Girl Interrupted

I believe the film, Girl Interrupted, addressed the idea of 'having a place' in the world in both a brilliant and interesting manner. Each character in the film portrayed a confused displaced person. For example the character of Polly is seen as child-like and unable to break into the realm of adulthood. As we learned in viewing the film this was due to her deforming scares, and she wished she could be a child again when she was pretty and loved. Polly has been displaced by society because she is outcasted, intentionally or untentionally, due to a socially constructed concept of beauty in which perfect skin is the standard, not the exceptional. There is no place for Polly in that world. Another example is the character of Susana who as a woman and a mentally 'unstable' person (so to speak), like many of the other patients, cannot find a place in her the world or her life to be who she is. If she cannot be comfortable as woman in her own life, where can she be comfortable? I believe the film raised many of these questions. Much of Susana's struggle entails searching for a comfortable place in a world in which there seems one may not exist.
Unfortunately in both the sixties and present day no such world exists in which female biases are unheard of. The slut archetype still travels through our world sneaking and hiding and popping up when we least expect it, or when we most expect it. And fortunately for us today there is much more knowledge about mental illness than in the sixties it was not spoken of. Susana, who fell victim to double standards struggled to find a place of her own.
Maybe Susana's lack of finding her niche is what caused her to be a girl-interrupted. If we do not have our own place in the world, is it possible to go forward or backward? I dont see how we could go forward without a starting point, without a place. This is how Susana was interrupted. Her life, which may have once been a progressive movement working towards the future, was brought to a halt when she may have found that she had no place or did not know what her place was. She could not continue to move forward if she had no where to move forward from.

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I apologize for all the rambling, as I pointed out in my writing metaphor, I have a very difficult
time getting my thoughts from my head to a page without creating a rambled mess. :)...oops?

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...Maybe he can teach us a thing or two about borderline personality disorder :)