openness
we watched “lars and the real girl” the other night, and it was not only way better than i thought it would be, it was one of the most touching and darkly funny movies i’ve seen in quite some time. the film was marketed as a sort of slapstick thing – i mean the premise just SEEMS slapstick – a reclusive shy guy buys a blowup doll (a RealDoll (NSFW) more specifically), falls in love with it, and takes her around town like a girlfriend, introducing her to people and having conversations. it WAS really funny (i laughed so much the whole way through), just done in a darker, more thoughtful, more uncomfortable way, not in a ‘haha that’s so stupid’ way. but take that silly premise and imagine for a minute if Lars were your brother, someone who’s been socially dysfunctional his whole life, someone who never had any friends or talked to any girls or left his dark room except to go to work and come right straight home again. imagine if that sad, lonely person really did this, and not in a joking way, but in an honest, sincere way – “mom, i’d like you to meet my girlfriend”. imagine how the family, how a small town community, might react, especially when it became clear that it was not a joke.
the movie does a great job of not focusing on what i imagine in most small towns would have been a lot of hostility and horrible taunting, not unlike what is described here. it seems a little optimistic and fantastic that everyone in the town accepts and supports what Lars is doing (the situation is decribed to everyone as a “delusion” that is helping Lars learn how to love and socialize after experiencing emotional trauma, and if they all just support him, he might turn out to be OK), and only once do i remember anyone in the film really saying anything mean. but even though it seems hard to buy at first that everyone would be so congenial about it, after a while you begin to see that it creates the real premise of the film: what if we treated people who weren’t like us with compassion instead of hostility? it’s specifically targeted at mental illness, but you don’t have to reach very far to apply this to all of us, everywhere.
my friend swan recently wrote a story about her homeless friend who lives in her neighborhood and whom she will miss terribly when she moves away soon, and it really touched me because i see so many people ignore homeless people every day, walk across the street from them, give them dirty looks. she describes a free spirit, a kind, gentle, giving human being who sees the world as his oyster and gives her so much joy, but only because she took the time to get to know him, to talk to him, to see him for who he really was. i bet most people on the block where she lives see him and wish he wasn’t there.
the movie also made me think a lot about certain members of my family and kids i knew growing up who were ignored, chastised, abused because they suffered from mental illnesses, or at a minimum were extremely socially dysfunctional. in the beginning of the film, when the siblings go to a therapist, they automatically assume he should be institutionalized. “why?” the therapist asks, “he’s not hurting himself or anyone else. he’s functional. you should support him.” and it’s true. usually what happens when families discover that someone has a mental illness those people are “put away” instead of supported. they are exiled instead of nurtured.
again, in many less extreme cases, we do this to those who need help – to those on our streets, in our communities, even in our own families – every day. on even lesser levels we do it to eachother, socially excluding people “not like us”, forming cliques and subcultures with walls like jerusalem. why?
it also made me think about my sister, who for several years now has helped run a home for adults with mental disabilities. not only does she have so much patience, whenever i see her interact with her clients she treats them just like she treats everyone else. it sounds easy, but it’s not. they love her. she loves them. she respects them. she treats them only as differently as she needs to in order to take care of them. i respect that a lot.
anyway, i highly recommend the film, especially if you know someone who’s been ostracized by their communities for no reason other than being “different”, when just a little bit of openness might have gone a long way.
(tangentially related and awesome: nurturing natural geniuses instead of trying to reprogram them with social norms)
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tossed into r2.0 of the $700 billion Bailout Bill was another $160 billion (if i recall correctly) of “earmarks” so that John McCain’s party would support it (go figure). “hidden” in the bill, along with millions to protect things like an archery arrow manufacturer’s monopoly, was a clause stating that mental health must now receive budgeting on a par with more general health care. this, i would say, is a HUGE step forward in this country, since the number of people affected by maladies that fall under the mental health umbrella is MUCH higher than we ever hear about. for years i did some volunteering discussing what is now called “panic disorder,” a flavor of anxiety, for the media in New York City. without fail, everytime i would visit the health care facility on the morning after one of these discussions aired, the phone would be ringing off the hook from people identifying with the condition.
Panic disorder is easily and inexpensively treated, and it’s a shame so many people become agoraphobic and lose years, sometimes decades, “hiding” in their homes, afraid of being frozen by an anxiety attack on the street. i met one woman who’d been essentially housebound for 32 years with the problem, and it was gratifying to all who knew her the day she got on a bus–by herself–to indulge once again in her favorite pasttime, gambling in Atlantic City! (fortunately, there’s help for compulsive gambling now, as well.)
so hopefully we’ve turned some sort of corner for the people Amy spoke of in her terrific post–that the ones who need care will finally receive it, and the ones who just need a bit of understanding with get it from us.