"I Saw It In A Movie": Film Representations of the Mentally Ill Community & its GIF Transmediation onto Tumblr

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/9w032376t

Abstract

This paper reviews film representations of mental illnesses, such as depression and anxiety, and their GIF transmediation in order to draw conclusions about the existence of the idealized “sad” cultures present on the Social Networking Site, Tumblr. After exploring previous research findings, this text analyzes a set of popular GIFs that were created from two movies (Girl, Interrupted, 1999, and Silver Linings Playbook, 2 013) and two television shows (American Horror Story, 2 011 and Skins UK, 2 007-2013) that attempt to represent mental illness(es), or behaviors associated with mental illness(es). Each GIF and film was chosen based on if they appeared to be the most circulated on Tumblr at the time of my search. In conclusion, this paper explores the findings from each set of analyses and makes informed claims about how adolescents are the most affected most by the romanticization of mental illnesses on Tumblr and how. This paper also found that depression-related content GIFs are circulated by Tumblr users in order to express something they feel they can not express in their own lives, to construct their identity through an online platform, and to romanticize mental illnesses.

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