The Sheila Variations

In my revisiting of Homeland over the last couple weeks, I sought out in-real-time recaps so I could follow along and enrich my experience with other opinions. It worked! But it was pretty funny to see some reviewers “take issue” with the portrayal of bipolar. One balked when she purposefully went off her meds so she could jumpstart her creative intuition (his opinion was along the lines of “but she was doing so well, it makes no sense”). There was also a general feeling like “she went off her meds last season, now it just feels like they’re doing it for ratings”. Maybe? But it’s not unrealistic. Purposefully going off meds because you miss the sharp-lightning-fires of mania is Bipolar Textbook. I did it myself last fall. And paid the predictable price. Along these lines, one reviewer felt it was somewhat “problematic” and “troubling” that Danes’s character associated mania with being really good at her job, because that might send the message that mental illness is good, and it might also create unfortunate associations to the poor dummy-dumb audience who can’t think for themselves. As we all know, the purpose of art is to provide a socially responsible message.

These people need to read Kay Redfield Jamison’s book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, where Jamison – backing up her theories with copious research – shows the clear connections between manic-depression and outbursts of creativity – and also – in some cases – genius flights which break new ground in different artforms. You fly higher, you’re braver in your bold assertions, you don’t care about conventional thinking and received wisdom at ALL – and in that state all kinds of breakthroughs can happen. (I wrote more about this book here.) It remains a controversial book (“what if people read this book and decide to go off their meds, thinking they can be Beethoven? THIS IS DANGEROUS”). Jamison herself is bipolar. Only if you have this thing can you understand the siren-call of it. The exhilaration of mania (especially the initial stages). In that state, even though you know a crash is inevitable, you can’t stop that train once it leaves the station. Normal people, ask yourself: How many of you have to choose NOT to feel joy and happiness because those things are potentially dangerous?

Claire Danes was rightly praised in re-caps for these sequences when her illness took over, but sometimes there was some little comment or aside that made me think, “Okay, this person has no idea what they’re talking about.”

This goes along with the weirdly common idea – mainly given to us from movies – that mental illness is somehow … adorable, and manifests mostly in socially acceptable ways, that it “presents” as someone sobbing, maybe, or lying in a dark room, or maybe hunched over in a chair with unwashed hair picking at their fingernails… opposed to – you know – a person flying off the handle and acting TOTALLY FREAKIN INSANE. But people are not adorable when they’re manic. They are frightening. I thought I was adorable. I never felt so clear-headed and productive. I slept 3 hours a night. I was ON FIRE. And ADORABLE. To quote Sinead O’Connor in “Daddy I’m Fine”: “I want to fuck every man in sight.” Textbook. Meanwhile people were scared of me and texting each other about how worried they were. And they were right to be worried. And I was IRRITATED that they were worried. I’m ENJOYING life, and I NEVER enjoy life, stop RAINING on my PARADE.

It’s great that mental illness is not so stigmatized now (people who say it is stigmatized have clearly not spent much time on Tumblr, where every single Tumblr-user lists in a prominent placement on the front page their string of mental illnesses and psychological problems). Of course there is still some stigma: people may interpret you differently if they know the truth about you. And if you really “act out” – say, by drinking too much, by ranting and raving, by picking fights – often these things will not be “forgiven” as a manifestation of the illness. Which is fair, I guess. I feel no stigma. I don’t give a fuck.

General lack of stigma doesn’t mean there’s greater understanding, though. One needs only remember the incessant mockery of Amanda Bynes when she behaved so erratically. The cruel MOCKERY of Britney Spears (thank you South Park for calling that bullshit out), who was clearly having a full-blown psychotic break. Another example is when, in 2013, Elizabeth Wurtzel (RIP) wrote a frankly insane-sounding essay about “how she was doing” for New York Magazine. People recoiled from how grandiose she sounded, how superior (basically “I live life on a higher level than other people”) and how chaotic her situation was. I was so ANGRY at the lack of understanding, and I hadn’t even been diagnosed yet (that would come a month later). But I myself at that time was in full-blown mania and I read her piece and thought, “Yeah. That’s what it’s like. I live just like that.” (I wrote about all of this here. I look at the date of that post and am amazed. I was so so sick when I wrote it. But that’s the thing. Being sick doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not lucid. I’m still really proud of that post.) To see supposedly tolerant loving people tut-tut, or react with horrified glee to the train-wreck of it all, or, worse, say judgmentally, “Well, I have clinical depression but I don’t act like that.” I don’t know what to tell you but … Isn’t that nice for you. The rest of us are not so lucky. There was also a “Jesus Christ, these women are acting INSANE.” Well, yeah. Duh. That’s what it actually fucking looks like, ya maroon.

The Homeland scene at the top of the post takes place in Season 1. It is the moment her illness is first revealed to her colleague, the guy who recruited her into the CIA, Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin). She’s been hospitalized post a sting-operation that went horribly wrong. Saul goes to see her in the hospital and finds her in this state at the nurse’s station: she is ranting, her words flying out a mile a minute: she needs a green pen and ONLY a green pen: she berates the nurse about the nurse’s “refusal” to magically conjure a green pen out of thin air. The nurse is patient but firm: she knows the drill, she knows Carrie is sick, but Saul has no idea. He is rocked to the core at what he is seeing. Why is she acting so insane?? (Patinkin is brilliant in this scene).

I wonder if some people thought Danes was overdoing it, or “playing crazy” like actors supposedly love to do. If you read Jamison’s book, and absorb it as opposed to resist it: you realize why Carrie needed a green pen ONLY and her reasoning made perfect sense; she just was incapable of explaining it to anyone.

Look at Mandy Patinkin’s face. That’s how everyone looked at me in the fall of 2012 and winter of 2013. Claire Danes did her research, boy. I hate to admit it, it’s still horrifying: The “green pen” moment is exactly what I was like when I first met the mood doctor who diagnosed me in February of 2013. I was that wild and that enraged and that rude. I refused to take my winter coat off throughout my first session with him. A clear message: “I won’t be here long, pallie.” I refused to sit down. My hair was long and wild. I paced. I gestured hugely. I raved about Elvis. I mean, I am glad there isn’t recorded footage of this. He told me later in his thick Italian accent it was like having a wild stallion in his office. I talked to him like I was in a 1930s gangster film, out of the corner of my mouth: “Therapy is a fucking racket, it’s all about the dough to you people.” I said “dough.” I said “you people.” I actually said these words, “If any part of this treatment involves you telling me I need to stop writing about Elvis, we are DONE.” I said it in as threatening and as rageful a manner as Claire Danes yelling at that poor nurse.

I was CHARMING. I met the man half an hour before and I was barking about how he was only in it for the “dough” and I was disgusted with him and his whole entire profession. I was speaking like that to EVERYONE then. I’m lucky I wasn’t famous, because everyone on Twitter would have been saying, “Listen, I have anxiety too but I never act like that. There’s no excuse for being that rude.” So glad you have your cray-cray under control. Happy for you!

Side note: I watched Homeland in real time in its initial run up until the 3rd season. After that, I fell off. In this recent binge-watch, I continued on. Halfway through Season 4, I realized, with dawning dismay, “Uh-oh. I am shipping Carrie and Quinn so hard that it’s all I am interested in. Screw the safety of the homeland, what’s going on with their romantic subtext??” I did what drives me crazy in some factions of Supernatural fandom: they see the show only through the lens of their ship, and it ruins the show for them. They can’t enjoy it for what it is. They’re all about the End Game of their ship, and they invest in THAT End Game rather than the End Game of the actual show.

But I couldn’t help it! My heart and soul screamed #carriequinn4EVA.

SPOILER: when Quinn died, I thought, “Okay. Well, I have no interest in watching this show anymore.” I also was not pleased about where they took this character I had so come to love in Season 5 and 6. Like, why are you DOING this to him? I LURVE him! The ship, and the power of it, snuck up on me! I blame the pandemic and the resulting isolation.

I didn’t mean to limit my interest in Homeland to this unrequited relationship that may or may not happen!

I’ll get over it some day.

But not yet. I need time to heal.