Mental Illness In Hindi Cinema: A Case Study Of 15 Park Avenue

Abstract

One of the accesses to information for a large number of audiences, today, is the media and visual texts. These include movies, advertisements on television, soap operas, and furthermore. These visual texts provide a variety of information which also includes sensitive information, if not cautious, the sensitive information can be incorrectly represented and misinformed. The entertainment media has been immensely credited for providing information regarding mental illness; however, it has been heavily criticized for inaccurately depicting such important issues (Owen 655).

In this paper, the movie 15 Park Avenue (Sen Bohra 2005) has been chosen to understand how schizophrenia has been portrayed. The movies is written and directed by Aparna Sen and produced by Bipin Vohra.Konkona Sen, Shabana Azmi, Waheeda Rehman, Dhritiman Chatterjee, and Rahul Bose are in lead roles. The movie explores the relationship between two sistersMitali and Anjali. Mitali (Konkona Sen) has been depicted to be schizophrenic and her sister Anjali (Shabana Azmi) tries to face and overcome the hardships she faces in taking care of her sister.