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Adolescent Daughters and Ritual Abjection: Narrative Analysis of Self-injury in Four US Films

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Abstract

Media representations of illnesses, particularly those associated with stigma such as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), not only define health conditions for mass audiences, but generally do so in ways that are consistent with dominant ideologies. This article examines the construction of non-suicidal self-injury as practiced by female adolescents and young adults in four US films: Girl, Interrupted, Painful Secrets, Prozac Nation, and Thirteen. The methodology used to examine the films’ narrative structure is Kenneth Burke’s dramatism, while Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection informs the analysis. On one hand, a paradigmatic reading suggests that the films frame self-injury as resistance to repressive maternal domination of female adolescents. On the other hand, syntagmatic analysis reveals a privileged response to NSSI in the form of pacification administered by psychotherapists functioning as the return of the phallic-mother fantasy.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Dr. Lisa Johnson, Director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice and Women’s Studies, University of South Carolina Upstate, for reading a draft of this article and offering insightful comments.

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  1. Department of Fine Arts & Communication Studies, University of South Carolina Upstate, 800 University Way, Spartanburg, SC, 29303, USA

    Warren Bareiss

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Correspondence to Warren Bareiss.

Endnotes

Endnotes

1 Here, I borrow Hochheimer’s (1993) concepts of “models of” and “models for” the community with respect to noncommercial radio; however, Hochheimer’s concepts are not quite what I mean. For Hoccheimer, radio models of the community employ local volunteers as programmers and staff who best understand community needs, whereas models for the community are stations where professionals determine what programming is best for the community. For this article, “models of” are descriptive texts and “models for” are prescriptive texts.

2 Following Gabbard and Gabbard, (1989), I use the general term, “therapist” throughout this article because films tend not to distinguish among the various professions within the field of psychology.

3 Note that Mel’s name is both masculine and feminine, signifying her marginality between home and the social world of business.

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Bareiss, W. Adolescent Daughters and Ritual Abjection: Narrative Analysis of Self-injury in Four US Films. J Med Humanit 38, 319–337 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-015-9353-5

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