Stella Bolaki
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474402422
- eISBN:
- 9781474418591
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402422.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, ...
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The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, agoraphobia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and self-harm. These documentaries were created in a collaborative manner, and use real testimony for their soundtrack and various animation techniques by professional animators. By bringing together scholarship on the animated documentary as a genre and on witnessing in illness narratives, the analysis examines the animated documentary’s evocative power, which allows it to penetrate subjective experiences that are difficult to represent, and the ethical encounters it stages for viewers. As the only chapter of this book to explicitly discuss mental health issues, it also returns to common critiques of narrative/narrativity in the field of illness narratives, specifically the problematic assumption that certain forms of mental distress are inherently ‘anti-narrative’. By looking closely at the Animated Minds audio testimonies, the chapter underlines the urgency of paying attention to such narratives and the experiences they document, many of which are surrounded with stigma, beyond an emphasis on pathology.Less
The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, agoraphobia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and self-harm. These documentaries were created in a collaborative manner, and use real testimony for their soundtrack and various animation techniques by professional animators. By bringing together scholarship on the animated documentary as a genre and on witnessing in illness narratives, the analysis examines the animated documentary’s evocative power, which allows it to penetrate subjective experiences that are difficult to represent, and the ethical encounters it stages for viewers. As the only chapter of this book to explicitly discuss mental health issues, it also returns to common critiques of narrative/narrativity in the field of illness narratives, specifically the problematic assumption that certain forms of mental distress are inherently ‘anti-narrative’. By looking closely at the Animated Minds audio testimonies, the chapter underlines the urgency of paying attention to such narratives and the experiences they document, many of which are surrounded with stigma, beyond an emphasis on pathology.
