Josh Grant-Young
1761 – London. A woman is dragged into the infamous Bedlam asylum, a dark and dreary place where the (purportedly) insane of London are committed. Her madness, confirmed by a court prior to her being committed, is but a pretense to silence her forever. Within the cramped space of the asylum, where many denizens pace the shabby floor, she will find horror. But this horror does not come from the inmates with whom she is locked up, but rather the very society which condemns her to such a fate.
The asylum looms large in the history of horror.. From Dracula to the more recent television series American Horror Story: Asylum, it is a location which often inspires fear and anxiety in audiences. But why is this the case?
According to Troy Rondinone, in his book Nightmare Factories: The Asylum in the American Imagination (2019), audiences of horror still “live in the shadow of the asylum” – a reflection of our “historic and ongoing failure to treat and accept” people of mental difference, rooted in cultural assumptions about what constitutes ‘normal’ and ‘sane’ behaviour. Horror, on this account, has often played on these assumptions to generate chills in audiences through various stigmatizing visions of mental difference.
Yet, while the asylum has often been a symbol of this cultural failure, it also presents itself as a contested space, one where social critique is also possible. The asylum has come to set the stage for dramas which explore “utopian reforms, slavery, democracy, and the chaotic market… women’s rights, consumerism, civil rights, fascism and psychiatry” (Rondinone 274). What then might Bedlam (1946), a classic horror film, examine in its time and illuminate in ours? I argue, in this article, that Bedlam presents a historical case of the mistreatment of people of mental difference to reorient how we culturally, in the West, think about mental health. The horror of the film comes not from some grotesque caricatures of ‘insanity’, but rather from the excessive cruelty and malice shown to the inmates of Bedlam by the wealthy and predatory upper class who have turned the asylum into their private circus. While not without shortcomings in terms of its racial politics (an enduring problem in cultural explorations of mental difference), Bedlam is – for its time – a thoughtful meditation on the dehumanization of people of mental difference, and with fruitful lessons for the present.
Bedlam presents the chilling tale of a fictional asylum based on historical fact. In the opening scene of the film, an acquaintance of the eccentric Tory Lord Mortimer (Billy House) falls to his death during an escape attempt. Lord Mortimer, disturbed by this event, calls on Master George Sims (Boris Karloff), the head of the asylum, to explain. To win back the support of Lord Mortimer, Master Sims has his inmates put on a performance for the Lord and his close friends. Among the attendees is the young protégée Nell Bowen (Anna Lee), whose disgust at the exploitation of the patients in the performance spurs her on to advocate for reforms to the asylum.
Frustrated by her efforts, supported by both Whigs and Quakers, Lord Mortimer and Master Sims concoct a conspiracy to have Nell committed to the asylum by means of a rigged trial to determine her madness.
From the treatment of inmates to Nell’s rigged trial to confirm her insanity, Bedlam draws considerable information from the history of such institutions. In many ways, the true story is more terrifying than the film itself. Bedlam (known at various points as Bethlem Royal Hospital, St. Mary Bethlehem, and Bethlehem Hospital) is a real psychiatric hospital. Its history, as has been documented by Jonathan Andrews and Roy Porter, is littered with tales of mistreatment, deplorable conditions, and public viewings of inmates for entertainment.
Nell is committed to Bedlam
Further, a long history exists of women being involuntarily confined within asylums under false charges of insanity, including Elizabeth Packard, Hersilie Roy, and Mary Huestis Pengilly. These women, though their stories differ, were all confined and declared insane. They were victims (like Nell) of men who saw them as nuisances, threats, or too autonomous for their own good, and had to battle for their freedom from (per Nérée St-Amand and Eugène LeBlanc) “an unfair system” that surmised “women are hysterical, irrational, and without legal rights.” Like Nell, these women also became fierce advocates and symbols for change (St-Amand and LeBlanc 47).
Yet, as much as Bedlam speaks to past issues faced by people of mental difference, it also resonates with contemporary discussions in the horror community about the representation of mental difference in horror films and issues of stigma.
Contemporary horror films, including Lights Out (2016), Daniel Isn’t Real (2019), The Roommate (2011), The Visit (2015), and Split (2016), possess a propensity to depict mental difference as consonant with violent behaviour or monstrosity, depicting those who experience mental health conditions as dangers to the world around them. This comes after the slasher era’s obsession proliferation of the ‘meme of the escaped (male) mental ward patient’ (think Michael Myers of Halloween fame or Billy in the 2006 remake of Black Christmas) and the perceived threat of deinstitutionalization – per Jeffrey Bullins. Even before that, the ‘mad scientists’ of classic horror (Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Mabuse) threatened the communities around them in pursuit of nefarious plots.
Within this history, then, Bedlam is a relatively rare example of horror where – rather than appealing to various tropes of mental health conditions being associated with evil scientists, monstrosity, or violent threats to the wider community – the horror comes from the treatment of the ‘insane’ by the ‘sane.’. We, as audience, are to feel abhorred by the treatment of those locked within the asylum as they are threatened with violence and made to entertain the rich of 1700’s England.
One of the inmates, covered in toxic gold paint, made to entertain rich guests of Lord Mortimer
One of the early scenes of the film makes the appalling treatment of the inmates explicit. At Lord Mortimer’s party, Sims brings out his inmates to amuse the rich Tories. A young inmate (painted in toxic gold and dressed in clothes from antiquity) sings in front of the jeering audience of Tories the praises of Reason before succumbing to the poison within the gilding paint, collapsing dead. While this is one of the first sympathetic visions we get of the inmates of Bedlam, and of the cruelty of Sims and his patrons, it is far from the last.
Though terrified by the inmates of the asylum at first, Nell overcomes her fears and remains steadfast in her desire to seek justice for them – engaging in acts of kindness towards those within the asylum. Though dark and dreary, Bedlam is not the terrifying space that so many asylums of the horror genre often depict. The people she meets within Bedlam are harmless, paying her little mind and far more terrified of Sims’s wrath. Even the most potentially terrifying of them (Tom the Tiger, bound in iron and chains) is warmed by Nell’s concern for their wellbeing. Far from the sources of amusement and fear which Sims has portrayed them as, those held within the walls of Bedlam are neither fodder for comedic folly nor monsters to be feared. They are humans, worthy of dignity. It is only the violent threats and mistreatment from Sims that finally motivates the inmates to revolt against him.
Nell converses with Tom the Tiger in Bedlam
If Rondinone is right that the asylum is a stage for all manner of social issues and anxieties to be explored, Bedlam might be understood as a nod to the historical mistreatment of people within such institutional spaces. Further, I argue, it might motivate reflection on the genre’s contemporary overdependence on mental difference as a source for scares.
While mental health stigma continues to echo through public discourse and horror films, returning to Bedlam can remind us of how horror might be done differently. As Rondinone notes in relation to a 2006 study, audiences of film and television “frequently are confronted with negative images of mental illness, and these images have a cumulative effect on the public’s perceptions of people with mental illnesses.” Seeing stigmatizing images of dangerous villains or violent inmates leave audiences with the impression that mental difference is something to fear, not to sympathize with. It is also crucial to note that these same images and stigmas often deter people of mental difference from seeking help themselves, as persons of mental difference might infer that, if this is the popular attitude towards mental difference in our culture, it might motivate them to silence their own struggles and concerns (277).
When one considers that audiences will no doubt include people of mental difference, it is worth considering how horror creators might approach the inclusion of mental health into their narratives. While I don’t hold that creators have a responsibility to educate their audiences, it is worthwhile thinking about the message narratives send to audiences about mental health. If horror comes at the expense of misrepresenting mental difference to non-pathologized audiences and alienating or stigmatizing those of mental difference, no one benefits from such films.
Horror need not trade on negative representations of mental difference as such images continue to construct mental difference as some sort of dangerous aberration to be feared and (if necessary) locked away from the world. According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, drawing on research around the globe, people of mental difference are (1) statistically “no more likely to engage in violent behaviour than the general population,”(2) more likely to be victims of violence themselves, and (3) continue to experience “stigma, discrimination, and social exclusion that significantly impacts their lives” (CMHA Ontario).
Bedlam does not trade on images of dangerous and violent inmates who must be locked away for the safety of the public. Those within the walls of the asylum are sympathetically portrayed, giving opportunity for the film’s audience to confront the indignities and injustices faced by people with mental differences, both past and present. What is horrifying is the lengths to which a society will go to silence dissenting voices and to make spectacles and mockery of the vulnerable for the benefit of the rich.
Why do we continue to see films that portray mental difference as brutal, cold, mad and violent – threatening our communities in the form of serial killers or monsters? I have no definite answer to this question, but perhaps it is time to – as horror fans – reflect on why these visions of threatening mental difference endure within the genre.
While I have suggested Bedlam engages with a progressive critique of the history of the treatment of people of mental difference, the film is, like many works of classic film, not without its problems. Rondinone rightly notes in Nightmare Factories that there is – in film writ large – a lack of representation of people of colour in films about asylums, as well as the stories we tell about them in history and the wider popular imagination. While Elizabeth Packard was a prominent figure in advocating for the rights of women, her public statements about her experience as a type of enslavement more painful than that of African Americans in the wake of the American Civil War complicates her legacy. Bedlam, while concerned with the humanizing of (white) people of mental difference, has a sole Black character named Pompey (Frankie Dee) – a child whose only role in the film is comic relief. While in many ways Bedlam is a thoughtful film that breaks with much of horror history, it is important to note its failings as well, which are tied to larger issues of the erasure of people of colour from the broader cultural history and representation of psychiatric institutions.
That said, Bedlam can demonstrate that, rather than rely on old and harmful tropes in the genre which demonstrably increase stigma against people of mental differences, horror might instead pursue a more palpable source of fear: those who exploit such stigmatizing perceptions for their own ill-gotten gains. It is frightening without relying on the cheap thrills of casting mental difference as the villain, turning the critical gaze of the audience on itself to reconsider our culture’s presuppositions about mental difference. Scholars and fans alike continue to explore new ways of reading horror as a medium for exploring mental health in greater depth. Yet, some problems (like stigma in our wider culture) still linger, requiring change. As Rondinone suggests, “Art can inform change, even when we know it’s just art” (277). We might look back to Bedlam as one early step in film towards that change.
Works Cited
Andrews, Jonathan. The History of Bethlem. Routledge, 1997.
Bullins, Jeffrey. “The Meme of the Escaped (Male) Mental Patients in American Horror Films.” Mental Illness in Popular Culture, edited by Sharon Packer, Praeger, Santa Barbara, CA, 2017, pp. 13–23.
“Violence and Mental Health: Unpacking a Complex Issue.” CMHA Ontario, CMHA Ontario, https://ontario.cmha.ca/documents/violence-and-mental-health-unpacking-a-complex-issue/.
Porter, Roy. Madmen: A Social History of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors & Lunatics. Tempus, 2006.
Rondinone, Troy. Nightmare Factories: The Asylum in the American Imagination. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019
St-Amand, Nérée, and Eugène LeBlanc. “Women in 19th-Century Asylums: Three Exemplary Women; A New Brunswick Hero.” Mad Matter: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies, edited by Brenda A. LeFrançois et al., Canadian Scholars’ Press, Toronto, ON, 2013, pp. 38–49.
