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The “madness” of market logic: mental illness and late capitalism in The Double and Nightcrawler

2016; Routledge; Volume: 14; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14791420.2016.1216576

1479-4233

Sean Brayton,

Cinema and Media Studies

This paper examines representations of mental illness in popular film, particularly Richard Ayoade’s The Double and Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler. As I argue, both films trouble typical Hollywood narratives of mental illness by situating schizophrenia and psychopathy, for instance, within a socioeconomic context, specifically relations of production under late capitalism and the unfettered self-interest of neoliberalism. If mental illness is a product of the postindustrial workplace in The Double, it becomes a prerequisite for success in Nightcrawler, providing a cinematic depiction of mental illness at odds with the “personal pathology” paradigm that dominates the current neoliberal landscape.