New York Wonderland

5:06 p.m

I finished my shift, and now I’m going to do what has been bothering me all day.  I’m going to go through the cars and look at whatever ads she did that caused her (in my opinion) to start acting that way.  

In the first car, I stand where she was standing and look at the ad she saw.  It is an ad describing “Que Viene el Coco”.  There is a picture of a woman protecting her children from a hooded figure.  This figure, Coco, ate naughty children.  I immediately recalled her biting the child’s leg and her mother saying that she “should have behaved.”

I go to the next car, where she had her second “episode”.  I sit where she sat and look up.  There is an ad about A Mobius Strip, with a little blurb describing mania and hysteria.  Brunette #2 was definitely hysterical.  

I get out and go to the next and last car she was on.  I walk through the car and lean on the pole she was leaning on.  I look at the ad that she looked at before her eyes glazed over, and saw yet another ad that gave information, this time about something called “The Cotard Delusion”.  Apparently, people who went this thought they were legitimately dead.

How strange…..

Mental Health America 1909

Historical Document

Mental Health America is the United States’ leading Mental Health Organization. It is a Non-profit organization that was establish in 1909 as a Country-wide benefactor to people with metal Health issues. This organization is an example of the shift of the view of insanity in the world to a medical centered issue. It’s goal is to identify mental illness in patients at the earliest stage possible. Some of its commendable contributions to Mental Health as a whole in America are the creation of over 100 Child guidance clinics around the country, the creation of various ethical laws and statutes that are now incorporated in several states, and conduction of surveys and case studies of common mental illnesses such as bi-polar disorder.

“Psychosis is a conflict between the inner self and the environment, which takes the form of perceptual distortion, such as delusion or hallucination” Sigmund Freud

Cited Source: Lobel, Daniel S. “History of Psychosis.” Abnormal Psychology Across the Ages. Ed. Thomas G. Plante. Vol. 2: Disorders and Treatments. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013. [15]-29. Praeger Perspectives: Abnormal Psychology. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 Nov. 2015

Our wonderland takes place below NYC on the subway, specifically throughout eight train cars. Each car is categorized under one part of our binary, sane or insane. As our protagonist finds herself moving through each car in the beginning she will have a clear idea which car is sane and which car she deems insane. Our plan to mess with the binary is to have the cars get increasingly “mixed.” So by the time our protagonist reaches the last car she can no longer distinguish if she is in a “sane” or “insane” car.  Since our wonderland is already extremely specific being only in a subway, the scenarios we will highlight will stem from this concept. We will include situations that we each may have experienced while riding the train, for example feminazi’s preaching about their beliefs, while also coming up with situations that would easily be deemed insane. For example, stepping into a car with no walls or something of that nature. The more extreme sanes and insanes will take place in the beginning of the protagonist’s journey throughout, while the more “grey area” situations will be towards the tale end where she can no longer differentiate between the binary.   Our viewer would need to know what a “New Yorker” would deem “insane.” Living in ny we are accustomed to people, situations, and things that could be deemed insane to an outsider but most new Yorkers would not bat an eye at. So it is important that our viewer understands that what would seem insane is actually one of our sane scenarios. They would have to know basic subway logic, like how a subway car should have walls, basically common sense about transportation.

We decided to provide a sample of the story to give a feel for what our character is experiencing.