Anaya “Mental Illness on Television,”

Initial Post: Anaya “Mental Illness on Television,” reflects that while media is doing better about providing characters who have physical disabilities, those with mental illness don’t fare as well. The media seems to exploit those with mental illnesses as being the motive for crimes against themselves and others. Read the various drafts in our Bedford Reader (pp. 53-60). In what way do you see her changing her essay by revising the drafts until that final one?

Replies to Classmates: How does her focus improve in the drafts? What can you learn about revising your own work from this?

AN ESSAY-IN-PROGRESS In the following pages, you have a chance to follow Rosie Anaya as she develops an essay through journal writing and several drafts. She began the writing process early, while reading and annotating Nancy Mairs’s “Disability” (p. 12). Inspired by Mairs’s argument, Anaya writes about another group that has been “effaced” by the media. Discovering Ideas and Drafting Journal Notes on Reading Haven’t the media gotten better about showing people with disabilities since Mairs wrote this essay? Lots of TV shows have characters who just happen to use wheelchairs. But I see why she has a problem: I would be bothered, too, if I didn’t see people like me represented. I would feel left out, probably hurt, maybe angry. Mairs is doing more: Invisibility is a problem for healthy people too — anybody could become disabled and wouldn’t know that people with disabilities live full, normal lives. Interesting that she mentions emotions so many times: The references to feelings and psychology raise a question about people with mental disabilities, like depression or schizophrenia. How are they represented by the media? Definitely not as regular people: Stories in the news about emotionally disturbed people who go over the edge and hurt or even kill people. And Criminal Minds etc. always using some kind of psychological disorder to explain a crime. Except the problem with mental illness isn’t just invisibility — it’s negative stereotyping. What if you’re represented as a danger to yourself and others? That’s got to be worse. First Draft Nancy Mairs is upset with television and movies that don’t show physical disability as a feature of normal life. She says the media shows disability consuming a character’s life or it doesn’t show disability at all, and she wants to see “representations of myself in the media, especially television” (p. no.). Mairs makes a convincing argument that the media should portray physical disability as part of everyday life because “effacement” leaves the rest of us unprepared to cope in the case that we should eventually become disabled ourselves. As she explains it, anybody could become disabled, but because we rarely see people with disabilities living full, normal lives on tv, we assume that becoming disabled means life is pretty much over (p. no.). It’s been three decades since Mairs wrote her essay, and she seems to have gotten her wish. Plenty of characters on television today who have a disability are not defined by it. But psychological disabilities are disabilities too, and they have never been shown “as a normal characteristic, one that complicates but does not ruin human existence” (p. no.). Television routinely portrays people with mental illness as threats to themselves and to others. Think about all those stories on the evening news about a man suffering from schizophrenia who went on a shooting spree before turning his gun on himself, or a mother who drowned her own children in the throes of depression, or a bipolar teenager who commits suicide. Such events are tragic, no doubt, but although the vast majority of people with these illnesses hurt nobody, the news implies that they’re all potential killers. Fictional shows, too, are always using some kind of psychological disorder to explain why someone committed a crime. On Criminal Minds a woman with “intermittent explosive disorder” impulsively kills multiple people after she is released from a psychiatric hospital and stops taking her medication. On Rizzoli and Isles a serial abductor’s actions are blamed on “a long history of mental illness” that started with depression after he saw his father kill his mother and developed a perverse need to recreate their relationship with victims of his own. And the entire premise of Dexter is that the trauma of witnessing his mother’s brutal murder turned the title character into a serial killer. Dexter is an obsessive-compulsive killer who justifies his impulses by killing only other killers. Early in the series, viewers learned that his nemesis, the “Ice Truck Killer,” who at one point was engaged to Dexter’s adopted sister and then tried to kill her, was actually his long-lost brother. Every season featured a different enemy, and each one of them had some kind of stated or implied mental illness: The “Doomsday Killer” of season six, for example, was a psychotic divinity student who went off his meds and suffered from delusions. 

It is my belief that the presentation of psychological disability may do worse than the “effacement” of disability that bothered Mairs. People with mental illness are discouraged from seeking help and are sent deeper into isolation and despair. This negative stereotype hurts us all.

Revising

Anaya’s first draft was a good start. She found an idea worth pursuing and explored her thoughts. But as with any first draft, her essay needed work. To improve it, Anaya revised extensively, cutting digressions in some places and adding support in others. Her revised draft, you’ll see, responds to “Disability” more directly, spells out Mairs’s points and Anaya’s own ideas in more detail, and builds more thoroughly on what Mairs had to say.

Revised Draft

Mental Illness on Television

Uses a less abrupt, more formal tone.

In her essay “Disability” Nancy Mairs is upset with argues that television and movies that don’t fail to show physical disability as a feature of normal life.

Deletes a quotation to remove a side issue and tighten the introduction.

She Instead, Mairs says, the media shows disability consuming a character’s life or it doesn’t show disability at all, and she wants to see “representations of myself in the media, especially television” (p. no. 13). But Mairs wrote her essay in 1987. Since then the situation has actually improved for physical disability.

Adds a thesis statement.

At the same time, another group — those with mental illness — have come to suffer even worse representation.

Explains Mairs’s idea more clearly.

Mairs makes a convincing argument Mairs’s purpose in writing her essay was to persuade her readers that the media should portray physical disability as part of everyday life because “effacement” otherwise it denies or misrepresents disability, and it leaves the rest of us “Temporarily Abled Persons” (those without disability, for now) unprepared to cope in the case that we they should eventually become disabled ourselvesthemselves (14-15).

Provides page numbers in Mairs’s essay.

As she explains it, anybody could become disabled, but because we rarely see people with disabilities living full, normal lives on tv, we assume that becoming disabled means life is pretty much over (p. no.). It’s been three decades since Mairs wrote her essay, and Three decades later, Mairs she seems to have gotten her wish. Plenty of characters on television today who have a disability are not defined by it.

Adds examples to support the assertion about TV today.

Lawyer and superhero Matt Murdoch on Daredevil is blind. Daphne Vasquez on Switched at Birth (as well as many of her friends and their parents) is deaf. Security analyst Patton Plame of NCIS: New Orleans uses a wheelchair equipped with a computer to help his team solve crimes, Joe Swanson of Family Guy is also paraplegic. A current ad campaign for TJ Maxx features a wheelchair dance team, and Amy Purdy, an athlete with two prosthetic feet, is featured on a TV spot for Toyota. The media still has a long way to go in representing physical disability, but it has made progress.

Adds a transition to tighten the connection with Mairs’s essay.

However, the media depiction of one type of disability is, if anything, worse than it was three decades ago. Although Mairs doesn’t address mental illness in “Disability,” mental illness falls squarely into the misrepresentation she criticizes. But pPsychological disabilities are disabilities too, and but they have never been shown “as a normal characteristic, one that complicates but does not ruin human existence” (p. no. 15).

More fully develops the idea about mental illness as a “normal characteristic.”

People who cope with a disability such as depression, bipolar disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder as parts of their lives do not see themselves in the media; those who don’t have a psychological disability now but may someday do not see that mental illness is usually a condition they can live with.

Adds a transition to link back to Mairs and the thesis.

The depictions of mental illness actually go beyond Mairs’s concerns, as the media actually exploits it.Television routinely portrays people with mental illness as threats to themselves and to others. Think about all those stories on the evening news about a man suffering from schizophrenia who went on a shooting spree before turning his gun on himself, or a mother who drowned her own children in the throes of depression, or a bipolar teenager who commits suicide. Such events are tragic, no doubt, but although the vast majority of people with these illnesses hurt nobody, the news implies that they’re all potential killers.

Combines related paragraphs (“Fictional shows” used to start a new paragraph).

Fictional shows, too, are always using some kind of psychological disorder to explain why someone committed a crime. On Criminal Minds a woman with “intermittent explosive disorder” impulsively kills multiple people after she is released from a psychiatric hospital and stops taking her medication., and Oon Rizzoli and Isles a serial abductor’s actions are blamed on “a long history of mental illness” beginning that started with depression. after he saw his father kill his mother and developed a perverse need to recreate their relationship with victims of his own. And the entire premise of Dexter is that the trauma of witnessing his mother’s brutal murder turned the title character into a serial killer.

Removes digressions and simplifies examples to improve unity.

Dexter is an obsessive-compulsive killer who justifies his impulses by killing only other killers. Early in the series, viewers learned that his nemesis, the “Ice Truck Killer,” who at one point was engaged to Dexter’s adopted sister and then tried to kill her, is actually his long-lost brother. Every season has featured a different enemy, and each one of them has had some kind of stated or implied mental ilness: The “Doomsday Killer” of season six, for example, was a psychotic divinity student who went off his meds and suffered from delusions.

Expands paragraph to link to Mairs’s essay and lend authority to Anaya’s point.

These programs highlight mental illness to get viewers’ attention. But the media is also telling us that the proper response to people with mental illness is to be afraid of them. Mairs argues that invisibility in the media can cause people with disabilities to feel unattractive or inappropriate (14). It is my belief that the presentation of psychological disability may do worse. than the “effacement” of disability that bothered Mairs. People with mental illness are discouraged from seeking help and are sent deeper into isolation and despair. Those feelings are often cited as the fuel for violent outbursts, but ironically the media portrays such violence as inevitable with mental illness. This negative stereotype hurts us all.

Provides a new conclusion that explains why the topic is important and ends with a flourish.

More complex and varied depictions of all kinds of impairments, both physical and mental, will weaken the negative stereotypes that are harmful to all of us. With mental illness especially, we would all be better served if psychological disability was portrayed by the media as a part of everyday life. It’s not a crime.

Add

Works Cited

• “Breath Play.” Criminal Minds, season 10, episode 17, CBS, 11 Mar. 2015. Netflix,  Accessed 19 July 2015.
• “Deadly Harvest.” Rizzoli and Isles, season 6, episode 3, TNT, 23 July 2015.
• Mairs, Nancy. “Disability.” The Bedford Reader, edited by X. J. Kennedy et al., 13th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017, pp. 12-15.
• TJ Maxx. Advertisement. Fox, 21 July 2015.
• Toyota. Advertisement. TNT, 23 July 2015.

Editing

With her thesis clarified, the connections between her argument and Mairs’s tightened, and her ideas more fully developed, Anaya was satisfied that her essay was much improved and just about finished. She still had some work to do, though. In editing, she corrected errors, cleaned up awkward sentences, and added explanations. Here we show you her changes to one paragraph.

Edited Paragraph

Reduces wordiness; corrects tense shift.

Mairs’s purpose in writing her essay “Disability” was is to persuade her readers that the media should portray physical disability as part of everyday life because otherwise it denies they deny or misrepresents disability,and it leaves “Temporarily Abled Persons” (those without disability, for now) unprepared to cope in the case that they should eventually if they become disabled themselves (14-15).

Corrects pronoun-antecedent and subject-verb agreement (media is plural).

Reduces wordiness.

Three decades later, Mairs seems to have gotten her wish. Plenty of for characters on television today who have a disability but are not defined by it.

Adds coordination for emphasis.

Reduces wordiness.

Lawyer and superhero Matt Murdoch on Daredevil is blind. Daphne Vasquez Several characters on Switched at Birth (as well as many of her friends and their parents) is are deaf. Security analyst Patton Plame of NCIS: New Orleans uses a wheelchair equipped with a computer to help his team solve crimes,.

Fixes comma splice.

Police officer Joe Swanson of Family Guy is also paraplegic.

Eliminates passive voice and creates parallelism.

A current ad campaign for TJ Maxx features a wheelchair dance team, and Amy Purdy, an athlete with two prosthetic feet, is featured on a TV spot for Toyota highlights Amy Purdy, an athlete with two prosthetic feet.

Corrects subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent agreement.

s a list of works cited. (See pp. 635–45.)

The media still has have a long way to go in representing physical disability, but it has they have made progress.

Final Draft

Mental Illness on Television

Introduction summarizes Mairs’s essay and sets up Anaya’s thesis.

In her essay “Disability,” Nancy Mairs argues that the media, such as television and movies, fail to show physical disability as a feature of normal life. Instead, Mairs says, they show disability consuming a character’s life or they don’t show disability at all. Mairs wrote her essay in 1987, and since then the situation has actually improved for depiction of physical disability. At the same time, another group — those with mental illness — has come to suffer even worse representation.

Thesis statement establishes Anaya’s main idea.

Mairs’s purpose in “Disability” is to persuade readers that the media should portray physical disability as part of everyday life because otherwise they deny or misrepresent disability and leave “Temporarily Abled Persons” (those without disability, for now) unprepared to cope if they become disabled (14-15).

Page numbers in parentheses refer to “Works Cited” at end of paper.

Three decades later, Mairs seems to have gotten her wish for characters who have a disability but are not defined by it. Lawyer and superhero Matt Murdoch on Daredevil is blind. Several characters on Switched at Birth are deaf.

Examples provide support for Anaya’s analysis.

Security analyst Patton Plame of NCIS: New Orleans uses a wheelchair equipped with a computer to help his team solve crimes. Police officer Joe Swanson of Family Guy is also paraplegic. A current ad campaign for TJ Maxx features a wheelchair dance team, and a TV spot for Toyota highlights Amy Purdy, an athlete with two prosthetic feet. The media still have a long way to go in representing physical disability, but they have made progress.

Comparison and contrast extend Mairs’s idea to Anaya’s new subject.

However, in depicting one type of disability, the media are, if anything, worse than they were three decades ago. Mairs doesn’t address mental illness, but it falls squarely into the misrepresentation she criticizes. It has never been shown, in Mairs’s words, “as a normal characteristic, one that complicates but does not ruin human existence” (15).

Foll

Thus people who cope with a psychological disability such as depression, bipolar disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder as part of their lives do not see themselves in the media. And those who don’t have a psychological disability now but may someday do not see that mental illness is usually a condition one can live with.

Topic sentence introduces new idea.

Unfortunately, the depictions of mental illness also go beyond Mairs’s concerns, because the media actually exploit it. Television routinely portrays people with mental illness as threats to themselves and to others.

Examples provide evidence for Anaya’s point.

TV news often features stories about a man suffering from schizophrenia who goes on a shooting spree before turning his gun on himself, a mother with depression who drowns her own children, or a teenager with bipolar disorder who commits suicide. Fictional programs, especially crime dramas, regularly use mental illness to develop their plots. On Criminal Minds a woman with “intermittent explosive disorder” impulsively kills multiple people after she is released from a psychiatric hospital and stops taking her medication, and on Rizzoli and Isles a serial abductor’s actions are blamed on “a long history of mental illness” beginning with depression. These programs and many others like them highlight mental illness to get viewers’ attention, and they strongly imply that the proper response is fear.

Paraphrase explains one of Mairs’s points in Anaya’s own words.

Mairs argues that the invisibility of physical disability in the media can cause people with disabilities to feel unattractive or inappropriate (14), but the presentation of psychological disability may do worse.

Cause-and-effect analysis applies Mairs’s idea to Anaya’s thesis.

It can prevent people with mental illness from seeking help and send them deeper into isolation and despair. Those feelings are often cited as the fuel for violent outbursts, but ironically the media portray such violence as inevitable with mental illness.

Conclusion reasserts the thesis and explains the broader implications of the subject.

Seeing more complex and varied depictions of people living with all kinds of impairments, physical and mental, can weaken the negative stereotypes that are harmful to all of us. With mental illness especially, we would all be better served if the media would make an effort to portray psychological disability as a part of everyday life, not a crime.

List of “Works Cited” at the end of the paper gives complete publication information for Anaya’s sources. (See pp. 635–45.)

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Works Cited

• “Breath Play.” Criminal Minds, season 10, episode 17, CBS, 11 Mar. 2015. Netflix,  Accessed 19 July 2015.
• “Deadly Harvest.” Rizzoli and Isles, season 6, episode 3, TNT, 23 July 2015.
• Mairs, Nancy. “Disability.” The Bedford Reader, edited by X. J. Kennedy et al., 13th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017, pp. 12-15.
• TJ Maxx. Advertisement. Fox, 21 July 2015.
• Toyota. Advertisement. TNT, 23 July 2015.

comments explain what the quotation contributes to Anaya’s thesis.