Luke Cage Falls into the Therapist Seduction Trap

I’m neurons-deep into Marvel’s Luke Cage on Netflix, and I’m loving this brooding, cinematic, contemporary (and socially conscious blaxploitation-style) series. I adore the Harlem/Hell’s Kitchen Marvel universes of Jessica Jones and Daredevil and I was thrilled to hear Power Man would be highlighted in his own series. Not to mention the return of series-linking pseudo-heroine Claire Temple played by the amazing Rosario Dawson. Dawson previously pissed me off as one of ‘the fallen’ therapists who entangles erotically with my favorite onscreen ‘mad-man’ in Danny Boyle’s Trance. However, she’s unarguably uber-talented and I love her in these shows.

My umbrage with Luke Cage ala Netflix is the warping of the character of Reva Connors. In the comics, Reva is one corner of a love triangle between Luke/Lucas and his lifelong frenemy Stryker (there’s a Stryker in every corner of Marvel, they’re like Starbucks.) Reva is set into the role of prison therapist in the Netflix series, responsible for facilitating process groups and working with prisoners. Reva and Carl Lucas (Luke Cage/Power Man’s given name) strike up rapport which quickly becomes unbounded.

This is that achingly overused relational dynamic of client/patient/prisoner and therapist. I’ve prattled-on about this a couple times, but dammit it just keeps coming up! The magic of the confirmation bias is that as soon as you’re looking for proof of your own assumptions you’ll find it in abundance! My bias is that this characterization of therapeutic alliance is tremendously tired at best and harmful at worst. Therapy and mental health treatment is chocked-full of stigma, and popular culture depictions of therapists as sexually predatory and ethically unconscious only fuels that further. I’d love to live in a world that doesn’t fear sitting with someone with legit training and exploring vulnerability as a strength-promoting process. We’re working towards that, and we’ve not arrived. Maybe we never will.

I wonder what lead the Luke Cage Netflix writers to head down this path with Reva Connors. Her importance to Luke could have been entirely retained as she exists in the comics, and the complicated relationship with Stryker would have been all the more developed. What drove those retelling this beloved story to make Reva-the clinician who is ethically responsible for Cage’s mental health-decide to upend her career, break her ethics code and flee with an AWOL prisoner, innocent or not?! It’s a curious question, and it’s ever more curious that I find myself asking this same question over and over again.

 

Kooky Quacks in Marvel & DC: Harley Quinn & Ella Whitby

I’ve previously discussed toxic therapists and the common depiction of mental health professionals as unethical maniacs. This trope transcends film and is reflected in the comic book universes of lifelong rivals Marvel & DC. It can’t be expected that comic characters will be especially vanilla, lest they fail in their primary premise of escape, fantasy and supernatural seductiveness. As a comic appreciator (strongly Marvel-leaning to be transparent) I find the conceit of the crazed psychiatrist especially curious.

Once the shrink now the shrunk, Harley

In realistic film and television formats the transgressive psychiatrist character is especially insidious as it plays upon the common fears of authority and expertise. Those fears, when reinforced, quietly cultivate and perpetuate a culture of avoidance and shame around mental illness. There’s plenty of conversation in my professional orbits regarding the apparent elevated prevalence of PTSD in the US versus other developed countries. This is strongly argued to be a culture-bound phenomenon based in the fear-shame-avoidance cycle. Our forms of storytelling are not immune, and in fact can be argued as the foundation of our social narratives. Mass media is the modern master of narrative, and often the [unfortunate] primary modality of public health education.

In comics (and their respective film adaptations) the cuckoo mental health professional can be seen through a more comic, hyperbolic lens. I tend to take slightly less umbrage to this archetype as it occurs within utterly unrealistic alternate universes where effectively everyone is totally batshit mental and the laws of nature are routinely moot. My ‘favorite’ mad mental health professionals occur in the canon of on-again-off-again frenemies Marvel and DC in the forms of Dr. Ella Whitby (Marvel/Deadpool earth 616) and Dr. Harleen Quinzel (DC Batman/Suicide Squad etc.) Of course it’s no secret that these two bitter bedfellows essentially copycat each other decade-after-decade.

you cray Dr. W

I happen to be a well-grounded Feminist who doesn’t spend a great deal of time soapboxing about social justice just to hear the sound of my own fury, and it does smack of a bit a’ the ol’ mysogyny that both these troubled characters are cis-female, blond-bombshelly, gullible and quick to become dangerously smitten with their most acutely crazed clients. It’s almost as though the expert-becomes-submissive is a sexualized fantasy in this format. Then again, based on most media characterizations, female therapists are supposed to be sultry sex-kittens who will whip off their specs, drop their silky hair from its matronly bun and insist on some ‘sexual healing’ as the proper intervention for your emotional malaise. >cue hacky seventies porn riff<

If you’re not familiar with the stories of Harley and Ella I strongly suggest absorbing them into your geek-lexicon whilst simultaneously sucking on a big fat grain of salt regarding their profession. I assure you that I’ll never go rogue for a client and collect their post-regeneration body parts in my freezer. I’ll also never decide to take up ‘whack-a-bat’ as a recreational sport. I will, however, bewitch your mind and incept you to do my more banal bidding such as taking out the rubbish bin and scooping the cat box. >wink<

 

More fun shit coming soon!

Stay tuned for the following topics to come!

Scare Tactics: the monster of mental illness in horror films

X-Machina: Psychological super powers, trauma & the X men

Mad, Mad Marvel Universe (MCU & Netflix)

LGBTQ mental health in film & television

DC Does Darkness: Harley Quinn, Joker & Batman of the Frank Miller era

Toxic Therapy: tired, transgressive treatment depictions

Mad Mac: James McAvoy, my modern master of onscreen ‘madness’

Drawn That Way: Archer, Futurama, Bob’s Burgers

Space Crazy: star trek, Firefly, Hitchhiker’s, Red Dwarf & beyond!

Get Schwifty: a love song for Rick & Morty

 

The Girl On The Train & the trope of the barren lunatic

This is a topic near and dear to my heart. I’ve been an open advocate for dialogue about fertility issues as a woman who has suffered the identity-altering trauma of inability to recreate life. So it was with mouth agape that I investigated the novel upon which the October 7 release The Girl On The Train is adapted. Author Paula Hawkins tells the tale of a 30-something divorcee turned drunkard whose life spirals out of control after she discovers her inability to conceive a child. Gladly there’s more to this tale than meets the eye for certain, and it throws into sharp relief a common trope in the narrative of mental illness; the assumed ‘madness’ of a woman who cannot (or chooses not to) have children.

I’m reminded of a moment in the sci-fi missed high-five Prometheus when Noomi Rapace’s character Dr. Shaw queries her partner and fellow scientist regarding her infertility “I can’t create life, what does that say about me?”

Noomi Rapace as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw in 2012’s Promethius (Scott Free)

This is part of a larger narrative of the worth of women, and people of all gender identities, who cannot reproduce in the privileged manner assumed intrinsic to humankind. Frequently characters missing fertility privilege or choosing not to procreate are depicted as jealous, unstable, relationally deficient and emotionally dodgy. Crazy cat lady, anyone?

Black Widow is my spirit animal in this tribe. Natasha Romanov is a clever, tactical, skilled BAMF who busts glass ceilings everywhere she treads. Yet even BW gets treated with tokenizing, devaluing energy when the trauma of her forced sterilization at the hands of her trainers is revealed. We briefly glimpse her as a victim rather than a powerful survivor whose value as a woman isn’t lessened by her loss.

Loss of fertility, child loss, abortion and miscarriage are deep traumas that don’t automatically lead survivors towards mental illness. As with all traumas, healing is possible and sickness is preventable. If we are telling folks that these losses are destined to be their own personal highway to hell, we set people up for investment in defeat and hopelessness. I think we can be a little more clever and creative and not defer to fearmongering about how folks will handle their trauma.