New York Wonderland

Historical Document 1

In 1774,  the Madhouse Act was implemented in the British parliament. The set standard for determining who was mentally ill and in need of involuntarily confinement was changed from the justices of the peace to the medical community.  In other words the people in charge of defining who was mentally ill switched from Court to the Hospital. This Act created a Group from the Royal College of Physicians to license and inspect private madhouses in London. The bill specifically required an order in writing from a physician, surgeon, or apothecary stating that such person needs this form of medical attention.  Allowing Medical Professionals to certify lunatics created a change in society’s view of lunacy shifting the view of madness from a spiritual disorder to one in need of medicalization.

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.