All of the following quotes are taken from the book A Bright Red Scream: Self-Mutilation and the Language of Pain, by Marilee Strong.
Shawnee Smith read this book during the filming of Saw III and requested changes be made to the script so Amanda would feel more real. I've paired quotes from the book with screenshots and lines from the film to illustrate exactly where and how Shawnee allowed her research to influence her portrayal of Amanda Young.
...The only negative feelings she has about what she's doing to herself is her complete lack of remorse—"like a serial killer who knows he should feel guilty about that line of bodies he's left behind."
For it is anger that drives [her] cutting. For almost any kind of negative feeling—fear, frustration, sadness, abandonment—cascades quickly into a rage so intense she likens it to a volcano exploding or being knocked over by a tidal wave.
"I hated myself. I hated my parents. I couldn't talk to anyone. So I cut and cut and cut." Yet the relief it provided was only temporary, and ultimately hollow. She could never cut "deep enough"—down to the impenetrable blackness, the pitiless void—to release all the rage and emptiness inside her. "I will always have to cut more because the pit is endless," she says mournfully.
Through the act of self-mutilation. . .cutters have "acted out all the familiar roles from childhood: the abandoned child, the physically damaged patient, the abused victim, the (dissociated) witness to violence and self-destructiveness, and finally, the aggressive attacker."
"Although self-harm results from a failure to resist an impulse, people with this disorder may . . . go through a ritualistic series of behaviors, such as tracing areas of their skin, and compulsively putting their self-harm paraphernalia in order."
Cutting bouts are generally precipitated by an experience—real or perceived— of loss or abandonment. Self-injurers are acutely sensitive to abandonment. Because they never properly attached to and then separated from their early caretakers, they live in a perpetual state of separation anxiety so intense it feels annihilating.
Their sense of themselves and the ability to control their lives has been dictated so much by external events that they believe their very existence depends on how others perceive them.
...Cutters often have an extremely short "time horizon." When overwhelmed with negative emotions, they believe that they have always felt this bad, and cannot imagine feeling better twenty minutes or twenty years from now. "So life is very much lived in the here and now and often it's lived without any history," he explains. "If they're feeling rejected or abused by someone, any memory of that person as a caring individual is lost."
The question of whether cutting is actually addictive, however, is highly controversial. Most chronic self-mutilators think it is and insist that alcohol, drugs, sex...are easier to give up than self-harm.
Cutting is a way of marking the body's boundaries, of proving what's inside and what's outside the body. One self-injurer, chronically abused by her father, was so confused about where she ended and others began that she had to place a chair between her therapist and herself during sessions in order to recognize that they were two separate people.
Because the sensitivity of cutters to perceived threats is altered and is, in effect, set to "hair trigger" response, many events that would be considered relatively minor by other people automatically trigger the emotionally loaded memories and the simultaneous flood of stress hormones.
"Dissociation, self-destructiveness, and impulsive behavior may all prove to be hormonally mediated responses that are triggered by reminders of earlier trauma and abandonment."
Within their lives, they had felt powerless against a parade of horrible events, and in order for them to restore a sense of balance (at least in their minds), they used the murders of other people like many people use a cigarette . . . They crave it because it calms them down, for within it, though they know it is bad for them, it serves as an immediate source of pleasure. And to the female multiple murderer, controlling another human being to death serves the same purpose. They are seeking a calm in their lives that they will never have, and deep down, they truly know it will never "fix" their lives. —Deborah Schurmann-Kauflin
A lot was exactly how much it hurt, or maybe more than a lot. When it was done, the question he had to ask himself as he lay there shivering was what, if anything, was there left of him worth saving?
As far as that question goes, he, or what now stands in for him, still doesn't know the answer. —Brian Evenson, "Three Indignities"
Her suffering was her armour. Gradually it became her skin. Then she could not take it off. —Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom. But the personality formed in an environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the tasks of early adulthood—establishing independence and intimacy—burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma. —Judith Herman
No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
They will make pigs of you all, and they will bury their snouts into your ribs, and they will eat your hearts! —The Machine, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
I am really doing it, she thought, turning the wheel to send the car directly at the great tree at the curve of the driveway, I am really doing it, I am doing this all by myself, now, at last; this is me, I am really really really doing it by myself.
In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me? —Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (the Creature)
How often in my life have I been abandoned? she thought, and could not help but think that abandonment was a word jotted not just on one or two moments of her existence, but scrawled heavily across her life as a whole. —Brian Evenson, "Scour"
If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. —Yonatan Zunger
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A BRIGHT RED SCREAM
Shawnee Smith read this book during the filming of Saw III and requested changes be made to the script so Amanda would feel more real. I've paired quotes from the book with screenshots and lines from the film to illustrate exactly where and how Shawnee allowed her research to influence her portrayal of Amanda Young.
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...The only negative feelings she has about what she's doing to herself is her complete lack of remorse—"like a serial killer who knows he should feel guilty about that line of bodies he's left behind."
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For it is anger that drives [her] cutting. For almost any kind of negative feeling—fear, frustration, sadness, abandonment—cascades quickly into a rage so intense she likens it to a volcano exploding or being knocked over by a tidal wave.
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"I hated myself. I hated my parents. I couldn't talk to anyone. So I cut and cut and cut." Yet the relief it provided was only temporary, and ultimately hollow. She could never cut "deep enough"—down to the impenetrable blackness, the pitiless void—to release all the rage and emptiness inside her. "I will always have to cut more because the pit is endless," she says mournfully.
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Through the act of self-mutilation. . .cutters have "acted out all the familiar roles from childhood: the abandoned child, the physically damaged patient, the abused victim, the (dissociated) witness to violence and self-destructiveness, and finally, the aggressive attacker."
no subject
"Although self-harm results from a failure to resist an impulse, people with this disorder may . . . go through a ritualistic series of behaviors, such as tracing areas of their skin, and compulsively putting their self-harm paraphernalia in order."
no subject
Cutting bouts are generally precipitated by an experience—real or perceived— of loss or abandonment. Self-injurers are acutely sensitive to abandonment. Because they never properly attached to and then separated from their early caretakers, they live in a perpetual state of separation anxiety so intense it feels annihilating.
no subject
Their sense of themselves and the ability to control their lives has been dictated so much by external events that they believe their very existence depends on how others perceive them.
no subject
...Cutters often have an extremely short "time horizon." When overwhelmed with negative emotions, they believe that they have always felt this bad, and cannot imagine feeling better twenty minutes or twenty years from now. "So life is very much lived in the here and now and often it's lived without any history," he explains. "If they're feeling rejected or abused by someone, any memory of that person as a caring individual is lost."
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At the moment of cutting, self-injurers feel no pain and are generally oblivious to their surroundings. Some are not even aware of the act itself...
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The question of whether cutting is actually addictive, however, is highly controversial. Most chronic self-mutilators think it is and insist that alcohol, drugs, sex...are easier to give up than self-harm.
no subject
Cutting is a way of marking the body's boundaries, of proving what's inside and what's outside the body. One self-injurer, chronically abused by her father, was so confused about where she ended and others began that she had to place a chair between her therapist and herself during sessions in order to recognize that they were two separate people.
no subject
Because the sensitivity of cutters to perceived threats is altered and is, in effect, set to "hair trigger" response, many events that would be considered relatively minor by other people automatically trigger the emotionally loaded memories and the simultaneous flood of stress hormones.
"Dissociation, self-destructiveness, and impulsive behavior may all prove to be hormonally mediated responses that are triggered by reminders of earlier trauma and abandonment."
QUOTES
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—Deborah Schurmann-Kauflin
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—Jonathan Lethem
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—Charles Fort
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As far as that question goes, he, or what now stands in for him, still doesn't know the answer.
—Brian Evenson, "Three Indignities"
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—Sylvia Plath
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—Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
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—Brandon Speck
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—Al Capone
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—Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted
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—Judith Herman
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—Jaqun Wilson
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—Philip K. Dick
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Or you don't.
—Stephen King, The Stand
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—Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
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—The Machine, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
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In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?
—Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
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—Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
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That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.
—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (Antonio)
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Only one person who was her family.
Only one person who loved her.
Only one person she loved.
She couldn't let him be stolen. She couldn't give him to anybody.
—Ryogo Narita, Baccano! (1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express)
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—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (the Creature)
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—Brian Evenson, "Scour"
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—Yonatan Zunger
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—Gillian Flynn