Film Review – medhum.org

Disability as a Plot Device in Tuner

Rudy Malcom — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 13:28:25 +0000

Directed by Daniel Roher

Tuner follows Niki White (played by Leo Woodall), the apprentice of piano tuner Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), and a tragic genius. Once a gifted pianist, Niki developed hyperacusis—an increased sensitivity to sound that prevents him from playing the piano and requires him to wear hearing protection at all times. After Harry forgets the combination to his safe, Niki teaches himself to open it by listening to the lock’s subtle sounds. When Harry is later hospitalized, Niki begins cracking safes to pay off his mentor’s mounting medical debt.

By the film’s second act, Niki’s increasingly dangerous work jeopardizes both his safety and his relationship with his girlfriend Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), leaving him to confront the consequences of his actions. When Niki makes amends in the third act, Uri (Lior Raz), the leader of the criminal group in which he has become entangled, viciously beats him. The injury costs him part of his hearing but enables his return to the piano.

Tuner is engaging, beautifully constructed, and emotionally resonant. At the same time, it turns disability into a plot device. Marking director and co-writer Daniel Roher’s fiction debut, the film fully embraces the artistic license afforded by the genre, casting hyperacusis as a superpower rather than focusing on the condition’s often debilitating effects.

To be fair, Niki mentions that, at one point, even the sound of his own voice was agonizing. He is constantly on guard against potentially harmful sounds. When confronted with barking dogs, smoke alarms, air horns, and gunshots, he winces and clutches his ringing ears.

But the impact is fleeting. In real life, exposure to noises like these can permanently worsen hyperacusis. Furthermore, the hearing disorder is not a “superhuman” tool; many individuals with hyperacusis show normal hearing thresholds. For those with milder cases, everyday sounds like a running dishwasher can cause significant discomfort. In more severe cases, even near silence can be excruciatingly painful. One wonders how Niki could tolerate the clicks, clacks, and whirs of piano keys and combination locks (another creative liberty: modern safes are designed to thwart auditory decoding).

As disability studies scholar Rebecca Garden argues, there are “tensions between the lived experience of illness… and the conventions that shape the representations of those experiences in published narratives.” [1] In other words, the demand for drama often precludes verisimilitude, instead favoring a happy ending of triumph over adversity. Niki’s liberation from his condition is narratively satisfying; another, if less commercially successful, film might depict a similar character learning to live with it.

In his seminal text The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (2013), sociologist Arthur Frank enumerates three types of illness stories: restitution, chaos, and quest. The restitution narrative “has the basic storyline: ‘Yesterday I was healthy, today I’m sick, but tomorrow I’ll be healthy again,’” the chaos narrative “imagines life never getting better,” and the quest narrative “accept[s] illness and seek[s] to use it.”

Tuner follows a kind of restitution storyline: Yesterday Niki was a healthy prodigy, today he cannot perform because he is sick with an exploitable “superpower,” but tomorrow a thief will effectively cure him by rupturing his eardrums. The film also features aspects of the quest narrative; to quote Frank, Niki “returns as one who is no longer ill but remains marked by illness”—that is, no longer hyperacusic but partially deaf. Niki is figuratively reborn with a new purpose, embodying the film’s Spider-Mannish moral logic: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Despite these quest elements, Niki’s story remains fundamentally a restitution narrative. Frank notes that such narratives are “culturally preferred” and calls for “an enhanced tolerance for chaos.” To that end, future films might engage more directly with the lived experience of hyperacusis. Ultimately, however, Roher’s approach is understandable and even commendable, using the possibilities of cinema to draw attention to some of the challenges of a rare, if romanticized, disability.

[1] Garden, Rebecca. “Telling Stories about Illness and Disability: The Limits and Lessons of Narrative.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, vol. 53, no. 1, 2010, pp. 121–135.

Photo credit: Black Bear

Obsession and “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Rudy Malcom — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:11:04 +0000

First published in 1892, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman depicts a postpartum woman whose husband, a physician, prescribes a rest cure for her so-called “nervous depression,” confining her to a nursery. The narrator’s increasing fixation on the room’s titular wallpaper reflects her descent into psychosis, culminating in her belief that a woman is trapped behind the wallpaper—and, ultimately, that she herself is that woman.

What if the short story were told from the man’s point of view? Obsession—the micro-budget horror film that has quickly become one of the year’s biggest box-office successes—feels, in some ways, like an answer to that question.

Directed by Curry Barker, Obsession follows Bear (played by Michael Johnston), who acquires a supernatural toy that grants his wish for his co-worker and childhood friend, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), to love him more than anyone else in the world. Nikki’s mind and body are thereby effectively hijacked, echoing the woman’s loss of agency in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Unlike Gilman’s short story, however, Obsession places us in the perspective of the controlling figure, forcing us to confront not only the horror of victimization but that of possessive desire itself.

Bear is initially presented sympathetically: as a lonely, shy, awkward music store employee with an unrequited crush. We might relate to his desperation for connection; after all, he seems as gentle as, well, a teddy bear. While bears are also predators, the character does not see himself as a villain—and because we spend time inside his mindset, neither do we. Even as Nikki begins to behave erratically, we believe that Bear deserves a chance at romance and that he can control the situation. More troubling, we believe that he can control Nikki.

Unlike “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in which we inhabit the woman’s mental breakdown, Obsession mostly foregrounds Bear’s fear and guilt, obscuring Nikki’s pain and suffering—at first. Hoping to alter his wish, he calls the toy’s customer support line and hears Nikki screaming in agony on the other end. He returns home to find her frozen in place, covered in excrement and vomit; later, she mutilates her own face with a broken bottle. Eventually, while she sleeps, the voice of her former self briefly resurfaces and begs him to kill her. But Bear refuses, asking, “What’s so bad about being with me?” His desire to be loved has become inseparable from his willingness to erase Nikki’s freedom. (Her surname, “Freeman,” feels heavy-handed.) The realization that we have centered Bear’s distress over the damage he has inflicted is powerfully uncomfortable.

Gilman’s short story concludes with the protagonist rubbing against the wallpaper and declaring, “I’ve got out at last… in spite of you,” causing her husband to faint as she continues circling the room, liberated through madness. By the end of Obsession, Bear is similarly inert, but Nikki is lucid and seemingly still trapped—that is, left to grapple with the carnage unleashed by the obsessive version of herself that Bear created.

Medicine is no longer the locus of patriarchal control it was when Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” but it still carries traces of gendered authority. Barker’s Obsession critiques the insidious logic of modern “nice guy” entitlement; believing he deserves Nikki’s love, Bear prescribes not a rest cure but a “love cure” that reveals how ordinary longing and self-pity can become coercive.

By aligning our sympathies with the perpetrator before exposing the full cost of his desire, the film tests our complicity and highlights the peril of love that demands possession.

Web image from Capstone Pictures.

Call Me by Your Name

Dustin Brinker — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:27:42 +0000

The story begins “somewhere in Northern Italy” in 1983 chez Perlman, a multicultural and well-educated family. Every summer, the family (Michael Stuhlbarg & Amira Casar) host a classical-arts graduate student for six weeks at their holiday home. Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), the family’s 17-year-old precocious son, is expected to act as host and guide to the selected student, this year a 24-year-old American named Oliver (Armie Hammer). From the beginning, the two have a love-hate relationship; an unspoken emotional tension exists between them. Uncertain of how to handle this tension, Elio begins exploring his sexuality with his female friend, Marzia (Esther Garrel). He eventually, albeit obliquely, admits his feelings for Oliver, and the two begin a brief love affair during which Oliver suggests, in bed, that they call each other by the other’s name. Noticing the closeness of the young men, the Perlman parents suggest that Elio accompany Oliver as he spends a few days in Bergamo prior to leaving for the United States. The sojourn concludes with a bitter goodbye: Oliver departs by train, leaving Elio on the railway platform. Unable to complete his journey home alone, Elio makes a tearful call home for his mother to come pick him up. Back in town, Marzia, seeing a grief-stricken Elio, approaches and forgives him, insinuating that she knows about his recent tryst and that she will always be his loving friend. Months later, the Perlmans return to the town for Hanukkah. While his parents are in the process of picking next summer’s student, Elio gets a bittersweet surprise: Oliver is calling to inform the family that he is engaged to a woman. The film concludes with Elio staring into the dining-room fireplace, the light flickering in his red, tear-sodden eyes.

Based on the novel of the same name by André Aciman, this multilingual film took the world by storm, using three languages (French, Italian, and English) in the first five minutes. The resulting language barriers add to feelings of yearning established by the musical score, whose key elements originate from Sufjan Stevens (Futile Devices; Mystery of Love; Visions of Gideon). Music, language, and literature carry the work’s primary themes, namely those of precocity and sexuality. Elio embodies all three—his main hobbies include transcribing music, playing the piano, and reading. These themes are further captured by the symbol of the apricot, its relationship to precocity and sexuality explicitly discussed in the film. Furthermore, the denouement of the film, arrives through a figuratively rich and overtly sensual scene involving Elio and the summer stand-in of the apricot, the peach, (1:34:30-1:40:24), beautifully capturing the relationship between Elio’s intellectual maturity and emotional naïveté.

Controversy surrounds Call Me by Your Name, primarily regarding consent and age statutes. Although Elio is over the 1983 age of consent in Italy and most United States jurisdictions, his relationship with Oliver evokes discomfort. This speaks to the historical Western perception of gay relationships as predatory. Nonetheless, their relationship warrants some skepticism, particularly regarding age-based power dynamics. The Perlmans support and watch over their son as the relationship progresses, frequently checking in and pointing him to literary passages as points of reference. In this way, the film navigates a complicated and loaded social topic, particularly in the queer community.

Further depth is added by considering the historical context of the early 1980s. By 1983, the AIDS epidemic had globally taken hold, the virus only identified in France the May prior to the events of the film. “Gay cancer” was a widely used term for a rare and defining symptom of AIDS, singling out the Western community hardest hit at that time. The merciless, viral specter of death overshadowed the gay liberation movement of the previous decade. HIV is never mentioned in the film, but its presence must be known by Oliver, adding to his own hesitations and fears about his and Elio’s sexualities. 1983 was also rife with relevant political fallout: Gerry Studds––the first openly gay member of Congress––became embroiled in a scandal involving a relationship with a 17-year-old, and Bettino Craxi was elected as Italian Prime Minister, eventually leading to the collapse of the modern Italian political machine. Craxi plays a central role in the peripheral events of the film, his influence appearing on television and in conversations with dinner guests.

Call Me by Your Name is an evocative masterpiece, one of the few movies that I can watch repeatedly (cf. Heated Rivalry). Despite my inherent preference for novels, this film, far and away, manifests a beauty missing from its literary inspiration. The actors perform splendidly, the music deepens the emotional journey, and the cinematography transports the audience perfectly to the setting. Every time I watch it, I discover greater depth and fall in love with it more, even if I can never look at a peach the same way.

Call Me by Your Name
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Screenplay: James Ivory
Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay (Critics’ Choice Awards); Best Male Lead [Chalamet] & Best Cinematography (Independent Spirit Awards); Outstanding Film-Wide Release (GLAAD Media Awards); Best Editing (Nastro d’Argento Awards & Golden Ciak Awards); Breakout Actor [Chalamet] (Gotham Independent Film Awards & Hollywood Film Awards)
Year 2017
Studio Sony Pictures Classics
Running Time (in minutes) 132
Based on Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

Web image from Sony Pictures.

When AIDS Activism Went Inside a Hospital: Ward 5B at San Francisco General

Russell Teagarden — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:24:41 +0000

The Call

Out of the gay rights activism in the 1970s came AIDS activism in the early 1980s. By then, the incidence and severity of AIDS had become evident and caused enough fear to generate social backlash against those with the disease. This, along with federal government insouciance at the time, made it necessary for gay rights activists to extend their remit into advocacy for health care specialization and research advancements for AIDS. The expanded activism was visible on the streets and at governmental research institutions (e.g., National Institutes of Health). Where it was also taking place, and not in such an obvious way, was within certain hospitals.

San Francisco General Hospital answered the call first in 1983 when it created a special unit for the care of people with AIDS in “Ward 5B.” The unit was in operation through its move in 1986 into Ward 5A to accommodate more patients, and until 2003 when advances in antiretroviral treatment of AIDS made the unit no longer necessary. But throughout, the struggle to maintain and advance the unit medically, socially, and politically persisted. The documentary film, aptly named “5B,” covers the struggles, successes, and failures of the unit, and the activism required of the staff and advocates for its creation and ongoing viability.

From the Inside

The story is told from various perspectives through interviews with key figures in the unit’s development and operation, and with archival footage of the unit and AIDS activism in the community. The most prominent among the key figures is Cliff Morrison, a clinical nurse specialist who spearheaded the idea for the unit and then managed it. Several other nurses who served in staff and supervisory positions are also featured. Participating physicians include Paul Volberding, an oncologist at the time who became pivotal in the development of effective HIV treatments, and Julie Gerberding, a physician treating patients on the unit who later became the Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Lorraine Day, the chief of orthopedic surgery at the hospital when the unit opened, is heard often as an opposing voice. Hank Plante, a local television news reporter, also appears frequently to offer his perspectives on many of the social and political issues swirling around the unit. Among other participants are AIDS activists, volunteers, and family members of unit patients.

Several storylines frame the documentary including how nurses drove the unit’s inception and then were instrumental in running it. “Nurses were in charge,” said Volberding, admiringly. Interwoven throughout the film are the experiences of the patients and individual nurses, including one nurse who was infected with HIV from a needle stick. “Those nurses were the real heroes,” said one activist.   

Rare is the story, though, about heroes who aren’t confronted with daunting challenges, and thus this documentary includes a storyline involving attacks the unit nurses encountered from inside the hospital. The nurses of this unit practiced in ways they considered safe but not in such a manner that would preclude them from touching patients or require them to don so much protective gear they become unseeable. Nurses and clinicians from other units objected and did not want to be compelled to adopt practices they thought endangered them on the occasions they took care of AIDS patients. The film follows this story through union grievances and public debates to their conclusion, which sided with the unit nurses and their advocates. The spirit of activism among the unit staff was pivotal in fending off the many challenges they faced.

Keeping in Touch

The documentary reveals stark juxtapositions that can manifest in the midst of an infectious epidemic, and in particular when an epidemic selects an identifiable group that is unwelcome in mainstream society. Two juxtapositions that stand out are the emotion of love with that of fear, and those who are deemed worthy with those who are considered disreputable.

No treatments for the HIV infection or for the many horrid and lethal diseases resulting from AIDS were available when the unit opened—it was “a very, very unpleasant death” as one nurse put it. The nurses saw a big part of their role as offering love: “Here you were allowed to love your patients.” They offered it through human touch. Morrison’s view was, “If we can’t save these folks, we’re going to touch them.” To touch the patients in this way required that they balance it with the risk of exposure to infection and still comply with universal precautions. Nevertheless, fear was prevalent—some people were “truly hysterical” according to Gerberding—and it touched off conflict among the health care staff. “People were afraid…we found ourselves attacking each other…everyone was so stressed,” is how Volberding described the situation. This balance is one that is continuously negotiated in health care settings, but it was more pronounced during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and at San Francisco General, it had to be mediated by hospital and union officials.

At the time unit opened, and for a long while after, people with AIDS were scorned. The gay lifestyle was linked to the disease and so a view held by many was that the gay community deserved to be struck down by this plague. They were not worthy of all the human resources, technology, and money the disease required. The documentary brings this sentiment to life by showing the actions some people took to prevent getting these patients help, and the actions governments didn’t take to help them. Also shown, however, was how the activism of health care professionals and others in Ward 5B helped to overcome these obstacles. Without it in the case of the unit in Ward 5B, the activism in the streets outside the hospital alone may not have been enough.

But Then

These fevers abated some when medical advances produced treatments that obviated the need for AIDS units, and changes in societal attitudes led to more acceptance of gay lifestyles. The next epidemic that targeted marginalized and susceptible groups would determine whether lessons learned from the time of this unit had been incorporated in response protocols. That opportunity came the year this documentary was released in 2019 when Covid struck elderly people first and hardest, and especially those in communal living arrangements.

Note:

The documentary was featured on the podcast episode, How Terrible It Was: Three Takes on the AIDS Crisis with Dr. Ross Slotten, which can be accessed here on medhum. In addition to the documentary, the podcast episode included the novel, The Great Believers, and the memoir, The Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey through the AIDS Crisis were discussed. The author of the memoir, Dr. Ross Slotten, joined the podcast as a guest.

Title image credit:
James Steakley, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Documentary information:
Film title: 5B
Directors: Paul Haggis, Dan Krauss
Studio: Vertical Entertainment
Viewing source: Amazon Prime
U.S. release date: June, 2019
Run time: 134 minutes 

Trailers from 5B Film

Cinema Without Barriers: Disability, Creativity, and Comfort Intersect at RestFest

Rudy Malcom — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:38:43 +0000

As the world began lifting COVID-19 safety precautions, many disabled and immunocompromised people felt left behind. Bec Miriam, who is chronically ill and neurodivergent, was unable to attend film festivals showcasing their work—some of it award-winning.

“That was a barrier I wanted to address because I know I’m not alone in that experience,” says Miriam, who lives in California.

And so, in the spring of 2023, they founded RestFest, described on its website as an online “gathering space and virtual film & video art festival created by/for the Disabled, Deaf, Chronically ill, Neurodivergent, and/or Mad arts community worldwide.”

This year’s festival is available to stream anytime in February—and viewers are invited to watch from bed. RestFest operates on “crip time,” recognizing the different pace at which disabled people may go through life due to their sensory, physical, or cognitive needs. Crip time rejects ableist productivity norms and offers inclusivity and comfort instead.

“This Werewolf Complex,” one of the 27 short films and video artworks, adroitly dramatizes an epileptic aura through hallucinations of SpongeBob SquarePants and Rorschachian patterns that morph into human silhouettes. Another work—shifting the meaning of aura from a focal seizure’s onset to aural gestalts—deftly considers how Deaf people access sound in their minds through sight, touch, and imagination.

While all of the works screened are made by disabled or chronically ill artists, not all of them are about disability or illness. Nor are they intended to educate non-disabled viewers (though RestFest is open to everyone).

Rather, RestFest taps into an “inherent mutual understanding between community members,” Miriam says. “I’ve had filmmakers who showed films reach out to me and say that they could tell the audience understood their work in a way they hadn’t seen before, which is really special.”

Similarly, Sammy Holden says that if they were to submit their work “N ight Holding Still”—which dreams a path through the shame of their chronic illness—to an experimental film festival, “it might be fine.”

“But reaching audiences who will potentially understand it more directly is just something that I think can only happen at a festival like RestFest.”

Beyond Words

The realities of disability are often ineffable. Reflecting this, many of the festival’s works are experimental, which “leaves space,” Miriam says, “for sitting in the uncertain and the unknowable.”

“Verbal language isn’t accessible for everyone,” adds Georgia Kumari Bradburn, a British filmmaker whose “A Brief History of Circles” uses sounds and objects to capture how she processes sensory information as an autistic person. A voiceover narrates the history of circles as flowers, logos, and other structures in that shape appear onscreen.

Eventually, hyperfixation escalates into meltdown. Objects blur and merge as the voiceover reverberates and multiplies, mirroring how euphoria can turn into overload for Bradburn.

And then a new, calmer obsession takes hold. It is a mathematical law that two perpendicular sine waves, moving in step, form a circle; the voiceover repeats the word “sine,” followed by shots of a shoreline. Bradburn’s fingers trace the water’s surface—a subtle yet powerful act of self-stimulatory behavior, or stimming. “That’s me transferring my sensory experience to the audience through something as intimate and simple as touch,” she says.

As part of the festival, Bradburn will lead a workshop on the “autistic camera,” which proposes the camera as a tool for autistic expression. A camera might stim, for instance, by circling a scene.

Not Explaining—Exploring

Troels Steenholdt Heiredal, an architect and artist, didn’t discover he was autistic until his 30s. “It was the best thing that had ever happened to me,” he says, “because it gave me a language with which to write myself back into my own life.”

His relief exemplifies the phenomenon of metagnosis, whereby “one becomes newly aware, in adulthood, of a lifelong ‘condition,’” writes narrative medicine scholar Danielle Spencer [1]. This recognition catalyzed a profound exploration of urban space, perception, and accessibility—an inquiry rooted in his lived experience and often overlooked in conventional architectural discourse.

Heiredal’s documentary short “Not Included—Embedded” explores his “Autistic architectural approach,” a framework that posits disability as a generative force rather than a limitation.

Raised in a small town in Denmark, Heiredal currently lives in Taipei. “The way that public space is being used is beautiful,” he says. Through mimetically arranged clips, some of shopfronts doubling as dance studios, his film presents a disabled reading of the Taiwanese capital’s traditional informal architecture—buildings and structures designed by residents, not as high-profile projects, but emerging organically. Heiredal depicts the metropolis as a symphony of its residents’ spatial voices.

Drawing on theorists like Erin Manning, who frames neurotypicality as a system that decides whose lives matter and whose do not [2], Heiredal challenges inclusion that ends with ADA-compliant ramps, arguing that disabled knowledge should more broadly shape how we build the world. For example, he suggests in a recent essay [3] that hosts create spaces where guests can retreat from overstimulation and craft environments that foster shared-interest interactions. To those ends, a host might furnish a quiet corner with cozy chairs, or intentionally spark a conversation between two guests who don’t know each other but both love, say, experimental films.

“I’m not interested in dictating what an Autistic architectural approach is… it must be co-created,” continues Heiredal, who will expand on these ideas in a talk at the festival.

Even before he developed this concept, he had been guided by intuition in his work. “The teachers around me encouraged me to just explore what is there without always needing to explain it, and I feel very lucky in that,” he says. “It’s allowed me to do a lot of things that I didn’t necessarily know how to explain.”

RestFest embodies this sentiment. And, in that spirit, when he found his grandfather’s old 35mm film camera, he started photographing Taipei. “It felt right to do it this way.”

Access and Care

The films and video artworks are grouped into categories defined by the sensations they may evoke: “rumbling,” “inside/outside,” “spaces/routes,” “reverberation/held,” and “mid-air/suspended.” All provide closed captioning and audio description, written or recorded, in many cases, by the artists themselves. One vivid example: In her short film “Song Without Words,” deaf visual artist Olivia Ting plays with typeface and lettering to echo the partial inaccessibility of hearing devices and sign language, and to portray listening as a bodily, interpretive act.

The festival also features 17 virtual events—among them Bradburn’s and Heiredal’s aforementioned programming, as well as a discussion with Holden and another U.K.-based artist on transgressing genre and gender in film. These events incorporate captioning, transcription, and audio description, along with low-sensory breakout rooms, live access support, and permission to stay comfortable—whether that means lying down, staying off-camera, communicating via chat only, leaving early, or something else. RestFest’s film and readings clubs and arts gatherings, held year round, also offer these accommodations. As disability scholar May Chazan writes, “In our care-filled, artful practices, we slowly make our next world.” [4]

The first event is a workshop on processing pandemic grief, and the final event will be a screening of a collective film created during the workshop. Facilitator Kit Blamire, a self-identified “anarcho-sicko” artist living in Berlin, organized the same event last year. Participants made one-minute films, which were later assembled together.

“Folks were talking about how, since they became very ill, they hadn’t been able to make films anymore—and then, coming into this space, they were inspired to make films again,” recalls Miriam, the RestFest founder.

“I’m disabled,” these attendees said, “but all these other disabled people are making films in these creative ways that are comfortable for their minds and bodies.”

RestFest Film Festival, through Feb. 28; restfestfilmfestival.org. “No need to get out of bed or off the couch. No worries if you’re half-asleep. You are always welcome here.”

[1] Spencer, Danielle. Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity. Oxford University Press, 2020.
[2] Manning, Erin. The Minor Gesture. Duke University Press, 2016.
[3] Heiredal, Troels Steenholdt. “Autistic Architectural Approach.” PLAT, vol. 13, “Alchemy,” 2025. static1.squarespace.com/static/611838bd3f0e670d00f832f5/t/6796f49bc98eac6ba1880af5/1737946272880/Heiredal-Troels+Autistic+Architectural+Approach.pdf.
[4] Chazan, May. “Crip Time and Radical Care in/as Artful Politics.” Social Sciences, vol. 12, no. 2, 2023, pp. 59-75. MPDI, doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020099.

Web image from RestFest Trailer.

Flushing the Script: Madness, Medication, and Patriarchy in The Housemaid

Rudy Malcom — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 15:08:28 +0000

Goodbye, Lexapro summer—hello, Haldol winter?

Through playful videos hashtagged #LiveLaughLexapro and #LexaproGirly, Tiktok and Instagram creators have transformed the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor into a selective, if relatable, lifestyle for the enlightened and empowered—stigma be damned. Our society is preoccupied with chemical selfhood[1], with mental illness arguably normalized to the point of sun-kissed romanticization.

Psychopharmaceuticals receive a different treatment in the snow-blanketed mansion of The Housemaid, based on Freida McFadden’s same-named novel and directed by Paul Feig. (Spoilers ahead for the campy thriller!)

Millie Calloway (a mostly lackluster Sydney Sweeney), who is on parole, becomes the titular live-in maid for a wealthy family. She finds Haldol, an antipsychotic, in the medicine cabinet of her erratic boss, Nina Winchester (a delightfully unhinged Amanda Seyfried). This discovery leads Millie to believe that Nina is mentally ill, confirming the story that the latter’s husband Andrew (an initially charming Brandon Sklenar) and gossipy so-called friends have been building: that Nina is deceitful and dangerous.

In reality, Nina’s outbursts and mood swings are in part a reaction to Andrew’s abuse. But she also uses the perception that she is unstable to her advantage, exaggerating her behavior in an attempt to engineer her escape.

By locking both of its female leads, at one point or another, in an attic room, The Housemaid alludes to the “madwoman in the attic” trope, theorized in 1979 feminist literary criticism by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. In their seminal work, they explore how 19th-century women writers used their texts to resist the patriarchy.

The quintessential example is Bertha Mason, the first wife of the eventual husband of the eponymous narrator of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Another example: the postpartum protagonist of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” whose physician husband prescribes her a rest cure and confines her to an upstairs nursery. Her resulting insanity is an embodiment of, and protest against, the subjugation of women. As literary critic Elaine Showalter[2] writes, the madwoman “refuses to speak the language of patriarchal order.”

Albeit to a lesser extent than Nina, Millie is also cast as a madwoman. Toward the beginning of the film, she seems anxious and hyper-vigilant, and her specific crime is kept secret, leaving her reliability ambiguous. And, at first, Nina’s freedom—her rebellion against the patriarchy—comes at the expense of Millie’s, hardly an example of women supporting women.

But Nina’s 7-year-old daughter Cece (Indiana Elle) encourages her mother to rescue Millie, who ultimately defeats Andrew. The police officer (Alexandra Seal) notices inconsistencies in Nina’s account but, owing to a plot contrivance, investigates no further. The Housemaid ends with Millie accepting a new job, once more as a knife-savvy housemaid for an abused woman.

Rebecca Sonnenshine’s twist-filled screenplay is highly entertaining, but it is no masterpiece. That said, we can examine The Housemaid through the lens of mad studies, a field of scholarship that places mental distress within broader social and political contexts. This approach extends the notion, often attributed to psychiatrist R.D. Laing, that insanity is a “perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” Bradley Lewis[3], another psychiatrist, maintains that “psychic difference from the norm” can, in some cases, be something “to celebrate.”

Mille’s vengeance-driven crimes are ethically understandable; however, they are legally questionable, and most mad-studies scholars would likely not exalt them. But instead of pathologizing her and Nina’s actions, we can read them as efforts to combat Andrew’s patriarchal control.

Additionally, as Lewis underscores, healthcare professionals must seek to understand how social and political forces shape the lives of their patients and center their perspectives and narratives. Had Nina’s clinicians taken her seriously, she, Cece, Millie, and even Andrew would have been spared much pain.

Millie finds an unflushed pill in a toilet, suggesting that Nina doesn’t take her Haldol. Unlike #LexaproGang members, she has been prescribed medication against her will. Admittedly, medication can play an important role in managing mental illness, but The Housemaid emphasizes that it cannot substitute for structural change. Even if mental illness has in part been commodified by social media, the film reminds us that what is labeled madness may, in fact, be an attunement to a world that too often denies women credibility and agency—a problem that demands not merely treatment, but transformation.

The Housemaid. Directed by Paul Feig, performances by Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, and Indiana Elle, Lionsgate, 2025.

[1]Metzl, Jonathan M. The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, Beacon Press, 2010.
[2]Showalter, Elaine. “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism.” Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, edited by Geoffrey H. Hartman and Patricia Parker, Routledge, 1985, pp. 77-94.
[3]Lewis, Bradley. “Rethinking Psychiatry with Mad Studies.” Mad Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health, edited by Bradley Lewis, Alisha Ali, and Jazmine Russell, Routledge, 2024, pp. 435-455.

Web image by Medhum.org

The Knick of Time

Russell Teagarden — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 19:40:33 +0000

Television has produced shows featuring the daily activities and dramas in medical practices from almost the beginning of television itself. Early programs, such as Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, and Dr. Welby, all weekly shows airing for many years, attracted huge audiences. Medical shows have since been a consistent offering on television, some of the better known being, St. Elsewhere, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Hope, and House. The medical series, The Pitt, represents the genre at present. Among the traits they share along with medical drama and personal drama, is being set in the era they were produced. The Knick is an exception.

The Knick portrays all that goes on in and around a hospital struggling to provide care for the poorer classes in lower Manhattan during the early 1900s. It shows that many of what were then considered important advances in medicine, technology, society, and culture were later considered dangerous, unethical, barbaric, inhumane, and racist. The series asks whether health care of any era, along with associated social and cultural factors at work, are destined to be seen sometime in the future in similar ways.

Storylines of the Poor and the Famous

The Knick was inspired by the Knickerbocker Hospital, founded in Harlem in 1862 to serve the poor. In this twenty-part television series spread over two seasons, the fictional Knick is located somewhere in the lower half of Manhattan around 1900. The time covered during the series is not marked in any distinct way. The characters do not age much, and although fashion and customs remain static during the series, the scope and significance of advancements that come into play were actually adopted over a longer time than the episodes cover.

The series builds on some known history. The central character, the chief surgeon Dr. John Thackery, is modeled on a famous surgeon of the time, Dr. William Halsted, in both his surgical adventurism and in his drug addictions. The character, Dr. Algernon Edwards, who is an African-American, Harvard-educated, and European-trained surgeon, is based in part on Dr. Louis T. Wright, who became the first African-American surgeon at Harlem Hospital during the first half of the twentieth century.  

Storylines of human drama and folly run through the series. Among them are medical cases both ordinary and bizarre, heroic successes and catastrophic failures, loves won and lost, gilded lives and wretched existences, honor and corruption, racism and more racism. Within these storylines are the scientific, medical, and industrial advances of the period, as well as the social frameworks that form fin de siècle hospital care and medical research in New York City.  

Some of the industrial advances adopted by the hospital include electrification, telephone service, and electric-powered ambulances. We see that transitions to these new technologies are not without risks and catastrophes: patients and hospital staff are electrocuted, and when the ambulance batteries died — a frequent occurrence– many of the patients they carried died, too.

Medical advances integrated into various episodes include x-rays, electric-powered suction devices, and an inflatable balloon for intrauterine compression to stop hemorrhages. Thackery is a driven researcher taking on some of the big problems of the day, such as making blood transfusions safe, curing syphilis, and discovering the physiologic mechanisms of drug addiction. We see how he learns at the cost of his patients, or rather his subjects. We also get a glimpse of movements directed at population health. For example, epidemiological methods are applied to find the source of a typhoid outbreak, which drew from the actual case of Mary Mallon (aka, Typhoid Mary). Shown juxtaposed to the advances in epidemiology is the concurrent interest that was rising in eugenics and its broad application to control for unwanted individual traits and particular groups of people. Research ethics and regulations were a long way off. 

Time Tells

Each era possesses its own hubris based on the technological advances and social progress made over those of previous eras, and on the certainty that the mistakes made before have not been repeated. Time reveals whether those attitudes and positions were justified. For Soderbergh, the director of the series, this idea was top of mind, and he stated as much in an interview published in the August 1, 2014 New York Times: 

There are so many treatments on the show that make you gasp because they’re so wrong…It just makes you wonder what treatments we’re all taking at face value that 10 or 15 years from now we’re going to be told, ‘Well, that didn’t work, and in fact that makes it worse.’ 

Early twenty-first-century medical care has benefited from advances in molecular biology, medical devices, surgical procedures, data analytics, and epidemiological methods among others. People only participate in experimental protocols with their informed consent, and health care workforces are highly diverse. Impressive indeed, but none that in any way dwarf some of the advances shown during the series, and many that make twenty-first-century medical care possible. And, while The Knick shows how patients were often victims of bad science, bad technique, unproven technology, and malfeasance, the current era of health care is rife with risks for its own harms. Based on a complex analysis from several sources, the U.S. Institute of Medicine estimated in 1999 that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors each year in the US (To Err is Human). In 2016, researchers from The Johns Hopkins University reported in the May 3, 2016 issue of The BMJ (The British Medical Journal), that at the time The Knick was running in 2014–2015, medical errors were the third leading cause of death in the U.S. While the the accuracy of these estimates could be challenged, we can take from them with some amount of certainty that medical error exists today to a significant degree.

The Knick pushes us to consider and to beware of what we may see resulting from modern-day biomedical and technological advances as time passes. To the medical drama and personal drama of most television medical serious, The Knick adds the drama of time.

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The Knick
Steven Soderberg, director
Cinemax
Twenty episodes, 2014-2015
Running time: 42–57 minute episodes

Awards
Peabody Award
Six Primetime Emmys
Three Critics Choice Television awards

The Knick began streaming on HBO Max on February 20, 2021

How Real is the Pitt?

Dave Hsu — Mon, 05 May 2025 17:20:08 +0000

From Apollo on Call–a Medhum Podcast

On the latest episode of Apollo On Call, I am pleased to welcome my good friend and pop culture expert Dr. Stuart Harman, a paediatric emergency room physician from Ottawa, Canada, to discuss the breakout TV medical drama of the moment: The PITT.

Both Stu and I have watched about three quarters of the show’s 15 episode first season at the time of recording this podcast, enough that we are ready to weigh in on some important medical humanities questions. Is The PITT realistic? Does it reflect the reality of life as an emergency room physician? Which parts of the show make sense and which don’t? What does it say about the hierarchal world of a teaching hospital?

If you haven’t watched The PITT yet or are considering whether you should watch it, this is the episode for you. We deliberately avoid any spoilers and instead talk big picture about the show’s themes and place in medical humanities.

Have a listen, and then come back in a month or two, when Stu and I catch up after we’ve finished the season. Next time, spoilers will be on so you better come prepared!

David Hsu

TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS EPISODE

Change Not Charity: The Americans with Disability Act

Lucy Bruell — Fri, 02 May 2025 14:42:01 +0000

Change Not Charity traces the grassroots movement leading to the passage in 1990 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the law that mandates accessibility for the disabled.

Jim LeBrecht

People with disabilities have a long history of being isolated, excluded socially as well as physically from facilities that were not accessible. Beginning in the late 1960’s, Jerry Lewis’ Labor Day Telethons were watched by nearly half of the country and raised millions of dollars towards finding a cure for muscular dystrophy. But despite its good intentions, by arousing the audience’s pity of the disabled to attract donations, the telethons also heightened the distance between “normal” people and people with disabilities.

Children were among those whose disabilities affected them in harmful ways. In one of the many interviews, Cynthia Jones describes how, at the age of five and a half, she was selected as a poster child for the March of Dimes because she was “blonde, blue-eyed, and braced.” When her teacher passed around a flyer to promote polio vaccines in class, she was horrified to see a picture of two children, one labeled “This”, the other “Not This.” Cynthia was the “Not This.” At that moment, she realized that no one wanted to be like her. In fact, many young children with disabilities were institutionalized and kept out of the public eye.

In February 1972, reporter Geraldo Rivera’s broadcast from inside Willowbrook State School, an institution for disabled children on Staten Island, shocked the nation and helped spark the disability rights movement. At the same time, a group of disabled college students in Berkeley, with a donation from the Rotary Club, formed the Center for Independent Living (CIL), offering services which included applying for government assistance, counseling and transportation. CIL drew disabled people from throughout the country who wanted to live in a place where they could find support and practical help. Judy Heumann, a disability rights advocate who had successfully sued the NYC Board of Education when she was denied a teaching position, became the Center’s Deputy Director.

In 1973, an update to the Federal Rehabilitation Act was enacted to help veterans. At the end of the document there was a 46-word clause, Section 504, barring discrimination against the disabled in federally funded institutions. People with disabilities took note, but the new regulations languished unsigned until demonstrators occupied the Federal Building in San Francisco and protested in Washington DC. The demonstrations drew national attention and led to Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano signing the regulation into law. Years later, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act expanded the earlier regulation to include private institutions and businesses.

The story of the disability rights movement has elements that resonate today. Letter-writing campaigns and connections forged with members of Congress and the Executive Branch helped garner support for pending legislation and advance the movement’s agenda. Justin Dart, Vice Chair of the National Council of the Handicapped, crisscrossed the country holding town meetings to find out about discrimination in local communities. He issued his findings in a report titled “Toward Independence,” which served as a roadmap for disability legislation.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was initially introduced in 1988, at which time opponents called it the bankruptcy bill because the cost of creating accessible spaces was considered too exorbitant. In Washington DC, people parked their wheelchairs and maneuvered up the steps to the US Capitol into the Rotunda where over 100 protesters were arrested. ADA was finally passed two years later in 1990 with the support of President George H.W. Bush.

The disability rights movement led to significant change in large part because people showed up repeatedly over the years in multiple venues across the country to ensure their voices were heard. And while much has been achieved, the documentary ends with a reminder that there is still more work needed, citing that two out of three adults with disabilities are not in the work force.

Change Not Charity, part of the PBS’s American Experience series, is a comprehensive overview of the pivotal events leading up to the passage of ADA, using archival footage of demonstrations and interviews with participants, Congressmen, and legal advocates. The documentary is directed by Jim LeBrecht, who won the Academy Award for his previous documentary Crip Camp, a more personal documentary, with its focus on some of the key people in the movement beginning with their experiences at the sleepaway camp. Both documentaries provide insight into the struggles faced by the disabled and the efforts to advance disability rights.

Change Not Charity Film Trailer

CHANGE NOT CHARITY

Director: Jim LeBrecht
Narrator: Peter Dinklage
A STEWARD/GAZIT PRODUCTIONS FILM FOR AMERICAN EXPERIENCE 2025
RT 53 minutes

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution

Carol Schilling Jan 3, 2025

A powerful film celebrating disability rights, resilience, and community, revealing untold struggles and triumphs that demand greater recognition and action

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin

Dave Hsu — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:28:42 +0000

From Apollo on Call–a Medhum Podcast

Mats Sheen

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is a 2024 documentary about the life of Mats Steen, a Norwegian man who died from complications of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The movie explores how Mats, unbeknownst to the people around him, adopts a full online persona that allows him to experience the fullness of the human experience through a video game, experiences that were denied to him in the physical world because of his illness.

I grew up during the nascent age of video games and home computers. While our parents looked at computers as tools that might help us in the future, as children, we looked at computers mostly as a source of fun. We crowded around arcade machines at convenience stores and arcades, throwing away quarters until our pockets emptied. We congregated at our friends’ houses after school and on weekends, befriending whoever was fortunate enough to have a console or a computer powerful enough to support the latest graphics.

Mats’ online profile image (Ibelin)

Now though, as a parent and physician, my nostalgic view of video games is tempered by a mixture of skepticism and fear when it comes to games and internet technology. To hear the skeptics discuss it, video games are one of the root causes of the obesity epidemic, and online games and social media are part of the teen mental health crisis. Schools bring in experts to teach parents the perils of children spending time online while pediatricians pound out guidelines that describe “healthy limits on screen time.” 

This month, on Apollo On Call, we sit down to talk about video games and how there is another side to this narrative. We look at the story of Ibelin and talk about how video games may add to our lives in ways that many of us have never considered.

Thank you, Mats, for showing us a different way to think about the online world.

Luki and Dave

TRANSCRIPT FROM THIS EPISODE