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Orientation Class

Orientation Class. An introduction to the subject and Louis Nowra’s Cosi. Administrative details. My name is: Danni Bunker My email address: teacherdanni1@hotmail.com or bunker.danielle.k@edumail.vic.gov.edu Where I live: In the Humanities office, second floor of the big building. .

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Orientation Class

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  1. Orientation Class An introduction to the subject and Louis Nowra’s Cosi

  2. Administrative details • My name is: Danni Bunker • My email address: teacherdanni1@hotmail.com or bunker.danielle.k@edumail.vic.gov.edu • Where I live: In the Humanities office, second floor of the big building.

  3. How to get organised for this class • Go through the unit outline/expectations/attendance. • It is important that you keep your notes in the most organised way possible- this is an exam that tests you on the entire year, so you need to ensure that you do not lose anything along the way! • Depending on whether or not you use your computers for not taking you should divide up sections of your notebook/or folders on your computer to look something like this:

  4. Organising your notes: • Section A: Reading and Responding- Cosi and The Reluctant Fundamentalist. • Section B: Whose Reality? The Player and A Streetcar named Desire. • Section C: Using Language to Persuade.

  5. An introduction to the play Cosi • Louis Nowra wrote the play Cosi • It was first performed in 1992 • It is set in 1971 Melbourne • The play is semi-autobiographical (Nowra based the play on some of his own experiences working in a mental asylum)

  6. Australia in the 1970’s An Introduction to the social context of Cosi

  7. What do we know about Australia in the 1970s? • Class brainstorm

  8. The decade in context: • The political and social unrest of the 1960’s carried over into the 1970’s. This mirrored social movement throughout other Western countries. • Widespread protest against Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam war led to the removal of troops in 1972. • Prime Minister Gough Whitlam instituted a range of Government reform in his three year tenure. In 1975 he was controversially dismissed. • The women’s rights, indigenous rights and environmental movements all made progress in the 1970’s.

  9. American and British influences • The Australian identity has continually evolved from over the decade, from that of a white British colony, to a diverse global culture. • In 1973, American dominance of the Australian music industry prompted the introduction of local content quotas on radio. • Government assistance led to a resurgence of the Australian film industry in the 1970s • Australian television was saturated with American programs in the 1970s, but local content steadily improved in quality and quantity. • Australian sport held fast to its British roots for many years, but has recently adopted the glitzy presentation and TV-friendly conventions of American sport.

  10. In Nowra’s own words (from the introduction of the play) • “Madness both frightened and attracted me” (p.xvi) • “This (looking at the time the play is set in) was 1971 and the era of R.D. Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist whose view of madness was oddly reassuring in a decade going crazy. One of his ideas was that labelling people mad was to stigmatise them, and that many mentally ill people should be allowed to go totally mad- once at rock bottom they would find themselves again” (p.xvi) • “This was also the era when chemicals began to control many of the wilder excesses of madmen” (p.xvi)

  11. The History of Mental Illness in Australia.

  12. Attitudes to mental illness can be seen in the language of ‘otherness’ Their actions are: • Crazy • Nutty • Insane • Barmy • Mad • Batty • People are labelled as: • Fool • Nitwit • Simpleton • Imbecile • Crackpot • Idiot • They belong in the: • Nut house • Loony bin • Funny farm • Psycho • Weirdo • Maniac • Moron • Cretin • Nutter

  13. Definitions of mental illness: • Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum, in mid 1800s, was the first Australian mental institution. Inmates often incarcerated because their behaviour seen to be a threat to society. Symptoms included: • alcoholism and homelessness • protracted sleeplessness • persistent headache • great depression or exaltation of spirits without sufficient cause • By the late 1800s, approximately one in every four hundred Victorian citizens classified as insane.

  14. Psychiatry has had a long history of subjecting patients to bizarre, dramatic and often barbaric procedures. Sometimes intended to restrain patients, but sometimes thought to cure specific conditions In the 1930s, insulin shock therapy introduced as an accepted treatment for depression and manic depression. At the height of its popularity, administered widely to institutionalised patients. • In the 1940s electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and frontal lobotomies introduced. Lobotomies were a form of brain surgery used to pacify patients - now regarded as barbaric. The use of Lithium salts (rediscovered in 1949 by Australian psychiatrist John Cade) - an attempt to control mania in chronically hospitalised patients. In the 1950s, antidepressant drugs arrived - used with a range of other drugs for sedative or restraining purposes; stimulants were used to ‘liven up’ patients with depression.

  15. Images of madness: • Look at the following images of ‘madness’. • How have they been portrayed by artists and filmmakers? • Why might they be seen in these disturbing ways? • Is ‘difference’ sometimes socially unacceptable? Why?

  16. This is what a ‘room’ in an 18th Century mental asylum looked like

  17. This is part of a 20th Century asylum How might environments like these affect the inmates?

  18. Underground sewer...? Larundel Mental asylum , Victoria; closed in 1990s

  19. These are some of the methods designed to control, restrain or cure the mentally ill

  20. Electro-convulsive therapy

  21. How it feels to the patient

  22. Cure or punishment? The effects of intensive shock therapy – Jack Nicholson in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest”

  23. ‘Productive employment’ for the mentally ill

  24. Occupational therapy Sue Sherman MLC

  25. Artwork by a mental asylum patient... Vincent Van Gogh

  26. Group therapy session One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

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