Titicut Follies
In 1966, a young film maker named Frederick Wiseman filmed for four weeks inside the Bridgewater State Prison for the Criminally Insane in Massachusetts which was run by the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. It showed the routine of the prisoners – psychiatric sessions, force-feeding of inmates, bathing, shaving. The film screened at the New York Film Festival before the Mass Supreme Ct ordered that it be banned and destroyed, saying it violated the privacy rights of the people shown. The Superior Court, in 1969, said it could be shown to professionals. Wiseman appealed to the U.S. Surpreme Court, which refused to hear the case. It was the first time in U.S. film history that a film was banned “not for reasons of obscenity, immorality or national security.”
In 1991, the Superior Court reversed the ruling and in 1992, PBS showed the film. It was called Titicut Follies after the variety show at the Mass. Correctional Institute. I happened to see it and had no idea what it was at the time. One scene stuck out in my mind. It was of a thin patient being strapped down on a bed and a man feeding a long tube in through his nose down into his stomach. When the tube was fully inserted, the man (doctor?) stuck a funnel on the top of the tube and poured something the consistency of pancake batter into the funnel, thus force feeding the man. He had a cigarette in his mouth, the ash dangling over the funnel.
More after the cut.
This topic came up recently amongst some friends when we were discussing banned books. I thought of this banned film because it was the reason I studied medical ethics when I was in college. The film was near impossible to find until just last year (I believe) when the distributor, Zipporah Film, made it available to the public for $35. Here’s a quote:
After a showing of TITICUT FOLLIES the mind does not dwell on the hospital’s ancient and even laughable physical plant, or its pitiable social atmosphere. What sticks, what really hurts is the sight of human life made cheap and betrayed. We see men needlessly stripped bare, insulted, herded about callously, mocked, taunted. We see them ignored or locked interminably in cells. We hear the craziness in the air, the sudden outbursts, the quieter but stronger undertow of irrational noise that any doctor who has worked under such circumstances can only take for so long. But much more significantly, we see the ‘professionals’, the doctors and workers who hold the fort in the Bridgewaters of this nation, and they are all over…TITICUT FOLLIES is a brilliant work of art…
–Robert Coles, The New Republic
I decided I wanted to see the film again. I wanted to see if my memory of the force-feeding was right and if it really had been that powerful, nearly 16 years ago. I wanted to see it with some new understanding of the context. After some poking around, I found it on Google Video and just spent the last hour watching and finally, I saw it. Pretty much just as I remembered. It’s crazy to be able to remember something like that so clearly 16 years later.
So, I’m curious…anything like this ever stick in your mind? Not a personal experience, per se, but something you saw maybe?
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Just a random attorney writing about daily life with Little Filthy, my rotten dog.
October 8th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Oooh. I need to see this. And not just because it’s fun to say “titicut follies.”
A lot of images tend to stick in my craw. There’s one in particular, along the lines of this film. I can’t remember the name of the movie, but it was done sometime in the 70′s (I think), and takes place in a remote village in UK somewhere. In one of the opening scenes, a group of kids come across a bullfrog in the middle of an open road. There’s a woman in their village who everyone thinks is some sort of freak. They know she crosses that open road at the same time each day. So they stick a straw in the bullfrog’s butt and start blowing in the straw, so that the bullfrog becomes engorged with air. They leave the bullfrog in the middle of the road, full of air like some big bubble (you know how frogs’ throats expand when they croak/breathe? Like that, but forced full of air) and hide nearby. When the woman comes walking down the road, they slingshot a stone from their hiding place, bursting the frog and getting frog blood and whatnot all over the woman’s white dress.
I don’t remember the name of the movie, or much else after that, but that’s the one scene I can remember.
Can you believe I saw this movie on a date?
October 8th, 2008 at 7:27 am
Whoa, exploding frog. Poor lady! How old were you when you saw that? I’m on a mission to find out what movie that is.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Avitania – Forgot to say..yeah, not a great date movie!
I think I found the movie from this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_toad
It’s called Reflecting Skin and it sounds really jacked up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflecting_Skin
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100469/
October 8th, 2008 at 10:05 am
We’ve discussed this film in a few of my Psych classes pertaining to medical ethics. While I’m intrigued, I have no desire to see it. I have a hard time with things sticking in my brain and I know myself well enough to stay away from things like that. Which is why I won’t watch “Two girls – one cup” and stuff like that. I still have nightmares about Goatse man.
*shudder(
October 8th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I avoid all war and horror movies for this very reason. I have NO desire to have images of pain, fear, humiliation, brutality, and death stuck in my brain.
I agree with Bev, this is the reason I too avoided the “two girls, one cup” emails that filled my box for a few weeks. There are things I just don’t want to follow me around.
I had nightmares after watching Red Dawn for nearly a month and would sneak into my mom’s room to sleep on the floor beside her bed. If it weren’t for Vodka I would still be afraid of the Russians!
October 8th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I know that I have a few scenes like that but I just woke up so of course none of them are coming to me.
I made my friend watch Pink Flamingos last night though, and I think I scarred him for life.
October 8th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
I’m with Bev and Tiffany…I intentionally avoid things like this. Disturbing things tend to stick in my head…no thanks.
When I was in college the psych students would periodically ask for volunteers for their various experiments. Both my roommate and I volunteered for one–we had to watch a movie clip while wearing a heart rate monitor and then answer basic questions. I guess they were trying to figure out whether the clip (one was violent, one was not) and corresponding heart rate had anything to do with how able one was to answer simple logic questions. Anyway, I went first, and the movie clip they showed was a bunch of frat guys raping a girl in a bar. Not cool. Knowing my roommate was next, I told the person not to show her that clip (she had been raped…not under those circumstances, but still). They said they weren’t sure which clip was going to be shown to which person. No, I don’t think you understand. Do not show the next person that clip. They didn’t.
But that has stuck in my head.
And when, my freshman year of high school, someone I thought was my best friend gave me a note listing all the reasons she didn’t want to be my friend anymore…that’s stuck with me too. That was not a very good day. A couple of years after that she said something to me about how we had grown apart. I almost hit her. Instead I reminded her that she apparently had such a hard time being around me that she felt the need to list all the reasons why for me. She didn’t appear to have any recollection. I did not jump at the chance to be friends with her again.
Thanks for the therapy.
Oh, and Happy Lovable Lawyers Day.
I’m not making that up. That’s really what today is.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Bev – I’d only heard brief things about Two Girls – One Cup and had no clue what was actually in it so I had to ask Sitcom. She gave me a brief run down of what she’d heard.
I’m with you on that one: NO THANKS.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Tiffany – is Red Dawn that scary? I almost rented it after reading your comment.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Chivahn – I don’t even want to know what Pink Flamingos is. It sounds…bad.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:13 am
KT – Good on you for protecting your friend.
Ugh, you know, I’ve never seen The Accused because I refuse to watch rape scenes. One of my first girlfriend’s had been raped and I just can’t stomach it.
GO LOVABLE LAWYERS!