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Keep Your Head in the Gutter: Engendering Empathy Through Participatory Delusion in Christian de Metter’s Graphic Adaptation of Shutter Island

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Abstract

This paper argues that the graphic adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island utilizes the medium to evoke an affective participation and investment from the reader. It explores the ways the graphic novel overcomes problematic representations of mental illness in the popular film version. Drawing on graphic fiction theory, I contend that readers’ engagement in and construction of the story between panels, in the “gutters,” allows them to participate in the protagonist’s persecutory delusion. Additionally, I draw on Foucault’s conceptualizations of the medical gaze and historical figurations of madness connected to water in order to demonstrate the mechanism by which the reader is placed in a dual subject position, becoming both observer and observed. In this capacity, I suggest that graphic fiction provides a unique experience to engender empathy for psychiatric illness.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Susan Zieger for her advice and comments on numerous versions of this paper. I would also like to thank Mary Servitje for her help with the psychopharmacological research and initial idea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, University of California, Riverside, 900 University Ave., Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    Lorenzo Servitje

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  1. Lorenzo Servitje
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Correspondence to Lorenzo Servitje.

Additional information

The eight captions accompanying the SHUTTER ISLAND illustrations are from pp. 28, 43(2), 65, 66, 102, 108, 120 from SHUTTER ISLAND GRAPHIC NOVEL by CHRISTIAN DE METTER and ADAPTATION BASED ON THE NOVEL by DENNIS LEHANE. Copyright © 2003 by Dennis Lehane. English text copyright © 2009 by Tokyopop Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

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Servitje, L. Keep Your Head in the Gutter: Engendering Empathy Through Participatory Delusion in Christian de Metter’s Graphic Adaptation of Shutter Island . J Med Humanit 36, 181–198 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-013-9260-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-013-9260-6

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