Individuals suffering from depression often experience a condition of isolation, which relegates them in a separate and neglected world of their own. In light of this issue, could audiovisual media contribute to drawing attention to the world of depression, and make it more familiar to the general population? The first part of this paper provides an extensive and in-depth description of depression. More specifically, by combining the psychiatric account of Thomas Fuchs with Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt, it frames it in terms of a ‘psychopathology of time’, and introduces the notion of a self-enclosed ‘temporal world’ that is usually home (or rather cage) to depressed people. In turn, the second part of this paper discusses some media strategies that may actually disclose the temporal world of depression. After taking into account a cinematographic option and showing how it succeeds in making this world visible, it further examines a VR-based alternative in order to assess whether it can make the same world not simply visible, but fully accessible: that is, affording an up-close, first-person grasp of depression to ordinary, non-affected spectators.
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Disclosing the (Temporal) World of Depression, by Means of Audiovisual Media: An Exploration between Cinema and Virtual Reality
Text.Serial.Journal
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Beyond Cinema
2020-10-01
2021-10-05
2020-10-01
2024-03-10
Cinéma & Cie
Federica Cavaletti
2020/10/01
Università degli Studi di Milano
2036-461X
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Disclosing the (Temporal) World of Depression, by Means of Audiovisual Media: An Exploration between Cinema and Virtual Reality
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16543/20224
20
Disclosing the (Temporal) World of Depression,
by Means of Audiovisual Media: An Exploration between
Cinema and Virtual Reality
Federica Cavaletti, Università degli Studi di Milano




Abstract

    Individuals suffering from depression often experience a condition of isolation,
    which relegates them in a separate and neglected world of their own. In light of
    this issue, could audiovisual media contribute to drawing attention to the world
    of depression, and make it more familiar to the general population?
    The first part of this paper provides an extensive and in-depth description of
    depression. More specifically, by combining the psychiatric account of Thomas
    Fuchs with Jakob von Uexküll’s notion of Umwelt, it frames it in terms of a
    ‘psychopathology of time’, and introduces the notion of a self-enclosed
    ‘temporal world’ that is usually home (or rather cage) to depressed people. In
    turn, the second part of this paper discusses some media strategies that may
    actually disclose the temporal world of depression. After taking into account
    a cinematographic option and showing how it succeeds in making this world
    visible, it further examines a VR-based alternative in order to assess whether it
    can make the same world not simply visible, but fully accessible: that is, affording
    an up-close, first-person grasp of depression to ordinary, non-affected spectators.


Introduction

   Mental health issues have been spreading at an increasing rate during
the last decades: among them, one of the most prominent is depression.1 In
several contexts, depression is still associated with a strong social stigma, which
frequently results in depressed people refusing to seek professional help. As
stigma is based on prejudice and misrepresentations about a given condition,
better information concerning the nature of depression may reduce stigma. In
turn, this may encourage help-seeking attitude in affected people.2

1
  World Health Organization, Depression and Other Common Mental Disorders: Global Health
Estimates (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2017). According to this WHO report, the total
number of people living with depression worldwide amounts to 322 million, and this number has
increased by 18,4% from 2005 to 2015.
2
  On the notion of stigma and its consequences, see for instance Klara Latalova and others,
‘Perspectives on Perceived Stigma and Self-stigma in Adult Male Patients with Depression’,
Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 10 (2014), 1399–405. Studies have demonstrated that

                                                      Cinéma & Cie, vol. XX, no. 35, Fall 2020
                                      Federica Cavaletti


   Given this scenario, one could ask whether audiovisual media, based on their
representational tools, can contribute to unveiling the world of depression and
promoting awareness about this disorder among those who do not have any
direct experience of it. This paper proposes a starting exploration of such broad
and complex issue, based on two selected case studies belonging to two specific
domains of the audiovisual mediascape.
   The first of these two domains is cinema. Indeed, cinema has often
been employed to make visible what normally is not: dreams, phantasies,
hallucinations, and —precisely —altered mental states.3 Therefore, it may be
sensible to explore how it could make visible the depressive condition more
specifically, and whether this could make the disorder more relatable. At
the same time, the ongoing developments in the contemporary mediascape
invite to push the boundaries of cinema itself, and to take into account new
immersive media, like virtual reality (VR). By using the latter, the current
debate suggests, it may be possible to make the world of depression not
simply visible, but more radically and fully accessible.
   The first part of this paper provides one of the possible conceptualisations
of depression. The second part discusses whether, how, and to what degree
different media options across cinema and VR may convey the experiential traits
of the depressive condition to non-affected spectators.


The Temporal World of Depression: a Multi-disciplinary Approach

   When describing depression, it may be advisable to start from the fields
of clinical psychology and psychiatry. Depression, however, is not the object
of these disciplines only. Therefore, a multi-disciplinary approach may reveal
advantageous to provide a scientifically solid yet multifaceted description of the
pathology.




‘approximately half of the general public is convinced that people with depression are weak,
responsible for their own condition and unpredictable; and nearly a quarter considers them to
be dangerous’; and that information campaign can contribute to change public perception of
depression (Elisabeth Kohls and others, ‘Public Attitudes toward Depression and Help-Seeking:
Impact of the OSPI-Europe Depression Awareness Campaign in Four European Regions’, Journal
of Affective Disorders, 217 (2017), 252–59.
3
  For an exhaustive and quite updated catalogue of movies about mental issues, organized by
disorder types and including a chapter on ‘Bipolar and Depressive Disorders’, see Danny Wedding
and Ryan Niemiec, Movies and Mental Illness. Using Films to Understand Psychopathology, 4th
edn (Boston: Hogrefe Publishing, 2014). For a more recent and more critical view on Hollywood
depictions on mental issues, see Erin Heath, Mental Disorders in Popular Film: How Hollywood
Uses, Shames, and Obscures Mental Diversity (London: Lexington Books, 2019).

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                        Disclosing the (Temporal) World of Depression


The DSM-5 Description of (Melancholic) Depression, and Beyond

   For practitioners in clinical psychology and psychiatry, one of the main
references is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.4
   According to this source, major depression can be diagnosed when five or more
of the following symptoms are registered during at least two weeks: 1. Frequent
and persistent depressed mood, comprising deep sadness and ‘hopelessness’; 2.
Loss of interest or pleasure in previously enjoyed activities; 3. Significant weight
loss or gain; 4. Recurring insomnia, or hypersomnia; 5. Frequent and persistent
psychomotor agitation, or retardation; 6. Frequent and persistent fatigue, or
loss of energy; 7. Recurring and excessive feelings of worthlessness and/or guilt;
8. Difficulty to focus and/or to take decisions; and 9. Recurring thoughts of
death and/or suicidal ideation. At least one of the observed symptoms must be
depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure.5
   As it constitutes the specific sub-type of the pathology described in the next
paragraphs, it is worth complementing the above description with the characterising
features (i.e. ‘specifiers’) of melancholic depression. These include at least one among:
1a. Loss of pleasure in all or almost all performed activities; and 2a. Diminished
or absent reactivity to normally pleasurable stimuli. Furthermore, they comprise
three or more of the following symptoms: 1b. A distinct quality of depressed mood,
expressed by ‘profound despondency, despair, and/or moroseness or by so-called
empty mood’; 2b. Peak of depressive mood in the morning; 3b. Recurring morning
awakening before usual time; 4b. Marked psychomotor agitation or retardation;
5b. Significant weight loss; and 6b. Excessive feeling of guilt.6
   Undoubtedly, the description of (melancholic) depression derived by the
DSM-5 is operationally valuable. On the other hand, precisely in light of its
essentially operational scope, it may result quite scant and under-detailed.
This observation is consistent with the criticisms raised by some contemporary
psychiatrists. For instance, Kenneth S. Kendler has observed that ‘focusing
solely on the symptoms and signs in DSM risks producing an impoverished
view of psychopathology’.7 To mitigate this risk, he suggests to draw from


4
  American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th
edn (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013). For a critical history of the Manual,
which is acknowledged here to be ‘considered the reference for charachterisation and diagnosis
of mental disorders’, see Shadia Kawa and James Giordano, ‘A Brief Historicity of the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Issues and Implications for the Future of Psychiatric
Canon and Practice’, Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, 7.2 (2012). For a discussion
of both the relevance and the limitations of the Manual, see Lee Anna Clark and others, ‘Three
Approaches to Understanding and Classifying Mental Disorder: ICD-11, DSM-5, and the National
Institute of Mental Health’s Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)’, Psychological Science in the Public
Interest, 18.2 (2017), 72–145.
5
  Ivi, pp. 160–61.
6
  Ivi, p. 185.
7
  Kenneth S. Kendler, ‘The Phenomenology of Major Depression and the Representativeness and
Nature of DSM Criteria’, American Journal of Psychiatry, 173.8 (2016), 771–80 (p. 771).

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                                       Federica Cavaletti


phenomenology, and phenomenological psychiatry more precisely. Indeed, these
disciplines have historically devoted great attention to mental disorders as they
are experienced by patients, thus building richer accounts than those summarised
in the DSM-5. Kendler’s opinion resonates with that expressed by Aaron L.
Mishara and Michael A. Schwartz, who have followed closely the development
of the latest version of the Manual. Even more radically than Kendler, these
authors stress the inescapability of a collaboration between a DSM-oriented and
a more phenomenologically grounded view of psychiatry.8
   Complementing the DMS-5 descriptions with phenomenological materials
might help better specify the symptoms listed in the Manual for given pathologies.
However, and most crucially, it might as well lead to unveil new experiential
traits characterizing them.
   Depression in particular has indeed been the object of in-depth phenomenological
studies. Interestingly, some of these studies have highlighted the importance of one
particular facet of the experience of depression, i.e. its temporal facet.


Depression as a Psychopathology of Time: around Thomas Fuchs’s ‘Desynchronisation’

   Depression has often been addressed in phenomenological psychiatry by
bringing to the fore its temporal dimension.
   Most notably, Eugène Minkowski maintained that essential alterations in the
relation with time lie at the core of the depressive condition.9 Building on previous
work by Erwin Straus,10 Minkowski proposed depression to be grounded
in a suppression of the human original propulsion towards the future. Such
suppression is connected to a discrepancy between ‘world time’ (i.e. the shared
temporality of a group of individuals and their environment) and ‘ego time’ (i.e.
the temporality experienced by a given individual, in this case the depressed
one). More precisely, since the others keep moving towards the future while the
depressed individual loses this propulsion, her/his own ‘ego time’ detaches from
the shared ‘world time’. As the latter seemingly proceeds at unsustainable speed,
the depressed individual conversely experiences a progressive slowing down of
her/his own ‘ego time’, or even its total arrest.


8
   Aaron L. Mishara and Michael A. Schwartz, ‘What Does Phenomenology Contribute to the
Debate about DSM-5?’, in Making the DSM-5, ed. by Joel Paris and James Phillips (New York:
Springer, 2013), pp. 125–42 (p. 126).
9
   Eugène Minkowski, Lived Time. Phenomenological and Psychopathological Studies, trans. by
Nancy Metzel (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). The book was originally published
in French in 1933.
10
   Erwin Straus, ‘Das Zeiterlebnis in der endogenen Depression und in der psychopathischen
Verstimmung’, Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, 68 (1928), 640–56. Both Minkowski
and Straus were at the same time theorists and practitioners in phenomenological psychiatry. They
belong to the ‘first wave’ of studies in the discipline, preceding the contemporary wave of studies
of which —for instance —Fuchs is representative.

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   These ideas have been retrieved by the contemporary psychiatrist Thomas
Fuchs. Fuchs picks up the basic notion of a temporal slowing down. At the same
time, he reframes it within a more markedly relational approach. The result is a
conceptualisation of depression —and melancholic depression more precisely
—as ‘intersubjective desynchronisation’.11
   Human life, Fuchs claims, is regulated by an essential and normally unnoticed
synchronicity. Indeed, human beings tend to acknowledge the rhythms proposed
by the world they live in, and to conform to them spontaneously. This concerns
both environmental aspects regulating human physiology (e.g. the alternation
of day and night, and the ‘synchronic’ drive to match the former with activity
and the latter with sleep) and social aspects (e.g. the institutionalised ‘proper
times’ to find a job, have children and so on, and the ‘synchronic’ inclination to
organise life accordingly). Against this background, desynchronisation is defined
as ‘an uncoupling in the temporal relation of organism and environment, or of
individuals and society’.12
   Desynchronisation is not necessarily pathologic. On the contrary, it often
characterises ordinary life as well. Periodically, indeed, subjects experience minor
delays or misalignments, which normally can be dealt with in different ways.
However, in melancholic depression, desynchronisation cannot be managed
effectively. Hence, it becomes unbearable and —most crucially —irreversible.
   Such drastic result is the product of a detrimental loop between social and
environmental (thus physiological) uncoupling. Most often, a social delay occurs
first. The subject prone to depression would mostly be inclined to make up for it,
but she/he fails to do so. Importantly, among the key factors contributing to such
failure is an abnormal sense of guilt. Indeed, the subject prone to depression
typically over-emphasises both the scale and the irreversibility of her/his assumed
mistakes and faults. This contributes to anchor her/him in the past, at the same
time undermining her/his present and future-oriented actions.13
   As a consequence, a physiological delay adds up. Indeed, in the urge to
regain synchronisation, the subject pushes her/his daily routine, which may
affect her/his sleeping habits or other relevant physiological patterns. With re-
synchronisation nonetheless not being achieved, discouragement and exhaustion
increase. Ultimately, this results in ‘a reaction of the entire organism, namely

11
   Thomas Fuchs, ‘Melancholia as a Desynchronization: Towards a Psychopathology of Interpersonal
Time’, Psychopathology, 34 (2001), 179–86; Thomas Fuchs, ‘Temporality and Psychopathology’,
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 12.1 (2013), 75–104.
12
   Fuchs, ‘Melancholia as a Desynchronization’, p. 3.
13
   The urgency experienced by the subject prone to depression to stay ‘in synch’ with others is
equally described in Fuchs’s 2001 and 2013 papers already referred to here. As for the mentioned
feeling of guilt and its consequences, they are devoted special attention in two additional papers
in particular, which are not discussed at length here as their focus is more on the (inter)corporeal
than on the temporal dimension of depression: Thomas Fuchs, ‘The Phenomenology of Shame,
Guilt and the Body in Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Depression’, Journal of Phenomenological
Psychology, 33.2 (2002), 223–43; and Thomas Fuchs, ‘Depression, Intercorporeality, and
Interaffectivity’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 20.7–8 (2013), 219–38.

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                                          Federica Cavaletti


a psycho-physiological slowing down or stasis’ that is described in Husserlian
terms as a ‘fundamental loss of conation’ (i.e. intentional drive).14 At this point,
the loop is activated: the inability to act aggravates the social uncoupling, which
aggravates in turn the bodily slowing down.
   In such essential stasis, the depressed subject becomes unable of even
conceiving a future in which she/he will experience the same temporality as
others again: hopelessness arises, stasis aggravates. With the intersubjective delay
increasing exponentially, the impression of living within a slower temporality of
one’s own arises. Eventually, ‘the depressed drops out of shared time, he lives in
an “anachronistic”, slow-moving time of his own’.15 Desynchronisation translates
into exclusion.
   The concept of exclusion immediately points at a subsequent one: namely, that
of isolation. It is certainly true that depressed subjects isolate themselves in the
first place, due to their perceived inability to take part in the events surrounding
them. On the other hand, their isolation may also be fostered by non-affected
people, who may consider the depressed subjects’ experience too distant to be
grasped. Hence, providing appropriate tools to break through the (temporal)
world of depression may constitute an important step to reduce the gap between
subjects suffering from this pathology and non-affected people around them.


Depressive Time as a Temporal World: Re-working von Uexküll’s ‘Umwelt’

   The notion of a different world generated by peculiar experiential conditions
is reminiscent of some concepts put forward by the Estonian biologist Jakob von
Uexküll, and particularly of his concept of Umwelt.
   The concept of Umwelt is introduced most clearly in von Uexküll’s booklet
A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans.16 Imagine, the author suggests,
to take a walk in a meadow populated by animals and insects, and to draw a
bubble around each of them. In von Uexküll’s words: ‘The bubble represents
each animal’s environment and contains all the features accessible to the subject.
As soon as we enter into one such bubble, the previous surroundings of the
subject are completely reconfigured. […] A new world arises in each bubble’.17

14
   Fuchs, ‘Temporality and Psychopathology’, p. 96. Fuchs’s entire framework is rooted in Husserl’s
thought and Husserlian phenomenology more broadly. In relation to ‘conation’ more precisely,
Fuchs explains in a footnote: ‘This “energetic” or affective side of intentionality is hardly present
yet in Husserl’s earlier writings, but it comes increasingly to the fore in his later works, especially as
regards the role of affection for attention (cf. Depraz 1994, 1998). The pre-reflective experiential
directedness means a (self-)affection which Husserl also refers to as “awakening of an intention”
and “drive-intentionality” (Husserl 2001, p. 198)’ (ivi, p. 78).
15
   Ivi, p. 97.
16
   Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans. With a Theory of Meaning,
trans. by Joseph D. O’Neil (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). The
booklet was originally published in German in 1934.
17
   Ivi, p. 43.

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                       Disclosing the (Temporal) World of Depression


   Each organism, the author maintains, lives in a world of its own, which is
created by the organism itself based on its perceptual and motor skills. It is well
known that distinct species differ — for instance — in their visual abilities. Dogs
can see fewer colours than humans, yet humans cannot see in the dark as cats
do. In von Uexküll’s view, these differences concretely project onto the world as
a whole, fragmenting it into as many perceived worlds as the types of organisms
inhabiting it: in this case, a dog-world, a human-world, and a cat-world. Unless
they develop further perceptual and motor skills allowing them to expand their
experiential horizon, organisms normally cannot step out of their own worlds,
which is what makes them bubble-like.
   Importantly, in addition to visual and other sensory features, the temporal
features of a given environment as well can be modulated based on the organisms’
specificity. Von Uexküll recurs in this regard to the example of the tick, which
can wait for food for as long as eighteen years. Such extended waiting period
would be unsustainable for a human being. Hence, it must be admitted that the
tick and the human being not only generally live in distinct Umwelten, but also
— and more specifically — they live in distinct temporal Umwelten.
   What is most relevant here is that different temporal Umwelten may not
only characterise different species, but also different categories of organisms
within the same species. Von Uexküll himself allows for this possibility, when he
refers as an example to the spatial Umwelt of an astronomer, which is built in a
radically different way compared to that of other human beings less inclined to
the observation of the sky.
   What could it be, in a similar vein, an example of a temporal Umwelt that is
specific of a circumscribed category of humans?
   An interesting hint in this regard comes when combining von Uexküll’s
with Fuchs’s account. Indeed, Fuchs’s depressive temporality and the notion
of a category-specific temporal Umwelt share some essential qualities. First, a
separateness and peculiarity compared to other subjective temporalities. Second,
the fact that such separateness and peculiarity originate from the (depressed)
subjects’ possibilities of perception and action in the world, their very disposition
within and towards the world. What emerges, then, is an original interpretation
of depressive time as a peculiar and pathologically inflected type of temporal
Umwelt, specific of the human category of depressed people.
   As it was anticipated, von Uexküll tends to describe the Umwelt as something
self-enclosed, since it is strictly dependent on a given organism’s perceptual
and motor possibilities. It is true that each organism is naturally assigned only a
selection of such possibilities. It is also true, however, that these can be extended
artificially, by means of specific technologies. Crucially, as it was foreseen shortly
after this medium’s birth, these technologies include cinema.18 Thus, it can be


18
  Consider for instance Walter Benjamin, ‘Little History of Photography’, in Walter Benjamin:
Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 2, 1931–1934, ed. by Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings and
Gary Smith, 4 vols, (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004/2006), ii.

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hypothesised, cinema could be employed in order to open given Umwelten to
those who are normally not included in them.
   This possibility has been envisioned clearly, in recent years, by Inga Pollmann.19
Pollmann works on a specific case study: namely, Charles Urban’s film series
The unseen worlds (1903). Urban employed magnification to show ordinary
objects at an extremely close distance. By doing so, he offered spectators an
unprecedented visual experience, thus breaking their usual perceptual bubble.20
Hence, he established ‘a technical analogue of the soap bubble that Uexküll asked
his readers to create imaginatively’.21
   The case study proposed by Pollmann is functional in relation to the
visual properties of a given Umwelt. The question arises, now, as to whether
something similar to what achieved by Urban with regard to these properties
could be attempted with regard to temporal properties as well, and, in relation
to the specific scope of this paper, to the temporal properties of the depressive
condition. In other words, the question arises as to whether cinema could disclose
the usually isolated temporal Umwelt of depression, making it available to the
general population.
   An original perspective on how the concept of Umwelt may intertwine with
the domain of temporal properties can be found in a 2010 book by film scholar
Pasi Väliaho. Väliaho shares the view presented here that cinema can give rise
to specific Umwelten in von Uexküll’s sense. Importantly, he also believes that,
among the factors characterizing such Umwelten, a key role is played by their
temporal texture. The latter indeed, according to Väliaho, is what allows cinema
to convey its ‘vitality affects’, a notion that he borrows from psychiatrist and
psychoanalyst Daniel Stern and that indicates the ‘the force, intensity, quality,
form, or rhythm of experience’.22 In Väliaho’s view, the moving image and the
given Umwelt it creates basically ‘consists of breathing rhythms, intensities of
affective states, and form and texture dynamics’, which — crucially — spectators
not only witness but embody.23
   Within the frame of this paper, then, the question expressed above may as
well be formulated in terms of whether the ‘vitality affects’ corresponding to a
depressive temporal Umwelt may be picked up and embodied by an audience
that normally lives a different experience of time.


19
   Inga Pollmann, ‘Invisible Worlds, Visible: Uexküll’s Umwelt, Film, and Film Theory’, Critical
Inquiry, 39.4 (2013), 777–816.
20
    An experiment, it should be noted, already somehow attempted by von Uexküll himself by
employing photography and the ‘grid method’ (see A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and
Humans, pp. 62–5).
21
   ‘Pollmann, ‘Invisible Worlds, Visible’, p. 79. Clearly, other and possibly more suitable examples
than Urban’s work may exist. However, I chose to focus on Urban as he is explicitly mentioned
in relation to von Uexküll’s theory in Pollmann’s essay, which I rely on in this part of the paper.
22
   Pasi Väliaho, Mapping the Moving Image: Gesture, Thought and Cinema circa 1900 (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2010), p. 92.
23
   Ivi, p. 93.

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Getting ‘in Synch’ with Depression: a Media-oriented Approach

   Given the (audio)visual nature of the medium, disclosing the temporal world
of depression by means of cinema may first be interpreted in terms of making
this world visible. This may constitute a valuable way of bringing the general
population closer to it; or — with a little pun — to get them ‘in synch’ with it.
   However, if what is at stake is an actual advancement in the general population’s
understanding of the depressive condition, making it visible may not be sufficient.
In contrast, it may be necessary to make it somehow experientially accessible.
Hence, the focus on cinema may have to be extended to different media.


A Cinematographic Option: Son of the Lovely Capitalism

   Coherent with Pollmann and Väliaho’s hints, the first option analysed here
for disclosing the temporal world of depression is a cinematographic one. More
specifically, it is the 2015 short movie Son of the Lovely Capitalism by Suranga D.
Katugampala.
   Son of the Lovely Capitalism depicts the psychological consequences of the
‘inexorable progress of capitalism’ on ‘[a] boy, metaphor of today’s youth’.24
As it will emerge, the movie explicitly aims at representing some behavioural
traits that are typical of the depressive condition. Moreover, though possibly
less deliberately, it expresses very appropriately the temporal features of
(melancholic) depression.
   Son of the Lovely Capitalism can be divided into three main sections.
   The first section consists of six static shots, comprising no camera movements.
In particular, after an extreme close-up presenting a face devoid of any
expression, five shots follow each other in which the main character — a young
male adult — occupies passively different urban scenarios. In each shot, the more
or less pronounced dynamism of the scenario is contrasted by the character’s
immobility: slumped over a subway stairway, sitting on the edge of a sidewalk,
lying on a bench, he appears completely detached from the events surrounding
him, and he is either ignored or looked at with suspicion by passers-by. Each of
these first six shots largely exceeds the duration of one minute (fig. 1).
   An extra-diegetic ominous sound rising gradually and the intensification of the
pace of the editing (i.e. the cutting rate) mark the beginning of the movie’s second
section. This section is stylistically opposed to the former: within one single minute,
five shots are presented repeatedly and at lightning speed. The fast rotation of the
shots is accompanied by a progressive increase of the volume of the extra-diegetic
sound, which reminds the sound of metallic components clashing. This second
section is closed by a powerful image: as if leaning out from a huge piece of graffiti,


24
     <http://katugampala.com/son_of_the_lovely_capitalism/> [accessed 18 August 2020].

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                                        Federica Cavaletti


a monstrous animal — perhaps a zebra — and its empty-eyed knight tower over
the main character, who is lying below the animal’s hoof in a gesture of shocked
surrender. The camera lingers on this image for about one entire minute (fig. 2).
   In the movie’s third and last section, the duration of the shots increases again.
Echoing and relaunching the first section, three additional urban scenarios are
presented, in which the main character keeps manifesting his immobility and
isolation. The only element of differentiation is provided by a sub-section, which
shows the back of the protagonist, who is sitting on the ground, in front of a
wall. A series of images are projected onto his back; some of them reach the
wall he is looking at. The images depict working men from different regions and
epochs. Once this sub-section ends, one last, extremely long shot presents the
main character standing in a field, in the dark, as he stares dully at the sky.
   As anticipated, the psychological condition addressed by Son of the Lovely
Capitalism and expressed by its main character matches quite precisely the
depressive condition, as well as Fuchs’s phenomenology of melancholic depression.
It does so — more specifically — with regard to three main traits of the pathology.
   First, the immobility of the main character relates to the idleness and apathy
that characterise melancholic depression. These states not only mark the
character’s body, but they extend to his face as well, which may be seen to show
the typical depressive feeling of hopelessness.25
   Conversely, the dynamism around the main character, and thus the discrepancy
between such dynamism and the character’s static attitude, may be interpreted to
point at the desynchronisation that, according to Fuchs, constitutes the core of
melancholic depression.
   That what is at stake is not a generic form of marginalisation but rather the
temporal construct of desynchronisation can be inferred by focussing on the
temporal texture of the representation, hence by working not at the diegetic but
at the discourse level.26 At the discourse level, Son of the Lovely Capitalism’s most
remarkable features are the pace of the editing, which is extremely slow, and
the duration of the single shots, which becomes consequently very long. These
features, which are eloquently among the constitutive traits of so-called ‘Slow
Cinema’,27 mirror quite clearly the temporal slowing down (or even stasis) that
Fuchs associates with melancholic depression.


25
   The intention to represent these behavioural and attitude traits is made explicit by the filmmaker
himself. Indeed, in the official ‘Concept’ he associates to the short movie (available on the same
webpage indicated in the previous note), he overtly uses the words ‘apathy’, ‘waiting without
purpose’, ‘life without goals’ in order to describe the condition exemplified by the movie’s main
character. As already suggested, these words match precisely some of the key symptoms of depression
according to both Fuchs’s account and the DSM-5: i.e. apathy, idleness, and hopelessness.
26
   Louis Giannetti, Understanding movies (Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2014). For
a broader yet classic argument, see Seymour Chatman, ‘Towards a Theory of Narrative’, New
Literary History, 6.2 (1975), 295–318.
27
   See for instance Lee Carruthers, Doing Time: Temporality, Hermeneutics, and Contemporary
Cinema (New York: State University of New York Press, 2016).

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   In this regard, it could be argued that — by contrast — the central section
of the movie is characterised by a marked speeding-up of the editing. It should
not be overlooked, however, that the acceleration of the images leads to a quasi-
impossibility for spectators to grasp their content. Together with the ominous
soundtrack accompanying it, this invites to conceive the section as a depiction
of the environment’s temporality as it is perceived by the main character:
excessively fast, disorienting, exhausting if not impossible to follow. The (static)
frame concluding this section, in which the main character appears dominated
by the hoof of a gigantic monster, seems to support this interpretation. In fact, it
may be read as epitomising the eventual defeat of a character that is smashed by
a temporality he cannot bear, and thus that is pushed back — in the subsequent
section — to the isolation of his own and separate temporal condition.


Stepping inside the Movie, or Not

   Based on the argument above, it seems safe to conclude that Son of the Lovely
Capitalism succeeds in making the depressive world, and its temporal traits
more specifically, visible. Making a world visible, however, is not the same as
making it accessible. Roughly, a merely visible and a more radically accessible
representation may be said to correspond to two modalities of engagement:
an observational one, based on a primarily third-person and outdistanced
positioning; and a more decisively close-up one, based on the adoption of a first-
person and internal standpoint within the representation. When adopting the
first modality, spectators would primarily witness a given experiential condition
as lived by someone else; on the other hand, when adopting the second one, they
would more radically feel as if they were living the same experiential condition
themselves. Hence, making the world of depression accessible would mean
enabling the spectators to quite literally ‘step inside’ the movie and to gain an
experiential grasp of the pathology.
   Whether this would be desirable or even necessary connects to a broad debate,
which has witnessed an impressive revival in recent years within the field of
virtual reality (VR) — and in relation to VR-based ‘immersive journalism’ more
specifically.28 The debate revolves around how to promote increased awareness
and proactive behaviour with regard to disadvantaged categories of people,
which are the typical objects of this type of journalism.
   Most scholars involved in this debate believe that the audience must be brought
as close as possible to the disadvantaged people in the representation; and they
claim that VR is the most suitable medium to do so, due to its immersive and


28
  On virtual reality as a new kind of image and its aspects of experiential novelty, see Andrea
Pinotti, ‘Towards An-Iconology: the Image as Environment’, Screen, 61.4, 2020, pp. 594–603. On
immersive VR-based journalism more specifically, see Ana Luisa Sánchez Laws, ‘Can Immersive
Journalism Enhance Empathy?’, Digital Journalism, 8.2 (2020), 213–28.

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                                       Federica Cavaletti


illusionistic potential and to its possibility to superimpose a diegetic character’s
point of view to that of the members of the audience.29 Indeed, when wearing
a VR headset, the spectator finds herself/himself de facto projected within the
represented world, and possibly within a character’s body. Hence, what VR can
produce is basically a coincidence between the represented subjects’ and the
audience’s respective experiences.
   Before pushing the argument forward, a couple of clarifications are due.
Indeed, both the concept of an observational mode of engagement and the idea
just proposed of a coincidence of experiences, which would be exclusive of VR,
are seemingly vulnerable to criticism.
   To start with, the term ‘observational’ appears to evoke an interpretive view
that has been severely criticised in the field of film studies: namely, the view that
cinema is a purely visual experience.30 However, the emphasis here is not much
on the visual component of the act of ‘observing’, as on the connected idea of
standing in front of something that remains at some distance. This is precisely
what — from both a technical and a phenomenological standpoint — does
happen in cinema, and does not happen in VR. Indeed, though avoiding reducing
the experience of a given medium to its technical properties, one may not want
to completely neglect them either. Even if choosing to adopt a phenomenological
approach, or precisely because of this choice, one should always bear in mind
the ‘conditions of possibility’ of a specific media experience.31 With regard to
the precise case at stake here, it is hard to deny that the technical difference
between a flat screen presenting images some metres away from the viewer
and a VR headset literally placing the user within the images does not have any
consequence at the level of the respective experiences.32
   The technical argument just proposed also helps to defend the view that in VR
only it is possible to observe the precise coincidence between the represented
subjects’ and the audience’s experience described above. Indeed, it is true
that certain cinematographic solutions, most blatantly the point-of-view shot,
seemingly achieve a similar result. However, even when a point-of-view shot
is used, in cinema a physical distance between the screen and the audience


29
    Chris Milk, ‘How Virtual Reality Can Create the Ultimate Empathy Machine’ (2015), talk
presented at TED2015 conference, <https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_
can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine> [accessed 18 August 2020]; Mel Slater and Maria
V. Sanchez-Vives, ‘Enhancing our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality’, Frontiers in Robotics and
AI, 3 (2016), 74.
30
   See for instance Vivian Sobchack, ‘What my Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in
the Flesh’, in Carnal Thoughts. Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 2004), pp. 53–84.
31
   Which is a very different position compared to plain technical determinims: the technical
properties of a medium do not determine the experience of it. At the same time, they most likely
impact on it.
32
   The issue can also be read in terms of the presence or the absence of a frame (or unframedness);
see for instance Andrea Pinotti, ’Towards An-Iconology: the Image as Environment’; and Pietro
Conte, Unframing Aesthetics (Milano: Mimesis International, 2020).

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nonetheless remains; whereas inside a VR headset such distance is abolished, so
that the audience is not only in line with the position of a given character, but
literally occupies that position. Moreover, in cinema the movements of the point
of view are still pre-established and delegated to an external ‘entity’ directing
them (i.e. the movie’s discourse); whereas in VR the point of view is created
as the representation unfolds by each spectator, who appropriates and actively
directs it by means of her/his own movements. Lastly, and tackling the issue from
a slightly different angle, cinema seems to struggle when it comes to maintaining
a first-person perspective for extensive amounts of time. In fact, in cinema this
solution is normally temporary, if not exceptional;33 whereas in VR it is structural.
And even in the rare cases in which cinema adopts a first-person perspective
extensively — or even for the entire duration of a movie — it is difficult that it
manages to calibrate it in a way that does not convey any sense of unnaturalness or
claustrophobia.34 Therefore, based on these observations, it appears reasonable to
claim that the ability of producing a coincidence of experiences proper between
a diegetic character and the members of the audience is in fact VR-specific.
   Still, going back to the debate introduced above, some scholars have put
forward compelling arguments against the usefulness of such coincidence. More
specifically, they have pointed out that the latter may not necessarily translate
into emotional or ideological proximity, that it may reveal uncomfortable, or
even impossible.35


33
   Ruggero Eugeni, ‘Il first person shot come forma simbolica: i dispositivi della soggettività nel
panorama postcinematografico’, Reti, Saperi, Linguaggi, 2.2 (2013), 19–23.
34
   See fo instance Vivian Sobchack’s discussion of Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage (1947), in ‘The Man
Who Wasn’t There: the Production of Subjectivity in Delmer Daves’ Dark Passage’, in Subjectivity:
Filmic Representation and the Spectator’s Experience, ed. by Dominique Chateau (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2011) pp. 69–83. In this regard, another example of an extended
first-person perspective that possibly results in claustrophobia (and by the way aimed precisely at
representing a condition of illness) is Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).
Examples of movies entirely shot in a first-person perspective — arguably with an even more
problematic outcome — are Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947) and Hardcore Henri
(Ilya Naishuller, 2015).
35
   Anna Caterina Dalmasso, ‘The Body as Virtual Frame: Performativity of the Image in Immersive
Environments’, Cinéma&Cie. International Film Studies Journal, 19.32 (2019), 101–19; Robert
Hassan, ‘Digitality, Virtual Reality and the “Empathy Machine”’, Digital Journalism, 8.2 (2020),
195–212; Andrea Pinotti, ‘Autopsia in 360°: Il rigor mortis dell’empatia nel fuori-cornice del
virtuale’, Fata Morgana,13.39 (2019), pp. 17–32. From a slightly different angle, other scholars have
warned against the ethical and (bio)political risks implied in the peculiar nature of the experience
of VR. According to Pasi Väliaho, for instance, those risks would derive precisely from the fact that
the latter experience is less an ‘optical process’ and more a holistic experience that can be used in
order ‘to modulate affect and to pattern behaviour or, in more general terms, to produce, manage,
and channel psychic and somatic flows’. The author refers specifically to some problematic aspects
of using VR in order to treat post-traumatic stress disorder among the members of the US army;
Pasi Väliaho, Biopolitical Screens: Image, Power, and the Neoliberal Brain (Cambridge, MA and
London: The MIT Press, 2014), pp. 12, 68. Though important to monitor, such risks, and the fields
of application of VR in which they may occur, seem quite remote from the scope of the present
paper. Therefore, they will not be addressed in detail here.

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                                       Federica Cavaletti


   This paper, though in no way aiming at settling such complex and long-
debated issue, expresses the view that the effectiveness of placing the spectators
inside a representation should not be overemphasised nor dogmatised. Indeed,
that this is in itself a sufficient condition (or even the only condition) for
improving the audience’s attitude arguably sounds simplistic. Still, based as
well on recent empirical data attesting the prosocial effects of this modality of
engagement,36 this paper proposes that it may be useful to check whether given
media representations have the possibility of inducing a first-person and up-
close experience of the state of affairs they depict. Such checking procedure can
be applied precisely to Son of the Lovely Capitalism.
   To this aim, it is necessary to go back to the main traits of depression expressed
by the short movie and to evaluate whether the way they are represented appears
suitable for making them not simply visible but also experientially accessible.
These traits, it was argued, are: the idleness and apathy characterising depressed
subjects; the desynchronisation between them and their environment; and the
slowness or even stasis of depressive time.
   Concerning the last one, it is quite straightforward to argue that the modality
of representation may trigger in the spectators a first-person involvement. To
start with, long shots and a slow-paced editing are mostly used, as anticipated,
in so-called Slow Cinema, precisely because they are supposed to slow
down the spectators’ style of reception. This observation also links back to
Väliaho’s notion of cinematographic ‘vitality affects’ and the way they are
conveyed by means of the temporal texture of the moving image. It appears
reasonable to assume that, indeed, in this case the spectators do appropriate
the slow temporality expressed by the movie. Interestingly, this point can be
substantiated by recurring to some empirical evidence as well. Indeed, a recent
study comparing different styles of editing and their effects on spectators
found that a slow-paced style of editing, involving long shot durations, induces
a greater sensation of ‘time dragging’ compared to faster-paced styles.37 In the
case of Son of the Lovely Capitalism, this would imply that the slow temporality
of the movie — reflecting the slow temporality of depression — ‘spreads’ to
spectators as well.
   The argument gets trickier, though, in relation to the other traits recalled above.
As for the character’s idleness and apathy, a first-person engagement would
require a first-person appropriation of these states. Since cinema — as it was
argued — cannot create a literal overlapping between the spectators’ and the
character’s positions, such appropriation must imply a ‘bridging’ mechanism


36
   Fernanda Herrera and others, ‘Building Long-Term Empathy: A Large-Scale Comparison
of Traditional and Virtual Reality Perspective-Taking’, PloS One, 13.10 (2018), <https://doi.
org/10.1371/journal.pone.0204494> [accessed 31 March 2021].
37
   Ruggero Eugeni and others, ‘It Doesn’t Seem_It, but It Is: A Neurofilmological Approach to the
Subjective Experience of Moving-image Time’, in The Extended Theory of Cognitive Creativity, ed.
by Antonio Pennisi and Alessandra Falzone (Cham: Springer, 2020), pp. 243–65.

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connecting the two. In film studies, this mechanism has been accounted for in
several different ways: identification, empathy, and (embodied) simulation are
among the key-concepts that have been used to do so.38
   One of the most prominent models in this domain, based precisely on the
notion of embodied simulation,39 proposes that spectators spontaneously
‘mirror’ the characters’ bodily activity and emotional states, thus always getting
to some extent a first-person experience of them. In this case as well, empirical
evidence is already available.40 However, the debate surrounding the idea of a
first-person appropriation of a character’s experience still comprises unsolved
issues and diverging positions.41 Hence, it appears unsafe to put forward any
definite prediction with regard to the spectators’ reaction to the character’s
idleness and apathy in Son of the Lovely Capitalism.
   As for desynchronisation, the issue gets even more complicated. Indeed,
if desynchronisation is meant as a state experienced by the character alone,
experiencing it in first-person would lead back to the problem just discussed.
However, the representation of desynchronisation is not based on a depiction of
this character only. On the contrary, it brings on screen a multiplicity of additional
elements, as the construct intrinsically depends on the presence of an environment
and other people in relation to which he is not in synchrony. Therefore, the required
appropriation process could be different from that required by individual behaviours
and states. In this case, due to the complexity of the resulting representation, it may
even be easier for spectators to grasp the idea of desynchronisation by means of a
‘bird’s eye’ view: hence, rather by adopting a third-person, observational stance.
   In sum, while making it successfully visible, Son of the Lovely Capitalism
seemingly has little chance of plunging spectators experientially into the
character’s depressive condition. Thus, it may be worth exploring whether a VR-
based alternative may be better suited for this goal.


A VR-based Alternative: VR Experience of Depression

  When it comes to VR-based representations of depression, one salient
examples is VR Experience of Depression, created in 2018 by the Singapore-
based group Vere360.42


38
   Amy Coplan, ‘Empathy and Character Engagement’, in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and
Film, ed. by Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 117–30.
39
    Vittorio Gallese, ‘Embodied Simulation: From Neurons to Phenomenal Experience’,
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4 (2005), 23–48.
40
   For a collection of commented empirical studies, see Vittorio Gallese and Michele Guerra, The
Empathic Screen: Cinema and Neuroscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
41
   Jane Stadler, ‘Empathy in Film’, in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy, ed. by
Heidi L. Maiborn (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 317–26.
42
     <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP28kc3DfGo&feature=emb_logo> [accessed 18
August 2020].

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                                   Federica Cavaletti


    The protagonist of VR Experience of Depression is a young girl, who is depicted
as she struggles with the pathology during a brief segment of her day.
    The short VR movie starts in the girl’s bedroom, showing her as she tries
(unsuccessfully) to get up. The camera is placed slightly above the character’s top of
the head, so that her point of view coincides quite precisely with the spectators’. A
diegetic voice — the girl’s own voice — makes her thoughts available to the spectators.
The girl first urges herself to move, then she tells herself she does not want to do
so, and finally that she cannot do so. In these words and attitude, it is immediately
possible to recognise the typically depressive fatigue, idleness, and hypersomnia.
    An alarm rings, and the girl manages to sit upright. After turning off the
alarm on her phone, the girl starts reading multiple text messages sent by people
checking on her and inviting her to join different activities. As the girl goes
through the messages, the spectators become aware of her heartbeat, which
was present since the beginning of the movie but which now accelerates and
increases in volume. The girl reacts to the invitations with anxiety and declines all
of them. At the same time, however, she repeatedly says ‘Sorry’ in her mind. This
arguably attests again to the character’s idleness, but it also shows that tendency
towards perceived guilt that characterises depression and its melancholic version;
moreover, it can be interpreted as a first sign of desynchronisation, in terms of an
unwillingness or incapability to join social events.
    Desynchronisation, however, becomes most evident in the subsequent part of
the movie. Here, a friend knocks on her door, bringing some notes from a class that
the depressed girl has been skipping. Dropping out from institutional obligations
like school is a blatant sign of severe desynchronisation. The friend proposes the
depressed girl to study together sometimes, which triggers a new increase in the
girl’s heartbeat. Manifesting another typical trait of depression, i.e. hopelessness,
the voice expressing her thoughts tells the depressed girl that there would be no
point in studying, because she would fail anyway. In the absence of a reply, the
friend leaves. The depressed girl’s heartbeat slows down, but her occasion to get
back ‘in synch’ with her peers has faded. The short VR movie ends. As it was
highlighted throughout its description, VR Experience of Depression appropriately
illustrates some of the main traits of (melancholic) depression. The most urgent
question now, however, is whether it presents advantaged compared to Son of the
Lovely Capitalism in making these traits also accessible.
    The first clear difference between the two media options concerns the
point of view strategy adopted. Indeed, VR Experience of Depression creates a
superimposition between the character’s and the spectators’ perspective. In fact,
the spectators are quite literally put in the character’s shoes, thus inhabiting her
depressive condition from within. According to the prevalent view in the debate
summarised above, this would be exactly what affords an experiential grasp of
such condition. The girl’s lack of energy would be the spectators’ lack of energy,
her effortful movements would be the spectators’ own movements.
    Such experiential proximity appears to be reinforced by the auditory features of
the representation. What is key in this regard is the diegetic internal voice expressing

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the main character’s thoughts. The effect of this voice is twofold: on the one hand,
it strengthens the perceptual sensation of being ‘inside’ the character’s experience;
on the other hand, at a more cognitive level, it contributes to make this experience
more understandable. Indeed, seen from the outside and in the absence of any cue
regarding its underlying motivations, the static and unresponsive behaviour of a
depressed person may result puzzling or even annoying, as it may be the case in
Son of the Lovely Capitalism.
    In a sense bridging the point of view and the auditory choices made by VR
Experience of Depression, another factor comes into play: the character’s heartbeat.
Auditory in principle but bearing very strong ‘embodied’ connotations, the
heartbeat is appropriately combined with the first-person perspective expressed
by the movie and its diegetic ‘thought-track’, thus marking a maximum degree
of proximity to the character’s experience. In this sense, Son of the Lovely
Capitalism’s ominous soundtrack is certainly more refined and evocative, but at
the same time less effective communicatively.
    It should be noted here that VR Experience of Depression and Son of the
Lovely Capitalism are animated by slightly different intentions, which result in
correspondingly different styles. Indeed, Son of the Lovely Capitalism manifests a
primarily aesthetic intention, which it pursues at the expenses of the clarity of its
message. Conversely, VR Experience of Depression is first and foremost devoted
to a didactic goal. Thus, it adopts extremely plain and straightforward solutions,
leaving aside any aesthetic ambition.
    Selecting cinematographic and VR-based options with more similar intentions
may allow a more balanced comparison. However, a medium-specific advantage
of VR can be glimpsed already. Indeed, at least something of what VR Experience
of Depression proposes in terms of the spectators’ engagement would simply
not be achievable by means of cinematographic techniques. Hence, if aiming at
bringing spectators inside given representations, and inside particular subjective
worlds, VR-based options like VR Experience of Depression may prove more
suitable than their possible cinematographic counterparts.


Conclusion, and Further Directions

   After presenting one of the possible conceptualisations of depression, the
paper has discussed the respective ways in which a cinematographic and a
VR-based representation of the pathology may engage non-affected spectators
and convey to them some of the main traits of the depressive condition. The
proposed VR-based option proved more effective than the cinematographic
one in affording an up-close and first-person grasp of depression. However, the
conclusions reached in this paper are subject to some limitations.
   First, as anticipated, that accessing someone else’s experience rather than
simply witnessing it is desirable (or even necessary) is still uncertain in the
current debate. Second, even in case such issue was settled, the view that was

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proposed in this paper would still need further validation, as it does not yet apply
to cinema or VR in general. Indeed, additional case studies should be taken into
account as well, in order to cover different genres and domains.
   For instance, one may note that this paper has focussed on short, fictional
products only. The question therefore remains open as to what would be the
effect of longer and/or non-fictional alternatives. In this sense, one cannot
avoid thinking about the domain of documentary.43 In this domain, according
to the view expressed in this paper, VR would still maintain its media-specific
advantages. However, could the bursting-in of ‘reality’ itself somehow constitute
a game-changer? Moreover, could the supposed media-specific advantage of VR
be contrasted by the cinematographic documentary’s more durable tradition,
and thus its more mature stylistic and rhetoric tools? Or, more specifically, by the
power of the director’s voice or framing, gently walking the audience through a
specific interpretive path? These and other factors44 may challenge the view that
the ‘mere’ visibility of cinema is not enough in order to afford an appropriate
understanding of given mental disorders, like depression. Such understanding,
however, would still need to be better defined by means of a comparison with the
more ‘embodied’ one supposedly afforded by (at least certain instances of) VR.
   In sum, in spite of its openness, or perhaps thanks to it, the discussion on the
prosocial effects of audiovisual media like cinema and VR is among the most
lively and stimulating today. Hopefully, its developments will benefit people
suffering from depression as well, by breaking down the walls that allegedly
divide separated worlds, revealing their unexpected proximity.


Acknowledgements

   This work has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC)
under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
(grant agreement No. [834033 AN-ICON]), hosted by the Department of
Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” (Project “Departments of Excellence 2018-2022”
awarded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research).




43
   See for instance Des O’Rawe, ‘The Politics of Observation: Documentary Film and Radical
Psychiatry’, Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 11.1 (2019), <https://doi.org/10.1080/20004214.201
9.1568791> [accessed March 31 2021]. This paper comprises notable examples of documentary
films aimed at representing life in mental health institutions during the instable times of the post-
war revolution of psychiatry.
44
   Indeed, the possible differences between a documentary movie and the short, fictional options
analysed in this paper are far from being limited to those suggested here. Just to make one additional
example, the case studies discussed in this paper revolved around one main subject only, whereas
documentary movies often depict large groups of individuals, both in their interactions and with
specific focus on each subject (see again O Rawe).

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