"madness" Research In The United States

A film can directly reflect the social situation of the country, even the national psychology. There is a kind of videos which reflect the margins of society——madness is becoming a theme of concern in all kinds of films in the U.S.Such films are trying to explore people’s mind and reveal the despair and madness of the American who lives in the post-industrial era with Language of the camera.This paper will select the American films which’s protagonists are madmen since the1960s as the object of study, the text read, psychological analyze and Ideological criticism as research methods. There are three purposes of this study:first, finding out of the experience used and deficiencies that exist in the development of American film; second, cancelling the problems reflected in American movies, such as aesthetics, popular psychology, culture and other social problems; then, providing a mirror for Chinese film and sociality.This paper is divided into three parts:the introduction, main part and epilogue.The introduction is divided into two parts. First part is mainly explaining the causes of choosing American madmen-films since the1960s, and the significance of the study; then, canceling research ideas and methods which will be involved; last, adding some supplements may be doubt. The second part will define concept of madness according to relevant literatures. Based on that, I will try to define concept of madmen-films from the dual perspective of diachronic and synchronic with combinations of psychology, psychoanalysis and Foucault’s theory. At the end of this part, I will analysis madmen-films from the diachronic perspective, so that sort out the progressive context of American madmen-films.The main part includes three aspects.The first chapter will research the types of American madmen-films since the1960s with psychoanalytic theory. What’s more, I will select some representative movies from each type for specific text analysis. And this part is divided into three categories:first, the type of indulgencing id; second, the type of Contradiction with id and ego, superego; third, the type of conflict with multiple personality. The second chapter will criticize object of study of this paper with Western Marxist theory. The third chapter discusses the aesthetic value of American post-modern madmen-films. And, this part also divided into two parts, The first part is try to find out the origin of it’s Aesthetic feeling with spirit of the analysis, reception aesthetics. In second part, I want to expound a significant aesthetic features:paradox of this paper’s object of study. And it embodied in three aspects. Firstly, the paradox forms of skills: orderly madness; secondly, the paradox of the characters:the evil goodness; thirdly, the paradox of theme:rational irrationality.The epilogue will summarize this paper.