
Once upon a time, women were viewed as tyrants by men in the era before the manic pixie dream girl movements appeared on the scene. Besides, the narrative related to mental illness cases took a completely different interpretation. Indeed, women going through a troubled phase were either ostracized or viewed with intrigue. In the sense of both, Elizabeth Wurtzel quite fits that profile as she started experiencing the highs and lows of depression as a student, faced with adversity and an overwhelmed life from her home. Through her memoir, Wurtzel recounts her life story, Prozac Nation, in great detail.
I remember that the last weekend, when i was at home, I watched for the first time the 2001 film adaptation. And I understand why people so appreciate it.
In its perspective, the plot of Prozac Nation is structured around an important event in the life of the protagonist Elizabeth Wurtzel (Christina Ricci) when she enters the journalism faculty of Harvard and begins her studies. The inspiration has always been there; however, she is amused by the idea of being an exceptional storyteller. She is inspired but the pressure to perform continually builds on her and before long, her health begins to go downhill. We now understand that people under such circumstances may find it difficult to be welcoming towards help but in those days there was only one ending for such a young girl and that was abuse.
Sex, Drugs and Outside Judgement:
What’s truly devastating in the case of Prozac Nation is the fact that Elizabeth Wurtzel understands quite well what is being done to her, yet, nobody finds it necessary to intervene. Largely due to an action star mother (Jessica Lange) who is addicted to drugs and has no affection for her daughter, Wurtzel matured into the depiction of a treasured little girl. And, all that woman was left with the desire to get her suppressed anger out. The trouble was no one had come to her rescue. She was taken to hospital and was set on some medications as well as seen by a psychiatrist but even still she remains to be viewed as a mad psychiatric patient.
The sequence is quite heartbreaking as young Elizabeth can be seen evolving to her worst self and everyone in her close vicinity blaming her instead of trying to have difficult conversations with her. Such an expectation, however, is unreasonable for someone whose mother is in the most fulfilling relationship in her life, but who becoming agitated with her friends and even her boyfriend Rafe (a young Jason Biggs, who ‘was’ once relevant) for not fitting a mold they created for her is just unfathomable.
I cannot say the sympathetic approach is taken by the film’s creators to understand Wurtzel for her character is enacted by an oversexed Christina Ricci who seems to be in an off-set seducing everyone except for her mom, throughout the film. It is remarkable what progress we have made in the coming forty years, and if anything the film we reviewed, ‘Prozac Nation’ is a sobering reminder of it. It is the most tragic movie of all time because it portrays the issues propagated over the last twenty years and continually worsen not because the issues didn’t exist, but rather because we as a society chose to overlook them and, no, the outcome wasn’t beneficial.
Potentially even without wanting to, “Prozac Nation” is an embarrassingly explicit symbol of how society viewed and treated mentally challenged individuals roughly thirty to forty years ago so in addition to being a sad film, which in the order of the movie can also be said Mature Sad Adult Film, it is also a good film. My admiration for stunning performances suffered due to my struggle as a viewer with issues of engaging with the character however her representation of a daughter who has to balance people’s expectations and her individualistic thinking was heartbreaking to witness. It is something a lot of people who belong to the generation between let’s say 78 and 98 actually have to deal with growing up.
Furthermore, Prozac Nation can be seen as a documentary of sorts, as a film about youth in an age where it was believed that one should not be allowed to feel bad. It seems that fun times with no adult commitments were synonymous with being showered with love, in this case with oral sex and grapes and hydromel. This is best illustrated, however, in scenes when therapist and medical expenses coverage disputes arise with both her mother and father. In such a conflict, she is also later forced to consider how damaging their carelessness and neglect of her life has been to her, without any financial independence.
It is hard to imagine how something comparable to Prozac Nation is made today. I would imagine that such a viewpoint would not just be frowned upon but would also be branded as lacking empathy and provocative for no reason. Cynicism is what it has been labeled since time immemorial, yet it still made waves during its release because empires knew that critics were not ready for such mystical Western cinematography shortly after the release of Requiem for a Dream. But at the very least he holds his own. I do not wish to experience it ever again but it deserves not to be consigned to oblivion.
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