The evidence speaks for itself. While the Hollywood cinema and prizes from his academy anquilosaron in a worldview that seems to ignore the diversity, American television has created a necessary niche, crossing previously unexplored paths in terms of race, sexuality and gender.
in recent years, however, some series have an even more complex step, portraying infighting that often must wage in silence outside the judges of the other eye. Thus, people with bipolar disorder, chronic depression and schizophrenia are consolidated on the small screen and, with time and development that allows them the serial format, are gestating a new way to understand those who deviate from the “normal”.
it is not surprising that the big names that make up this diversification come mostly from the same platform that changed the way the world watches television. With Netflix as a developer and disseminator, programs like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Orange Is the New Black, BoJack Horseman and the most recent Lady Dynamite came to the screens and interest in the human psyche made it to television networks with other examples, such as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , CW, and Mr. Robot , USA Network (in Uruguay, via Space).
Women commanding
An undeniable common denominator of this new wave of programs is the role of women, a highlight that adds layers to characters that have historically been kept on the surface. In this sense, the great forerunner was Orange Is the New Black (OITNB), praised for its diverse cast and almost totally feminine. The series about a women’s prison in the United States that debuted on Netflix in 2013, progressively away the lens of his protagonist to focus increasingly on the personal stories of convicts, both through the narrative present as the Flashbacks .
This development was especially important for Suzanne Warren, “Crazy Eyes”, the character “crazy” series. No revealed diagnosis, Crazy Eyes is delineated by their difficulties in understanding limits, his violent outbursts, hallucinations and emotional attachment exacerbated. However, throughout the seasons, that picture has not limited or has locked into the potential danger to others, but has opened up a world of possibilities to understand a disturbed character, but with wit and feelings She is demanding genuine empathy. That outlook reconfirmed with Lolly Whitehill, inmate presented in the second season. With psychotic delusions, paranoid and hallucinations, Lolly has its own heartbreaking story, but the greatest achievement of the character could be how portrays living with voices that constantly want to push the edge
While OITNB gravitates between comedy and drama, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt prefer to repress through laughter, like her protagonist, Kimmy, a woman who was kidnapped in a bunker for 15 years and that, when released, he decides to live in New York. The comic burden is such that it is easy to forget that supports Kimmy, already in the first chapter, have been the victim of “weird sexual things” hand of her abductor. Altruistic and always concerned about others, nature Kimmy use denial to deal with their traumas that emerge involuntarily under the peculiar form of “emotional burps” (suffered by the serial murderer Robert Durst), fear of Velcro and some aggressiveness at meetings sex.
in this sense, therapy performed in the second season has been central to the plot, forcing Kimmy to face all the feelings that holds them hostage in their own psyche, but also to show that in the magical world of television, not all problems are solved in one episode to another.
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depression is two great performances in BoJack Horseman and Crazy Ex- Girlfriend that deviate from the ephemeral character facilismo crying in his chair for a couple of chapters and He is rescued from his sadness for a new opportunity. Also between comedy and drama, BoJack Horseman bet on a lively format that makes living humans with anthropomorphic animals, having as its protagonist a player horse that never managed to recover from past successes.
between criticism of the entertainment industry that conveys the series, his portrayal of the sadness of Bojack points to a reality of chiaroscuro, which continues to sabotage itself: progress is constantly hampered by its self-hatred , his alcoholism, his insecurities and even narcissism that fails but prove how detached it is from its surroundings, without being able to foresee the impact of their actions on others.
the second season has also been important where appropriate, to take him to wonder how much of their unhappiness is linked to their own lousy attitudes, and again, no magic formulas, the way out of that pit and towards self improvement is an uphill battle.
For Rebecca Bunch, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , released last year in CW, career success, pressures and disorders themselves were those who drowned her life. After meeting with a former boyfriend who lives in a “happy” people of California, his delusions and frustrated desires lead her to abandon everything and follow him to a place devoid of skyscrapers and tormenting goals New York. What does not change, however, is the “madness” that designates the title: Rebecca throws his medication but the second to get to California, her anxiety and depression are still there. If the tool Bojack is the animation, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the musical, with numbers like Sexy French Depression that allow Bunch, the lightness of the genre, explicitly mock romantic and glamorous representations of depression
Although these programs are marked by a comic tone that colors the tribulations of its characters, Mr. Robot uses the darkness to define itself and its protagonist, Elliot Alderson, engineer day cybersecurity and cyber hacker night watchman. In it, clinical depression with social anxiety, technology is not incidental, but functions as the only instrument to link to others. In addition to a photograph that shows the isolation and paranoia of the protagonist, the same revelations of the plot are defined by a psyche that cuts the reality with the filter of their disorders.
Although from a radically different place, another program also shapes its resources from that distance with “normal”. Released this May, Lady Dynamite focuses on the past and present of Maria Bamford a comedian with bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety, plus a generous profile similar to Kimmy Schmidt. At different times, the series shows the time of previous success to his nervous breakdown and subsequent treatment using self-referential Minnesota resources and breaks the fourth wall, but also dares to portray the present, the result of that prologue. In the present Bamford, disorders continue, controlled, but are still part of their essence. And in this constant negotiation it is the key, the crux of a person who is not only what you have.
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