Cultures of Representation: Disability in World Cinema Contexts

Psychiatric Disability and Pedro Almodóvar (1988–2011)

Candace Skibba

In May 2015, the Prado Museum in Madrid opened an exhibit aimed at giving the visually impaired an opportunity to ‘view’ the collection. In the same month, the cultural organisation La Casa Encendida, also located in Madrid, inaugurated the second annual artistic project titled ‘¿Qué puede un cuerpo?’ (‘What Can a Body Do?’), which explored the possibility of the body in choreography and visual culture among many other activities.¹ These social and artistic efforts work toward increasing accessibility as well as normalising physical difference. And although these are definitely advances in social recognition and acceptance of difference, they do not take into consideration stigmas regarding mental illness.

As this chapter outlines, there are rapidly evolving analyses of physical disability within art history, and film and literary studies. More recently critics have also taken on the task of evaluating intellectual disability and its portrayal in film. What is lacking is a look at mental illness in an attempt to continue the effort at destigmatisation. This chapter enters into dialogue with established disability theories while adding to the discourse by including mental illness. First, it will be necessary to situate this chapter within disability studies. It will then be important to undertake a brief historical analysis of disability in Spain, focusing on mental illness while also introducing cultural studies critics whose works have informed this analysis. The study of three films by the acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar – Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988), Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, 1990), and La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In, 2011) – sheds light on this area of disability studies that is just starting to emerge. Through this analysis I will show that including mental illness in an aesthetic that embraces difference reflects the actuality of human existence. According to the World Health Organization, ‘One in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives’ (Anon. 2001). Yet, the stigma remains. By creating an aesthetic of anti-normalisation, these three films by Pedro Almodóvar continue the trend he has set for exposing the abnormal and making it visible and normal.

In part, the brilliance in Almodóvar’s work is his ability to bring to life the otherwise marginalised and dissident bodies under the decades-spanning dictatorship of Francisco Franco – women’s bodies, homosexual bodies, transsexual bodies, etc. He came of age during a particularly transformative time in Spanish history following the death of the Franco in 1975. The director was part of the famed movida movement in Madrid in the early 1980s in which artists, musicians and designers took on the job of redefining Spanish identity following years of oppression. This was a time of growing pains in which the norms established in the post-war Western hemisphere – the binaries of man/woman, body/mind, socialism/capitalism, able-bodied/disabled, dictatorship/democracy – were being challenged and arguably surpassed in certain cultural and political circles within Spain. Almodóvar’s first feature film, Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Average Girls) was released in 1980 to mixed reviews. Since then, his work has grown to amass a total of nineteen films to date, two Academy Awards, six Goya Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Awards) and scores of other honours. The thematic nature of his films generally concentrates on interpersonal relationships, yet the nuanced character development, vibrant cinematography and references to Spanish political climate and history make his films unique, irreverant, emotional, compelling and, at times, polarising.

In the films of Almodóvar we are able to see a rhythmic portrayal of the human form and figure – the body in all of its various manifestations and versions. These are gender-bending bodies, stereotypical bodies, over-the-top bodies, violent bodies, etc – from the abused, fragmented, ill, dead, scarred and disfigured to the powerful, disguised and expressive. The bodies created through these works represent iconic cultural portrayals (such as nun, priest and bullfighter, to name just a few) and separation from societal expectations (transvestites, transsexuals, addicted, obsessed or inanimate). Throughout his oeuvre, Almodóvar has encouraged audiences to reconsider the body – perfection, classical beauty and heterosexual attraction (elements prevalent in mainstream Hollywood cinema, for example) do not constitute the norm in this cinematic world. Rather, imperfection, abnormality and strangeness remain constant.

Analysis of the socially marginal and abnormal in Almodóvar is extensive. Studies by Mark Allinson, Paul Julian Smith and Marsha Kinder, to name just a few, aptly outline the thematic framework that delineates the Almodóvar body as it relates to gender and sexuality. In A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar (2008), Allinson determines that Almodóvar veers from the traditional cinematic tendencies that showcase and objectify women while privileging men’s bodies and power through those bodies. Allinson’s critical eye is also found in the anthology All About Almodóvar: A Passion for Cinema (2009), which provides a more in-depth analysis. An earlier article by one of the co-editors of that volume, Brad Epps (1995), further investigates endemic otherness such as queer identities, and overt and symbolic violence in three of the director’s films. In Blood Cinema (1993) Marsha Kinder focuses on how violence, gore, the grotesque, fetish and patriarchal control serve as themes through which to explore Spanish identity. Although the body is not the main topic of discussion in Kinder’s work, it is an implied component of her analysis. Paul Julian Smith also discusses the representation of the Spanish body within the context of fetish in Desire Unlimited (1994).

Part of the intent of disability studies is to shed light upon contemporary culture’s penchant for giving precedence to normalcy. In so doing, it implores that society consider that ‘normal’ is simply constructed through media. Media images and advertisements perpetuate social norms and admonish those that are considered different due to physical embellishments (such as tattoos, piercings, hair dye), illness, disability and lifestyle choices. As illustrated by Sharon Snyder, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Brenda Jo Brueggemann in their introduction to the anthology Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, ‘In stigmatizing and distancing ourselves from disability, we participate in late-capitalist culture’s relentless attempt to standardize and stabilize the body. Such an effort effectively attempts to reduce both our individual particularities and our experience of bodily vulnerability’ (2002: 2). Media saturated by such image standardisation facilitate consumption; and as current-day capitalism is based upon a consumer-structured economy, in exercising their purchasing power consumers are participating in stabilising such norms. In Extraordinary Bodies (1997), Garland-Thomson challenges not only the economic implications of prioritising the normal, but also political, medical and cultural. The body that is uncontrollable, abnormal and deviant is a threat to the organisation of society; however, it is attractive to characterisation within narrative. This social model established by Snyder, Garland-Thomson and Brueggemann serves as the point of departure for this analysis.

Disability studies is a compelling interdisciplinary field with various implications and applications. And although it has picked up quite a bit of momentum in the past twenty years, there are still some matters that require further analysis and discussion. As the field is continuing to grapple with types and categories of disabilities, their social definition, political resonance and intersection with a range of critical discourses, what is missing is the conversation regarding disability and mental illness. These conditions are difficult to diagnose and their categorisation can be challenging. This may be because the origination of the condition (i.e. genetic disposition, environment, physiological injury or malfunction, etc) can be difficult to pinpoint. Physical disability tends to be more visible than psychiatric disability – both in everyday life and as a subject within current work on disability studies. However, the possible psychological (mental health) issues that might accompany physical disabilities are less socially visible. By seeking to explore the ground common to mental health, psychiatric illness and social stigma/normalisation we can meaningfully expand the disability studies paradigm.

As the criteria presented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (2013) (known as the DSM V) is widely used and accepted – although not without controversy – it will serve as our point of departure here. Mental illness is described there as ‘a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual’s cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning’ (2013: 20). This is, in fact, an extremely wide diagnosis and includes a number of differential diagnoses. A model for the analysis of mental illness within cultural studies is provided by Elizabeth Donaldson, who has developed the discourse on mental illness, disability studies and the humanities. In ‘The Corpus of the Madwoman’, she astutely observes that while the medical model eschews social implications and the social/disability studies model often leaves out the body, ‘feminist science studies and feminist examinations of the body can offer us the conceptual modes and the critical language to begin a rigorous denaturalization of impairment within disability studies’ (2013: 29). She goes on to encourage a change in thought: ‘It is possible, in other words, to begin with the premise that mental illness is a neurobiological disorder and still remain committed to a feminist and a disability studies agenda, and it is important that feminists and disability theorists begin to think about mental illness in these terms’ (2013: 30). It is this perspective that I draw upon in order to situate representation of mental illness in these three films by Pedro Almodóvar.

It is necessary to briefly point out that scholars of disability in Spanish Peninsular studies have tended to emphasise cognitive disability along with physical disability and political concerns. Benjamin Fraser has looked at deaf cultural production, the politics of intellectual disability and its representation in film, and the social model of disability in Spain all culminating in his monograph Disability Studies and Spanish Culture: Films, Novels, the Comic and Public Exhibition (2013). Fraser’s work not only discusses the content of the primary texts in which he engages, but it also highlights their formal elements adding yet another critical layer to his analysis. Another scholar, Julie Minich, looks at disability through the lens of identity politics in heteronormative social contexts. Matthew Marr tackles the topic of disability in The Politics of Age and Disability in Contemporary Spanish Film: Plus Ultra Pluralism (2013), highlighting various stages of human existence often left out of critical analysis of identity and subjectivity – adolescence, senescence and disability – themes used to organise the three sections of his book.² The chapters most relevant to my analysis are those regarding disability in Alejandro Amenábar’s Mar adentro (The Sea Inside, 2004) and Pedro Almodóvar’s Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces, 2009). In his analysis of Mar adentro, Marr points to a social disparity between physical and mental disability (2013: 100) and suggests that while some mental illnesses are frequently the topic of films due to their dramatic portrayal, depression and anxiety tend to be ignored (2013: 97, 117). Mar adentro, while focusing primarily on the main character’s paralysis, also creatively contemplates the suggested bipolar disorder that either preempted or accompanies his current physical state. It is interesting to note that while mental illness is not referenced directly in this film, it is artistically displayed in the way the work is filmed.³

Yet another source bringing to the fore disability studies in the Spanish-speaking world is the special section of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies edited by Encarnación Juárez Almendros (2013). In the introductory commentary, Juárez Almendros suggests that for many years, disability studies, ‘seem to have been mostly associated with studies of culture and literature within the discipline of English’ (2013: 153). However, the sheer existence of this section indicates that this is no longer the case. In fact, the article by Victoria Rivera-Cordero, ‘Rebuilding the Wounded Self: Impairment and Trauma in Isabel Coixet’s The Secret Life of Words and Pedro Almodóvar’s Los abrazos rotos’, is a telling example. In this article, the author references these two films for their portrayal of disabilities and their relationships to the trauma that led to the impairment. This novel connection between trauma studies and disability studies both sets her exploration apart and also connects with a broader tradition linking physical and psychological concerns in Spanish studies of disability.

Moreover, contemporary understandings of mental health in Spain must acknowledge the existence of mental hospitals in early Iberian history. Medical writings of that time acknowledged the existence of ‘mania’ and treated the illness in what has been documented as beautiful and centrally located environments. It is worth noting that this type of institution predates the onset of the European asylum. Jesús Pérez, Juan Undurraga, Ross J. Baldessarini and José Sánchez-Moreno further discuss the topic in their article ‘Origins of Psychiatric Hospitalization in Medieval Spain’ (2012), in which they distinguish the Islamic versus Christian traditions and how the medicalisation of mental illness came to be. According to them, ‘Madness was widely conceived by the Islamic general public as being possessed by a spirit, elf, satyr, or genie (djinn or jinn). […] The tradition of possession by a djinn continues to the present time in some Islamic cultures as a popular belief, and sometimes involves states resembling conversion reactions’ (2012: 422). They acknowledge Greek traditions as contributing to increased medicalisation and objectification, and go on to state: ‘However, this trend toward a medicalized view of mental illness struggled against social, legal, and religious interpretations and implications of such conditions, and continues to do so’ (2012: 423). A study dealing with the development of psychoanalysis in Spain in the early twentieth century further assists an historical/cultural perspective. The author, Thomas Glick (1982), discusses the debate regarding Spanish reception of Freud. It is important to acknowledge this history as simply one piece of evidence to demonstrate the necessity to culturally contextualise studies of mental illness.

A turn to contemporary statistics will situate us in the current climate. FEAFES or the Confederación española de agrupaciones de familiares y enfermos mentales (Spanish Confederation of Groups of Families of Those with Mental Illness) defines mental illness thus: ‘un trastorno o enfermedad mental como una alteración de tipo emocional, cognitivo y/o del comportamiento, en que quedan afectados procesos psicológicos básicos como son la emoción, la motivación, la cognición, la conciencia, la conducta, la percepción, la sensación, el aprendizaje, el lenguaje, etc. lo que dificulta a la persona su adaptación al entorno cultural y social en que vive y crea alguna forma de malestar subjetivo’ (‘an emotional, cognitive and/or behavior in which people whose basic psychological processes such as emotion, motivation, cognition, conscience, conduct, perception, sensation, learning styles, and language, etc suffer such that it is difficult to adapt to the social and cultural norms in which they live and this creates a poor way of living’) (Anon. 2015b: 22).⁴ An estimated 250,000 people suffer from some sort of mental illness in Spain and yet the types and significance (spiritual, personal, corporeal, medical and social) of the illnesses remains largely unknown (see Anon. 2015c). Among the most common illnesses, depression affects close to ten percent of the population and is projected to rise.⁵ This analysis focuses on what is referred to in Spanish as ‘trastorno de personalidad’ (‘personality disorders’) and ‘trastorno obsesivo compulsivo’ (‘obsessive compulsive disorder’) – which is cited as affecting close to 2.5 per cent of the population.⁶

Before moving on to Almodóvar’s films, it is useful to turn briefly to the argument laid out in Donaldson’s article ‘The Psychiatric Gaze: Deviance and Disability in Film’ (2005). Even though she does not situate herself within scholarship on Spanish film, her comments on Fight Club (1999) as a film that represents psychiatric disability are relevant. In her estimation, this film does a good job of breaking stereotypes of mental illness and thus reducing stigma by: i) making the illness central to the narrative – rather than peripheral; and ii) by allowing the spectators a window into the world of mental illness: ‘In addition to healing the wounds of spectators who witness severe mental illness, the psychiatric gaze is also marketed as a technology of normalcy’ (2005: 43). Which then begs the questions: Are films that peripherally include mental illness able to reduce stigma? My analysis suggests that in many ways the films that include mental illness as simply a way of living and a ‘normal’ part of human existence are able to break down stereotypes and create a new normal.

Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios

This Academy Award-nominated film comes at an important time in Almodóvar’s career in which he is thrust on the international scene. As per the loaded title, it is difficult to avoid the topic of mental illness in an analysis of this film. There is no ‘normal’ established in the film: or rather, almost all of the kitschy characters are eccentric in their own ways. This is a film about a break-up, family dynamics, misogyny, lust – all within a comical tone with a political backdrop. Shot in beautiful, bright colors that counteract the supposed sadness of heartbreak, the film presents the relatively simple story of a woman who is left abandoned by her lover. Pepa is portrayed as hysterical as she tries to recover after being left by Iván, the consummate Don Juan. And yet her connection to reality is much stronger than that of Iván’s wife, Lucía, who has recently been released from a mental hospital.

The scene that captures Pepa’s supposed hysteria begins with her ransacking the closet in which Iván’s clothes are hanging. She is packing up a suitcase with his belongings as well as all of the items, gifts and knicknacks that remind her of him. As the scene begins, so too does the beautiful overture ‘Capricho Español’ by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. As the harp gently plays, Pepa lights a cigarette and throws the matches on the bed, setting it alight. What follows is a 15-second shot of the fire burning. As the stringed instruments pick up tempo, so too does the rapidity of the transitions between shots: these visual and auditory cues intensify with the growing fire. And yet, Pepa’s actions are still quite comical. Realising that the bed is on fire, she returns to her bedroom with a plastic flower, ostinsibly given to her by Iván. She stands staring at the fire as the phallic flower melts and wilts. It is unclear from Pepa’s demeanour whether the fire initially proves gratifying, insprires fear, or simply provides entertainment.

There is no dramatic follow-up to the fire incident. Rather, the scene ends with Pepa sitting atop the suitcase containing Iván’s belongings, her hysteria turned to sadness. This is normalisation of mental distress in that the camera does not inscribe judgement. In the crazy world that Almodóvar creates for his characters, lighting a match and setting fire to a mattress simply do not constitute cause for alarm.

In her aforementioned article, Donaldson references madness in the context of discussing Jane Eyre. She suggests that madness has been overly interpreted as rebellion – and that this metaphor has overshadowed the possible study of mental illness.⁷ In particular, women, she says, have been affected by this oversight.

Fig. 1: Pepa lights the bed on fire.

I believe that the madness/rebellion configuration subtly reinforces what has become an almost monolithic way of reading mental illness within feminist literary criticism and perhaps in the larger culture of women’s studies scholarship. This is undesirable…because this configuration of madness, if it remains widely accepted and uncontested, may limit our inquiry into madness/mental illness. (2005: 15)

In a similar way, hysteria is an affliction that has ‘plagued’ women, serving as a metaphor for all things out of the ordinary as expressed by a woman. Epps, who has written extensively about Almodóvar, connects the concept of hysteria and the genre melodrama saying, ‘in Almodóvar’s production of nervous, rattled women; in his depiction of passion, obsession, and repression; and in his self-reflexive play with voice, body, image, and movement there lies…the historical residue of hysteria, its discourses, and its spectacles’ (1995: 101). We are left to question the representation of hysteria, madness and mental illness in this film. Does it perpetuate negative metaphors of women and mental illness? After all, the women in the film who drive the plot are also out of the ordinary. My suggestion is that, as in most things Almodóvar, the emphasis on madness in these women does not victimise or criticise them, but rather, by highlighting their abnormality, makes them real, accessible, pleasantly imperfect. In the end, the women overcome, and (at the risk of spoiling the plot), they survive.

Átame!

While in Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios Antonio Banderas plays a secondary role as Iván’s prudish and nerdy son, in Átame!, he is the protagonist. This film follows the acclaim of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios with controversy of a different type than the prestige of an Academy Award nomination. It caused so much polemic in the Hollywood rating system that it was involved in the initiation of the NC-17 rating. It is indeed a love story told unconventionally. The ‘hero’ is a formal patient at a mental institution. The ‘heroine’ is a former porn star and drug addict. Rather than the typical courtship, he kidnaps her and literally makes her fall in love with him.

The film opens with the image of an asylum. We are unfamiliar with the aesthetic. The lighting is subtle, not bright. There are organic elements – such as an indoor plant in the director’s office – that portray the opposite of what is normally found in an asylum (white walls, sterility, inorganic). It is beautiful, yet sparce – hence destigmatised. It isn’t clear that Banderas’s character belongs to this community until it is understood that at this moment, he is to be released. The conversation that transpires between him and the woman who appears to be the director of the facility (and the first love interest we see) upon his release is as follows:

Directora: ‘Puedes incorporarte a la sociedad, Ricky’ (‘You can go reinsert yourself into society, Ricky’).

Ricky: ‘¿Cómo una persona normal?’ (‘Like a normal person?’).

Directora: ‘Tú no eres una persona normal’ (‘You are not a normal person’).

Through this interaction, we are told that Ricky is not normal. However, as the remaining cast members are introduced, it becomes apparent that Ricky is, in fact, one of the few normal people. In his search for love, he ends up in the world of film – porn stars, drug addicts, eccentric and egomaniacal characters. His insertion into the narrative thread – as a regular guy who might have been a bit of a pickpocket – serves as a clear juxtaposition to this eccentricity. The only element that leads the audience to suspect possible foul play is the extra-diegetic film score, which insinuates wrong-doing through discordance and rhythm.

Although mental illness forms the framework for the film, it is not a medical narrative. Through the development of the plot, Ricky is not meant to improve in his condition. His actions do not lead to a catharsis of character. In fact, his ‘condition’ of obsession and loss of clear footing in reality assists him in wooing his beloved Marina. At the end of the film, when the two lovers head off into the distance to begin their ‘normal’ lives together in the country, getting married and starting a family, the audience is left to contemplate their own sanity as they are impicated in the union of this strange couple.

Fig. 2: Ricky meets with the director of the mental hospital.

La piel que habito

This third film is one of Almodóvar’s most recent, in which the director reunites with Banderas to present a piece of filmmaking that questions the boundaries of science, gender and ethics. Banderas’ character (Robert Ledgard) is a ‘mad scientist’ – driven mad by having withstood the tragic loss of his beloved wife. In the hope of refashioning a being in the likeliness of his spouse, his goal is the biological reproduction of skin. To carry out his experiment, he takes a ‘subject’ under his control – both literally and figuratively. This character (Vicente-Vera Cruz) is held in captivity for the duration of the experiment and frequently observed by her captor through the cameras he has installed. She is experimented upon not only through replacing her skin – proving the efficacy of Robert’s work – but also in the scientist’s sex reassignment surgery.

Dr. Ledgard’s character is explored in detail through the opening scenes in which we find him: i) giving a lecture to a group of medical professionals; ii) working in the lab he has created in his estate in the country; and iii) carrying out everyday tasks, such as eating. The audience is made aware of his brilliance and precision but not yet introduced to his abnormality until thirteen minutes in to the film when it is understood that the work he has been conducting has led to the creation of artificial skin. The first introduction to the lab is a medium close-up in which we see Dr. Ledgard enter. The closeness of the camera shows the small size of the lab. The combination of glass/ transparency with the natural sandstone arches communicates precision and softness, much like the scalpel that works with skin. Neutral colors of the doctor’s suit, the walls and ceilings serve as background for the deep, saturated red of the blood sample that Ledgard removes from the receptacle. The lab setting is dark, extremely aseptic, unemotional and yet beautiful as the technical and technological elements are juxtaposed to the organic materials used to build the original structure which appears to be quite old. The combination of new and old, organic and inorganic, all lead to a feeling of sublime interest for while it is obvious in a short amount of time that Dr. Ledgard is not ‘normal’, the audience is not yet led to feel disgust or abhorrence.

Fig. 3: Dr. Ledgard enters the lab.

Fig. 4: A close-up of a blood sample.

Evidence of the film’s interest to mental illness scholars (in addition to film studies critics) is the fact that there is an entire section of the periodical International Journal of Psychoanalysis (2012) dedicated to this film. And, while it is not the purpose of my analysis to categorise nor medicalise the illnesses and characters presented in these films, it is nonetheless compelling to see how practicioners view mental illness in Almodóvar’s artistic creation. Caron Harrang’s diagnosis of rage focuses on how Dr. Ledgard’s grief has affected his mental health: ‘The result, as shown in the film when rage cannot be contained, is often disastrous’ (2012: 1301). Domenico Di Ceglie suggests Dr. Ledgard has Asperger syndrome.

Dr. Ledgard, as portrayed in the film, would appear to be an excellent systemizer but he has little empathy. […] This style of thinking, characterized by average or above-average level of systemizing with a low level of empathy, is typical of people who present with autistic spectrum conditions and Asperger Syndrome. […] These psychological aspects can offer an insight into some of the complex dynamics of the film. (2012: 1310)

The final diagnosis by Alessandra Lemma provides less of a diagnosis than a review of the possible implications or injuries leading to mental illness when one sustains trauma as did Dr. Ledgard: ‘The Skin I Live In is a rich exploration of central psychoanalytic themes: the psychic impact of trauma and the consequent perversion of loss when trauma and its associated losses cannot be faced, the survival of the good internal object as a mitigating factor in trauma and, finally, the relationship between the body and identity’ (2012: 1293).

It is quite possible that three different practicioners would have yet another three different diagnoses to this particular character’s affliction(s), which is to say that this type of examination is quite subjective, at best. At worst, it is simply a suggestion of abnormality. However, as opposed to the other characters mentioned in this chapter, the Ledgard character is not presented with the same amount of ambivalence as are the hysterical women of Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios and the love-sick, obsessed lover Ricky. The audience is led to be critical while inquisitive regarding his scientific talent, his objectification of his patients, and the detachment and sterility he experiences. Like most of Almodóvar’s characters, he is a freak, existing outside of the norm. However, by skewing the norm, Almodóvar removes judgement.

In one of Pedro Almodóvar’s most critically acclaimed films, Hable con ella (Talk to Her, 2002), the audience is led to both admire and admonish the protagonist Benigno. His apparent mental illness – that leads to the rape of one of his comatose patients, his subsequent incarceration and ultimately his suicide – is neither discussed in any depth nor clearly pathologised. What is strongly emphasised is the importance of communication, hence the title of the film. By communicating and portraying variations on normalcy and therefore breaking barriers of silence and stereotype, Almodóvar’s films have encouraged audiences to consider alternative forms of existence, health and reality. In looking at these films, this analysis opens the discourse for further exploration of mental illness in Spanish film and literature. By seeing Almodóvar’s films through a disability lens it is possible to dialogue with existing discourses of gender/sexuality and social marginalisation in his work from Spanish Peninsular studies while also working to correct the insufficient work on psychiatric disability in the wide interdisciplinary field of disabilty studies.

NOTES

1 ‘¿Qué puede un cuerpo? es un proyecto artístico vinculado a la escena en el que participan coreógrafos, teóricos, investigadores culturales y artistas locales e internacionales. El programa tiene una duración de dos semanas (del 9 al 22 de junio) e incluye laboratorios, encuentros y propuestas artísticas, que desde la coreografía, el movimiento, la cultura visual, la filosofía contemporánea y la teoría crítica desea reflexionar y experimentar en torno a la pregunta ¿qué puede un cuerpo?’ (‘What can a body do? Is an artistic project connected to the cultural scene including choreographers, critics, and researchers, as well as local and international artists. The program lasts for two weeks (from the 9th to the 22nd of June), and includes labs, meetings, and artistic projects through which choreography, movement, visual culture, contemporary philosophy and critical theory hope to reflect upon and create an experience that relates to the question: What can a body do?)’ (Anon. 2015a: n.p.).

2 ‘Therefore conceptualized as a response to, but also as a developmental amplification of, the aforesaid critical inclinations, the present study at the same time seeks to break genuinely new ground for Spanish cinema scholarship by fusing sustained close readings with analytical methodologies brought together from the allied fields of youth, aging, and disability studies. Moreover, this monograph consciously aspires to complement existing lines of inquiry in academic criticism’s ongoing conversation regarding Spanish filmmakers’ screening of marginalized forms of subjectivity’ (Marr 2013: 5).

3 ‘By this I mean to say that bipolar disorder is neither broached diegetically in dialogue, nor explicitly invoked as part and parcel of the movie’s surface narrative. Rather, what I hope to show in this chapter is that it is inscribed onto the film through key aspects of performance, mise-en-scène, and the symbolic’ (Marr 2013: 97).

4 My translation.

5 Statistics from a report presented during the XIV National Congress of Psychiatry in Barcelona, 2010.

6 See Knickerbocker (2003), who analyses obsessive-compulsive disorder in the works of Juan José Millás. His exploration, however, focuses on the mental illness aesthetic created by the formal elements of the texts and does not engage with the disability studies discipline. It is my hope that by embarking on this journey of analysis of mental illness, there will be a continuation of the discourse such that the field gains momentum.

7 Susan Sontag (1978) is often cited when discussing metaphors of illness. She illustrates her frustrations with metaphors of illness due to the multitude of negative associations employed in discussing the subject such as the word ‘cancer’ used within the framework of plague as well as the words used within the context of medical terminology itself – ‘fight cancer’, ‘the battle against cancer’. And although the examples she describes aptly defend her point of view, not all illness metaphors are deconstructive. David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder view this dependency on disability as narrative prosthesis or ‘a stock feature of characterization and…an opportunistic metaphor device’ (2002: 15–16). In the chapter ‘Narrative Prosthesis and the Materiality of Metaphor’, they go on to explain the abuse of the abnormal characters as metaphor. ‘The coinage of the phrase “narrative prosthesis” argues that disability has been used throughout history as a crutch on which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive potentiality, and social critique. Yet, at the same time, literature avoids designating disability itself as a source for derisive social myths that need to be interrogated. Instead, disability plays host to a panoply of other social maladies that writers seek to address. Disabled bodies show up in literary narratives as dynamic entities that resist or refuse the cultural scripts assigned to them. The out-of-control body of literature has been historically used to identify the workings of dominant ideology in regard to nearly everything but the social construction of disability itself’ (2002: 17).

FILMOGRAPHY

Almodóvar, Pedro (dir) (2011) La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In). 120 minutes. El Deseo/ Canal+ España. Spain.

____ (1990) Átame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!). 101 minutes. El Deseo. Spain.

____ (1988) Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). 90 minutes. El Deseo/Laurenfilm. Spain.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allinson, Mark (2008) A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar. London: I.B. Tauris.

Anon. (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. Washington, DC: APA.

____ (2015a) ¿Qué puede un cuerpo? Available at http://www.lacasaencendida.es/es/grupo-eventos/%C2%BFque-puede-un-cuerpo-2015-sosteniendo-la-pregunta-4550 (accessed 7 September 2015).

____ (2015b) FEAFES - Confederación española de agrupaciones de familiares y enfermos mentales Salud Mental y Medios de Comunicacion: Guía de estilo. Available at https://consaludmental.org/publicaciones/GUIADEESTILOSEGUNDAEDICION.pdf (accessed 7 September 2015).

____ (2015c) World Health Organization. Available at http://www.who.int/whr/2001/media_centre/press_release/en/ (accessed 7 September 2015).

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