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- Title
The Folklore of Deinstitutionalization: Popular Film and the Death of the Asylum, 1973–1979.
- Authors
RONDINONE, TROY
- Abstract
The demise of America's state mental hospital system, or "deinstitutionalization," has received much attention from sociologists and historians of medicine. Less understood is the manner in which the public experienced and came to terms with it. Using elements of folklore and horror studies, I will examine how popular films accommodated audiences to institutional decline and confirmed popular antistatist pessimism. The Exorcist (1973), One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Halloween (1978), and When a Stranger Calls (1979) helped weave a tapestry of distrust. By endorsing popular conceptions of institutional failure and presenting mythical narratives of individualist triumph, these films helped pave a path towards the conservative Reagan era to come.
- Subjects
UNITED States; DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION; PSYCHIATRIC hospitals; POPULAR films; ASYLUMS (Institutions); EXORCIST, The (Film); HALLOWEEN (Film : 1978); WHEN a Stranger Calls (Film)
- Publication
Journal of American Studies, 2020, Vol 54, Issue 5, p900
- ISSN
0021-8758
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S0021875819000094