24 July 2011
Have you noticed that for the past few years it's been sexy for television shows to have people who are mentally strange.
Think Monk and Bones. House kind of fits due to failed social skills, as does Sheldon (Big Bang Theory).
And these people aren't amusing sidekicks that play off to the star - they are the star of the show. And they are shown fairly sympathetically, even Sheldon.
Being sorta crazy is being accepted into the mainstream by the media.
WP 2 Comments
lindsey fraggleDec 5, 2011User InfoIn London several hundred years ago you could buy tickets to visit the Bethlehem Hospital (a.k.a. ‘Bedlam’)so that you could stop and stare at real life madness.Television surely is repeating this trend? Acceptance would surely lead to very few people paying attention to us crazies,they would have simply accepted that that’s just how we are,no fascination. I think people are fascinated by the ‘odd’ behaviours of tv characters and the drama value they can offer.No-one would be interested in a real life manic depressive,being overly prevalent for a few episodes and then disappearing for a while out of contact with everyone during a low.The confusion and mismanagement of day to day…It would be nice to think there was broader acceptance brought to us my the media but I don’t believe it to be true. Stephen Fry and his televisual exploits exposing his ‘bi-polar’ have caused my family to think my problems boil down to me ‘getting a bit sad sometimes’.Thanks Stephen.Thanks a bunch!ApprovedSpamTrashLikeEditReplyJames ClaimsJul 24, 2011·jamesclaims.wordpress.comUser InfoI think that acceptance of mental illness will be gradual through seeing characters like these. A mental illness stonewall riot will do little except for scaring the crap out of people because the crazies are coming for them. I’ve also appreciated how these shows also display the loneliness that often accompanies mental illness. These characters are not living a perfectly happy life, they’re lonely in the case of Bones, miserable in the case of House, and confused in the case of Sheldon, and all three in the case of Monk. It’s nice to see at least a little reality in a fictional program.