It's important to note three things about the movie Gaslight in order to understand gaslighting:
1. there are two movies, both are similar. The second though starts at a time later, after a mysterious murder has occurred. The heroine in movie two is leaving London to leave the scene and life with the murder.
2. the theme is a psychopathic male, a gaslighter. Psychopath, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Machiavelianism (gloating and joyous at the killing, bleeding and suffering of others). All have no regard to the humanity, welfare, or outcome of the other person or persons.
(We describe all three, as well as how others become both conned then willing participants in the inhuman crime. Think of Hitler and his conning of hundreds of thousands of countrymen enlisted to a: gas and kill 7 million Jews, and 1 million Gays and Infidels (those in disagreement with Hitler, SS, Hitler's Henchmen.
In general, while viewed as the same brain and psychological disorder of lack of feelings, lack of compassion, and lack of remorse, it's accepted that those known as psychopaths may start wars, start genocides, be serial killers, see no harm in torture or dismemberment, and are demonstrated well in movies on Rippers and Serial Killers. But, there is a case to call all the same, and put the many types under one Diagnosis and Name: psychopath
- the cruel boss who doesn't kill physically or dismember, but does so in all other ways emotionally, psychologically, metaphorically, and symbolically: there is no concern for the welfare of the person destroyed publicly, destroyed and unrecoverable emotionally, taken mental hostage of a false prosecution,
- or given a short term or destructive long term Smear Campaign by a hateful, angry, and revengeful politician, public leader, or religious leader or any moralist
- the psychopathic husband who destroys his wife, philanders, uses for his advantage, and likely has a criminal record of felonies and has anti-social disorder.
- the cruel world leader, bent on selfish takeover, and planning to kill the opposition, many often those who assisted a career that are "thrown under the bus" publicly, emotionally, and psychologically, destroyed and never able to recover....all the way to paranoid plans (and ALL types listed above have this in degrees), or the relatives on the hit kill list in that psychopath's mind.
There are also psychopathic organizations that are a "like a psychopathic person"
a. destructive regimes
b. countries entrenched in ethnic cleansing, or even regions of countries (see our article on Emmett Till, a Southern US lynching backed by religious and political moralists and fundamentalists, a lynching not of the Old South, but of recent history).
3. there are some comments on the web, misinformed because news about psychopathic criminals like the one in the movie, have not been understood and talked about publicly: she is not a victim of dementia as some comment: she is a victim of the hidden and covered up actions of the Psychopath in Gaslighting: convincing her she is mental. At the TCM movie website, the woman's problem is described as dementia, not gaslighting.
How can one tell the difference, in the point 3?
a. the psychopaths always blame shifts
b. the psychopaths always have a smear campaign of letting you, the victim, and the public know you're CRAZY, nuts, insane. They use whatever method they need to sell the story of: you're weak, they're weak, I'm an expert authority on this and trust me...trust me alone. Further, marginalize that person, or them, and get on board: oppose them, stop them, shout at them, and if needed imprison or KILL them (lynchings, genocide, false imprisonment leading to execution, or all sort of metaphoric emotional and public worth or standing "slayings".
c. the end outcome is often a good test of what is going on: the psychopaths wants something. Their goal is not altruistic, it is self-serving and greedy though that truth may not show itself for 2 to 5 years. They sell that they'll help you, include you, give you the wealth, inclusion, or status you're hungry for. But in the end, you're not invited to the "party". They build their condos, castles, stocks of gold, and in their mansions, when there is a dinner party you're not there, though you might have been invited to the psychopath's bbq at the public park or a catered buffet at the town hotel....and likely spent $5,000 on that food for all.....But, you're not worthy to step into their home.....You are as dispensable as the person they SCAPEGOATED and VILIFIED.
So, of course, people assume: you're crazy, weak, immoral, and more, because we're so used to this pulpit and political microphone training: we tolerate and accept reviling, don't question, and are used to the process of moralism and the scapegoating of others. We're also used to the oddity that occurs in every country: the psychopath has boundless wealth, pays no taxes, and knows how to cheat systems and people to get more and more. Often, this wealth is hidden from the public via bank accounts and vaults of gold. But sometimes, like in the fall of the Ukraine, the dictator's sickening lavish lifestyle and mansions are shown finally to the public.
When we think we have dementia: in the movie the heroine is given a full concerted Campaign, Reinforcement, and Education in her mental weakness, forgetting, and symptoms of mental illness.......when all along it was the gaslighter's campaign.
This campaign is used to weaken:
- you
- any person bullied: schools, by parents, at work, or by neighbors
- women in relationships with abusive men
- persons who question anything or have other views in a community
- a person from a non-white Evangelical or Mormon view
- a kid bullied in the third grade: you're a sissy, dyke, idiot, stupid
- and groups: see our articles in the future on the weakening and disempowering of voices of US Hispanics, Hindus, Muslims, Atheist, Hollywood Voices and Voices of Activists or Questioners of all sort, and so on......
From TCM website:
Encouraged by the success of the play and film, MGM bought the remake rights, but with a clause insisting that all existing prints of Dickinson's version be destroyed,[4] even to the point of trying to destroy the negative, so that it would not compete with their more highly publicized 1944 film starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotten. Time Out wrote, "Nothing like as lavish as the later MGM version ... But in its own small-scale way a superior film by far. Lurking menace hangs in the air like a fog, the atmosphere is electric, and Wynyard suffers exquisitely as she struggles to keep dementia at bay. It's hardly surprising that MGM tried to destroy the negative of this version when they made their own five years later."
From Wikipedia:
Gaslight, 1940 and 1944 movies.
Gaslight is an American 1944 mystery-thriller film, adapted from Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light, about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing that she is going insane. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Screenplay; it also won the Academy Award for Best Actress and Best Production Design.
The 1944 version was the second version to be filmed, following the British film Gaslight, directed by Thorold Dickinson and released in 1940. This 1944 version was directed by George Cukor and starred Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Joseph Cotten, and 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in an Oscar-nominated screen debut (Supporting Actress). Gaslight had a larger scale and budget than the earlier film, and lends a different feel to the material. To avoid confusion with the first film, this version was originally given the title The Murder in Thornton Square in the UK.[2] This film features numerous deviations from the original stage play, though the central drama of a husband trying to drive his wife insane in order to distract her from his criminal activities remains.
and, other Film Noir movies of this genre, and some of the with Gaslighters.
Noir analysis
In 2006, film critic Emanuel Levy discussed the film noir aspects of the film:
A thriller soaked in paranoia, Gaslight is a period films [sic] noir that, like Hitchcock's The Lodger and Hangover Square, is set in the Edwardian age. It's interesting to speculate about the prominence of a film cycle in the 1940s that can be described as 'Don't Trust Your Husband'. It began with three Hitchcock films: Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and continued with Gaslight and Jane Eyre (both in 1944), Dragonwyck (1945), Notorious and The Spiral Staircase (both 1946), The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947), and Sorry, Wrong Number and Sleep, My Love (both 1948). All of these films use the noir visual vocabulary and share the same premise and narrative structure: The life of a rich, sheltered woman is threatened by an older, deranged man, often her husband. In all of them, the house, usually a symbol of sheltered security in Hollywood movies, becomes a trap of terror.[9]
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