Romantic conflictive partners study, Dick Powell & June Allyson love story

20% of suicides between 2003 and 2020 were related to issues like breakups, conflict, and divorce. One in five suicides involved intimate partner problems, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Georgia. Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study found that mental health problems; life stressors, such as unemployment and family problems; and recent legal issues were more common among suicides related to intimate partner problems. Ayana Stanley, lead author of the study, which grew out of her doctoral research at UGA’s College of Public Health, says: “Romantic partners experience other kinds of relationship stressors, such as general hostility, arguments and jealousy. By sharing resources for seeking help, we send a strong message that every life has value, there is hope, and that seeking help is a sign of strength.” Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, with more than 48,000 Americans dying by suicide in 2021, according to the CDC. While previous research has shown a connection between suicides and intimate partner problems, the present study is the first to use data from 48 states; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico to examine factors that were associated with intimate partner problem-related suicides. Of the 402,391 suicides of Americans aged 18 years and older during the study period, 20% involved intimate partner problems. Almost half of those individuals were between the ages of 25 and 44. The majority were white and male with at least a high school education. Source: news.uga.edu

June Allyson has sometimes been called “Allyson Wonderland.” The term is only applicable if used in reverse. Hollywood has been but little of wonderland to Allyson. She has not found stardom and greatness synonymous. Perhaps there was a time when June found films a challenge. She proved to herself that Hollywood could be taken, and she took it. A couple of years ago fans voted her their number one choice among feminine stars; the following year, their second. Though appreciative of the honor, June was not obviously impressed. Another star recently said to her, “It’s amazing that you can be so popular with all the bad pictures you make.” June didn’t know whether it was a slam or a compliment. “I never got around to asking exactly what she meant,” said June. She has a childlike quality of acceptance. Her click in movies neither amazed nor exhilarated her. When she wished to learn to dance, she went to see Fred Astaire in “The Gay Divorcee” seventeen times, studied his technique, and landed herself in a series of Broadway musicals that eventually brought her to Hollywood. 

It seems that everyone wants her to be a movie star but June herself. Making motion pictures is to her a job, like selling ribbons over a counter, and she does it well. Two years ago Dick Powell said to me, “June’s the best actress I know. But she’s the most un-actressy actress you’ll find in Hollywood. I honestly think that on a lot of mornings she wouldn’t go to work if I didn’t urge her. It’s not that I care whether she works or not; but I do believe she’ll regret passing up the opportunity later on.” At that time June had an adopted child and was expecting another of her own. She seemed to look at us in amused wonderment as we talked about her career. ‘Tm not a career woman,” she explained. “I don’t like to fight, and in this business to get what you want you have to fight. I’d just as soon stay home and raise babies. I’ve been the happiest since the time I learned the stork was headed my way. For the first time in my life I feel important. I’d like to have more babies. But Richard thinks he’s a bit too old for such a big family.”

Here indeed was a Hollywood phenomenon: a top star who didn’t care about being a star. When I asked if she went to the studio while not working, she cast those innocent eyes upon me as if I’d wanted to know if she wished a trip to the moon and said, “What for? I’ve got everything I love at home.” June’s contract with M-G-M ends within a year. I called Dore Schary, head of production at the studio, and asked him what he would think if June retired at the expiration of her contract. He hardly waited for me to get the words out of my mouth before replying, “She won’t retire.” “What are the qualities that make her such a big box office star?” I asked. “She has a fresh personality, an honest kind of personality,” he replied. “She lends validity to a role. She reminds me of something in a picture we just produced about Hollywood, ‘The Bad and the Beautiful.’ In it Kirk Douglas says to Lana Turner, ‘I know you’re a star, because when you’re on the screen no matter what you’re doing or who else is in the scene the people in the audiences are looking at you.’ That’s true of Junie.”

“What are her strong points as an actress?” I asked. “Any good actress must have understanding of other people’s problems, and June has,” he said. “She also has that curious quality called talent—the ability to project herself and make others believe what she does. You know when you turn out the lights in a big room and start showing pictures, the good actress makes you think, ‘This is really happening.’ She can make one scared, happy, or sad. June has this ability to make others think make-believe is real. This is what we call talent.” “Do you think she’d actually be happy in retirement?” I asked. “Oh, no,” he quickly responded. “She’s much too young to retire. Any personality as vibrant as she would be unhappy doing nothing. It would get tiresome. You know we all say that in a couple of years we’re going to retire, but somehow it seems that we never do.” This is the opinion of the man who’s June’s current boss; and the person who will likely get her signature on a new contract, if she puts one anywhere.

To get another answer, I went to see the popular young miss in her Bel Air home. She and Dick had just finished dinner before an open fire. June, wearing quilted lounging pajamas and red felt slippers, looked hardly more than a child herself. She had on horn-rimmed glasses, but removed them when she started talking. A mannerism she has of hugging her knees in her arms added to her juvenile appearance. Our conversation started with politics; and June began telling a story about Dick. He interrupted her with, “You’d better let me do the talking, because I’ll get the facts straight.” June stuck out her tongue at him and went right on with the story. On finishing, she asked, “Now, wasn’t that the way it was?” “Yes,” he admitted. “But you never give prefaces.”

“Oh, I don’t have to go on and on to tell a story,” said June. Dick looked at her in a patient sort of way, continued his discussion of politics, and stated that he was not a rabid Republican. “Thank God, you’re not a rabid anything,” chimed in June, whose every look and gesture indicated she was head over heels in love with the man. As she sat there with her chin on her knees, one couldn’t possibly conceive of her being among the most popular film stars on earth, with the question of her quitting pictures causing many a producer and exhibitor to tremble in his boots. “In his new picture, Richard co-starred with Lana Turner,” said June. Then as if suddenly recalling the event, she looked around with a very wise, impish expression on her face, and exclaimed, “Lana Turner! I was on that set every day Richard worked.”

Unlike most Hollywood stars, she appears bored with talking about movies. That’s one reason I believe she actually would like to retire. “Okay,” I said. “Now comes the $64 question. Why do you want to retire from pictures?” June settled back into a lounge as if accepting the inevitable. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “I love my career, and I’ve been very fortunate in movies. But I don’t see why I should waste time doing something not worthwhile. The studio sends me a script. I read it and say, ‘I don’t want to make the picture.’ The studio insists that I should. So I do. Then I’m told by studio officials that the picture wasn’t very good. I knew that before I started working on it. Actually I want to retire from bad pictures. People don’t want to see run-of-the-mill films. Take somebody making fifty dollars a week.” “Who do you know who makes fifty dollars a week?” Dick interrupted. “My father,” said June. “He does better than that,” said Dick. “You’re thinking of my step-father,” June corrected. “If my father wants to take his wife and three children to a movie, he has to spend seven dollars. He doesn’t have that much money to spend. He can’t afford it. 

That’s the reason I don’t want to waste either the studio’s or my time by making mediocre pictures. I’m married and have two children. I’d rather spend the time with my family.” She said: “My children need me. When little Pammy falls down and cuts her leg, the nurse tries to help her. But Pammy won’t let her. She says, ‘Oh, no, mummy will come downstairs and fix it.’ So I go downstairs and fix it, and everything’s all right. When I go to work that little thing is always in the driveway to see me off.” Mimicking the little girl’s voice, she continued, “Pammy says, ‘Will you be home before I go to bed, Mummy?’ That’s not easy to take. I want to spend time with my children. “But, as I said, I’m not a fighter. When anybody pats me on the head and asks me to do something, I’ll do it. If I go into a store, and a clerk shows me something, I’ll buy it. I don’t want anybody to be unhappy. But most of all, I don’t wish to be unhappy when I’m working. It makes me nervous. So I bring the state of mind home with me. I get mad at Dick and the kids. I grumble a lot, and that’s not right. I can’t blame the studio. 

If M-G-M had a good script suitable for me, I’d get it. I’ve had about everything a film actress could expect except an Oscar; but don’t get me wrong. I have no burning desire to own one. However, if I were ever nominated for an Academy Award, I’d be down sweeping out the theater so it would be clean for the ceremonies. And I’m not saying to M-G-M, ‘Give me a good picture, or I quit!’ That would be childish. For my birthday two years ago, the studio gave me an $18,000 dressing room. The boys said, ‘You’ve been a good girl, so here’s a present.’ “Although I’ve turned down scripts, I’ve never been suspended. A classic example is ‘The Stratton Story.’ When I read the script, I saw there was very little in it for the girl, so I said I wouldn’t do it. M-G-M told me I wouldn’t be suspended for refusing to make the film but I was still wanted for it. Then I put up the argument that studio officials—not me—claimed I was one of their biggest stars and asked why they didn’t protect their property. ‘Well and good,’ they said, ‘but we want you for the picture,’ So naturally I gave in. Then I went to Sam Wood, who was to direct the film, and explained that doing the picture was no wish of mine and that I’d have to depend upon him. “My part in that film was strictly Sam Wood. He and Jimmy Stewart would come to my dressing room after working hours and cook up whole scenes for me. Jimmy would say, ‘June’s my wife. She’s the big star. Moviegoers won’t want to look at me; they want to look at her.’ So we rebuilt the whole picture around that idea. Now it's my favorite film.

“I’ve repeatedly told June that as long as I can walk and breathe, there’s no necessity for her making a picture she doesn’t like,” said Dick. “But she’s an actress; and not only a hausfrau. And to an actress there’s nothing more gratifying than doing a job well. June wouldn’t be happy in retirement, because she’s got acting in her blood. An actress simply hasn’t the quality in her make-up to be indifferent to seeing herself fade from the public scene. If June had a substitute, got busy doing something else, I would think retirement would be okay for her.” “Busy!” exclaimed June. “I’m busy doing things that I want to do. I want to stay home.” “Then we’d better get off that subject,” said Dick. “But I do get sick of hearing actors talk about how nerve-wracking their business is; and how they hate it. Sid Luft gave the best answer to that I’ve ever heard. We were dining with him, the Edgar Bergens, and Judy Garland in San Francisco, when the players began to complain about the hardships of show business. Sid said, ‘Well, you’re either equipped for it or you are not. If you're not equipped, you should get out.’ ”

“I don’t mean that I’m neurotic,” said June. “I just can’t relax when I work. I love the film industry, and 1 think it’s been very kind to me. But Richard and the children are the most important things in my life. I want to continue in pictures if I find the work interesting, enjoyable, and rewarding—but not for the simple sake of being a movie star. So far I’ve never learned to lake it easy while making a picture. I never go into my dressing room to read or write letters, for instance. I work from the time I enter a sound stage until I leave.” “If you should retire, what would you do?” I asked. “I’d have another baby right away,” she said. Then she looked at me with sudden astonishment at the question. “What would I do!” she exclaimed. “Did you ever run a house and take care of two kids? We have a nurse, a butler, a cook, a gardener, and two secretaries. But they all have to be directed. I take charge of the children myself. Having a nurse is wonderful; but children also need the help of a mother. I teach Pammy to read, write, and draw. Then we go to the beach and on hikes. Passing on to them what little knowledge I have and seeing them discover new things for themselves is really thrilling. That’s why I insist on quitting pictures before I get too old for them. If I find good stories, I wouldn’t mind doing one film.”

On January 24th, 1961, June Allyson sued Dick Powell for divorce. “Did he (Dick Powell) ever hit you?” asked the judge trying to get to the root of the trouble. “Never!” snapped June. “He could never do a thing like that. It was just that he was always too busy.” On January 31, 1961, she won an interlocutory decree which, in California, means that if hubby and wife cease and desist living under the same roof for one year, they are, at the termination of said period, kaput! The decision made June very happy. And that evening, by way of celebration, she and a date really did the town. After a whirlwind round of many of cinema city’s favorite eating and watering spots the wee hours of the ayem found them at Junie’s front door. Two minutes later they were inside. Neither was seen until the morning. And who was the guy that June celebrated her divorce with? None other than Dick Powell, the hubby she had jettisoned that very afternoon. But the minute they set foot in the same house the ex-hubby became the ever-present hubby once again. That was the first time Mr. and Mrs. Powell ever brought their differences to a divorce court. However, it is by no means the first time they have ever had marital difficulties, nor is it the first time they’ve ever aired them. The public first got wind of the fact that all was not well at the house that Allyson and Powell built about seven years ago. It was the night of the Photoplay Awards and the banquet room at the Beverly Hills Hotel was jammed to capacity with the greats, the near greats and the ingrates of Hollywood. Some had come to receive awards, others had come just to be seen and still others were there for no other reason but to gawk. Dick Powell was there too. 

And, as a Hollywood star of long and good standing, he was asked to say a few words. The one-time musical comedy favorite made the usual thank-you comments and then snapped the big room to attention with a remark no one had anticipated. “For those of you who were worried,” said he, “everything’s okay again at the Dick Powells.” Those words came out of the blue. Some of the people who were retrieving their jaws from the vinicity of their knees had no idea there was or ever had been anything wrong with the Allyson-Powell merger. Others, however, knew that Dick had a problem with his petite, goodie-goodie blonde mate. They suspected too, that Dick had been getting her out of flirting with other men for the better part of their married life. But this was the first time they had ever heard Dick even hint that the marital knot wasn’t as tight as it could have been.

But then, what could he have said? He was stuck with the image of June Allyson that the Hollywood press agents had created. She was typed as “the girl next door,” “cute as a button,” “too nice to be naughty,” “all sweetness and light.” Why, if he had even hinted that sweet little Junie was a bit spaced, her fans—and they number in the millions—would have howled their heads off at the charge and, in the end, made him the “heavy”. But what those fans—and a lot of the hipsters in Hollywood—didn’t know was that June had, long ago, pushed the sugar bowl aside and reached for the spice shelf. It even reached the stage where she was admitting it. Sitting at a cocktail table with a few other Hollywood beauties, she flipped a pretty finger at the little-girl frock her bosses like her to wear and declared: “I’ve had enough of all this. I’d like to land in the middle of a nice juicy scandal—just to prove I’ve graduated into a woman) but no one was believing her. But just so no one would think she was a doll given to idle chatter she set out to prove there was a lot more to June than a goodie-goodie personality and a Peter Pan collar. And the first guy she proved it with was the old swinger himself, Dean Martin. Rumor has it that he was even sober at the time. Junie first met Dean when he and his zany ex-sidekick, Jerry Lewis, were appearing at Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom’s in Hollywood. After the meeting, June became a regular ringsider at the club night after night. And she finally capped the caper by going right along with Dean when he moved from Hollywood to a nightery in Las Vegas. The citizens of that so-called sin-suburb are supposedly used to anything, but their raised eyebrows, as they watched June and Dean rocket around the town, proved that the Las Vegas natives weren’t as blase as they were cracked up to be. As one gossip columnist itemed it, “Dean Martin and June Allyson are having a ball in Vegas where they’re spinning faster than the roulette wheels.”

Mr. Powell did a lot of hollering about this secret liaison that the tabloids made public, and the betting around Hollywood was two to one that Junie would be given her walking papers. But it never happened. Dick may have been sore but he wasn’t sore enough to call the whole thing off. Just what he had to say to Junie when she returned from her Vegas adventure isn’t known, but it must have been quite a storm. During his Gotham safari, a good friend met Dick Powell outside Hollywood’s Brown Derby. “How’s June?” politely inquired the friend. “You mean Stupid?” Powell snapped. “I don’t know how Stupid is. Ask me another question.” This was all Dick said publicly about the affair. About another chapter in her life, June recently had this to say, “About five or six years ago there were many items in the columns linking me with Alan Ladd. What actually happened was that he was having problems, and I was sympathetic. Because of the nonsense in the columns Dick and I stopped seeing Ladd. Funny thing, he was also Dick’s friend, not only mine.” After the Ladd affair, Dick decided that a short leash on June was in order. And he figured the way to keep that leash tight was to spend more time with her. And how best to do that but to direct her pictures. So he got himself the job of director on A Night To Remember starring June Allyson and Jack Lemmon. “When they (June and Jack) were on the set, the phonograph in her dressing room would play for hours while the two of them were in there,” one of the co-workers recalls. “They must have been talking, because that dressing room was too small for dancing.” Dick held his temper as long as he could but finally, when Jack flubbed his lines, he blew up and told him what he thought of his acting. June leaped from her chair and flew at her husband, screaming, “Don’t you dare talk to him like that!” The movie making ended on a note that was becoming familiar to the Powells in general and June’s playmates in particular. Lemmon and his wife got a divorce. They didn’t say why, which left the matter open for the gossips to have a field day in the press.

Once again, however, the Powells weathered the storm. But though Junie has been a bit of a gad-about she is not the only one who contributed to the plights and plagues of the Powells. Dick, too, has done his share to keep the marriage on the rocks. And though his straying has not manifested itself in another woman his way of life has, nonetheless, been pretty hard on June. In the Powell household Dick is the dominant figure. He chose the house they live in. He decorated it. He hires the domestic help. He even plans the meals. An example of Dick’s disregard for June’s opinions came when he purchased their sixty-three-foot cruiser. The boat cost $103,000. “I must have looked at a hundred and fifty boats with Richard,” says June, “yet he wound up buying one I’d never even seen.” His work keeps him away from home more than is good for any marriage. When June calls to ask what time she can expect him, she’s usually told, “I’ll be there when I get through.” “Once,” she told a reporter, “I said to our houseman, Frank, “I haven’t heard from Mr. Powell this afternoon. I guess he’ll be home for dinner.’ Frank said, ‘Oh, we’re having fifty people for dinner tonight. Mr. Powell called and told me what to serve.’ ” Out of the fifty June knew exactly two. Dick is a man not given to emotional outburst. He is never too sad or too happy. He rides a middle course. This is the direct opposite of June’s extremely sad or extremely happy personality. But despite the weaknesses on both sides, the Powells plod on. They’ve had their differences, their separations and even a divorce, but they’re still together. Some say they’re together because of the children. Still others say it’s because they’re used to each other. It could be for any of the above reasons. It could also be because they dig each other. It’s possible, you know. —Harold Monroe, Inside Story magazine, 1952 and 1962. Source: vintagepaparazzi.com

Bring Them Down, Mammal, Calm with Horses

Christopher Eccleston has said it would be impossible for him to become an actor in today’s world, in an impassioned interview after the closure of Oldham’s Coliseum theatre. The British actor spoke about how the closure of the historic theatre would affect the acting community and people from working-class backgrounds. Eccleston reflected on his start in the industry and why he felt it would be “impossible” for people from a working-class background to enter acting today: “If you grow up in the north-west, you don’t feel culture and the arts belong to you. You don’t believe if you come from a council estate you can be an actor, a poet or a painter. I had no qualifications… Acting is not an academic pursuit. It’s a pursuit of the heart and the gut. You don’t need to have gone to Oxbridge... What you need is imagination and emotion and passion.” Eccleston said he would “keep banging on” about the promise of a new theatre in Oldham. Source: www.theguardian.com

I'm guessing I am one of many Americans who can't discern between rich and working-class British accents most of the time, but I understand it must be obvious to their fellow Brits. I've been watching Star Trek: TNG a lot lately and since Patrick Stewart has the air of a mannered Shakespearean actor—something like a real-life Frasier Crane type, except less off putting—I assumed he may have grown up wealthy. But it turns out he grew up quite poor, it turns out. Next, my mind went to Ian McKellen. I'd have guessed he was less 'posh' than Stewart but that he must have grown up well to do, since I know he went to St. Catharine's College of the University of Cambridge. I can't find much explicitly about his economic class during his upbringing, but it seems like he didn't grow up rich either. 

I guessed incorrectly about the class backgrounds of many. I suppose, because the American super-rich class historically has been limited to a few families like the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, the Kennedys, more recently the Hiltons and similar corporate-brand families. People who are very impoverished likewise used to be a very small share of the US population overall, and the vast majority fell within a broad-ranging middle class. But that is changing and I suppose we are bound for a more UK-like system in which socioeconomic class really defines a person's limitations and economic mobility. British actors who are really posh: Cara Delevigne descends from the Barons of Redesdale (aka the Mitfords), Helena Bonham Carter's family background has connections with the Bank of London, Benedict Cumberbatch is related to aristocracy. Damian Lewis (Homeland), Tom Hiddleston, Dominic West, and Eddie Redmayne went to Eton, the famous elite prep school. Barry Keoghan is salt of the earth Irish 'from the wrong side of the tracks' working class.

On the other hand, Julie Walters (Billy Elliot), Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren have working-class roots; Ian McKellen and Judi Dench came from middle class. Florence Pugh grew up upper-middle class with a successful restauranteur father but her family claims working-class roots. James Norton's (Star Trek: Picard) parents were teachers and then he went to Cambridge. Carey Mulligan is solid middle class. Kate Beckinsale went to a private independent girls' school. Does that mean she's posh? In the US, it would mean upper middle class. Ralph Fiennes: by his accent, I would have guessed working class, but he grew up connected to generations of family who have been knighted. I was struck when Fiona Hill—who has a lovely manner of speaking to my ear—testified that her working-class regional accent would have prohibited her from any important advancement in the UK and it's why she moved here to the US. But although I do hear what defines northern accents, which sound to me like they're nearly Scottish at times, I guess I can't always discern them because Ian McKellen is from Lancashire in NW England and Patrick Stewart is from Yorkshire in NE England and both sound refined and upper class to me. Michael Caine is totally non-posh, in fact he’s Cockney. The Eton actors, such as Benedict Cumberbatch and Eddie Redmayne, actually are upper middle class and are only posh-adjacent. Source: medium.com

Mubi shared a first-look image of Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbott in the upcoming drama Bring Them Down, the debut feature from writer-director Chris Andrews. The film is in the final stages of principal photography in Ireland. Keoghan and Abbott have replaced Tom Burke and Paul Mescal who were previously attached to the film. The plot follows Michael (Abbott), the last son of a shepherding family, who lives with his ailing father, Ray (Meaney). Burdened by a terrible secret, Michael has isolated himself from the world. When a conflict with rival farmer Gary (Ready) and his son Jack (Keoghan) escalates, Michael is drawn into a devastating chain of events, forcing him to confront the horrors of his past, leaving both families permanently altered. Keoghan changed the game in The Killing of a Sacred Deer (his range as an actor is on full display) and Abbot has been around for years, most notably in Possessor, and Black Bear. The film is a European co-production produced by UK-based Wild Swim, Ruth Treacy and Julianne Forde from Ireland’s Tailored Films, Jacob Swan Hyam (UK), and Jean-Yves Roubin and Cassandre Warnauts from Frakas Productions (Belgium). Mubi financed Bring Them Down with Screen Ireland and the UK Global Screen Fund. Source: deadline.com

Barry Keoghan started his career as a critically acclaimed young Irish actor working on indie movies in his home country. These movies picked up notice thanks to festival appearances and he soon branched out into the United States, where he was able to slowly start to show his worth by working alongside some acclaimed directors before eventually picking up roles in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and DC Universe (DCU). Since coming into Hollywood, he has worked alongside directors like Christopher Nolan, David Lowery, and Martin McDonagh. He also gained a lot of mainstream attention when he picked up a role in the MCU movie Eternals. While the movie was one of the MCU's lower-rated releases and didn't set the box office on fire, he could possibly return down the line as the Eternal Druig. He also had a minor role in the DCU movie The Batman, where he took on the role of Joker, the most infamous villain in that film's world. However, the best Barry Keoghan movies don't always deal with superheroes.

The landscape of grief encompasses both universal and very personal territory, realms that Dublin-set drama Mammal (2016) explores with curiosity and compassion, although not always with narrative precision. Margaret (Rachel Griffiths) lives a solitary life and seems to like it that way. She works in a second-hand store in a nondescript corner of the city, but barely has a word to say to her shop assistant and rarely socializes. Her routine is unexpectedly disrupted by the reappearance of her ex-husband Matt (Michael McElhatton), who’s come to tell her that their 18-year-old son Patrick has gone missing. Margaret takes the news without much apparent emotion, since hasn’t seen Patrick since leaving the boy with Matt years before. 

At about the same time, she befriends Joe (Barry Keoghan), a homeless young man about the same age as her missing son, whom she assists after finding him injured and unconscious in the alley behind her shop one night. A bit like the feral cats that Margaret adopts from the streets, he’s wary and standoffish at first, but decides to move in with his few possessions after checking out her small two-bedroom home. Margaret begins molding the young man into a stand-in for her deceased child. Is she merely trying to be a mother again? Or are her intentions more driven by passion? As they spend more time together, sharing jokes, beers and smokes, their relationship begins to take on new dimensions that neither has anticipated. 

Margaret attempts to manifest a parental relationship with Joe as a substitute for the son she never knew and attain some measure of redemption in the process. For his part, Joe keeps trying to reconcile his painful decision to leave home with his inability to survive on the streets, even as his frequent late-night forays with the loose-knit gang that he used to run with threaten to destabilize his situation at Margaret’s. Keoghan here gives an intense performance as a tortured young man on the verge of utterly destroying his life before it’s even quite begun, never really settling on a predictable path to stability.

A tense crime film, Calm with Horses (2019), also known as The Shadow of Violence, is about a former boxer turned organized crime enforcer named Arm who is asked by the head of the family to kill someone. Joseph Murtagh creates a believable atmosphere of toxic masculinity and its hold on those that indulge in it. The box that they lock themselves in, intentionally or not. Barry Keoghan plays the role of Dymphna, a member of the crime family and friend of Arm. The character is complex but violent, and Keoghan's often subtle portrayal of the figure grounds him in reality. He is intimidating and brash, but has deeper layers to him, which the actor communicates ambiguously in this bleak thriller. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Female bias, Male Dangerous Vulnerability, Phenomenology of Right (Hegel/Kojève)

Evidence for Intersectional implicit bias and the predominance of target gender: New research (Connor, P., Weeks, M., Glaser, J., Chen, S., & Keltner, D., 2023) provides evidence that people generally have a positive implicit bias towards women and a negative implicit bias towards men, as well as a similar but less consistent implicit bias in favor of people from higher social classes. But the most recent research found inconsistent evidence for implicit biases based on race. The findings shed new light on intersectional implicit bias and have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Implicit Association Tests (IATs) are a type of psychological tool designed to measure implicit biases (unconscious attitudes) that people may hold towards certain social groups or concepts. These tests have provided evidence that people have implicit biases towards different social categories, like race and gender. But individuals often have multiple identities that intersect, like being a woman of a certain race or social class. The authors of the new study sought to investigate implicit biases in the context of multiple intersecting social identities. “I’ve always been interested in stereotyping and prejudice based on social class,” said study author Paul Connor, a postdoctoral scholar with the Collaboration Project at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers again found that gender was the most significant factor affecting implicit evaluations, with female targets receiving more positive evaluations than male targets across all three methods used to measure implicit evaluations. The effects of race were found to be inconsistent, with participants favoring White and Asian targets over Black targets in ST-IATs, and Asian targets over White and Black targets in EPTs, while Asian and Black targets were favored over White targets in AMPs. “Our headline finding was that it was predominantly targets’ gender that drove implicit responses, not race, age, or social class,” Connor told PsyPost. “Specifically, we found that pro-female and anti-male biases explained much more variation in participants’ responses than any other kind of bias.” The study will be publicly available on 05/19/2023 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  Source: psycnet.apa.org

Anthony Oliver Scott on quitting as film critic after 23 years writing for the NY Times: "I'm only a little more than halfway through this March 23 podcast but it's a really interesting interview. I grew up with the classics from the golden era. The films from the 1940s are among my favorite ever. Others of my favorite personal films are of the late 90's/early 00's. The problem at the moment is mainly the transition that happened shortly thereafter into brands-as-movies: the churning out of franchise blockbusters that has sucked the air out of the filmmaking industry. There is currently a tyranny of fandom that inoculates the franchises from critical discussion and that puts the "hater" label on their critics. I was a target of the Film Twitter hordes because I didn't champion Everything Everywhere All At Once, for example. I thought there were better movies this year like The Banshees of Inisherin or Tár." Source: www.nytimes.com

Fresh from his Oscar nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin, Irish actor Barry Keoghan is turning his attention back towards a dream assignment: a new feature retelling of the story of Billy the Kid. Keoghan’s American Animals director Bart Layton is aboard to direct the feature, produced by Element Pictures and RAW with Film4. “We’ve seen many versions of Billy the Kid on screen before,” Keoghan tells Deadline. “My interest was in trying to tell a version that breaks from the facade of that cool, calm, and collected gunslinger Billy the Kid that we’re all used to seeing. I wanted to humanize him in a way.” The project will lean into the Kid’s Irish ancestry and complicated childhood. Born in New York as Henry McCarty, he was orphaned at the age of 15 when his mother died and his stepfather abandoned him. His first arrest for robbery came a year later, and by the time he was 18, he was wanted for murder after an altercation in Arizona. His notoriety escalated from there, and he was 21 when Sheriff Pat Garrett shot him to death. Keoghan, who lost his own mother when he was just 12 years old and grew up in the foster system, says he understood the desperate choices McCarty made along the way. “I remember reading about him as a kid, but as we were digging into the project, there were so many things we discovered about his life,” Keoghan says. “There are so many eyewitness accounts, and lots of different versions of his story that didn’t add up but that contributed to the legend. He was running his whole life. I felt related to Billy in the sense of him being a mummy’s boy, but obviously, I took a different path, turning my circumstances into something positive rather than rebelling against them. Nevertheless, there’s a vulnerability to Billy that I think it’s important to bring, to understand him as a real person rather than the myth that he has become.” Source: deadline.com

In bringing the lofty language of Hegel down from the heavens, Alexandre Kojève offered readers a secular understanding of human action, which requires every individual to reckon with the inevitability of their own death, their own undoing. Perhaps most importantly, what Kojève understood was the extent to which we humans desire to exercise some control over how other people see us differently from the ways in which we see ourselves. According to Hegel, "On approaching the other it has lost its own self, since it finds itself as another being; secondly, it has thereby sublated that other, for this primitive consciousness does not regard the other as essentially real but sees its own self in the other." Whereas for Hegel freedom rested upon the ability to preserve one's difference, for Kojève it rested upon the ability to preserve one’s own identity at the expense of difference. Kojève’s reading of the Hegelian master/slave dialectic presents another form of contest between oppressor and oppressed, where mastery over another in order to master oneself becomes the means to equality, and ultimately justice within society. Source: aeon.co

In The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Martin (Barry Keoghan), has formed a father-son relationship with Steven (Colin Farrell) after the death of his own father. Martin’s dad died on the operating table under Steven’s care and it’s implied that such a dynamic formed due to the surgeon’s moral obligation. Martin insinuates himself into the Murphy family and reveals his true motives—to get revenge on Steven by forcing him to kill a member of his own family. Such an act will “balance” the act of killing Martin’s father. Even when he’s being “nice,” Martin oozes a bland sort of affected charm. He knows that Kim is a choirgirl, so one day he presents her with a musical note attached to a keychain. 

Kim succumbs to Martin immediately, instead of thinking that he could be an evil Eddie Haskell. This girl seems to find in Martin a romantic sense she had never witnessed within the sterile confines of her family. Actually, Martin comes to play the gentleman, refusing Kim's sexual offering at her bedroom. Keoghan is eerily capable to show a dangerous vulnerability throughout. Uncomfortable interactions and reveals—Steven’s reaction to Martin’s mother, or Martin when discussing death—are shown from a slight left profile view. Realizations—like Steven saying that Martin has “serious psychological issues” or Kim and Anna noticing that Martin can will them into sickness and health—are shot from a slight right profile view. Moments of guilt are also shot this way, and when characters reveal something, they’re usually shot from behind or largely out of frame. It all creates a spatial loop to disorient viewers. Source: www.brightwalldarkroom.com

Reflections on iconic films of last year

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE: The film’s simple message about the importance of family drew criticism for being predictable and a letdown after the elastic mayhem that led to it. The thing I didn’t understand is how you lose money running a laundromat, especially if you own part of the building. The cast in Everything Everywhere All at Once work is interesting. Michelle Yeoh is enormously charismatic, we see the return of Ke Huy Quan after these many years, the welcome antics of such disparate talents as Stephanie Hsu, James Hong, Tallie Medel, and Jenny Slate, even the pungency of Jamie Lee Curtis as an embittered IRS flunky—these add up to something new when set against the backdrop of franchise sequels, reboots, and the current mirthlessness of American filmmaking. The humor, though, is silly and second-rate. The googly eyes, the talking raccoon, the pet rocks at sunset, the send-off of 2001: A Space Odyssey—all those work against the cast instead of with it. There should be a moratorium on 2001 parodies at this point, and writer-directors like Kwan and Scheinert should know that. In a film that is, in the end, really about adult regret, these juvenile ideas from sketch comedy and music videos one after another reveal themselves as distractions. If the multiverse needs that much flailing and tinkering to come out the same as it always does, then I don’t believe in it and don’t need it. The Ramones understood this universal truth better than the Daniels: “Second verse same as the first.”

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT of course originated as a German novel written by Erich Maria Remarque about World War I published in 1928. It follows the journey of Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) on the Western Front of World War I. This film is a thorough treatise on the cyclical, streamlined lethality of war and the machinery that supports it, from its opening shot to its last, a stunning achievement from its director/co-writer Edward Berger. The depiction of the cycle through the military lives and experiences playing out directly onscreen serves to make the point that much more impactful than any overt anti-war dialogue or speech. We see Paul go from bright-eyed and enthusiastic to very sullen with a sunken and haunted face. It is through his appearance that viewers are physically shown how war makes monsters of men. Berger’s craftsmanship in this film is striking, turning the horrors of war into a visceral experience. Berger does this not just through gory battle scenes, but taking us through the full process of war, from the frontlines to the negotiating tables. It also touches upon the lasting legacy of war as we see how the insistence of the winning French side on humiliating the Germans will inevitably lead to the next Great War we all know followed soon after. The editing and cinematography serve the film’s message well, working in perfect concert and making the experience that much more impactful. Daniel Brühl’s Matthias Erzberger is keenly aware of the staggering loss of life, patiently trying to guide political leadership toward a ceasefire, keeping in reserve his desperation, aware of the stark reality that Germany has already lost. It’s a position that has yet to sink in for many of those around him. As the film’s end title cards remind us, WWI was fought over patches of ground hundreds of yards wide, with either side hardly advancing their position across the course of war. 

BABYLON: This end-of-cinema epic starts by dramatizing the old joke about the man who cleans up elephant shit at least being in show biz, a literalization of La La Land’s contention that the audience likes crap more than jazz. The idea that we need Damien Chazelle to tell us that movies “meant something” and are not a “low art” is absurd, a sure sign of a disconnection from the reality of the lives of film fans across the world. Maybe Chazelle never meets any of these fans. As a murky Mad magazine fold-out comedy, Chazelle’s movie achieves a sort of grandeur in evoking a silent era that is reminiscent of Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. It does this by imitating the work of filmmakers from the generation immediately before Chazelle’s, lifting ideas and scenes from Quentin Tarantino, Guillermo del Toro, Baz Luhrmann, even Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza. But it pretends it’s not doing this, claiming instead that Singin’ in the Rain is its touchstone, going so far as to reproduce the predecessor “Singin’ in the Rain” musical number from The Hollywood Revue of 1929, as if that is some kind of deep research. Its real cohort is disgruntled movies like The Big Picture, Under the Silver Lake or The Disaster Artist. Like Babylon, they are about the impossibility of achievement in Hollywood filmmaking, made by callow writer-directors who have tasted success and are afraid the supply is running out.

 

BLONDE: Australian director Andrew Dominik takes on 1950s American icon Marilyn Monroe in Blonde, miscasting Ana de Armas as a Marilyn ripped from the pages of Joyce Carol Oates' novel. The film is like Babylon in the way it demeans and befouls everything it touches, but Dominik is meaner and more lowdown than anything Damien Chazelle has ever encountered, including Tobey Maguire. Dominik’s Hollywood, unlike Chazelle’s, contains the pulsating viscera of surgery footage and has no love for the movies at all. That’s because Dominik is dead certain he is a better filmmaker than anyone Marilyn Monroe ever worked with. Blonde is a brain-damaged movie but, unlike Chazelle’s, it doesn’t induce laughter or pity. If this film had been directed by Andrea Dworkin it would still have been easier on men and on humanity. Specific dissections of “the blonde” are not new in the cinema. As out-there a director as Larry Buchanan made one Monroe biopic (Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn, 1989) and there was an Australian actress in the 1970s named Linda Kerridge who specialized in Marilyn imitations and seems to have lived as if she were Marilyn herself. I saw her playing Richard Lewis’s neighbor in an obscure movie called Diary of a Young Comic (1979) that it was way better than Blonde.

From Andy Warhol to Norman Mailer, Marilyn Monroe’s beauty and memorabilia have been the subjects of the creepy, insistent fascination of many weirdos. Dominik, with a big Netflix budget, has outdone them all, without thinking he’s one of them. He treats Marilyn like she’s the Barbie whose head Dawn Wiener tries to saw off with a cleaver in Welcome to the Dollhouse. In Blonde, Marilyn must suffer every kind of sexual predation or betrayal from every man she meets. Dominik reduces each of them to a lowest common denominator of American 1950s manhood, making most of them look like Richard Nixon, including Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale), Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody), and JFK (Caspar Phillipson, brought back from Pablo Larrain's Jackie). The film ends in a paroxysm of grubbiness, after many scenes of Marilyn puking and bleeding, with men waving at her, their mouths distorted in vulgarity. By then it is impossible to tell if the confusing and confused Dominik is attacking masculinity, Hollywood, or America. Paradoxically it is over the subway grate of his inevitable remake of the white skirt scene from The Seven Year Itch that it becomes clear what’s going on: he’s blowing smoke up our panties.

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN: Martin McDonagh, a writer always trying to be more of a director, starts with drone shots because Ireland's landscape is beautiful, and the film is set in 1923. McDonagh’s greatest strength as director is with his actors. The ensemble here—Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, and Barry Keoghan—are all exceptional in the old Abbey Theatre way. This dark film plays on the enduring appeal of Irish music while teaching a hard lesson, which is that there is a difference between empathy and niceness. Colin Farrell is especially good as a stupid and boring but pleasant man driven to violence by his best friend’s sudden coldness, which is also a form of violence. McDonagh literalizes it through Gleeson’s self-mutilation, while Farrell works himself up like a Hibernian peasant, seeing that Gleeson keeps steelier and gorier. Although Kerry Condon's character best represents the search for freedom, it is Barry Keoghan who adds the most to the movie’s truly unsettling vibe. 

Keoghan, who apparently invoked (unfairly) the wrath of Jeffrey Wells, is one of the strangest actors working today, jerks his performances wildly between “this guy is the greatest actor I have ever seen” and “this kid is getting a little too weird.” Playing a tragic figure in a film of tragic figures, Keoghan works against the distracting drone photography, same as he did in Dunkirk and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. How long he can keep doing that before either insanity or stardom claims him?

TÁR: The best film of 2022. Cate Blanchett delivers the performance of the year in writer-director Todd Field’s superb motion picture, a character study so piercing in its analysis and so precise in its details that many have believed composer-conductor Lydia Tár to be an actual person. Instead, she’s a marvelous movie creation: an artistic genius with a loving daughter, but also a manipulator going crazy. Tár is a rarity in contemporary cinema in that it’s a movie that matters beyond the multiplex, the sort of brainy fare that has inspired almost as many think pieces as straightforward movie reviews. Impressively, the film isn’t pro- or anti- anything. Rather, it trusts viewers enough to allow them to absorb, understand, and appreciate the complexities inherent in cancel culture, in identity politics, and in the perpetual battle to separate the art from the artist. Todd Field’s Tar breaks all the rules of conventional screenwriting. It begins with a long take dominated by dialogue in the service of one image – that of a supremely confident Lydia Tar (Cate Blanchett) painting a verbal self-portrait by describing her life as a celebrated conductor. She’s being interviewed on stage by The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik and is giving him an unashamedly intellectual rundown. The tone is so elevated and, at the same time, so elliptical that you start to feel as if you’re watching a biographical documentary. Or maybe a filmed live play. 

It certainly doesn’t look or sound like the kind of American movie that gets a cinema release these days. Tár cost $35 million and grossed $6 million; The Fabelmans cost $40 million and grossed $15 million; Babylon cost $78 million and grossed $15 million; Amsterdam cost $80 million and grossed $14 million. To Leslie cost <1 million and grossed $34.000. So for the most part, expect studio heads to crunch the numbers and decide that, while variety might be the spice of life, it’s the same-old same-old that will ultimately save cinema. Cate Blanchett immersed herself in every aspect of Tar’s character: her armouring of arrogance, her joy in the music she conducts, her damaging need to exert power and her vertiginous fall from grace. Blanchett deserved her Oscar for a lifetime performance. Source: thebaffler.com

Barry Keoghan: Untitled film with Jenna Ortega, Saltburn, Therapeutic Acting

Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye (Uncut Gems) is set to make his feature acting debut, teaming with Waves helmer Trey Edward Shults on an untitled film that also stars Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan. Plot details are being kept under wraps with the pic currently in production. Shults will direct from a script he co-wrote with Tesfaye and his producing partner Reza Fahim. Even though both Ortega and Keoghan have been weighing several offers following their big years, both made it clear they wanted this as their next project and following their commitments, the film was a go. Besides landing Ortega and Keoghan, Shults and Tesfaye also have assembled a below-the-line team that includes director of photography Chayse Irvin (Blonde). Jenna Ortega has been on a roll as of late, led by her Addams Family series, Netflix Wednesday, which has been renewed for a second season and is starring in Scream VI. Keoghan is coming off his Oscar-nominated supporting role in Searchlight’s The Banshees of Inisherin, which earned him a BAFTA win. He stars next in Saltburn, Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman. Source: deadline.com

Segueing seamlessly from the theatre of absurdity, Lanthimos presents a tale of mythical, methodical revenge that starts with an ironic chuckle and moves inexorably towards a silent scream. Taking its titular theme from the myth of Iphigenia, The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a deranged masterpiece, a wrathful tale of retribution and responsibility transposed from the stages of ancient Greece to the screens of 21st-century cinema. Colin Farrell plays heart surgeon Steven Murphy – wealthy, slightly world-weary and too fond of a drink. Steven lives in a grand, cavernous home with his wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman), daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy), and younger son Bob (Sunny Suljic). Their lives are materially rich, but emptiness prevails. The dialogue is theatrically mundane, delivered in the monochromatic rhythms of a trance state. Gradually, Martin inveigles his way into this picture-perfect family life, visiting the house, impressing the teenage daughter. Later, Steven meets Martin’s needy mum (a sharp cameo by Alicia Silverstone).

Lanthimos’s regular cinematographer, Thimios Bakatakis, accentuates the sense of dread as his cameras creep and crawl through hospital corridors, like the lurking spirits in The Shining – all low-angle prowls and ghostly high glides. Thunderous music cues (including bursts of Ligeti) crank up the cracked tone, ominous and screechy. Observing it all is Martin, brilliantly played by Barry Keoghan to combine the awkwardness of youth with the suggestion of unforgiving power, the bearer of projected parental guilt. Throughout, Lanthimos and regular co-writer Efthymis Filippou leave us tantalisingly uncertain as to whether this intense young man is the architect or messenger of forces beyond our ken. When awful truths are revealed, they are recited like cursed verses, conjuring a fable-like sense of fate, out of step with contemporary concepts of choice. It’s that clash between the farcical and the fearsome, which gives The Killing of a Sacred Deer its edge. As a doctor Steven plays God, literally saving people with his hands, but Martin is the ultimate foil, showing Steve just how powerless he truly is in the face of the unknowable. Viewers will doubtless have their own vastly differing reactions to this bizarre drama. Farrell said that making the film left him “fucking depressed”. Source: theguardian.com

Just to elaborate further on “Saltburn,” Emerald Fennell’s upcoming thriller starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi and Rosamund Pike. The film was test-screened in Culver City, California and the reactions have been wildly positive. Fennell directed the Sundance sensation, “Promising Young Woman,” in 2020. She went on to win a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, and was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Obviously, her follow-up comes with high expectations. Those expectations seem to have been met. Barry Keoghan carries the movie and is said to be flat-out great. The movie fully showcases his insane commitment as an actor. “He will shock you,” says a person who attended the screening. Everyone else is supporting, including Rosamund Pike. Carey Mulligan only has a few scenes, but makes a very strong impact with the limited time that she does have. Pike is said to have the best lines. The film, which is set in the early aughts, is being described as a Thriller/Drama. A significant amount of the plot takes place in college. The movie starts off as the school year is beginning during the late summer. “I don’t know how audiences will embrace this because there’s a lot of nudity and explicit scenes that will get them talking. I hope these scenes don’t undermine other aspects of the film. In my opinion this movie is drastically better than “Promising Young Woman,” so if that got nominated for best picture, best editing, best screenplay, it would be a shame if this didn’t. However, Emerald is for controversial endings. Not everyone will be happy, I fear.” Keoghan has already showed great promise in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “American Animals,” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” Source: www.worldofreel.com

BK Fan: Barry was a year older than me in high school. In the last three years I saw him, I thought he was very cute, he was quiet, he was friends with some of the popular boys, but he wasn't like them. His best friend, Harry, was infamous for dating lots of girls, he was a flirt. But Barry had only dated a few times throughout those years. He dated one girl for a long time, her name was Faye, and she had said some unflattering things about him, but everybody found out that wasn't true. Apparently he was actually upset that she'd broken up with him and tried to subtly ask her why. He wanted to apologize for whatever slight she felt he had done. The rumor was she felt uncomfortable that he was so upset, so she started saying he was an asshole. Barry said he wanted to be an actor or a boxer, and he was a huge comic book nerd. He had trouble with his older brother, and his family life had always been rocky and complicated. He was always a soft-spoken guy at class, and he struggled with his mental health too, but he didn't talk about it much. Source: wattpad.com

Barry Keoghan: My mother was from Summerhill—she was on heroin, and she died from it. My father had another woman. I grew up in foster care, and my granny raised me from when I was 12 on. Coming from the working class makes it hard enough to get into this game, but coming from foster care with no parents is even harder. I'm wild proud where I come from, because if I can fucking do that, then anyone can. It's nice coming from Summerhill, because you don't come from having everything, and what you do get, you appreciate it.

From 2017 to 2020 Barry Keoghan was in a relationship with Killarney native Shona Guerin, whom he had met on Good Friday in a Killarney pub in which she was working. The pair appeared on the Irish show Livin' with Lucy together in 2019 in which Lucy Kennedy stayed with them in their Los Angeles home.

In September 2021 Keoghan began dating Alyson Sandro, a dentist whose father is from County Cavan. A few months later, on Ireland's Mother's Day, 27 March 2022, he announced that the couple were expecting a child together, Brando, born on 8 August 2022. In March 2022, Barry Keoghan was confirmed as the new ambassador for the Barretstown children's charity and also helped open the charity's new Aladina Studio in Kildare. Keoghan and his family moved to Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, Scotland in November 2022.

-Larry Fitzmaurice: Did you learn anything from your grandmother as far as growing into being a man?

-Barry Keoghan: I'm good to women. I treat women with a lot of respect. That's probably from being raised by a woman—I hold her responsible for that. I treat women very good. I'd be lost without them. I thought I was going to be a boxer or something like that—I was into sports. When I was acting, I don't know, there was something about it—I can't pinpoint what it was. The perks of it are all great, but there's some other reason why I do it, it's so therapeutic—expression and stuff—so it's along the lines of that. [Irish playwright and filmmaker] Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father) was my mentor.

-Barry Keoghan: I'm an amateur boxer in the Celtic Core. It's something I do on the side.  I never got to meet my granddad. He was a doctor, a war vet, and he worked on the docks. Watching those movies of Paul Newman and Marlon Brando reminded me of him, and home, and how people talked to ladies and held their dresses. 

-Larry Fitzmaurice: Your two big roles were very opposed to each other thematically.

-Barry Keoghan: George (Dunkirk) is naïve and innocent, and Martin (The Killing of a Sacred Deer) is completely tormented, so it was fun playing with that range.  Source: geekireland.com

Schizophrenic gene code, Youth Risk Behavior

Patrick Tracey, author of Stalking Irish Madness: “I had to go to Ireland to find the roots of the disease and also to discover that Irish researchers are actually leading us out of the darkness. It was an Irish research team that first cracked the schizophrenic gene code, an enormous discovery. A DNA stew was cooking in the west of Ireland and it had to do with suffering. You can drive people into insanity. Anecdotally, visitors to Ireland in the 19th century wrote of the high levels of madness inflicting the nation. They were often stunned by its prevalence.  The rates of schizophrenia fluctuate in populations but the Irish levels red lined in the 19 century. Schizophrenia is not a case of snapping back and forth between different personalities — a common misconception. Schizophrenia is the hearing of voices, but the hallucinations can be seen, felt, and smelled as well as heard. It's fright night for life for many, an all-consuming terror that never ends.”

The Banshees of Inisherin is really about the heart of classic Irish culture. The absurd pride that has led to several civil wars, revolutions, and attempts at sedition in the last century. About how they’d like to have been home to the next Mozart, but would gladly cut off any ability for that to happen if such a situation required compromise. They’d like to think of themselves as nice folks, but that niceness is really just naivety and is destroyed by alcohol or honesty. The more sane Irish seem to leave for better options elsewhere, as Padraic’s sister does. It’s a fascinating movie because it uses cultural assumptions to tell a story about self-hate, especially masculine self-hate, that’s both sympathetic and disgusting. Source: medium.com

Derek Thompson has been writing on this subject for the Atlantic. His take on the latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), published earlier this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “American teenagers — especially girls and kids who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning — are ‘engulfed’ in historic rates of anxiety and sadness.” For Thompson, the best explanations are “the decline of physical-world interactions due to the prevalence of social-media use; the decline of time spent with friends; a more stressful world of mass-shooting events and existential crises such as global warming; and changes in parenting that might be reducing kids’ mental resilience.” The Covid-19 pandemic made an already bad trend worse. Jonathan Haidt of New York University has made similar arguments. According to Haidt, there has never been a generation as “depressed, anxious and fragile” as Generation Z, Americans born between 1997 and 2012. They have “extraordinarily high rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide and fragility.” By most objective measures, such as disposable income or access to entertainment, America’s teenagers and 20-somethings are better off than their parents and grandparents were at the same stage in life. According to the non-profit advocacy group Mental Health America’s 2023 report that 11.5% of American kids aged from 12 to 17 are “experiencing depression that is severely impairing their ability to function,” while 16.4% report “suffering from at least one major depressive episode in the past year.” 

This is a problem that is getting worse over time. According to Office Practicum, there was “a 27% increase in anxiety and a 24% increase in depression between 2016 and 2019” in this teenage group. Amazingly, 1 in 6 US children aged between 2 and 8 has been diagnosed with a mental, behavioral or developmental disorder. Here, too, the trend looks terrible. The share of children aged 6 to 17 who have ever been diagnosed with either anxiety or depression has been rising since the early 2000s. Between 2011 and 2021, the percentage of high school students who experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 28% to 42%; of those who seriously considered attempting suicide, from 16% to 22%; of those who made a suicide plan, from 13% to 18%; of those who attempted suicide, from 8% to 10%. “In 2021, 12% of high school students had ever taken prescription pain medicine without a doctor’s prescription or differently than how a doctor told them to use it.” According to Tanz et al. (2022), the number of overdose deaths among Americans aged 14 to 18 rose 94% from 2019 to 2020, and 20% from 2020 to 2021. True, the vast majority of these deaths were due to opioids and illicitly manufactured fentanyl, so this could just be a story of more potent drugs and more tragic mistakes, as opposed to deaths of despair. Two-thirds of those who died from overdoses were male, whereas the survey evidence points to a crisis of female mental health. 41% of teenage overdose victims had evidence of mental health conditions or treatment.

There’s only one glitch with this harrowing narrative: The reality is that there is a mental illness epidemic throughout the population. It’s not just the kids who are not all right. In 2019-2020, according to Mental Health America, 20.8% of adults were experiencing a mental illness, equivalent to more than 50 million Americans. Admittedly, the percentage of adults reporting serious thoughts of suicide is 4.8%, a quarter of the YRBS figure for high schoolers.  However, according to MHA, the rate of substance-use disorder is 15.4% for adults, whereas it is only 6.4% for young people. A staggering 32.6 million people have an alcohol use disorder in the US, nearly all of them adults. Of these, at most 50% overcome their addiction and achieve sustained abstinence, according to Sliedrecht et al. (2019). Most of the estimated 108,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021 were of adults. Contagion is the key concept if we are to understand our modern malaise, and you cannot understand contagion until you understand the structure of networks. 

In my 2017 book The Square and the Tower, I quoted Stanford University biology professor Deborah M. Gordon’s argument that online social networks were replicating on a vast scale many of the more insidious features of friendship circles in a middle school. I also cited research by Holly Shakya and Nicholas Christakis, who used data from 5,208 adults over two years, to argue that “the more you use Facebook, the worse you feel.” I even quoted Facebook’s own research, which came to similar conclusions about the effects of the overuse of social media by students. All that research has since been reinforced by studies such as Allcott et al. (2020), which concluded that using social media was a form of addictive behavior. The issue remains a battleground for social scientists, but I remain firmly persuaded that the creation of vast online networks greatly increased our vulnerability to contagions of the mind, including “mind viruses” of all kinds. Into this hyper-networked world came SARS-CoV-2, a genuine virus spread through the air rather than online and capable of causing severe illness or death. To a truly unprecedented extent, social life came to halt. Large proportions of the population were confined to their homes in what resembled mass house-arrest. The enduring mental health cost is being borne by sufferers of long Covid, an umbrella term for a variety of the lasting “sequelae” that afflict a significant minority of people infected by the virus. These include cognitive impairments such as memory loss, concentration problems — all colloquially known to patients as “brain fog.” Douaud et al. (2022) even found evidence that Covid infection was associated with changes in brain structure.

There is, however, another possibility that cannot be ruled out. With the number of therapists growing faster in the US than average for all occupations—and with mental health services booming in college campuses—young Americans surely have more access to psychotherapy than any previous generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings. At the same time, from my Baby Boomer vantage point, they seem to have a lot less of what we used to think of as fun. This is the part of the latest YRBS that attracted less comment. “Sexual behaviors,” the report states, “have been improving for all students, but especially for Black and Hispanic students.” The percentage of high schoolers who have ever had sex fell from 47% in 2011 to 30% in 2021. The share who have had four or more sexual partners was down from 15% to 6%; the share who were currently sexually active was down from 34% to 21%. 

In America today, the peer group pressure among teenagers is to get counseling rather than to get crazee. I feel sorry for Generation Z. Compared with being a teenager in the 1970s, being a teenager in the 2020s seems like no fun at all. But can there really have been as many suicide attempts by high schoolers in 2021 as the YRBS implies — which would be around 2.5 million? When I was seven years old, London was 86.2% White. Half a century of migration has reduced that share to 36.8%. You will look in vain for the race riots prophesied by Enoch Powell in his notorious “Rivers of Blood” speech in 1968. The big mental health pandemic of our time is the one that is driving tens of millions of adults to shorten their lives by suicide or by an addictive intake of alcohol and drugs that amounts to slow suicide. These are the unhappy people who took Slade literally. They just attract less media coverage than the Instagram-induced angst of Generation Z. Source: www.bloomberg.com