barrymore’s character, yeah. 

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

KAREN POMEROY: You call this clarity? I don’t think you have a clue what it’s like to communicate with these kids. We are losing them to apathy. This prescribed nonsense. They’re slipping away.

SANDY: Something kind of interesting that I was reading, apparently like it was this script that was passed around Hollywood so much so that it had, like, food stains on it because so many producers had had their fingers on it at one point. And so it finally got made, but it was apparently, like, Drew Barrymore who really pushed for it to happen, and she was kind of the star who, you know, used whatever star power in order to actually make the thing happen, which kind of answered a question in my mind, which was, why does Drew Barrymore play the teacher in this movie? It always felt a little bit random. I don’t know why it always kind of stuck out to me. But no, so I think that it’s like that — that kind of heartbeat of — of violence towards some people that is in the background of this world that, yeah, like, really — people like Patrick Swayze’s character, you know, aren’t aware of stuff like that — that kind of racism, or that kind of violence toward women. It seems like that’s part of what’s being lampooned with that whole love versus fear thing is just, like, this doesn’t get at enough of the reality, I guess. I’m — I guess I really see the movie as showing that whiteness or showing that kind of misogyny as part of the — the culture that it is showing us in general this whole ‘80s thing. And I think it’s like maybe — it — it does feel to me like a bit of a rebuttal to more of a John Hughes romant — like somebody who would be more romantic or more nostalgic about the late ‘80s.

JONAH: I mean there’s actually direct references to Back to the Future.

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DR. MONNITOFF: The basic principles of time travel are there. You got your vessel and your portal, and your vessel can be just about anything, most likely a spacecraft.

DONNIE DARKO: Like a DeLorean?

DR. MONNITOFF: Metal craft of any kind.

DONNIE: You know I love that movie, the way they shot it — so, like, futuristic, you know?

JONAH: It is such a darker, you know, take on, you know, both of those — both of those depictions and worlds.

SANDY: I was curious if you had thoughts about kind of, like, the depiction of voice-hearing and vision-seeing in general in this movie and how those kind of — how those strike you [1:00:00] in terms of, like, their accuracy or just kind of, like, how they reflect, like, the reality that some folks experience, or whether they just seem like kind of like Hollywood fantasies?

JONAH: That’s a great question. I have to start by — by saying I don’t identify as a voice-hearer, so I don’t want to, you know, speak for that direct experience myself. There’s been — a visual hallucination or two, but that was on antimalarial drugs for me. But I’ll say —

SANDY: I guess one thing I’ll add is that you right after this are going to a panel on the Hearing Voices movement, if I’m not mistaken, so it is something that you’re — you’re pretty familiar with the kind of — the movement.

JONAH: I’m deeply embedded in the movement, and — and a key principle emerging in the movement, you know, in this next wave of mad resistance now is — is the importance of nothing about us without us, and so that was really where I wanted to qualify that I couldn’t really speak from the I.

SANDY: I really appreciate it. I also wanted to — I wanted to make clear to audiences that I’m not asking you this entirely out of the blue (laughs), I’m — I’m aware of where you’re heading directly after this conversation. But yeah, that’s important to say. But anyway, that being said, given your familiarity kind of with — with the movement, and I think part of what’s in my mind is given the relative lack of familiarity that some listeners might have, I would presume there are folks listening to this right now who maybe they caught our third episode where we talked about Six Feet Under, but especially if you didn’t, there’s a potential that folks have never heard of the Hearing Voices movement before. And so yeah, I — all that — all that being said, how — how did this movie’s kind of taking up of some of these topics strike you?

JONAH: There — there were times when I was somewhat uncomfortable with some of the depictions, but I also thought that — that some were fair and realistic in terms of ways in which, you know, voices are often experienced as disembodied and, you know, from the outside. I would say more importantly, you know, the Hearing Voices movement asserts strongly that hearing voices is not necessarily a pathology, it’s just a way of being. And there’s lots of ways of being, and, you know, the imperative to demand that folks have the right to narrate their own identities and interpret their own experiences, you know, there is — there are a lot of people out there who hear voices and in many circumstances those voices are not dangerous and do not lead to flooding the school or burning down a pedophile’s house, and so in that sense it’s unfortunate that this movie plays directly into — into that trope. At the same time, you know, people — people do appreciate seeing themselves on film and ultimately Donnie is a sympathetic character, and ultimately I think he’s really a hero, he’s the hero of this film, even though he’s a tragic hero. And, you know, to that extent, like, you know — and — and I mean, he’s troubled, but not — not — not entirely haunted. I mean, you know, he’s — he’s learning, he’s on a mission. It’s like, I don’t — I don’t know if — if it’s fair to say that he feels sick. He’s — he’s — he’s confused, and he’s working through stuff, but you know, he — he — it’s a hard one. It’s a hard one because — because the movie sort of boxes us in and traps us in — in the consequences of these voices, it’s real, you know, Son of Sam, you know, the rabbit made me do it kind of — kind of thing, you know. So maybe — maybe — maybe — maybe I’m being too defensive in some ways. 

SANDY: Well, there is a very pernicious stereotype in there, and I think it’s one that plays out really negatively in a lot of people’s lives, is there’s this overwhelming cultural perception that if someone hears voices that means those voices are gonna tell them to do violent things and they’re gonna do them, you know, it’s this whole set of presumptions that’s so popular in pop culture. And it’s not the reality that most voice-hearers are experiencing at all. 

JONAH: And if I could say one thing it’s that his family loves him and accepts him, you know, so in that sense, you know, they’re not judging him, they’re not considering him crazy. And his parents want to help him, and that — and that seems genuine. And his mom will do anything, you know, to keep him safe. She doesn’t know where her son went, but at the same time, you know, they eat together as a family — and so something — there’s something disingenuous about that depiction, too. I mean so many people I know who — who’ve struggled emotionally have, like — often have, like, way more, you know, traumatic and dysfunctional home lives and family lives, and so there — there’s a mismatch there. Somehow or another they really do all love each other and get along in — in very, very supportive ways, right? So —

SANDY: Yeah. And Donnie is the errant member, like, that line you referred to where his mom asks him early on:

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

ROSE DARKO: What happened to my son? [1:05:00] I don’t recognize this person today.

DONNIE DARKO: Then why don’t you start taking the goddamn pills?

SANDY: Like, there’s this sense that, like, sort of out of nowhere someone has been replaced by someone else, which I think is another of those kind of, like, I mean frequently repeated and kind of problematic notions that someone who’s received a diagnosis like schizophrenia has therefore been replaced with some totally different person.

JONAH: Or adolescence. I mean that’s the funny thing about that too is, like, you could also just read the film as, like, a coming-of-age story, right? Like, you know, but — but yeah, it’s a lot deeper than that, you know, once you factor in the, you know, therapist and the pills and his past and his history. And so, you know, from — from — from my perspective, I mean Donnie doesn’t really, you know, grapple with — with his condition. I mean, the therapist is probably, you know, should be held most to task on that — on that front, and I’m not talking about the importance of him receiving a diagnosis, but — but she can’t even get to him unless he’s under — under — under hypnosis. And I mean, she also — she completely glosses over, like, you know, what he’s going through emotionally, sexually, like —

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

DR. THURMAN: Do you still think about girls a lot?

DONNIE DARKO: Yeah. 

DR. THURMAN: How are things going at school?

DONNIE DARKO: I think about girls a lot.

DR. THURMAN: I asked you about school, Donnie.

DONNIE DARKO: I think about fucking a lot during school.

JONAH: Yeah, he wants to talk about the girl he has a crush on and stuff going on in his family and — and you know she just wants to go back to school and is like digging, you know, for whether or not, you know, he was involved in those crimes, I think. It seems, right? And like she doesn’t really.

SANDY: She’s — she’s a very — she’s like an inquisitor, you know? And I was thinking about that, how the hypnosis thing, too — and the hypnosis also comes up, I was mentioning ‘cause we have an episode about Batman: The Animated Series —

JONAH: Oh cool.

SANDY: — and there’s a sequence where there’s a psychiatrist who does hypnosis against Two Face. And it kind of works similarly, like, the psychiatrist pulls out the pocket watch and starts the hypnosis session, then immediately we’re kind of given access to that character’s innermost truths, you know, like it becomes this really, like, neat narrative device for kind of —

JONAH: Yeah, truth potion.

SANDY: — allowing — yeah. You pointed this out the other day and I wanted to mention it, kind of in terms of, like, Donnie’s mom and whether she is someone who — I don’t know, we’re supposed to sympathize with in the story or not, and kind of the way that, in general, in our culture today, for sure, but back in the late ‘80s this would’ve been true as well, it would’ve been the beginnings of it at least would’ve been true — parents are often kind of mobilized by the status quo mental health system in a very particular role, and you actually sort of see that in effect here:

[CLIP FROM DONNIE DARKO]

ROSE DARKO: What can we do?

DR. THURMAN: I would like to do more hypnotherapy and increase his medication. (Thunder clap).

ROSE DARKO: Whatever will help him, really, because that’s why we’re here. We just would like him to experience some relief. So if you think that more medication will do that, then I think we should give it a try.

SANDY: She’ll do anything to help her son, and I wondered for us to kind of talk a bit about the extent to which it seems like the therapist’s role in this world is to get the secrets out of Donnie and then deliver them to his parents.

JONAH: Yeah. Those scenes were really troubling to me, and I needed to — to look this up to — to verify it. I was unsure of the responsibilities or rights that minors had when they were in therapy, and it varies — it varies by state, and a lot of therapists will actually either sign and uphold, like, some kind of confidentiality agreement with parents, and a lot won’t. It’s a very, very important issue, I don’t know if your audience is familiar with the 21st Century Cures Act which passed at the end of the Obama administration.

SANDY: Yeah, why don’t you explain what that is?

JONAH: Yeah, so for — for years there was a congressman, Tim Murphy, not to be confused with Chris Murphy the senator, and Tim Murphy was a Navy psychologist who was a strong proponent of mental health legislation and for years was — was pushing, you know, more for evidence-based, you know, research and — and by evidence he didn’t only mean quantitative evidence, he, you know, also meant the stuff that only pharma could afford. He wanted a psychiatrist in charge of SAMHSA. He kind of really, really, really belittled and was down on any of the activities of the movement, there’s a —

SANDY: Which is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, kind of one of the two big federal mental health-related organizations.

JONAH: Yeah. And you know they had been sponsoring this alternatives conference [1:10:00] which actually tried to bring together, you know, activists and folks with lived experience and, you know, he was mocking, you know, the yoga and aromatherapy and — and other alternative perspectives that were — that were offered in settings like that. And — and he also, and this becomes a lot more serious, really wanted to nationalize forced outpatient treatment. New York — New York state and California both already have forced outpatient treatment programs. He wanted to chip away at HIPAA, which are the patient privacy policies, and allow say, for example, parents to learn more, you know, from college counselors and really whittle away at a lot of patient privacy stuff. And a lot of activists were strongly opposed to his legislation and unfortunately most of, not all of it, but most of it was folded into the 21st Century Cures Act a couple of years ago. And we’re seeing the fallout now. There’s talk in the media now of the administration wanting to bring back asylums and it’s likely that the physical buildings will not return, but the asylum will be on people’s person, it’ll be like the ankle bracelet, it’ll effectively be the sensor pills that are monitoring if you’ve taken them, and the treatment teams potentially coming to your door, or not even needing to because, you know, you’ll be monitored. You know, the monitoring on this front is actually beginning to extend into prevention and prediction.

SANDY: Yeah. When you mentioned forced outpatient treatment, just so folks understand what that means, what does that mean, forced outpatient treatment?

JONAH: Forced outpatient treatment is, you know, when a judge decides that you no longer have the right to turn down your medication, for starters. And that means that whether or not you want to take it, you’re gonna take it, and they’re gonna watch you take it or inject you once a month with a long — a long-lasting, you know, version of the — of the treatment. And so unfortunately, you know, there’s folks who — who get caught up in the revolving door of the system and, you know, often it’s, you know — the — the stereotype, which I think we’re confronting in pop culture, and is also used to support this kind of narrative like in — in the real world is that these people are dangerous and, you know, I think my involvement with the movement over the last, you know, decade, decade and a half, I mean you just meet some of the most sensitive, gentle, kindest people, many of whom have really, really, really struggled and — and one of the things that I’ll — I’ll note about being a part of this movement for this long — I just meet folks who have gotten caught up in the system at younger and younger ages, like whether it’s, like, 14 or 8 or 4 — I mean there’s people, you know, who don’t remember a time in their lives that they were not on psychotropic medications, you know. And that, to me, is really horrifying. I mean we’re talking, like, 80,000 infants in Florida last year were prescribed antipsychotics and that’s below the age of 1 —

SANDY: Fuck.

JONAH: — and, you know, so it’s stories like that, I think, that really paint such a different picture than again these knife-wielding psychotics, these fictional, often, and sometimes, you know, a lot of the folks on the receiving ends of these most brutal treatments are not the most photogenic and they’re kind of trotted out — Kendra’s Law was, you know, named after a woman that was pushed onto the subway and — and it was used, it was —

SANDY: And that’s the New York forced outpatient law. 

JONAH: The New York forced outpatient one. And so these incidents happen and research has demonstrated that those with a diagnosis are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence, and yet, like, when one of those things happen, it ends up, you know, kind of — people rally around it and then use that, you know, shock doctrine style to push forward all of this really oppressive and brutal legislation. 

SANDY: Legislation that at the end of the day begets pharma profits. And I think that’s one of the things that’s such a bummer about status quo that we have right now is that there’s just this incredible consolidation of power, you know, between the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatry, kind of the medical profession that lends legitimacy to a lot of these ideas, and then the state. And there’s such an alliance of kind of a particular very aggressive theory of what mental illness is, of how to treat, you know, folks who’ve got this or that diagnosis — it’s a very pessimistic set of ideas about what exactly is happening and how to effect change, and it’s one that I think in reality most folks who are on the other end of that, you know, who are being forced to take that medication or who are being injected with that medication, a lot of people who wind up in that position need help, you know, and they need some form of — of care, and I think what’s so powerful about the movement that you’re a part of and that I’ve over the years gotten to know a bit about just by meeting people like you and spending time and so on, it’s like, this is a really important next paradigm that is coming into effect here at least among those people who are part of that activism. What’s tough, of course, is the difference between that and then so much of the status quo [1:15:00] and what the mental healthcare that most Americans get to experience, what — what form it takes.

JONAH: Yeah. And, you know, you talk about pessimism — I think pessimism for the individual, but optimism for the bottom line, especially the pharmaceutical companies. And I think, you know, it’s just — it’s really important, you know, to understand that this starts with greed, but a lot of these forces run a lot deeper and, you know, the institutional and structural oppression and racism and classism and, you know, all the ways in which what really should be considered social and political problems like poverty and homelessness are being transformed in this neoliberal mindset into, like, individual failings, you know. It’s something that you’ve failed to do and now we’re actually gonna give you a label — it was all your responsibility, society had no responsibility for it. You know, there’s other challenges that you just raised. I think I’ve learned over the years, especially when listening to folks, you know, come over from Europe, especially the UK, which has a very strong critical psychiatry movement, and their British Psychological Association has been putting out some incredible material on understanding psychosis and understanding about — of understanding, you know, hearing voices and — and altered states and divergent experiences, and you learn really quickly that in the United States we’re really stuck on the question of access, it’s like a binary, whether or not you have or don’t have access to services. And where there’s universal care, people get to have a conversation about the nature of the care, and they can talk about what works better than what else. And one of the hardest things as part of this movement is — is meeting people who have no access and, you know, explaining to them, you know, at some level that, you know, in some cases the treatment is worse than none, you know? And I mean that’s not really fair to someone who’s struggling and that’s, you know, part of the challenge of doing this kind of work is that, you know —

SANDY: Exactly, because the mom on the couch is told, hey, your son’s doing worse than ever, I’m gonna up the med, and she tearfully agrees. I mean I think that dynamic was one that struck me as so — that is a big dynamic in our culture, and we haven’t yet said the word NAMI, but it — it struck me as a very NAMI scene, you know what I mean? Like that sort of, like, the psychiatrist is pressuring the parent to kind of be that enforcer.

[DIGITAL START-UP SOUND]

SANDY: Hey, let me and Jonah save you a google. We just mentioned the National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI. It’s an organization that is mostly parents, right, of folks who’ve — who’ve received mental illness diagnoses?

JONAH: It’s families of people who are struggling and survivors. It’s primarily families. I’ll say that they vary a lot by chapter, but nationally they definitely receive a lot of funding from pharma. And ultimately it seems to be the kind of place — it is the kind of place, at least in my experience, you know — where you go to these groups and you’re told to take your meds, you’re told to, you know, just shut up and — and go along with — with your doctor’s orders. You know, to me it’s always important to — to remember that doctors give advice, not orders. But there’s a mindset out there that — that really I think reflects, like, a much deeper underlying ideology of power and control and respect for authority, and — and I’ve come to learn in the last couple years that I think a lot of the problems in the psychiatric system are really just symptoms of — of — of that pathology that underlies, you know, a lot of the attitudes in psychiatry. And NAMI just represents the worst of that to a lot of activists. Now, your local chapter may vary, and folks have received, you know, solace and support by individuals, just like AA chapters vary across — across the board as well. But for the most part, you know, NAMI is — has a reputation for being in pharma’s back pocket.

[DIGITAL SHUTTING DOWN SOUND]

SANDY: And even from the very beginning of the movie there’s that sense that like, oh, Donnie’s not taking his meds, that’s a secret, and that’s something that the mom has to come react to.

JONAH: I think that’s really, really important to pick up on. I’ll say that, you know, I have a good friend who tragically just lost a son to suicide and it was —

SANDY: I’m so sorry.

JONAH: — yeah, I appreciate it. It was really, really heart-wrenching and — and, like Donnie, I actually was able to relate to his son, I didn’t — I didn’t know him too well, but in the wake of this, I mean and it’s been really hard and tragic, and I’ve also come to understand better all the ways in which, like, the pain of something like this happening can so easily be — be transformed into trying to prevent it from happening to anybody else at any cost. And you know my friend hasn’t gone this route, but I can see much more clearly now, again, like, this impulse and the dynamic of trying to, you know, stop anybody from ever doing this, like whether or not it takes, you know, forced or coerced treatment or — and, you know, in the course of looking around for resources to, you know — to provide [1:20:00] some solace or support, and I’m — I’m brutally aware of how, like, a peer support group’s, you know, really gonna comfort this family right now, but I was very struck at how difficult it was to even discern whether or not a resource would — would take up, you know, a so-called NAMI perspective or — or have one that’s more aligned with, you know, the values of the movement that I’m a part of. And in particular what I mean by that is like, you know, the NAMI perspective is really, you know, takes up the notion that if you just, you know, shut up and take your meds, you’ll be fine. I mean, just comply with authority, comply with like, you know, the powers that be who know better than you, comply with the experts, and the experts are those with the medical degrees. I mean, you know, to me, you know, the — the movement that I’m a part of, you know, starts with the provocative question of how the mad can ever establish a voice and — and — and the reason that’s so hard to imagine is because, you know, by definition society has — has categorically deemed us irrational. You know, so how can folks that are ever, you know — how can folks that are deemed irrational ever participate in rational discourse. And the question or the challenge of finding our voice and — and telling our stories, like, I think is really — is really central and motivates, like, the movement right now, you know. I think there’s a new wave of — of mad resistance that’s emerged in the last decade, decade and a half, and in contrast to, you know, the anti-psychiatry of the ‘70s which was, you know, a lot more black and white, a lot more, you know, motivated by — by fear and love, you could say. No, but I mean the anti-psychiatrists of the ‘70s, I call them sometimes orthodox anti-psychiatrists, were dogmatically opposed to drugs and labels and, you know, categorically deny the existence of mental illness. And that is actually, in my mind, a philosophically tenable position, but — but doesn’t really help people that much. I mean, it doesn’t really help people who are struggling, and ultimately is arguably an ableist position. And the movement that I’m now a part of has an exciting new infusion of — of rhetoric, and is taking up, like, the banner that the disability rights movement, you know, really, really pioneered, of nothing about us without us. And we’re demanding, you know, a voice in the production of psychiatric knowledge, we’re demanding that, you know, we’re involved in narrating our own identities and interpreting our own experiences. And, you know, in so — in so many ways it’s — it’s preposterous that, you know, a really small group of mostly white men with degrees in medicine get to define a normal range of human experience, you know. I don’t know if your show has time for it, but I’d be fascinated to hear a psychiatrist’s take on Donnie Darko. I don’t think it would take long, you know, for him to actually receive the diagnosis that he never quite got in the film, right? So — and — and you compare that, you know, with maybe the interpretation of a psychologist or a social worker, you know, never mind a humanist or a philosopher or an activist or their family — there’s so many, you know — the — the diverse range of, you know, perspectives on human experience is so rich and varied it just seems so weird to me that the definition of normal is defined by such a narrow group, you know, with just, like — you know, a monoculture of — of — of — of experience and perspectives.

SANDY: Yeah. I one time — not the time I saw you outside the APA, but a year before I had actually gone to the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting with a press badge, and I’d gone inside. And so I’d kind of been inside with, you know, all of the different med students and psychiatrists and so on, and pharma reps, etc., who were there, and I — that sense of monoculture of just, like, wow there’s a really intense single mind here, you know? There’s a — there’s an ideology, and it’s an ideology that’s in this big purple book, and this big purple book lends these folks a sense of authority, and in fact the entire society and legal system and so on seem to — and our culture, you know, and I think that’s part of what this show is about — our culture also often passively, unknowingly with a lot of the kind of myths and theories that I think are, you know, propagated again and again by that kind of consortium of power.

JONAH: I remember talking to a psychiatrist and — and learning that, you know, his only experience with madness or at least that he knew of, really, was acute patients on the ward. In other words, like, it was totally foreign to him, or so he thought, I’m sure he knows people in his life that may or may not even disclose to him for a bunch of reasons, and that’s where like, you know, you think about a film like Donnie Darko, and that’s what’s familiar to folks — like, the most acute or intense depictions. And in some ways narratively it’s much harder, you know, to pull the film off when there are not, you know, these more simplistic, you know, causal connections between what’s going on in — inside someone’s [1:25:00] interior world and what — how it acts out or plays out in the exterior world. I think it’s so important to remember that — how common it is for folks to have suicidal thoughts, how common it is for folks to have, like, violent and homicidal thoughts, and it’s like, it’s just, you know the critical part is to not necessarily act on them. But like, you know, the more as a society we — we stigmatize and condemn, you know, the existence of those thoughts, the more they’re suppressed, and the less help people can get from the people around them. 

SANDY: Yeah. It’s very well put. Kendra’s Law and other forced outpatient laws tend to be named after white women who were the victims of violent crimes. Do you want to talk a little bit about just, like, that as kind of an example, perhaps, of the, I don’t know — the — why these laws are so pernicious?

JONAH: I think as we’ve been talking about the perpetrators of these kinds of crimes are most often not people with a mental health diagnosis, much like the — the current political situation, you know, the greatest terror threat in this country right now is white nationalists, and we don’t talk about that as much. There’s an undercurrent that does. You know, the situation, you know, that we’re seeing with mental illness, I mean psychiatry has always been all about disciplinary control, you know, of a population, of our psyches, and, you know, what’s — what’s concerned me most in the last couple years, in fact I’ve been pretty consumed by it, is — is what’s next. And — and what’s next to me is — is really scary. I’ve begun to describe the — what I’m talking about here as, like, surveillance psychiatry, and what’s happening is — is that, you know, psychiatry is no longer content to diagnose what it sees and is beginning to predict in — in an effort to prevent, you know, things from happening next. And, you know, it’s really interesting because, you know, the prevailing, you know, theory of chemical imbalance has — has never been demonstrated or proven and, you know, in some ways doesn’t even matter anymore. I mean there are currently researchers, you know, who claim to be able to diagnose depression based on your Instagram feed better than clinicians, you know, just based on whether or not it’s like blue or saturated or something. And then manic episodes based on your Facebook posts, not even, like, the content, just like the frequency and time of posting. And, you know, whether or not it’s accurate, and what does accurate even mean, and who gets to draw those lines, and, like, what’s normal and what isn’t — I mean there’s like this real shift, you know, towards prevention. And, you know, prevention — I mean it doesn’t even get more Orwellian, you know, if you manifest symptoms you’re psychotic, and if you haven’t manifested them yet you’re prodromal — you know, prodromal is from the Greek “running ahead of” and it’s like in anticipation. And it’s — it’s so slippery because, you know, Western medicine is often critiqued for only being reactive and not being preventative enough, and prevention can be benign, you know, when it’s in the right hands. But at the moment, you know, these preventative efforts, which really started with children around, you know, early intervention and, like, the invention of pediatric —

SANDY: Increased psychiatry in the schools.

JONAH: Oh, they’re predicting a shortage of child psychiatrists because they’re manufacturing the need. I mean, you know, don’t even get me started, or do, on pediatric bipolar and you know the explosive rise in not just, like, the diagnosis, you know, of kids but there was a huge shift away from, you know, the ADHD drugs, you know, to antipsychotics. And they’re really, really potent and powerful and toxic, and, you know, it’s — I think most Americans have a vague awareness that, you know, we’re over-diagnosed and overmedicated, but the story of what psychiatry has been up to in the last 10, 15 years is so egregious that I think few have really absorbed it. And there’s, you know, a volume of books and documentaries and it’s just, you know, what’s coming next, you know, has the potential to expand the diagnostic net, you know, so widely that I don’t even know if folks are gonna know what’s about to hit them. You know, I’m convinced that this new paradigm of what I’ve called pathologizing risk is gonna be sold to the public under the umbrella of suicide prevention, although maybe mass shooting prevention, now that I’m paying a little more attention to the news. But in either case, you know, folks are gonna be so drawn to the promise of being able to, you know, predict and control and — and I think really not fully understanding that this infrastructure, you know, is gonna be used to actually crack down on all forms of, like — of deviance and, you know, and dissent, really. And so I don’t want to be too alarmist, but maybe we all need to be a little more alarmist. [1:30:00]

SANDY: Yeah. Let’s get a little alarmist. I think it’s really important to get a little alarmist. Well and part of it is, like, I think a lot of people might not be aware of what the present is, either, you know what I mean? Like, never mind what’s coming next. And I think, you know, when I speak to someone like you or I read your writing or I, you know — I think I often am then thinking more about the sort of, like — the negative things that are coming up and the ways that these trends are just continuing in the directions that they are. If people who’ve been listening to you speak want to learn more about you or read your writing or just, you know, learn anything else that’s coming up that you might want them to know about, what would you like them to — to hear about?

JONAH: So I’ve been involved in the movement for, you know, over — over a decade. I recently have a chapter published in a new anthology called We’ve Been Too Patient, and it’s really fantastic, it’s North Atlantic Books and it’s been distributed by Penguin Random House, and you should pick up a copy, it’s got — two-thirds of it is people’s personal stories, one-third of it is research, and it’s just got some incredible, incredible voices, and I’m in such good company that I’m really, really, really honored and blessed to be in that book. And you can —

SANDY: Yeah, and that’s actually going to be the third Mad Chat Book Club pick, so yeah. And we’re hopefully gonna have more with that book coming up, but regardless it’s gonna be our third book club pick, so if anybody is interested, I definitely encourage you to pick it up because we’re gonna be having a discussion about that text in several weeks. But sorry, I interrupted.

JONAH: Not at all. I’ve spent many, many years working with The Icarus Project, especially the New York City chapter. I’m also like I said doing a lot of work now with the Institute for the Development of Human Arts, IDHA. We do a lot of workshops — I mean, I’m at a point in my activism where instead of head-butting and solely focusing on protests, it’s really important for me to be working on active alternatives, because even if people want an alternative, if it doesn’t exist, there’s just nowhere for them to turn. So we do a lot of workshops, we focus on a lot of — we focus a lot on people’s lived experiences, people with lived experiences as experts, and IDHA will be offering like a series of workshops the next semester of our trainings, and you can learn more about that idha-nyc.org. There’s so many tools and techniques to interpret our human experiences differently, it’s really vital. Some programs that are worth, like, highlighting, I mean New York City, you know, has these respite centers which are alternatives to hospitalization, people can, you know, spend some time there for free, they can come and go as they please, there’s no doctor —

SANDY: And that’s respite, R-E-S-I-T-E, which is a word that, you know, in the movement is pretty common, but folks might not have heard in that context before.

JONAH: Absolutely. And, you know, I mean, beyond the yoga and the aromatherapy and the healing, you know, open dialogue is a really important modality that really seeks to, you know, locate the pathology in relationships between people instead of focusing on just, you know, one person’s failings, for example, and there’s just, you know, so many, you know, practices and perspectives that you could read about in — in We’ve Been Too Patient that I think we really open up people’s eyes to the world beyond meds. 

[INTERSTITIAL MUSIC]

SANDY: So our last segment on Mad Chat is called What’s Helping Today, and it’s just an opportunity for you and I each to share something that’s helping us get through today, big or small or something that’s helped recently. I’m happy to go first, or you’re welcome to go first, if you’d like. 

JONAH: Why don’t you start, I have some thoughts, but let me hear what you have to say first.

SANDY: I think for what’s helping today I am going to say baking bread, which is something that I do a lot of these days and I haven’t actually used as one of these on the show yet ‘cause I’ve had to come up with a few, but I did this morning get up really early and bake a couple loafs of bread that I had begun, well, I guess the day before yesterday, and how — yeah, sourdough bread baking has been something that has been just transformative for me, I think, to an extent over the last couple of years since I’ve been doing it. It’s something that obviously yields delicious food that I get to share with my, you know, my husband and loved ones and friends, but also it’s a — I don’t know, a truly — a really grounding task where I’m kind of often brought very into the present as I — as I contemplate a particular piece of dough. So — so yeah, I think that’s what’s helping me today, baking bread. What about you, Jonah? What’s helping you today?

JONAH: Well I’d love to break some bread and share a slice with you sometime, Sandy. What’s helping me today is a new hobby. I started photography [1:35:00] this — this — this summer, which was really fun. Last year on an impulse at maybe three in the morning at a Best Buy I picked up a camera with a lot of buttons on it, and it sat around for a year with — I was too intimidated to use it. And then a friend and I went to the Mermaid Parade and I kind of really fell in love, just especially with —

SANDY: I love the Mermaid Parade.

JONAH: Oh it was so, so easy, like shootin’ mermaids in a barrel, the pictures, but yeah, it was — it was so much fun, and it was, like, I just felt really present and connected and, you know, anytime, you know, you’re — you do something that requires two hands, you just gotta concentrate fully on it. So I’ve been taking some classes, including this amazing photojournalism and social justice class out at the Mayday Space, and we’ll see — we’ll see. I don’t know why I feel compelled to take every fun whimsical hobby of mine and turn it into work, but that’s been keeping me going. 

SANDY: (laughs) America, 2019. No hobbies, only work. (JONAH laughs)

[MAD CHAT CREDITS MUSIC] 

SANDY: Mad Chat is produced by Lee Mengistu. Theme music by Lee Mengistu and Ruthie Williams. Our Social Media and Community Manager is Rachel Charlene Lewis. Join her online for more discussion about today’s chat, we’re @madchatshow on Twitter and Instagram, and we’re Mad Chat Show on Facebook. Tell us #whatshelpingtoday and Chris Ritter might illustrate your answer. She also designed our logo. Episodes transcripts by Alex Cornacchia; find those transcriptions and more resources and recommendations from me related to this conversation at our website, madchatshow.com, and you can also find resources and recommendations from me related to today’s episode. Thanks today to Brooklyn Podcasting Studio. I am Sandy Allen, author of A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia; more about me and my work at hellosandyallen.com. This is Mad Chat. Thanks for listening. Chat with you again in two weeks.

[MAD CHAT CREDITS MUSIC]