And we really can't expect Hollywood to give us the stark
reality that we see in psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric outpatient clinics.
Dr. Glen Gabbard, psychoanalyst and author.
Why not?
And does it matter?
A Beautiful Mind is a wonderful film, if you like inspiring stories. It's the story of John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia. In the movie, John Nash attends Princeton University, develops some brilliant theories about economics while skipping most of his classes, begins teaching at MIT, and marries a beautiful student, Alicia. Then his life begins to break up. He begins having delusions-- he sees people who don't exist. He becomes paranoid and irrational. Alicia supports him through all of his struggles, however, and, eventually-- after twenty years-- he pulls himself together. He is nominated for a Nobel Prize (for work he did as a student) and makes a speech in Stockholm thanking his loyal wife for standing so firmly behind him.
Wonderful story, isn't it? On a Christian website, the movie is given almost acclamation, "thumbs up" for it's "inspiring" story. Is it inspiring? Do you watch this movie and think, wow, it's wonderful to know that his wife was so loyal and supportive-- I know I could be like that? The fact that it is a true story makes it oh so compelling! And so uplifting! That's the kind of film some Christians feel that Hollywood should produce-- lies and blather!
And it is a "true" story. Other than the fact that John Nash married and abandoned a wife (and a child) to poverty before he met Alicia. And other than the fact that Nash didn't "see" people (he heard voices). And other than the fact that Alicia actually did divorce him. And other than the fact that he went to Europe and joined an anti-American organization for a time. And other than the fact that he was arrested for soliciting sex in a men's room in San Francisco (and that's why he was fired from "Wheeler" -- in real life, the Rand Corporation.)
Yeah, other than a few small details...
Some people I know say, "I don't care. I don't care if it's true or not-- it's a wonderful story. Why can't I just enjoy the movie without having to know the truth?"
Then you're going to tell me to keep my chin up-- if I only look on the bright side of things, life will get better.
The trouble is, in a few years, the movie will replace the real facts of the life of John Nash, just as "Schindler's List" has begun to replace the real facts in the life of Oskar Schindler.
The funny thing is, in both cases, the real stories are far more compelling, far more interesting, and more "inspiring" in a true sense than the ridiculous Hollywood versions.
It's worth a thought or two about Spielberg's revisionist "Schindler's List". The original book was labelled "fiction" by it's publisher until after the movie was released. It is now labelled "non-fiction". So, who's going to sue over the difference? There is no Association for Honesty and Truth to finance a legal challenge to this arbitrary conversion from fiction to projection.
And after all, what's wrong with Schindler's list?
Spielberg's villian, Amon Goeth, likes to shoot at Jewish workers with a rifle, from his balcony. You see that he is a monster. But ...
To pathologize Göth as Sadist, to demonize him and make him a monster is precisely to miss the most disturbing knowledge we now have of the average Nazi perpetrator: that he
was, in an overwhelming majority of the cases, not a sadist, a "deviant" or an "aberration," but rather a dutiful, law respecting civil servant carrying out his orders. Robert S. Leventhal
And that's the truth.
