Disability is in Everything (Including our Villains): UNSANE

Warning: HARK! There are spoilers here, traveler. Take the road less littered with thought.

TW: mentions psych wards, psychiatric abuse, mention of drugs, gaslighting, stalkers, and the word "mental illness" as a measurement tool for sanest purposes.

Unsane (2018) (dir. Steven Soderbergh) is a movie whose grainy, stiff intimacy mirrors the harsh fabrics of linen. The rough, polka-dotted torso of a cotton hospital gown, matching and itchingly shared sheets draped on the ward's beds; ironically, this is the feeling of a movie filmed entirely on an iPhone 7 plus. A historic feat that some praised, while others questioned if the movie's inception came straight from the promise of its birth ensuring a hidden commercial - either way, I liked the movie. I think there are some questionable choices (Warning: White person with dreads) but overall, the plot beneath some of the movie's more obvious drama, (i.e. the stalker following the main character, Sawyer) there is a perversive question peeping out: Do hospitals, psych wards, and state-run or privately owned wellness centers mimic carceral logics on purpose? I think what unsane, and psychiatric survivors have historically said is, well, yes!

Sawyer Valentini (played by Clair Foy) is a working person who seeks counseling after she experiences a PTSD flashback and mistakes her most recent date as her ex-stalker; incidentally, after running into a bunch of purposely vague and leading questions, Sawyer is deemed "a danger to herself and others" and is forcibly institutionalized. Some of the most horrible, more realistic parts of Unsane is that whenever Sawyer desperately pleads with her doctors and tries to prove that she doesn't belong at the center, It just re-affirms their beliefs that she experiences delusions. A similar occurrence likely happens to other institutionalized people: forced to be under the care of physicians who see their plea for humanity as symptoms. To de-empathize and categorize their active feelings of distress.

Later in the movie, Sawyer meets another patient, Nate Hoffman (played by Jay Pharoah) who gives the real reason as to why the center is reluctant to let her go: It's all part of a pharmaceutical scam. A cycle where counselors vaguely introduce the idea of suicidality within vague questioning, give over paperwork without properly introducing them as consent forms, say they are legally holding people for 24 hours, allowing them time to explore how long the patient's insurance will pay for their stay, which leads the patient to become agitated and thus finds more reasons to tell their insurance why they're "holding them", and so on. It's an extreme metaphor, of course. But I don't the system abuse explained in Unsane is not entirely far off from how sometimes carceral wards treat their patients: potential bodies to fill the beds. Cash opportunities from donors, grants, and state funding for privatized owners to pocket rather than implementing any real healing.

Then, the movie takes an extremely interesting and almost entirely different turn: the stalker works for the doctors. Tormenting Sawyer further, taunting her by switching out her medication for methylphenidate and eventually changing her status from held to release, kidnapping her. There are some moments in the movie where the audience is supposed to be both suspicious of Sawyer, who does have moments of pause, but also curious if we are actually seeing her stalker or a projection of him on another's face - my feeling is that it doesn't matter. The important takeaway is that no matter the status of someone's mental health, no one should be institutionalized. No one should be vulnerable to violent acts of "care."

Recently, I've been enlightened by some online psychiatric survivors surrounding and reclaiming the term "mad": An umbrella term reclaimed and connected to The Mad Movement (A mass movement that empowers people to make their own choices, find freedom in their mad identity, and challenge psychiatry's approach to demonizing mental health/illness). It seems that a lot more people have been rejecting bio-medical and consumerist approaches juxtapositioning two made-up binaries (i.e. The mentally ill vs the mentally well) and have been moving toward prideful stances of who they are. Placing blame more on the oppressive realities. Recounting society's solution of "self-care" and liberating themselves away from sanism's presence within a lot of psychology's mandated treatment. Disrupting fascism's idea of "sanity".

Learning about the Mad Movement had a lot to do with my own understanding of Unsane; although the existence of Sawyer's stalker seems like a plot distraction or rather a re-direction away from the movie coming off as too anti-psychiatric hospitals, I'd argue that Sawyer's stalker could be a larger metaphor for something extremely prolific: Similar to how cops can be bullying, massive agents of surveillance, I think psychiatric advocates can move around us the same way; stalkers, collecting our every word. Cataloging and prescribing systems of control when they feel we our experiences step outta line. When our thoughts lead us somewhere radical. Somewhere without them and their consultation. And uncareful words or honest feelings can feel a lot like accidentally leaving your front door unlocked. Letting the breeze in with an open window, not realizing their hand sits on the sill.