The Mental Illness Manifesto: A Rambling, Sleepless Rant

If you're prone to either paying attention to frivolous news from Hollywood or enjoying the schadenfreude from a famous person's downfall, or both, you may have heard that Tom Cruise's production company was dumped by Paramount Pictures. (For a nice change of pace, I'm linking to a CBC article. Canadians probably have to see American-made news all the time, so we'll switch it around.)

Now, all of you here, and most people who write about entertainment news and that sort of crap for a living, are probably thinking to yourselves, "Well, duh. Didn't you see him jump on the couch?"

I'm going to say again that I have no idea why jumping on a damn couch is such a huge freaking deal. If I had Tom Cruise's kind of money and fame level, I'd do whatever I damn well wanted to do, and if that included being exuberant on nationally syndicated talk shows, then I see no reason for that to stop me. And you can tell me that the couch was a symbol of all of his excesses, and blah blah blah, and I'll ask: what excesses? What has he done from a behavioral standpoint that's so bad?

So keeping in mind that Cruise's antics over the last year, which people mindlessly classify as "bizarre" or "hysterical," aren't really that important, I'm going to posit that maybe, just maybe, Cruise is being punished for his criminally irresponsible attitude toward psychiatry and mental health in general. I don't really feel like linking to something or summarizing it, because most people probably know what I'm talking about. But to me, that is what he's done that's made me dislike him. That is why he's a Class A Asshole, and I'd like to think that his production deal wasn't renewed because he's displaying a bigotry that is all too common in today's society. I often think of homosexuals as the final minority group that is overtly and legally discriminated against, but people with mental illnesses definitely fit into that category too. (Women and racial minorities of all sorts are regularly discriminated against, of course, but at least that's technically illegal.)

Of course, that affects me a lot more personally than gay rights, because people with mental health problems happens to be a minority of which I am a part. So, because I'm feeling fiesty right now, despite being exhausted, I am going to stand up (figuratively speaking, I suppose) and say this, and I encourage others like me to do the same:

I am a victim of mental illness, and Tom Cruise and people who think like him can go fuck themselves.

Now, although Tom Cruise does make a fine poster/whipping boy, there are some problems with that. First, we need a better term than "victim of mental illness." Then, to balance out the inevitable PC-ness of whatever we come up with there, we need to take a page from the homosexual playbook and steal the bigots' derogatory term and embrace it. I've known lots of gay people who refer to themselves as "faggots" or "queers," so maybe we can start proudly referring to ourselves as "lunatics" or "nutjobs" or "basketcases."

Hmm... we've got our work cut out for us there.

Second, we need a short and memorable term for people who discriminate against us. Something that fits in perfectly alongside "chauvanist," "racist," and "homophobe." We can't say "Tom Cruise and people who think like him" every time, and way too many people qualify as "ignorant morons" for different reasons to use that.

But this is a battle that should be fought. Some day I would like to be able to ask my boss at work whether or not my health benefits cover psychiatrists and therapists without him filing a mental note that I am "potentially unstable" or something. Or, when somebody asks, "Where are you going?" to be able to answer truthfully that I'm going to a psychiatrist or therapist rather than rack my brain to remember whether or not I used the dentist as an excuse with that person recently. I suppose it's a personal battle as much as a societal one, because I could easily tell the truth in those situations. But the point I'm making is that anticipating the judgement of other people shouldn't have to be a factor. You know, kind of like how gay people can be "open" or "in the closet," but are still subject to the judgement of society at large.

I guess I'm working on being the mental health equivalent of more "open" and less "closeted."

Of course, the difference between having a mental illness and being gay is that the latter can be a celebrated point of pride, while the former is classified as an "illness" for a reason. We'll never be proud of our conditions, and would rather not have them at all, and often despise the fact that "normal" people will never know how we experience things.

Anyway, to bring things back around to the starting point, Tom Cruise wasn't dumped because of his ignorance and bigotry, nor his "disturbing" behavior. He was dumped because movie executive idiots don't think that people will go see his movies anymore. Money trumps everything else.

If it wasn't so early (might as well be "late," for all the sleep I got), I would try to organize this into something cohesive. But I'm letting it sprawl out, because I feel like it.

At any rate, my final thought is: fuck Tom Cruise. (And, you know, people who think like him.)

EDIT: As it turns out, Liz Spikol made almost the exact same point a few days ago. Oops.