Meaningless Laughter Accompanying Behaviours Acted by a Schizophrenic in Canvas movie
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In the example, the aggressive behaviour is clearly shown in the bold italic words. In this scene, Mary gets hallucination which influences her to behave
violently. She wants to be alone and no one can approach her. However, as her husband, John tries to calm her down. Unfortunately, Mary does not like to see the
way John orders her. In fact, she considers that John is one of people who try to threaten her. Therefore, she does not want to follow his instruction.
Mary holds a knife to defend herself, and then, she directs it to John’s face. She wants to protect herself so that there is no one who can harm her. Thus, it is
clearly seen that Mary’s aggressive behaviour happens since she feels insecure, afraid, and panic. Therefore, the phenomenon of aggression may mostly occur in
schizophrenic people. This behaviour happens as the result of their disorganized feelings.
2 Painting
The second rank is painting as the phenomenon of other deviant behaviours. It occurs 3 times which is out of the total of 19 occurrences. This
behaviour shows Mary’s hobby. She is fond of painting. Through her artwork on canvas, she can express what she feels and thinks. Actually, painting is a normal
activity which people can do as a medium to get relax and pleasure. However, painting will have a different function when it is created by a person with mental
illness. As stated by Lestjed and Nielsen 2006:10, painting, sculpting, and writing are not only used for expressing feeling, but those activities can also help
a person with mental illnes to organize his or her way of thinking. In this case, a person with mental illness, especially a schizophrenic creates an artistic
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expression to get rid of his or her anxiety and depressive thoughts. For this reason, in Canvas movie, Mary often paints on canvas to make her feeling better. In the
beginning of the movie, she tries to paint the same scene, a beach and a lighthouse. She also tries to draw her son’s face since she attempts to connect with
the past memory when she is able to be a mother to Chris. The datum below shows how important painting is. It also shows that
Mary loves drawing her son’s face. In a living room, she is still trying to practice her regular television class
of portraits. In her canvas, she draws her son’s face. She thinks that it can make her comfort when painting.
Chris : Hi Mom Mary : Oh hi Oh I missed you by hugging and laughing
Did you have fun? Chris : Yeah.
Mary : Good.
Datum no. 01 LVS1
The above example shows how much Mary loves painting. She likes painting since the artwork reflects the memory between her and Chris. When
Chris comes home from his holiday, suddenly she feels surprised because she does not expect it. Then, she asks him to sit well, in order to be an object of her
painting. Another example of painting can also be seen in the following datum. It
shows that the painting becomes a necessary thing for her. John : What do you say we get some turkey?
Chris : I want stuffing. John : Good stuff
Mary : Yeah, me too Lets go Do you like my painting? She brings her painting in everywhere she goes
Chris : Yeah.