(Spoiler) Which is the best solution to mental illness? Psychotherapy or brain medicine? The Netflix series Maniac concludes: Neither. Because the root of the problem is not in (or in) the patient, but outside of it.
The series takes the medical experiment of a technology group as the main scene, asking people to test a new drug that tries to cure mental illness. The hero Owen and the heroine Annie have a romantic relationship here. Owen suffers from schizophrenia and refuses to take his medication, seeing Grimsson, a non-existent spy, makes him feel like he has an important task to accomplish. Although he came from a wealthy family, he became a family shame because of his illness. He would rather live alone in a dorm room than spend his family's money, and was so poor that he became a white mouse for the reward of his experiments. Annie is addicted to one of the drugs in the experiment, so "Yokate" is also added. What's interesting is that the effect of that drug is to recall the most profound trauma - for Annie it was the tragic death of her sister in a traffic accident, and for the survivors she has been bitter towards her sister.
The goal of this experiment is to cure mental illness by material means. In addition to using medical technology, artificial intelligence is also used to run the entire experiment: first let the subjects take medicine, and then let them dream under the control of artificial intelligence GRTA (with the artificial intelligence GRTA). recall). But with the appearance of a series of incidents, the experiment gradually got out of control, and GRTA also had psychological problems and turned mutiny. James, the scientist in charge of the experiment, had to ask his mother Greta, who had not been in contact for a long time, to help.
At this time, the narrative level of "Mad Men" is enriched. It is not limited to describing the experiences of the male and female protagonists in the experiment, but also depicts the trauma and knots behind the experiment. It turns out that James is doing this experiment precisely to fight against his mother. Greta is a psychotherapist and best-selling author, and the design of GRTA is based on her earlier research. James' material orientation is very different from Greta's later spiritual orientation. If the drug experiment is successful, James can get rid of his mother's shadow.
One of the incidents in the experiment was that the artificial intelligence GRTA and the laboratory director Dr. Muramoto developed a secret "office romance", and Muramoto secretly took the drugs in the experiment as drugs and died unexpectedly, so GRTA became depressed. Get up, triggering her to mix Owen and Annie's dreams together, and GRTA itself appears in the protagonist's dream in the form of Greta. Greta was invited to GRTA's dream for psychological counseling, but she failed to complete it. The gradually disordered GRTA gradually took control of the laboratory and was about to threaten the safety of the experimental subjects.
Eventually Owen and Annie return to the outside of the lab and face their respective lives anew. Neither medical science, artificial intelligence nor psychotherapy have helped them. Owen's predicament is that his father wants him to give false testimony for his criminal brother. Owen was sent to a mental hospital by his family because he insisted on the truth. Having hallucinations and indistinguishable between the real and the fake is his symptom, and the reason is that the world he lives in is upside-down. Interestingly, his performances in multiple dream worlds are normal people, even heroes. It can be said that his "madness" just reflects the madness of the world.
Although Annie settled her and her sister's mind in the laboratory's dream, she is still lonely and boring in real life. Their problems stem from a social and interpersonal dimension, and medical and psychotherapy approaches that focus on the inner realm of the individual cannot solve the root cause. In the end, "Fantasy" offers a way out of the bond between Owen and Annie.
The theme concept of "Mad Men" is not really cutting-edge. Personal problems are attributed to family problems, and many mistakes are "society's fault". It is a little bit old-fashioned; two lonely souls have a common experience because they met by chance. Rather than being alone, it is also a comforting escape—like fantasy, movies, and dreams.
One of the interesting sources of "Mad Men" is the intertextual parody. There are many scenes and designs reminiscent of classic sci-fi movies, such as the Voight-Kampff Test in Blade Runner , the rebellious computer HAL9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey , And Inception 's compound dream scene and so on. Nearly half of the play is the adventure of the common dream in Owen and Annie. Each dream is framed by a movie sub-genre, parodying scenes such as thieves, gangsters, fantasy, and secret agents. The clues of the knot, but it is also obviously a tactic to "drag the plot".
Extended reference:
1. The movie "2001 Space Odyssey" (2001: A Space Odyssey) , Stanley . Directed by Kubrick, 1968.
In "2001 A Space Odyssey", the name of HAL9000, the mutinous and murderous computer, was transferred from IBM (the letters before the letters I, B, and M are H, A, and L respectively), and the title design of "Fantasy" is also used. Horizontal design and similar fonts of IBM trademarks. The main difference between GRTA and HAL is that they are modeled on women and HAL is set by men. The former is also more emotional than the latter, which is inevitably a bit of gender bias.
2. The movie "Inception" (Inception), Christopher. Director Lu Lan , 2010.
The dream of "The Thief in Search of the Lost Chapter of Don Quixote" in "Fantasy" is reminiscent of "Into the Dead". It is also in each dream that there is an inner logic of operation, and the male protagonists in the two works also suffer from the difficulty of distinguishing between true and false. There is a dream in "Stalking and Murdering", and the systematic conception corresponding to the thoughts of the dreamer is certainly more ingenious and richer than the loose structure of "Fantasy".
3. The book Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals , by Joel Dimsdale, translated by Zhang Xinfang and Li Zhinian, published by Shang Zhou, 2016.
Annie took the Rorschach inkblot test in the lab, which was widely used after World War II, including to understand the inner world of Nazi war criminals, but was criticized for lacking empirical evidence. The test was done by having subjects look at ten symmetrical black-and-white or color smears, report what they saw, and then interpret them. The testers judge the personality characteristics and mental state of the other party according to the content of their narration and their performance during the period. Two scholars who used the inkblot test to test Nazi war criminals had a deep disagreement during the research period, and finally came to very different conclusions-whether the Nazis committed unusually murderous crimes because they were so evil themselves, or normal people in unusual circumstances. reaction?
Originally published in Times Forum on November 2, 2018
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