July 27, 2014

MaKenzie Beck

Extra Credit Essay: Hysteria

Behind Hysteria

Ted Lavine’s video “Hysteria” is a non-linear story that follows the random motions of a seemingly insane young women. This video is both compelling and confusing because it gives the viewer a chance witness something unusual as well as analyze the meaning.

In the video, through a compilation of out of order clips, the viewer sees a young women running around a room and playing in the bed covers almost looking like a lunatic, blowing up a balloon that eventually pops and washing her face with cream in the bathroom while skipping from the process of a older women cleaning the floor and we see laundry being done. The choppy back and forth of the video compels the viewer, and tends to make the viewer feel confused and unsettled. But when dissecting the video and placing it into a linear form one is able to see past the confusion to new meaning. One way to place the events of the video would be in this order: the young women, main character of the story, is jumping around barefoot on a hardwood flooring of a bedroom. She then begins blowing up a balloon until it is so full it pops and the pieces are scattered on the floor around the her toes. She is then in the bathroom franticly washing her face with cream, she stares at her reflection in the mirror, and begins to smile. The next clip would be the young women walking down the hall and entering a bedroom where she begins to wildly run around, jumps on the bed and rolls around underneath the covers all while laughing hysterically for no apparent reason. The young women then seems to become agitated, she breaths heavy and starts pulling at her hair, neck, arms and clothing, unable to satisfy the issue in her mind as the sounds (images) of cleaning housework surround her.

The concept of hysteria is often identified as “an uncontrollable outburst of emotion or fear, often characterized by irrationality, laughter, weeping,etc.”1 this characterization is seen in the young women in Levine’s video, as she is shown to laugh for no visible reason, but is also seemingly uncontrollable and her emotions change with outbursts. A further look into the concept of hysteria helps one understand that up through the nineteenth century, it was a common medical diagnosis for womens and that the symptoms often included “faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, ... shortness of breath, irritability... and "a tendency to cause trouble"2, But it was later decided that hysteria, was actually just a way to for medical professionals to refer to a woman's sexual frustration. 3

This is why I placed Lavine’s video in the order I did, I felt that the events related to each other allowed the viewer to understand the young woman's sexual frustration. The balloon popping in the beginning had the effect of pushing the women into a “fit”. While cleaning her face in the bathroom she think of the balloon popping and visualizes the climax of intercourse. Then as she wildly goes about jumping on the bed and playing in the covers it is as if she is envisioning and going through the motions of coitus (think of her interaction with the camera as her partner). Then when she becomes agitate by the surrounding sounds of housework it isn’t really the housework bothering her but the built up sextual frustration she hasn’t been able to release.

Both the video in its nonlinear original form and my linear plot interpretation cater to the understanding of hysteria, the video introduces how a hysterical women is perceived, and my addition helps one understand reason a woman becomes hysterical.

Cited Work

Levine, Ted. Hysteria

May 6, 2010

http://vimeo.com/11518555

1) Dictionay.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hysteria?s=t