As a MindFreedom alert notes, Ray Sandford is a real human being who is receiving forced electroshock. Michael Shannon is an actor who has been nominated for an Academy Award for “Best Supporting Actor” for playing an electroshock survivor in the film Revolutionary Road.
Only about 20 news sites currently mention the following at this time, according to a Google news search.
But the film Revolutionary Road includes a character who is a survivor of forced electroshock.
Thirty-seven (37) forced electroshocks, to be exact.
Actor Michael Shannon has been nominated for “Best Supporting Actor” and may win a 2009 Academy Award for playing an electroshock survivor. His character, John Givings, is a mathematician who says his forced electroshock eliminated his ability to do higher level math.
John is a sort of “truth teller” in the brutal film directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, based on a 1961 book by Richard Yates.
Says John, about the over-conformity of the mid-1950’s, ““Plenty of folks are on to the emptiness. It takes real guts to see the hopelessness.”
Much has been made of the fact that Shannon received the only Academy Award nomination related to this film, even though he only appears twice. Some critics feel his performance steals the show.
It is indeed dramatic to have an electroshock survivor break the silence about robotic obedience in a 1955 suburb.
But today it is 2009.
Ray Sandford, by sorry coincidence, has also had about 37 forced electroshock, in a suburb of Minneapolis in Minnesota.
Ray’s story is also dramatic.
And we have pointed out several times, he’s a real human being.
it’s doubtful that the media will pick up on the real-life connection between Ray and the film Revolutionary Road.
After all, when the film Beautiful Mind was nominated, the media examined and re-examined various obscure ways the film inaccurately portrayed reality.
But only author Robert Whitaker was able to break the silence in a single mainstream news article, in USA Today, about how the main difference with reality, is that the real-life protagonist of that film was able to evade powerful psychiatric drugs for years, and reached some level of recovery anyway. The mathematician hero in real life felt the neuroleptics would destroy his mind, and based on modern medical information about neuroleptic-induced brain damage he was correct.
Unfortunately, as the makers of Beautiful Mind apparently explain in their DVD commentary, director Ron Howard apparently caved to psychiatric industry advisers, and so the film now implies that the protagonist’s recovery is because he takes ‘newer medications,’ which implies — for those in the field — the infamous and discredited atypical neuroleptics, also known as antipsychotics.
Once more it’s up to the grassroots to create its own media. For some reason mainstream media have some kind of “reality radar,” and avoid news stories that may imply there is something fundamentally wrong in this wonderful society. Consider how mainstream media missed the story of the world economic collapse, before it happened. Mainstream media is now missing the story of massive scandal and corruption in the mental health industry.
For more info about Ray see
For an article about how the media ignored distortion in the film Beautiful Mind go here:
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