Conjuring the 'Insane': Representations of Mental Illness in Medical and Popular Discourses

Representation, primarily understood as ‘presence’ or ‘appearance’ with an implied visual component, is a critical concept in the cultural milieu. Conceived as images, performances, and imitations, representations propagate through various media: films, television, photographs, advertisements, and other forms of popular culture. As such, representations of mental illness perform a pivotal role in framing perceptions about the mentally ill. These representations influence and shape public perceptions about the illness. This essay aims to analyze how mental illness is perceived, represented, and treated in popular culture and medical discourses. In so doing, the essay lays bare the ideologies and the symbolic codes that undergird these representations and the consequent stigma confronted by the mentally ill. Taking these cues, the essay close reads popular representations of mental illness in movies, newspapers, advertisements, comics, and paintings and the articulation of stereotyped images of the mentally ill in a medical discourse which externalize madness in distorted physiognomic features. In so doing, the essay exposes the negative implications of these representations on the personal and social lives of the mentally ill and negotiates the significance of personal accounts of mental illness experience as a means of reclaiming their identity

Chronicles of Eating Disorders from Physician's Notes to Netflix Series: Representations of Eating Disorders in Popular Media

The earliest medical descriptions of anorexia occurred in 1689 with Richard Morton’s Phthisiologia, Or, A Treatise of Consumptions, however, it took another century for medical science to accept anorexia nervosa as a medical condition. Later on, it was Hilde Bruch who initiated the first public discussion on anorexia in the latter half of the twentieth century. While the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resorted solely to the verbal medium to narrate their eating disorder experience, the post-millennial era turned to a variety of visual and verbo- visual media. Stylistically differing widely from verbal texts, graphic medicine, a subgenre of comics, provides singular ways of negotiating eating disorders. Accordingly, a concise overview of some of the canonical works on eating disorders from 1970-2018 will be presented. Lastly, graphic medicine and the aptness of the comics medium in representing the subtle layers of eating disorder experience will be examined

Picturing Illness: History, Poetics, and Graphic Medicine

Comics have often been treated as a juvenile and sub-literary art form; however, taking cues from the new-found cultural acceptance of comics, particularly with the publication of Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1986), Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragedy (2006), there have emerged, over the past decade, a new breed of comics dealing with the patient/caregivers’ experiences, perspectives and identities. Christened as graphic medicine, these illness narratives use comics as a medium to address wide ranging disease/illness related issues. The present review examines the following issues: What is graphic medicine? Is there a tangible relationship between underground comics and graphic medicine? If so, can we regard underground comics as historical precedent to graphic medicine? What are the uses of comics in medicine? Broadly put, drawing examples from various graphic medical narratives, the paper seeks to trace the history and poetics of graphic medicine

Bringing Superheroes into the Fight against COVID-19 Misinformation

Over the past year, artists, doctors, medical professionals, and international agencies such as the World Health Organisation have been using comics to communicate the risks of the SARS-CoV2 virus. The visual economy and a near-universal language of lines, balloons, and panels in comics makes them well suited to disseminate epidemic-related information to children and adults

Conjuring the ‘Insane’: Representations of Mental Illness in Medical and Popular Discourses

Representation, primarily understood as ‘presence’ or ‘appearance’ with an implied visual component, is a critical concept in the cultural milieu. Conceived as images, performances, and imitations, representations propagate through various media: films, television, photographs, advertisements, and other forms of popular culture. As such, representations of mental illness perform a pivotal role in framing perceptions about the mentally ill. These representations influence and shape public perceptions about the illness. This essay aims to analyze how mental illness is perceived, represented, and treated in popular culture and medical discourses. In so doing, the essay lays bare the ideologies and the symbolic codes that undergird these representations and the consequent stigma confronted by the mentally ill. Taking these cues, the essay close reads popular representations of mental illness in movies, newspapers, advertisements, comics, and paintings and the articulation of stereotyped images of the mentally ill in a medical discourse which externalize madness in distorted physiognomic features. In so doing, the essay exposes the negative implications of these representations on the personal and social lives of the mentally ill and negotiates the significance of personal accounts of mental illness experience as a means of reclaiming their identit

Chronicles of Eating Disorders from Physician’s Notes to Netflix Series: Representations of Eating Disorders in Popular Media

The earliest medical descriptions of anorexia occurred in 1689 with Richard Morton’s Phthisiologia, Or, A Treatise of Consumptions, however, it took another century for medical science to accept anorexia nervosa as a medical condition. Later on, it was Hilde Bruch who initiated the first public discussion on anorexia in the latter half of the twentieth century. While the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resorted solely to the verbal medium to narrate their eating disorder experience, the post-millennial era turned to a variety of visual and verbovisual media. Stylistically differing widely from verbal texts, graphic medicine, a subgenre of comics, provides singular ways of negotiating eating disorders. Accordingly, a concise overview of some of the canonical works on eating disorders from 1970-2018 will be presented. Lastly, graphic medicine and the aptness of the comics medium in representing the subtle layers of eating disorder experience will be examined