viz.

Image Credit: Prometheus (2012)

Hollywood, you are going about action movies all wrong, then, because you have taken for granted what is the opposite of the actual case. You believe we viewers take pleasure from grandiosity of visual effect, but in fact your viewers are suffering from a spiritual condition of nullity brought on by over-exposure to the visually incomprehensible. How to make us feel anything: that is your challenge! Two recent treatments of the action movie hero provide a neat case in point and will serve for a conclusion to these remarks on the importance of psychological realism to compelling action cinema.

Lucas Cranach's Melancholia Image Credit: Art Tattler

Last week, I examined how painters of the nineteenth century revised the image of Phillipe Pinel, the famous mental health physician, to contribute to an evolving national mythology and edify the physician's archetypal (as well as vocational) role in fostering mental health. While the representation (as well as the specific job description) of the mental health practitioner has changed drastically over the past five centuries, one cannot help but notice that there are striking continuities to be found in representations of people said to be afflicted with maladies of the mind. Today, we will take a look at some remarkable consistencies to be found linking 16th and 21st century visual representations of one of Western society's most frequently visualized maladies: melancholia.  

According to this New York Times article, office décor and location can be very important if you are a psychologist.