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Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Exploring the Use of Isolated Expressions and Film Clips to Evaluate Emotion Recognition by People with Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: May 15, 2016
Adolescent Daughters and Ritual Abjection: Narrative Analysis of Self-injury in Four US Films
1Department of Fine Arts & Communication Studies, University of South Carolina Upstate, 800 University Way, Spartanburg, SC, 29303, USA. wbareiss@uscupstate.edu.
Abstract:
Media representations of illnesses, particularly those associated with stigma such as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), not only define health conditions for mass audiences, but generally do so in ways that are consistent with dominant ideologies. This article examines the construction of non-suicidal self-injury as practiced by female adolescents and young adults in four US films: Girl, Interrupted, Painful Secrets, Prozac Nation, and Thirteen. The methodology used to examine the films' narrative structure is Kenneth Burke's dramatism, while Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection informs the analysis. On one hand, a paradigmatic reading suggests that the films frame self-injury as resistance to repressive maternal domination of female adolescents. On the other hand, syntagmatic analysis reveals a privileged response to NSSI in the form of pacification administered by psychotherapists functioning as the return of the phallic-mother fantasy.
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