Providentia

Reel Talk: Gender Dynamics and the Bechdel-Wallace Test

In the huge universe of movie tales, how often do we see female characters talking about something other than men? This inquiry goes beyond simple film interest and touches on larger cultural conventions and gender roles.

In a challenging new study, German researchers Markus Appel and Timo Gnambs conducted a thorough investigation into this field, utilizing the Bechdel-Wallace Test (BWT) to examine female characterization in 1,200 of the highest-grossing movies released over the past 40 years. Their findings provide insight into the gradual yet noticeable change in gender roles in film.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

Superhuman Standards: How Comic Books Shape Body Ideals

tertainment, captivating readers with their larger-than-life characters and extraordinary storylines. However, have you ever stopped to consider the portrayal of these characters' bodies and the impact they may have on our perceptions of beauty and attractiveness? A study, recently published in the journal Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, took an intriguing look at the exaggerated physiques of DC and Marvel comic book characters and their potential influence on our own ideals about body image.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today post now up.

The Boston Sleepwalker

Just thought I'd include this story from my newly released book, True Crime Stories You Won't Believe: Book Two.   Enjoy,

Even for Boston in the 19th century, it was a ruthless murder.

On  October 27, 1845, police were initially called in to investigate several suspicious fires at an upscale "boarding house" (i.e., brothel) in Boston.  After dousing the fires, police, soon discovered the body of a 21-year-old prostitute named Maria Ann Bickford in the room where she lived and worked.  Bickford’s body was nearly decapitated, and her throat cut from ear to ear. From what police could determine, the fires were likely set to conceal the crime, but they still found a man's vest and cane, covered with blood, at the scene. 

Since the landlord insisted that the house was securely locked to prevent intruders from getting in, the police only had one real suspect in the killing.  Albert Tirrell was a twenty-two-year-old paramour of Maria Bickford.    The son of a successful manufacturer and a member of a well-established family, Tirrell had lived with his wife and two children in Weymouth, Massachusetts, when he apparently grew tired of the domestic life.   Whether he had abandoned his family before or after meeting Maria Bickford in a Boston brothel isn't clear, but they certainly became inseparable afterward.

Maria Bickford's history was a  little different from Tirrell's.   Born and raised in Bangor, Maine, she married a shoemaker at sixteen and had one child who died in infancy.  Her friends took her to Boston to help her overcome her grief, but she quickly became fascinated by Boston life.  After only three years of marriage, Maria soon abandoned her husband and took up with a paramour who left her.   With no other options, Bickford turned to prostitution to support herself.   Her youthful beauty made her extremely popular, and she quickly became established in brothels catering to the wealthy Boston elite.   That she soon became Albert Tirrell's constant companion did nothing to change that. 

Whether Tirrell was just her lover or Maria's pimp was never clear though they often traveled together from one new address to another.   Despite never marrying (they were both legally married to other spouses),  Albert and Maria often posed as husband and wife, staying in some of the most fashionable hotels along the East Coast.   

They also scandalized Boston society, and Albert even stood trial for adultery at one point (it took an impassioned plea from family members, including his young wife, to save him from prosecution).   He and Maria frequently quarreled, but she would claim that she didn't mind because they had "such a good time making up."   Under the name "Maria Welch," she and Tirrell maintained a house on London Street for a little while.   It was hardly a secret that the house was a front for Maria to entertain clients (Maria's name was on the front door), but prostitution was still technically illegal.  For this reason, she and Tirrell rarely stayed at any address for long despite Maria's exclusive clientele.

At the time of Maria's murder, she and Tirrell lived at a thinly disguised brothel in Boston.   An elderly couple ran the place and advertised it as a boarding house, but it seemed clear enough that people rented the rooms for only one purpose.  Though Albert supposedly lived elsewhere, he stayed with Maria frequently and was known to have slept there the night of her death.    Other residents reported hearing loud noises coming from Maria's room early in the morning, but nobody investigated until after the body was found.  

When police questioned Tirrell about the murder, they found that he had disappeared.  Still, he was their only suspect since he had been with the victim earlier that night and was likely the last person to see her alive.  The bloody clothes in Bickford's room were identified as belonging to Tirrell.  Also, one witness had reported seeing Tirrell afterward arguing with a livery stable keeper about getting a horse.   He reportedly said he was "in a scrape" and needed a horse and carriage as fast as possible.

Albert Tirrell disappeared for months until Louisiana police, acting on a tip, arrested him on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico on December 5.   As Boston police later learned,  Tirrell had driven to the home of some relatives in Weymouth, MA, on the day of the murder.   These relatives supplied him with money which he then used to flee to Canada.   He formed a convoluted plan to sail to Liverpool from Montreal, but lousy weather eventually led to his sailing to New Orleans instead.  There, he was arrested and returned to Boston to stand trial for the murder of Maria Bickford.

While nobody could be sure who was responsible, a book titled The Life and Death of Mrs. Maria Bickford was released shortly before the trial began.   The book, a largely fictionalized account of Maria Bickford's life up to the time of her murder, portrayed her as a beautiful and tragic figure victimized by the men in her life.    Though portraying Maria as a victim, the book also highlighted all the stereotypes associated with prostitutes.   Despite claims of being "true to life," the book was primarily fabricated and meant to capitalize on Tirrell's upcoming trial.   There is no evidence that any jurors in the trial read the book, but it likely added to the media circus surrounding what promised to be a high-profile case.

Despite the scandal, Tirrell brought to his family, they were well-to-do enough to hire Rufus Choate to defend Albert in the lurid trial.   Choate, a prominent lawyer and politician, had already served in Congress as a Senator and was legendary for his skill as an orator.  Since virtually everybody in Boston knew about the overwhelming evidence against his client, Choate was obliged to try a different strategy to save his client, thanks to the "scandal sheets" that described every detail of the case.  

First, he attacked Maria Bickford's character to make her less sympathetic to the jurors.  Through evidence carefully orchestrated by Choate, Tirrell's cousins portrayed Maria Bickford as a shameless siren who had seduced poor Albert away from his wife and children.   They also claimed that she had a fatal hold on Albert and forced him to spend nearly all his inherited wealth on buying her jewelry and dresses while she continued throwing herself at other men.   Despite this apparent abuse, Choate also insisted that his client would have been entirely irrational to kill Maria due to his love for her.   As Choate pointed out, she " had held him spellbound by her depraved and lascivious arts for a long time."  

There was also a touch of racism added as Choate also brought in witnesses who testified that they had seen Maria with non-white clients (likely meant as proof of her "moral turpitude").  As a "fallen woman," anything Choate could say about Bickford must have seemed plausible enough to jury members, all of whom had seen the rise of urban prostitution in their lifetimes. 

To explain the evidence against his client,  Choate and his defense team would do everything in their power to further blacken Maria Bickford's reputation, even suggesting that the wound to her throat had been self-inflicted.  He also broadly hinted that prostitutes were prone to committing suicide due to their immoral lifestyles.  But Rufus Choate didn't push this argument very far.   Considering that Maria was nearly decapitated, arguing that she had done it to herself would have been too much for even a sympathetic jury to swallow.  Not to mention the trifling problem of who had set the fire that nearly consumed her body.

All of which led to his second great defense strategy:  sleepwalking. Since somnambulism was regarded as a mysterious phenomenon without a rational explanation, arguing that Tirrell must have murdered Maria in a trance state was a bold move on Choate's part.  As he stated in the courtroom, "Evidence will be produced to show that it had pleased Almighty God to afflict the prisoner with this species of mental derangement.”   That evidence included anecdotes from history, including famous people such as Alexander the Great acting strangely while sleepwalking. The defendant's family and friends also described episodes from Tirrell's life, showing that he had been sleepwalking from a young age.  To cap off the testimony on Tirrell's behalf, Walter Channing, dean of Harvard Medical School, testified that it was theoretically possible for a man to commit murder while sleepwalking.

Whether it was the character assassination of the victim or the novel sleepwalking defense, Choate's ploy worked.   But it was his fantastic skill at rhetoric that truly swayed the jury on his client's behalf.  Even the court stenographer recording Choate's arguments complained that she had difficulty keeping up with him during the trial.  "Who can report chain lightning?"  she reportedly said.

It took only two hours for the jurors to hand down a not-guilty verdict.   Spectators applauded, and Albert Tirrell burst into tears.   Of course, his legal problems were hardly over.  He still had to stand trial for arson (which was also a capital crime at the time), but Choate also got him off that charge.  According to historical records, Tirrell failed to get Choate to refund half his legal fees because "his innocence was so obvious." 

Not that Tirrell escaped justice completely.   The judge refused to acquit him on the charge of adultery, and he eventually spent three years in state prison.   He soon vanished into well-deserved obscurity after his release from what I could find.   Whether Tirrell ever went back to his long-suffering family isn’t mentioned.

Afterward, Choate left private practice to return to public office (after being reportedly besieged by defendants hoping he could help them as well).   Despite his reputation as a statesman, Rufus Choate never quite lived down being the one to introduce the sleepwalking defense.   Following his death in 1859,  one lawyer eulogized him by saying that Choate was "the lawyer who made it safe to murder." 

Which is one hell of a legacy when you think of it.

The Abe Sada Case

On May 18, 1936, Sada Abe strangled her lover, Kichizo Ishida, to death. After laying with the body for several hours, she took a kitchen knife and severed his genitals. Wrapping them in a magazine cover, she used his blood to write Sada, Kichi Futari-kiri ("Sada, Kichi together") on his left thigh and on a bedsheet. She then carved her name on his left arm, got dressed, and walked out of the room in the Tokyo inn where they had been staying. Sada instructed the staff not to disturb Ishida and left the inn.  Shortly afterward, she went to see a politically prominent former lover, Goro Amiya, and apologized to him repeatedly. He had no idea what she was talking about but she was well aware that his political career was about to be ruined by the adverse publicity surrounding her involvement with him.

She was right.

Born to a well-off Tokyo family in 1905, Sada Abe (or Abe Sada depending on the naming tradition used) was doted on by her mother who encouraged her to be free-spirited and independent. At the age of fifteen, she was raped by an acquaintance. While her parents supported her through the investigation that followed, Sada was never the same afterward.

As she became more uncontrollable, her father sold her to a geisha house in Yokohama although family members would later disagree as to why. While Sada later maintained that she was punished for her promiscuous behaviour, her sister would state that she had been perfectly willing. Becoming an accomplished geisha was a mark of distinction for Japanese women of the time and Sada had often expressed her wish to pursue this lifestyle.  Still, whatever Sada believed about the glamorous life of a geisha, the reality was very different.

After contracting syphilis from a client, she turned to prostitution and began working in Osaka's brothel district. Being a licensed prostitute posed more problems than she was prepared to deal with and she eventually drifted towards unlicensed prostitution (with all the usual dangers). After both her parents died, she became even more unrestrained. A raid on the brothel where she was working in 1934 led to her becoming the mistress of a well-connected friend of the brothel owner. A string of other lovers followed as she tried to get out of prostitution entirely. In 1936, Sada became an apprentice in a restaurant while trying to start a new life. This was how she met Kichizo Ishida.

Despite being the owner of the Yoshidaya restaurant where Sada worked, it was really Ishida's wife who ran the business. The 42-year old Ishida was a frequent womanizer who was bored with his marriage and it didn't take long from him to notice his free-spirited apprentice. Sada in turn, despite already being involved with Goro Omiya at the time, didn't hesitate when the handsome Ishida approached her (she would later say that "I never met such a sexy man"). Their lovemaking bouts were legendary and often lasted for days. Whatever Ishida's plans, Sada found herself falling in love with him (possibly for the first time in her life). Just being his mistress wasn't enough for her, she wanted to be his wife, and the idea of sharing him with another woman infuriated her.

Sada grew more despondent as Ishida lost interest and she began drinking heavily. Inspired by a play that she had seen featuring a geisha threatening a lover with a knife, Sada bought a large kitchen knife and threatened Ishida with it at their next meeting.  Ishida was amused by her threats and took her off to an inn in the Ogu red light district for their next lovemaking marathon. What happened next is mainly based on Sada's testimony. After two days of lovemaking, she took the obi off her kimono and began strangling him. He found the erotic asphyxia enjoyable and told he to do it while he was sleeping. On the morning of May 18th, she strangled him to death (whether intentionally or not is open to debate) and would later say that she felt a "sense of clarity" on realizing that he was dead. After cutting off her lover's genitals, she put on his underwear and left the inn at 8:00 am. The mutilated body was found by a maid sometime later and the hunt for Sada Abe began.

There was a nationwide panic due to lurid media accounts describing the deranged Sada being at large. Reported sightings came in from all over Japan. Goro Omiya got swept up in the media frenzy thus dooming his promising political career. As for Sada herself, she never left Osaka and managed to check into a local inn under an assumed name.  It was while she was reportedly making plans to commit suicide that police got a tip on her location.   On May 20, police came to her hotel room and she gave up immediately. Ishida's severed genitals, still wrapped in a magazine cover, were found in her handbag.

News of Sada's capture was reported nationwide and even announced in Japan's National Diet. Given the political upheavals of the time, the bizarre sex scandal made for a welcome diversion and the public ate up every detail of the testimony that she provided during her interrogation.  Meanwhile, police continued interrogating Sada Abe to get some sense of why she had killed Ishida and severed her genitals.   In the statement she made, Sada said of  Ishida that "I loved him so much, I wanted him all to myself. But since we were not husband and wife, as long as he lived he could be embraced by other women. I knew that if I killed him no other woman could ever touch him again, so I killed him....."  Asked why she cut off his genitals, she replied ""Because I couldn't take his head or body with me. I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories." 

Not surprisingly, the public was fascinated with the case, both within Japan and beyond. While murders due to jealousy were hardly uncommon, the strange story of the geisha-turned-harlot who killed out of love mesmerized Japanese society (and you thought the Lorena Bobbitt case was memorable).   Her trial began on November 25th, 1936 and crowds gathered for hours before the courthouse even opened to catch a glimpse of her (she wore a bizarre conical hat when entering and leaving the courtroom to hide her face). Eager reporters relayed as much of her sensational testimony as government censors allowed (even one of the three judges who tried her case later admitted to being sexually aroused by the explicit details). Considering the conservative nature of Japanese society at the time, Sada's testimony, which became a bestseller afterward, was explosive. One leading newspaper described the fascination with the case as "Sada mania" and many of the young women who watched the case were called "Sada fans".

The media furor didn't focus on Sada alone.  Goro Omiya had been investigated by the police for his possible involvement in the murder but was finally released. He resigned from his political and academic posts and disappeared from public view.  Kichizo Ishida's wife was devastated by her husband's death (although she could hardly have been unaware of his womanizing) but managed to keep the restaurant going.  Ironically, the Yoshidaya restaurant flourished thanks to the publicity of the case. Even the inn where the murder had taken place attracted eager customers (many couples specifically asked for the room where Ishida had died).

Any hope for a lengthy trial was squashed when Sada Abe simply pleaded guilty to the charges against her. Despite her plea, numerous witnesses were called (including Sada's sister) and Ishida's severed genitals were presented as evidence.  There was no question of the verdict, only the sentence that she would receive. Sada had been hoping for the death penalty so that she could join Ishida while the prosecution asked for a ten-year sentence.  That she was only sentenced to six years came as a surprise to everyone in the courtroom. In handing down the sentence, the judge explained his decision by stressing the role that Ishida had played in the events leading up to his death. He also discussed Sada's mental state at the time since, despite Sada's objections, her lawyer insisted that she had been insane at the time of the murder. The judge concluded that the sentence would be enough time for Sada to rehabilitate herself in prison and start a new life upon release. Since she never committed another crime, he was probably right.

Sada's time in prison would represent the most stable period of her life. She would later describe the prison staff as "loving and caring people" and actually felt herself part of a community. Despite setbacks (especially on the first anniversary of Ishida's death), she was able to function and even studied Buddhist philosophy while in prison. Due to her being a model prisoner, her sentence was later commuted and she was released on November 10, 1940. Unfortunately, her notoriety kept her in the public eye for the rest of her life.

Even living under an alias, Sada found that public fascination with her case made starting a new life impossible. Since she left prison without any real income, she lived with her sister and brother-in-law for a time but wartime rationing forced her to support herself. Under the name "Yoshii Masako" she went to work as a maid but was fired when her employers learned her true identity. A "serious man" then asked her to become his mistress and she reluctantly accepted. This relationship ended after several years when his family learned who she really was.

Although Sada realized that her name had become "poisonous" and was distressed that the public thought of her as a "sex pervert", this would change over time as postwar attitudes concerning sexuality became more liberalized. Still, there were few occupations that were open to her as a notorious woman living alone and the stigma of her past continued to haunt her. She sued the author of a scandalous book based on supposed interviews with her (this was settled out of court) and even published her own autobiography in 1948. After years of living in semi-anonymity and working in pubs and restaurants, Sada finally managed to drop out of sight. Last seen in 1970, nothing else is known about her life. Occasional later rumours of her committing suicide or entering a convent sprang up but nothing was ever confirmed and there is no known death date  (though flowers continued to be left on Kichizo Ishida's grave until 1987).

Despite her disappearance, the fascination with Sada's case never really ended. Her life has been the subject of non-fiction books, novels, psychoanalytic essays, and movies. The 1976 erotic classic, The Realm of the Senses is probably the best-known of the three films made about her life. The film's explicit sex scenes (and its gruesome ending) caused it to be banned or censored in countries around the world but it introduced viewers to a bizarre case that is still largely unknown outside of Japan. Whether Sada Abe is a feminist icon or a notorious murderer (and she has been described as both), her case represents an important test of the changing sexual mores of Japanese culture. Whatever her final fate, Sada Abe will be remembered.

The Movie Murderer

In 1995, a 14-year  boy, Sandy Charles, lured a 7-year old acquaintance into some bushes near their homes in the town of La Ronge in northern Saskatchewan under the pretext of playing a baseball game with him.    With the help of an unnamed 7-year old accomplice, Charles then stabbed and bludgeoned Jonathan Thimpsen.   After the murder,  Sandy  Charles mutilated the body by removing strips of skin which he took home to place in a tin can covered in foil.   An intense search of the area by friends and family led to Jonathan's body being found three days later.   After an investigation, Sandy Charles was arrested.

As Charles would later admit to investigators, he boiled the skin on the family stove to reduce the fat to liquid but had refrained from actually drinking it, stating that, "I just wanted to stay the way I am."   According to testimony later presented in court, Jonathan had been selected at random so that his fat could be harvested based on a scene from the 1989 movie Warlock.    The movie, featuring a 17th-century warlock who travels to the future, includes an off-camera murder of a young boy so that his fat could be extracted to make a potion enabling the warlock to fly.    According to Sandy Charles' mother, her son had become obsessed with the movie and saw it more than ten times.    While he admitted committing the crime to her, he also insisted that he could not stop himself.  "He said it was like a dream. He said he didn't want to do it, but it was like it wasn't him doing it", she reported.   He also later said that "There's a strong spirit in my room that gave me these thoughts.   I was going to commit suicide until this thing popped into my head. I started thinking about killing someone else. Something wanted me to." 

The killing of Jonathan Thimpsen and the subsequent publicity of Charles' trial generated international publicity given the age of the victim and the perpetrator and the bizarre circumstances involved.    The RCMP officers investigating the murder concealed many details for fear of possible "mass hysteria."     In a public statement before the trial began, RCMP Corporal Dave Hoefl refused to provide full details about the murder due to the possible impact on jury selection.  "When you take a look at a 14-year-old doing this to a seven-year-old, there has to be a reason.  There is a reason. We have to decide whether it's in the public interest to know that reason right now," he said.   "I'm not sure whether the community is ready for this or not - and in reality, I don't even think the province is ready for it."   Based on the circumstances of the crime,  Sandy Charles was tried for murder in an adult court.

During the trial, his defense attorney, Barry Singer, insisted that Charles was not guilty due to mental illness and that the movie had a powerful effect on his mind.  "In the movie, the idea was that if you cut the fat off a virgin, unbaptized child, then boiled it down and drank it. That would give you the power to fly," said Singer.  "Sandy was suffering from the delusion that if he did these things, it would give him the power to fly. The movie just gave him the know-how to do it."    Following the lurid testimony given during the trial, Sandy Charles was later found guilty because of insanity on August 2, 1996.  He was transferred to the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon and held until he eventually  =applied to be transferred to a secure psychiatric unit closer to his home.  

As many expected, the trial generated considerable debate concerning the link between movie violence and real-life crimes.    In their coverage of the murder, the Toronto Globe and Mail cited experts who warned against drawing general conclusions from the murder and warned that violent movies could be a "precipitating event" for an already troubled child.    Based on concerns relating to movie violence and a petition in the early 1990s calling for an end to violence on television, the Canadian government passed legislation forcing cable companies to enable parents to block violent programs deemed unsuitable for children.  Similar legislation was passed in the United States months later.

The debate concerning the potential impact of media violence on impressionable children is a longstanding one.   During the 1950s, Fredric Wertham's crusade against violence in comic books led to the implementation of the Comics Code Authority. In contrast, similar crusades against violence in video games, music lyrics, and the Internet have had limited success. Similar concerns over the potential impact of inappropriate content in movies and television programs have generated considerable controversy about whether children could model their behaviour on graphic violence seen on screen. 

Moral panics over violent movie and television content remain a familiar phenomenon, especially as new, shocking media depictions of graphic violence help inspire calls for greater censorship.   Certainly, the number of films that have faced censorship over the years in the United States alone, often for minor scenes that would likely have gone unnoticed by the audiences supposedly being protected, is mind-boggling.   In other countries, battles over movies such as A Clockwork Orange led to either outright censorship or awkward compromises with movies being dramatically re-edited or removed from distribution altogether.   Though changing social standards and legal challenges led to a reevaluation of many production codes that controlled movie content for decades, the battle over what can be shown on the screen is far from over.  

But does media violence really lead to youth violence?  Though Albert Bandura's classic Bobo Doll experiments suggest that children tend to imitate aggressive behaviours that they see being modeled,  the impact of observational learning as it applies to movie and television violence seems more muted.   Despite decades of media violence research, no clear causal link between media violence and real-life crimes has ever been found.   The rise in movie and television violence of the past two decades has not led to a similar increase in real-life violence.  If anything, there has been a sharp decrease in violence during that same period, especially among adolescents.   Though school shootings and other examples of extreme violence appear to inspire copycat offenses, most young people appear perfectly capable of distinguishing between fictional violence and the real thing.  

A more controversial theory about media violence deals with the idea of catharsis or using violent media content to purge viewers of their violent thoughts or fantasies.   The term "catharsis" was first coined by Aristotle, who suggested in his Poetics that watching violent Greek tragedies helped audiences "through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions."   In other words, watching violent movies or television shows made people less inclined to commit violent acts.    This was in direct opposition to Plato's view that plays, music, and literature had a potentially harmful effect on morals (thus making him the first moral crusader).     Along with being a common theme in literature, catharsis has also been adopted by psychoanalysts such as Joseph Breuer and Sigmund Freud.

While most moral panics surrounding media violence tend to peter out fairly quickly, new panics often arise to take their place.   Though cases such as Sandy Charles continue to be invoked as a justification for greater control over media content, actual evidence to support such control is often lacking.    More graphic cases of copycat violence can definitely be expected in future, but the knee-jerk reaction and the calls for control will likely follow the same old pattern.

The Sculptress

Camille Claudel was, without a doubt, one of the most brilliant artists of her generation.  And she paid the price for it.

Born in 1864 in Fere en Tardenois in the French province of Picardy, Camille was the second child of a middle-class family.   Although the family moved frequently during her childhood, Camille developed a passion for art at an early age and became an accomplished sculptor by the age of thirteen.   By 1881, she was training at the Academie Colarossi in Paris under the supervision of eminent sculptor, Alfred Boucher.  Whatever plans Camille had for her own future as an artist changed dramatically when she first met Auguste Rodin in 1883.  

It's hard to say for sure when the two of them became lovers but Camille was quickly established in Rodin's studio and began a professional and personal collaboration with him that would last for fourteen years.   Although they never lived together, Camille's relationship with Rodin alarmed her family (especially her mother who had never approved of Camille's artistic ambitions) and she was eventually forced to leave the family home as a result.   While Camille contributed greatly to Rodin's career as a sculptor (many of the pieces that Rodin supposedly produced during their years together were likely her work), the opposite was certainly not the case.   There are few surviving signed works produced by Camille during her years with Rodin despite it being the most fertile period of his artistic career.  

Auguste Rodin was unsupportive in other ways as well.   Details of their personal life together are limited but there is evidence to indicate that she became pregnant as many as five times.  Whether the pregnancies were terminated by abortion or the infants given up for adoption, the end result was the same.   Since Rodin was already living with Rose Beuret and showed no intention of ever leaving her,  marriage was out of the question and he certainly had no intention of being monogamous with Rose or Camille.    Throughout the years when he and Camille were lovers, there was a steady stream of models and other women fascinated by his growing fame as an artist.   At least one noted biographer described Auguste Rodin as a "serious collector of interesting women".

By 1898, Camille had terminated her relationship with Rodin, both personally and professionally (although there is some indication that the had stopped being lovers some time previously).    Working independently for the first time in her life was a major hardship her.  Although the prosperous Rodin could afford to maintain three studios with a stable of artisans working under him, Camille had to struggle to pay her own bills.    The attitudes of the time towards independent women, especially women who actually worked for a living, needed to be faced as well.   Her unconventional lifestyle alienated her from her mother and sister (her father remained supportive, though).   Despite praise from most of the prominent critics of the time, Camille's artistic output remained slim.   The long years during which she had only produced art under Rodin's name worked against her and few patrons took an interest in her work.   While Rodin became increasingly rich and famous, Camille sank further into poverty.   Aside from a possible romance with composer Claude Debussy, there were no other men in Camille's life.

As she grew older, Camille became increasingly unstable.  In 1905, she deliberately destroyed many of her statues and began disappearing for long periods of time.    She also developed acute paranoia and accused Rodin of conspiring against her and stealing her ideas.   While she was reasonably lucid when working on her art, Camille became a recluse and often neglected her personal hygiene.  She also became an animal hoarder and kept numerous cats in her tiny, unkempt studio.   With shutters firmly drawn to keep out sunlight, Camille's entire existence focused on her art and her cats.  This eccentric lifestyle (complete with erratic outbursts and suicide attempts) certainly alarmed her family although her father continued to support his wayward daughter. 

Three days after her father died in 1913, Camille's brother Paul and her mother made arrangements to place her in the psychiatric hospital of Ville Evrard in Paris.   Two orderlies had to break into Camille's studio and drag her to the hospital by force.  The reasons for committing Camille remain controversial although the spectacle she made of herself when she was hospitalized likely didn't help her cause.  While she was certainly mentally unstable (and possibly suffering from schizophrenia), independent women who refused to accept societal restrictions on sexuality were often committed to hospitals during that era on the grounds of insanity.    In Camille's case, she settled down quickly and even her doctors came to insist that she was well enough to be released.  Despite attempts at a family reconciliation, her mother  remained adamant that she be kept in the hospital. 

With the outbreak of World War I, female patients in Ville Evrard were moved to safer quarters in an asylum near Avignon.  The certificate admitting Camille to Montdevergues Asylum described her as suffering from a "systematic persecution delirium mostly based upon false interpretations and imagination".   Despite repeated attempts by Camille's doctors, the artistic community, and the press to have Camille released from hospital, her family refused to consider the possibility.   Her mother and sister also refused to visit her in hospital and actively discouraged others from visiting her as well.  After Camille's mother died in 1929,  her brother continued to act as her guardian and steadfastly refused to allow her release.  Over the years, visitors typically described Camille as being lucid and insisted on her release but Paul Claudel opposed them.  Although he visited her every few years, he always referred to her in the past tense whenever discussing her life or art with friends.  Camille Claudel died on October 19, 1943 after spending three decades in the asylum.  Her family refused to claim the body and she was eventually buried in a communal grave in the Montfavet cemetery.  Only hospital staff attended the funeral service.  

Despite her long hospitalization, Camille's reputation as a brilliant artist remains secure.   While only ninety statues, paintings, and sketches survived her attempts at destroying them,  they show ample evidence of her artistic genius.  Paul Claudel, long notorious for his role in confining his sister, organized the first major exhibition of her work in 1951 and fascination with her complex life  has spurred the publication of various biographies over the years.     In 1988, a full-length biography of Camille Claudel's life was released starring Isabelle Adjani as Camille and Gerard Depardieu as Rodin.   Based on a biography by Paul Claudel's great-granddaughter,  the film transfers much of the blame for Camille's later breakdown on Rodin himself.  While feminists have criticized the film for downplaying the role that Camille's family played in the later tragedy of her life, it received numerous awards (including two Academy award nominations). 

Many of Camille's statues continue to be displayed at the Musee Rodin in Paris and traveling exhibitions have been held at numerous art galleries and museums around the world.   Rodin's various sculptures of Camille are on display as well.  Her artwork continues to fetch record prices at art auctions and she is regarded as being one of the greatest women artists of all time.  Camille Claudel will not be forgotten.

Do We Really Love Villains?

Villains make for good TV and movie watching.

I'm not talking about movie monsters such as It or the predators in A Quiet Place, I mean those very unpleasant people who seem to populate many of the most popular television and movie dramas that seem to revel in the chaos they cause for everyone around them.   Remember Frank Underwood (played by Kevin Spacey) in the HBO political drama series, House of Cards?   How about Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas), in the hit movie, House of Cards?   And, for those of you of an older generation, there was J.R. Ewing of Dallas fame (played by Larry Hagman) and Alexis Carrington of Dynasty (played by Joan Collins).    Whether or not these characters ever received the comeuppance we felt they deserved, they were inevitably the reason most people kept watching.

Certainly, given the appeal these characters seem to have for viewers, it's hardly surprising that Nthey crop up in so many television shows and movies.   After all, watching movies and television shows are a major part of American culture.   Not only does the average American over the age of fifteen spend three or more hours watching television, but over eighty percent of American homes subscribe to video-on-demand services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu.    While the kind of media content we enjoy changes from one generation to the next, characters that we love to hate continue to exert a strange fascination.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post. 

 

 

Why Do People Like to be Scared?

What makes movies that are sad or scary so popular?   

For that matter, why do people enjoy roller-coasters, bungee jumping, or any of the countless other activities that seem to serve no purpose except to make people feel terrified, however briefly?   Is there a positive benefit to exposing yourself to these kind of intense negative experiences?   According to recent studies, there may be.

In looking at the impact of voluntary, arousing, negative experiences (known as VANE for short) have, researchers have largely focused on the physiological changes that can occur.  But, along with  sweating, rapid heart rate, and hyperventilation, new evidence suggests that VANE exposure can also play an important role in helping people learn to handle stress.    Previous studies looking at different ways of taking people "out of themselves", such as meditation, sexual activity, and intense mental or physical exertion, have shown that they can all reduce brain activity in those regions of the brain linked to "fight or flight."  In a sense, they help the brain to "shut down", thus reducing the panic  or "overthinking"  that might otherwise cause people to freeze in crisis situations.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

Is There a Bridget Jones Effect?

“Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?   Oh God. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to them and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still have sex?”   Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones' Diary

In an era in which the choice to put off marriage or even forgo it altogether is becoming more popular,  more adults than ever are single and content to stay that way for a large part of their lives.  According to the latest World Marriage Data, for example, the proportion of people who are married has dropped sharply over the past four decades in many Western countries, including the United States and Canada.  This is especially true for adults aged 18 to 25 who can be considered "emerging adults."   

While marriage for this age group was far more common back in 1970, more young adults are choosing to put off marriage while they pursue other life goals.  These can include finishing school, devoting themselves to a career, and "playing the field" with numerous romantic relationships rather than committing themselves to one person exclusively.    Still, while the pressure to marry at an early age is not as great as it once was (at least in Western countries), surveys of emerging adults, both male and female, indicate that most of them express the hope of being in a committed relationship eventually.  

Ironically enough, single adults often find themselves having to justify their choice to be single, not just to friends or family, but even to total strangers they might happen to meet.   There is also a certain stigma attached to singles, especially as they grow older.   Surveys suggest that singles are often viewed as being lonelier and less mature than their married counterparts.  They can also be considered less warm and caring as well.   Despite research showing that well-adjusted singles are often healthier, more socially active, and more involved in the community than married couples, the stereotype of the "desperate, lonely, single" still persists.  

While being single confers many advantages, including providing greater control over financial and activities, less financial pressure, and more freedom to pursue recreational or vocational interests, the desire to be in a committed relationship remains strong.   Women under the age of 35 typically reported facing active discrimination, especially if they are sexually active, something that single men are often able to avoid (aside from speculation about their sexual orientation).   Still, for both men and women, the fear of being single is often very real.  When this fear is especially strong, it can lead to people lowering their relationship standards by "settling" for partners who might not be suitable for them.   When they do form relationships, they can often be more emotionally dependent and "clingy" and, as a result, may be extremely reluctant to have that relationship end.  

And the stigma surrounding single people seems deeply rooted in our society.   Along with cultural and family expectations, stereotypes about desperate, lonely singles are frequently found in movies and television shows.   According to the cultivation theory first developed by media researcher George Gebner, all forms of mass media, especially television, provide a "“common symbolic environment” that can shape the way people view the world.   For heavy TV viewers in particular, the way the world is presented in movies and television can often be interpreted as reflecting real life.  Granted, we have a wide variety of different viewing options these days, including network and cable television, media streaming on the Internet, etc.  which can affect viewing audiences in different ways depending on the kind of shows they prefer.  

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.  

 

The Man Who Raised The Dead (Part One)

When Robert Edwin Cornish graduated from the University of California at Berkeley at the age of 18, no one doubted that the young prodigy had an amazing future ahead of him.   And they were right (sort of).

The oldest child of Berkeley City Attorney Frank Cornish, Robert actually began school at the age of eleven having been home schooled by his mother up to that point.  Once in university, he quickly distinguished himself as a brilliant student and the youngest student ever elected to Phi Beta Kappa at Berkeley, not to mention an accomplished musician.  By the time he was twenty-two, he had earned his doctorate and went on to become a research associate in anatomy at Berkeley.   It was there that he engaged in a series of ambitious, not to mention far-out, experiments in human physiology.     By 1932, he was already making headlines over stories such as inventing special lenses that could be used to read newspapers underwater as well as josquest to make synthetic vitamins.  In that same year, he distinguished himself further  by developing the first practical antidote to thallium poisoning in response to a health scare involving poisoned barley.   Not only was he directly credited with saving the lives of three children who had been accidentally poisoned, but he seemed on the verge of revolutionizing nutrition with his vitamin research. 

But what Robert E. Cornish would become best known for was inventing a machine to reanimate the dead.  

While  hardly the first to make this claim, he had the advantage of living in an era in which the boundary between life and death was already being pushed back due to advances in emergency medicine.   Along with improved methods of artificial respiration and blood transfusion,  surgeons were routinely carrying out operations that might have been impossible just a few years earlier.   In an article which he wrote in 1934, Cornish described in detail the process he was planning to use to revive the recently deceased.  

As he explained in his article, the reanimation process had four essential steps:   first, remove or neutralize the agent causing death, second, conduct artificial respiration,  third, restart the heart, and fourth, nurse the patient back to health.   While his first experiments involved using electric shock to restart the heart, Cornish eventually decided that it was too dangerous to patients who might be left insane as a result.  As an alternative, he used a "teeter board" allowing gravity to produce artificial respiration.  Essentially a see-saw, the board allowed the body to be teeterded at regular intervals (about every six to eight seconds) with which  Cornish and his colleagues hoped to create enough blood flow to  get the heart started again.  

While the teetering was taking place, Cornish and his colleagues also planned to monitor the heart carefully using stethoscopes and, if necessary, injecting additional fluid into the body to build up arterial pressure to the necessary level.   The fluid would consist of human blood mixed with heparin to reduce clotting.   They would also inject epinephrine to constrict the smaller arteries and build up the required arterial pressure.  While all this was happening, intermittent pressure to the heart, along with brief blasts of oxygen to the lungs, would help compress the fine capillaries in the lungs and, hopefully, get the heart restarted.

Though Cornish suggested that this grandiose plan could be tried out on an executed prisoner, he was obliged to start small.   His first subject, a mongrel terrier named Lazarus IV (no word on what happened to Lazarus I through III), had been deliberately asphyxiated  and then subjected to the teeter-board process in April, 1934.   In describing this experiment, Cornish carefully pointed out that the dog had met all clinical tests of death before the reanimation process began.  While the dog was successfully revived, Cornish didn't consider the experiment a success since the dog's brain had been left permanently damaged by what had happened.   Though all physical functions were restored, the dog seemed sluggish in responding to commands and Cornish suggested that much more research would be needed before anything similar could be tried with a human.

"The world must not jump to the conclusion that we, in our humble experiments with the dog, have arrived at a solution for death,"  he told reporters.  "We do know. as a result of these experiments, that we have taken a dog, asphyxiated it, and by scientific experimentation have brought the dog back to the point where it eats normal dog meals, sleeps, breathes, and lives.   Whether it lives constantly in a world of today, or exists in a world of shadows, we have no way of knowing.  Further research or greater study by higher scientists may one day return that answer.  Until we know the answer to that riddle, we shall try no human experiments."

Despite his caution, Cornish's success with Lazarus IV and a second dog, Lazarus V, made the notion of  successfully reanimating the dead seem distinctly plausible.  Movies featuring scientists restoring the dead to life became increasingly popular during the late 1930s and 1940s, largely due to Robert Cornish's research.  One movie that came out in 1935, Life Returns, actually featured a charismatic scientist who was largely based on Robert Cornish (who also appeared as himself in the movie).  

Reanimating the dead also became a standard staple in horror movies including such classics as The Walking Dead (1934) and  The Man They Could Not Hang (1939).   In both movies, Boris Karloff played a character who is executed and revived using methodology not that dissimilar to Cornish's research (The Walking Dead even featured a teeter-board).   Not surprisingly, reviving the dead doesn't turn out so well onscreen (they were horror films, after all) with more than a hint that Cornish and others like him were dabbling in matters best left alone.

Despite the misgivings raised by his research, Robert Cornish was more than willing to take his experiments to the next level and try reviving a human being.  Since his work with dogs had allowed him to refine his method, he felt reasonably certain that he could succeed in restoring a recently executed criminal.   He even described how he would counteract the effects of hydrocyanic acid fumes (such as in a standard gas chamber) by using methylene blue, an antidote for cyanide poisoning.  This would be quickly followed by the reanimation process that he had used with dogs and, hopefully, lead to a successful revival.

As you might imagine, approaching officials at San Quentin and other prisons where executions were conducted went nowhere.   Until, that is, when a condemned prisoner named Thomas McMonigle contacted Robert Cornish and offered himself as a test subject.

Which was when things got interesting....

Continue to Part Two