Sad Girl Cinema (obviously) isn’t the final word in the ever-shifting space of screen representation and mental health! Here’s a small selection of incredible writing and publications on film and television to continue the conversation <3
Essays and Articles
Alaina Leary, How Media Prevents Us From Truly Empathizing With Disabled Characters, The Establishment
Anna Leszkiewicz, Ten years on, how Cassie from Skins’ eating disorder affected a generation of teenage girls, New Statesman
Anna Leszkiewicz, Is new Netflix drama To The Bone glorifying eating disorders?, New Statesman
Ariel Smith, Trespassed Lands, Transgressed Bodies: Horror, Rage, Rape, and Vengeance Within Indigenous Cinema, Bitch Flicks
Aaron Orbey, Mourning Through Horror Movies, The New Yorker
Angelica Jade Bastién, What TV Gets Wrong About Mental Illness, Vulture
Angelica Jade Bastién, Why don’t women of color get to be mentally ill on TV?, Fusion
B.N. Harrison, The Unified Theory of Ophelia: On Women, Writing, and Mental Illness, The Toast
Brodie Lancaster, Really Funny, Rookie Magazine
Eve Sturges, OCD and Me, Rookie Magazine
Hannah Black, You are Too Much, The New Inquiry
Hannah Ewens, Meeting the People Who Make Mental Health Storylines On TV Look Realistic, Vice
Janiera Eldridge, Why Gothika exposes the hidden thoughts of every black woman who’s ever experienced mental illness, Graveyard Shift Sisters
Kristina Wong, I Thought Being Miserable Was Just Part Of Being Chinese American, xoJane
Lakesha Lafayett, Dark Times Under the Radar: Black Women and Mental Illness, Adios Barbie
Maria Turner Carney, How Queer Women’s Mental Health is Depicted in Movies, After Ellen
Matt Zoller Seitz, What Sharp Objects Understands About Memory, Vulture
Maya Golden, I Am Rocket: A Reflection on PTSD from a Sexual Trauma Survivor, Black Girl Nerds
Mel Perez, Mental Health and the Strong Black Woman Trope, Black Girl Nerds
Mey Rude, Who’s Afraid Of The Big, Bad Trans Woman? On Horror and Transfemininity, Autostraddle
Nyasha Junior, Don’t We Hurt Like You? Examining the Lack of Portrayals of African American Women and Mental Health, Bitch Media
Parul Sehgal, The Forced Heroism of the ‘Survivor’, New York Times
Riese, 105 Trans Women On American TV: A History and Analysis, Autostraddle
Rose Lyddon, The Acceptable Performance of Insanity, Girl Fury
Ruby Tandoh, An illustrated taxonomy of queerness and mental illness in film, Little White Lies
Shannon M. Houston, Is it Still “Diversity” or “Inclusion” if No One’s Broke on TV?, Paste Magazine
Soraya Roberts, Winona, Forever, Hazlitt
Tahiera Overmeyer, ‘Being black, going crazy?’ shows we need more conversations about mental health, Gal Dem
Vanessa Willoughby, Black Girls Don’t Read Sylvia Plath, The Hair Pin
Vilissa Thompson, Disability, Slavery, & The Call to #PickUpUnderground, Ramp Your Voice
Willow Maclay, Someday You Will Ache Like I Ache, SVLLY(WOOD) MAGAZINE
Books
Alana Massey, All the Lives I want (Grand Central Publishing: 2017)
bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Routledge: 2014)
Glen O. Gabbard, Krin Gabbard, Psychiatry and the Cinema (American Psychiatric Press Inc: 1999)
Kier-La Janisse, House of Psychotic Women (FAB Press: 2012)
Nancy Wang Yuen, Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (Rutgers: 2016)
Sady Doyle, Trainwreck (Melville House: 2016)
Websites
http://www.blackwomendirectors.co/
http://chew-mag.com/
https://www.filminquiry.com/
https://geeksofcolor.co/
http://www.graveyardshiftsisters.com/
http://rampyourvoice.com/
https://wearyourvoicemag.com
Journals and Zines
Cleo Journal
Filmme Fatales
Sonorus Zine: Feminist Perspectives on Harry Potter
SVLLY(wood) Magazine