Episode 035: Mental Health, Sexuality, and Suicide, Oh My! The Hours (2002) with Crystal Steltenpohl

Join Alex and Dr. Crystal Steltenpohl in a discussion of the various psychological concepts in the crushing, but a poignant look at relationships and happiness, film The Hours (2002). The film stars Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep as three women struggling with their mental health, relationships, and happiness, connected by the story written by the famous Virginia Woolf. Listen, Nicole Kidman’s prosthetic nose was great to be like Virginia, but it didn’t change color!

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Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro (“Self-Driving”). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. “Et Voila” used under license.

Episode Transcription

EMPLOYEE: Good morning, Mrs. Woolf.

VIRGINIA WOOLF: Good morning.

LEONARD WOOLF: We should publish no more new authors. I have to tell you, I’ve discovered 10 errors in the first two.

VIRGINIA: Lucky to have found them.

LEONARD: “The Passchendaele was a charnel house from which no min returned.” Do you think it’s possible that bad writing actually attracts a higher incidence of error?

ALEX SWAN: That has got to be just about the only joke in this whole movie. But man, it is a doozy.

ALEX SWAN: Hey, everybody, and welcome to the CinemaPsych Podcast, the podcast where psychology meets film. I am your host, Dr. Alex Swan. And today we are going to delve deep into human drama. Today’s film is going to be about The Hours. Yeah, 2002 it came out. Oh, boy. This one was Oscar fodder for sure. But it really does have some wonderful performances by Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore, including performances by Ed Harris and many other fantastic actors, Stephen Dillane, all those sorts of people. A wonderful, wonderful movie and wonderful, wonderful performances. It is a bit on this on the sullen and and very dour side, though. So, you know, if that’s your kind of movie, then I definitely recommend it. As I said, the movie came out in 2002. Nicole Kidman won the best actress Oscar in 2003 for that performance as the real person, Virginia Woolf, the-the great writer, the great American author who unfortunately died by suicide in 1941 in in England. And the beginning of this film, spoiler alert, starts with that moment in history in 1941. Virginia Woolf drowning herself, via the river, by their cottage. This is-this film was directed by Stephen Daldry. This is not a name that I have heard before, but I mean, it was an interesting vision. And I think he pulled it off with the three disparate stories, but also kind of brought the three together because, of course, the plot of this film is that these three women that I told you about, including the real Virginia Woolf, played by Nicole Kidman. That is that is the main plot is that these these women are interconnected somehow, and it’s an interesting vision from Stephen Daldry. I’m not sure how much more will say about him in this episode, but I just wanted to make sure I got that out in front.

ALEX: Now, before we get into the episode with my guest host, I did want to mention that the podcast is two years old as of this this episode going out first published in the beginning of August, I think, somewhere around there. And so, yeah, this is the we have done two full years of this podcast, about 35, 36 episodes, depending on how you count Episode 000. iTunes counts it as—or how I should say Apple counts it as Episode 001 and so does Spotify. So I guess we’ve done about 36 episodes of this lovely podcast. And I’ve got lots of guests lined up still. So we are moving into year number three. So probably won’t be doing another year in review like we did with that first one. It was it was kind of like the first year anniversary, “Let’s take a look.” But I think we have a good vision of going forward. And like I said, lots of fantastic guests coming up and some changing formats a little bit. I’m going to have a duo come on for the first time. So there’s going to be two people other than me talking. So there’s a lot to come in this in this next year, our third year running strong, running strong. And I thank you for listening to some of those episodes or maybe all of those episodes in the last two years. So my humblest gratitude to all that. Listen to this show, whether it’s one episode or more. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

ALEX: And while I’m on that train, the other thing that I wanted to mention before we jump into the episode is I have a you know, it’s kind of a side venture. I have I have a YouTube channel where I have tutorials. So I thought I’d I’d take a moment to plug my own YouTube channel just in case there is not a mixture of audience members in either case. I recently and—was made YouTube Partner, and that was really cool. It was really a milestone for sort of the work that I had been putting in over the last couple of years, wanting to do tutorials and sharing psychology stuff. And, you know, there’s a there’s like a creative of mixture between the CinemaPsych Podcast and my YouTube channel, because I also share the podcast episodes as video. In case you’re unaware, that’s-I’m-sort of take the audio, visualize it with a little waveform, put my picture, the guest picture. And and it’s a way to it’s another way to to listen to the podcast or quote unquote, watch it. So my YouTube channel is primarily tutorials for statistics and statistics apps like jamovi & JASP. But I do share some of my other endeavors there. Like I said, the podcast is uploaded there. My VODs from streaming on Twitch TV, get uploaded there periodically. I sort of edit and edit them down. But if you’re interested in that sort of thing, the way to find me is www.bit.ly/AlexanderSwan. That is my name. So bit.ly/AlexanderSwan and you will get directly to my YouTube channel. All right. So. With the celebration and the self-flagellation—well, it sort of was… “Go to my YouTube, please!”. Without further ado, let’s just jump into the episode.

ALEX: My guest host today is Dr. Crystal Steltenpohl. Crystal is an assistant professor at the University of Southern Indiana and a community psychologist. This is a new one for the show. Her research focuses on how people interact with and through technology. And that is really awesome. And she is the founder—co-founder, excuse me, of the Online Technologies Lab. Crystal, welcome to the show.

CRYSTAL STELTENPOHL: Hey, thanks, Alex. I’m really excited to be here.

ALEX: I am definitely happy to have you on. We’ve been talking about this for a little while now, but like I do with all of my guests, before we jump into this episode’s film The Hours. I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on film in general and using them, or if you haven’t yet, would you use them in in your teaching?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think that’s a great question, I, I think when used responsibly that that film can be used as an excellent tool in the classroom because it can help us to understand classroom concepts and we can understand how society was viewing an issue during a certain time period through decisions like directors and writers make. Right? We can critique portrayals of popular scientific knowledge…” that we only use 10 percent of our brain” stuff that pops up some of these. And I think it can also help us explore our understanding of ourselves, like what our morals are, what we value and what moves us and isn’t not really hoping for with The Hours. I’ve used other films in classes. This will be the first time that I’m using this film in a class this fall, and I’m hoping that it can lead to some really good discussions like the one that I hope that we’re about to have, particularly from a community perspective when we aren’t just looking at the women’s—the women in this movie themselves and their symptoms, but also their environments, the people that they talk to, their communities and where the pain points are in our society and our institutions.

ALEX: That’s awesome. And that is like 100 percent why I wanted you to have you on the show before the fall started, especially as this this episode goes live, you know, in a few weeks. Excuse me. So for those of you listening now, it’s it’s obviously in the past that we’ve had this conversation, but it’s useful for Crystal, too, because she’s about to, you know, use this film in a class. And I have made similar kinds of decisions and wanting to have conversations. And there are a few episodes where that I’m I’m like, I’m going to use this film again. Like a couple of episodes ago I talked about Unsane and I’m like, yeah, I’m totally going to use Unsane again. So I hope this is a wonderful, wonderful resource for you moving forward. And maybe, you know, maybe you’ll be like if you’re having trouble figuring out stuff, there’s a podcast you can go look at. I know a guy. Yeah. So that’s awesome. So let’s pivot to The Hours because you ended your you ended your point there with the hours. So talk to me more broadly about The Hours itself, the film, I mean, not not the unit of measurement of time, but the film and what it means. Why, a little bit more, you want to use it in this community psychology class.

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think I should actually start off by saying that when I was undergrad, I was actually a psychology and an English major. So I was really, really drawn to this film for a number of reasons. And I think first, the movie is just fantastic from a storytelling perspective. It’s sort of slow in some spots. But there are these really beautiful parallels between the three stories that are being told and as it all really comes together in the third act. I mean, it’s it’s still really impactful for me. And I’ve seen this movie a billion times. It would take a few times. Oh, I think I think it also has a lot to say, you know, intentionally or unintentionally about the enduring stigma around depression and other mental health conditions, the expectations put on women in our society and our general unease with death and dying and talking about it. I know that I have a lot of death and dying anxiety myself. So it’s kind of funny for me to love this movie so much. I was telling you before we started recording that I you know, I used to watch this movie about once a year. My favorite movies. So it is it is kind of funny for me to love the movie so much. But I think that this particular movie would be an excellent addition to any class that’s covering mental health and or societal issues, particularly around gender, sexuality and institutional or community support.

ALEX: Yeah, those are all great points because there’s a lot in this, just like many of the movies that are on the show and will be on the show in the future. There is not just one aspect of psychology we can talk about, because as as has also been mentioned on the show many times, you know, a lot of the way it reasons why psychology teachers love to use films in their teaching, as said by many guest hosts, is that psych psychology is movies, movies is psychology. So there’s a lot to get from this. And as I watched it from for the first time myself, because I am if you look at my film history and I’ve been and I’ve been starting to track this recently, you look at my film history, very few are these kind of period dramas. I do like a specific kind of period drama for specific periods. But for this particular one, like I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Virginia Woolf. And I, I don’t know if if the what was sold through trailers or anything would have appealed to me at any time in my movie watching history until—

CRYSTAL: The trailer for this movie, I will say, is awful.

ALEX: I saw it. And you’re right. So. Well, there we go. And I was I suppose in 2002, I wasn’t into as a teenage boy, was not into the slow period drama. Of course, watching it through a psychology lens is 100 percent why I watch movies now. And, you know, outside of the shoot em up them up or the superhero stuff, because, you know, that’s just made for entertainment or is if you find deeper meanings in those movies. Please put down the cannabis. So being able to watch this movie for the first time with that lens has actually been. And doing so in the previous episode about The Truman Show kind of opening, reopening some some eyes in my head. That’s a strange phrase. But OK, we’ll go with that. All right. Since you mentioned, Crystal, a few things. I think right off the bat we should talk about how this film shows a significant amount of mental health crises across the three women characters, the three main characters, although technically Nicole Kidman is the main character, even though Meryl Streep has more screen time than her, I don’t know. But that’s how they did it. So we have the main character of Virginia Woolf, and that’s probably because she was a real person. And, you know, it’s her story that sort of thrusts the interweaving plot line through. So, Crystal, what are the mental health aspects of this film that any teacher of psychology could use this film for?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think, you know, this is kind of a hard movie to watch and a lot of ways because it does deal with mental health so deeply. And I think the very obvious one is depression, bipolar. We’re not really entirely sure what Virginia Woolf would have really been diagnosed with—current standards of DSM. But I think I think the real Virginia Woolf probably did have. Bipolar disorder, and that you can kind of see hints of that throughout throughout the movie. All three of the women are dealing with depression in different ways. So Virginia Woolf is the her time period is set in the 1920s in England. And so she’s been dealing with it for a long time. We get several hints about that and some explicit references to having attempted suicide twice. And then, of course, we know from the first like minute of the movie that she does eventually complete it. And then we’ve got Laura, who’s played by Julianne Moore, and she is a 1950s housewife. That’s post-World War II. She’s got a child. It’s Richard, who we see later as an adult in the in the film. And she’s pregnant. So she’s got another child along the way. She’s-so she’s got kind of a more subtle kind of depression. It’s hard at times to tell because Dan mentions that she was kind of shy growing up. So it’s kind of hard to tell, like how much of it is her being introverted. And then but we do generally, genuinely see she’s struggling with some stuff.

ALEX: Yeah, I think I think Julianne Moore plays the like micro expressions really well for that aspect to get to give you a sense that, like in this moment, she’s really hurting.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. Yeah. And she’s she’s clearly struggling with some other stuff, which I’m sure we’ll get to the sexuality part as well. But she seems to be really struggling with her identity as a mother, her identity as a woman, her identity as as a wife, and whether that’s really the life that she wants for herself. And Virginia, where Virginia was actually diagnosed by a doctor, although it’s not really clear whether it was hysteria or what it was that she was diagnosed with.

ALEX: Yeah. Questionable diagnosis.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. Real life quote about Virginia-Virginia Woolf is that she was a victim of male medicine. And I think that really applies and is highlighted in the movie. Laura is not diagnosed, but we see her. She’s probably treating some symptoms of it because her medicine cabinet does have stuff like sleeping pills and stuff like that. So we know that she’s sleeping a lot. We know that she’s having trouble sleeping. So she’s probably self diagnosing to some bed. Or if she’s going to a doctor, it’s probably not for depression, it’s for sleep issues.

ALEX: I also thought when I saw it, when I saw that note that you had put in there, that, you know, this was hers. I don’t know if we see the labels at all.

CRYSTAL: Yeah, it could be Dan’s.

ALEX: Yeah. So that’s my thought, because, you know, he came back. We know that he comes back from World War II and a lot of soldiers, just like in World War I, where it was named shellshock. You know, a lot of soldiers were coming back with shell shock and a different kind of shell shock, but still post-traumatic stress disorder as we know it now. You know, it could be him who struggles and she just knows that it’s there. So I was I was I that thought occurred to me when I saw you write that, because I was like, hmm, we never see the labels.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely not even be hers that she’s taking, because it does seem like she’s hiding a lot of it from Dan. And then finally, we have we have Clarissa, who’s played by Meryl Streep, one of my personal favorite actresses. And she is it’s set in 2001. She’s in New York. Laura’s setting, Laura’s timeline to set in Los Angeles. And Virginia is almost certainly not diagnosed. We don’t see any mention of it. She’s not taking any medication or anything like that. The way that she seems to be treating her struggles is by overcommitment, by perfectionism, by just almost like forcing herself to be an extrovert, right? Planning a party. She is Mrs. Dalloway, as as referenced by by Richard later on.

ALEX: Right. And and there’s a clear mention of the character of Mrs. Dalloway. I think it’s by Laura telling Kitty about the book, saying that she was this master hostess and that she threw extravagant parties and things like that. And Laura was sort of reading the book. Maybe pining for a life like that, I’m not entirely sure how to read that based on some of the other things that you had mentioned about her that will probably get into.

CRYSTAL: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I think also, too, it’s kind of it’s definitely foreshadowing, you know, class struggles, but I also think it’s a brief reflection on Kitty, right, because she says tickety like you’re so good at that, meaning making friends. Yeah. And and when Katie opens up as after explaining the book, so she says that’s true. She throws all these parties, but because she does it so well, like people think that she’s OK, but she’s really not. And then that’s when Kitty says, yeah, they found the growth in my uterus and like got to have surgery and I’m really worried about it. And then that long conversation about child deserving each other and after the war and all that kind of stuff happens.

ALEX: Yeah, we’ll, we’ll come back to that with with sexuality. But-so Clarissa is is a publisher.

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think so.

ALEX: And she is in a relationship with a woman named Sally, played by Allison Janney. And they live in a loft in New York. And she is a caretaker to Richard, who I believe they had a relationship. Sorry, Clarissa and Richard had a relationship. And so. Richard is an unfortunate AIDS victim. And up until the spoiler alert end of the movie, what for all intents and purposes, seemed like an aid sort of, you know, a long, longer term AIDS survivor until he dies by his own, throwing himself outside out of a window. Well, sort of like tipping himself off of it, I suppose. So he is a writer. Am I not mistaken?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, he’s a poet, but he had written one book, a very dense, difficult to understand book.

ALEX: OK, I think I missed some of that in the repartee between Clarissa and Richard. And I don’t know if this is normal for however many times this you have shown this movie to a first timer, but it took me to the very end. And I don’t know if this was on purpose or not to recognize that Ritchie, the little boy in the 1950s, is Richard, played by Ed Harris in 2001. Are you supposed to only get that reveal at the end?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think where I realized it was, there’s when she is. I think when she’s leaving at one point, like Richie is like banging on the doors and she, you know, they just call him Richie and then it like faded to Richard. And I was like, wait a minute. And there’s there’s like a picture of a really forlorn looking bride on on his desk. And that’s when I that’s when I ended up putting it together. So it’s like well into act three where you’re like, “oh, shit.” And then afterwards after he dies. And then Laura comes in and explains like why she left and and all those things. That’s when you’re like, “oh, OK.”

ALEX: OK. All right, that’s fair. Now, my good my my follow up question, that is, how does that change the narrative when you watch it again with that knowledge? Does it change some of the way that Ed Harris characterizes himself before we get that extended look of the, you know, the cake baking, maybe?

CRYSTAL: Yeah. You know, I don’t I don’t really know how to feel about that particular turn in the story other than it’s a nice storytelling device. Sometimes I’m like, it really doesn’t affect the reading of it for me at all. Like I don’t necessarily particularly care. But I think sometimes when I watch it, to me, it makes Richard’s life a little bit sadder even because, you know, Laura mentions after he dies that she’s outlived that whole family, right? Yeah, dad died pretty young then his sister died. We’re not really sure how she died. The dad died of cancer. So he’s lost a lot of family. Right. And then he however it happened, he ended up losing Clarissa, but she’s still always there. He lost Louis, in a sense. Louis left him as he as he said. That was like one of the best days of his life or whatever. And then and then who knows how many friends, you know, how he’s lost to the AIDS and stuff like that. So to me, sometimes it just kind of compounds a bit of the tragedy…

RICHARD: Take my hand. Would you be angry?

CLARISSA: Would I be angry if you didn’t show up at the party, would you be angry if I died? If you died, who is this party for? What do you mean, who is it for? What are you asking, what are you trying to say?

RICHARD: I’m not trying to say anything I’m saying. I think I’m only staying alive to satisfy you.

CLARISSA: Well, so that is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other. Doctors told you you don’t need to die. They told you that you can live like this for years.

RICHARD: Well, exactly.

CLARISSA: But I don’t accept this. I don’t accept what you say.

RICHARD: Oh, and it’s for you to decide, is it? How long have you been doing that? How many years came to the apartment? What about your own life? What about Sally? Just wait till I die and you’ll have to think of yourself. How are you going to like that?

CLARISSA: Richard? It would be great if you did come to the party if you felt well enough to come. Just to let you know I am making the crab thing. Not that I imagine it makes any difference to you.

RICHARD: Of course it makes a difference. I love the crab thing. Clarissa?

CLARISSA: Yes. I’ll be back 3:30 and I’ll help you get dressed.

RICHARD: Wonderful.

CLARISSA: 3:30.

RICHARD: Wonderful.

CRYSTAL: He’s alone in an apartment by himself. Friends don’t come to visit him, it seems like it’s just Clarissa

ALEX: and like Meals on Wheels or something.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. So, you know, to me, it kind of compounds the tragedy. And then sometimes I read it and it doesn’t or I watch it and it doesn’t really affect me at all in terms of the emotional impact.

ALEX: I appreciate the read on it. I don’t know if I’ll find myself watching it again, but you know, I can I don’t know the the having children made the. Leaving him at the babysitter’s house. Very anxiety stripping. I was like, “oh, God, is it hot in here?” I mean, I’m not even I’m not even a mother. But I told my wife that, you know, there’s there’s the scene and she’s like, “yeah, I don’t think I could have done that.” I’m like, “OK, yep. That’s fair.” So before we delve more into those things, I did want to finish up on the mental health aspect of the film. So you mentioned that Virginia Woolf had showed some signs of bipolar disorder historically. Yeah, my reading it, it’s like, you know, most postmortem evaluations will say not of not of actually her body, but of her writings and her sort of evaluations, her her medical records and things seems to suggest what we would now call bipolar disorder. And it sort of feels a little bit like that in the movie. She’s at at at some turns, just seems completely out of it in a in a deep depression. And she explains that in probably one of the more stronger monologues in the movie at the train station to her her husband. About the darkness and then other parts in the movie. She seemed sprightly and exuberant. She has an interesting case of her sister. They have a passionate kiss in one moment, so. That also looks like mania, but to see those two things interconnected in the short, what appears to be a short amount of time don’t necessarily know how long it has been. Doesn’t seem like normal tracking. But of course, you know, the movies playing a little bit with historical information. What else did you notice about Virginia Woolf? And then if you could explain to the listeners sort of the various time points and mental health treatment.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. Yeah, I think so—I think across all three of these women, you can tell like just watching them, I think a layperson can say these women are depressed, right. On some of. They are depressed even if that depression manifests differently in each of them. And I think that they all show some pretty like if you open the DSM and we flip to the depression page and we did a checklist, I think that they fit a lot of those standard signs. But I think there’s also a couple of the less common symptoms. So, for instance, Virginia mentions at certain points that she hears voices, and that is that is a we we tend to associate that with schizophrenia. But other other diagnoses also have that symptom. And I think don’t quote me exactly on this percentage, but I think it’s something like one in seven or one in five or something folks who are diagnosed with major depressive disorder hear voices of some kind. But because of the I think because of the association with disorders like schizophrenia, people are less likely to disclose that, right? Like a doctor or something. They’re afraid that they’re going to get locked up for, yeah, whatever. And then we also see like with Clarissa, then also with Laura, to a lesser extent, this this overcommitment or in Laura’s case, especially this perfectionism and and this hesitancy to do tasks that are considered to be, I don’t think cake that cake baking is not necessarily a simple task. I’m not particularly artistic. The decorating part. I love the baking part. The decorating part is a nightmare for me. So the fact that people are like, “oh, this is so basic, you should be able to do this.” I was like, well, I think maybe you need to calm down a little bit. But but but so we do see these these different additional symptoms that are there that I think could make for an interesting conversation around what depression looks like. And even in the DSM, there’s several symptoms that are like kind of multiloaded. That’s like an increase or a decrease in appetite. So we see Virginia. She doesn’t eat very much. And so we see these we see these differences. So even though they all have the same disorder, it’s it’s manifesting in different ways. Although Virginia also probably is bipolar. So that makes her a little bit different. But the treatment is interesting, too, because Virginia is the only one that’s diagnosed with anything that we’re aware of in the movie. And her treatment is to isolate her and to keep her from being productive. And actually a bit of a historical note at the time. People look down on educating women and they actually often blamed women’s mental health issues on being educated. So there were there were some doctors out there who were saying, you know, “Virginia Woolf’s the way that she is because she went and got herself educated.” Oh, my God. So that’s I think that’s a big thing. And that I think ties into know we’ll get into it in a bit. But like this idea of like patient rights, you know, Virginia has to advocate for herself because it’s like she’s even having trouble getting through to her husband at times. And and this idea of like the doctor coming in as the expert. But sometimes the patient knows a little bit more about themselves than the doctor does. And what would be good for them. So they they kind of shipped out to, I can’t remember which city? That’s not really a city—

ALEX: Richmond.

CRYSTAL: Richmond. Yeah, it’s very beautiful. But she’s isolated. She just has her husband. Her husband sometimes is really tense with her. And she has the the two, I guess you’d say, servants who who don’t necessarily super like her very much. Right. So and she sees her sister and we’re not really entirely sure how often that is. So she’s got nobody in that that we know now that that that tends to make people worse, being isolated and being broken off from your community and not having that sense of belonging that actually does something worse.

ALEX: Yeah. I 100 percent agree with that, that last point, for sure I did. As you were saying this, I did just realize that-that’s a similar situation to both Laura and Clarissa. Laura doesn’t really have anybody, she has her son and you know, I guess friends about the neighborhood, friends of or wives who are wives of Dan’s friends. And they have sort of that they don’t really have that for full on deep friendship, just sort of acquaintances, really. So Laura’s isolated and Clarissa seems isolated too, very, I suppose, infrequently, from my read of it, visiting with Richard. I mean, maybe regularly, but I guess I shouldn’t pair that with infrequently, but it doesn’t seem like it’s like, oh, like every other day or something like that. It’s just it seems disjointed. Doesn’t seem like she sees her daughter all that often, played also like surreptitiously by Claire Danes. I was like, what didn’t I was not expecting that. And then seem sort of stuck/trapped/bored with a relationship, which I believe is, what, 10 years old?

CRYSTAL: She said 10. Isn’t that crazy?

ALEX: Yeah. And she, I think, believes herself. So they all seem isolated to me. So that is a wonderful point.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. And I think it’s it’s interesting because there are points of support, right? It’s not like Virginia doesn’t communicate with her partner. It’s Laura and Clarissa don’t seem like they really communicate with their partner necessarily. Or when they do, there’s like breakdowns there. But, you know, it seems like, you know, that the communication is either fraught or tense or awkward or very superficial. And that actually seems and I mean, I would also be uncomfortable with the conversation that Richard has with her in the apartment in the beginning, because he’s kind of calling her out. And he’s like, eventually I’m going, dying, you’re going to have to think of yourself. I actually got the impression that she sees him a lot just from the way that other characters responded, like so she was right upset. And then Julia, the daughter, comes home and says, what’s wrong? And then she’s like, oh, this is about Richard. So like it seems like these conversations happen kind of frequently or at least frequently enough that like neither Sally nor Julia seem to like Richard very much. And that, you know, how long that they’ve known him in terms of or how long he’s been diagnosed and had to deal with the disease and stuff. But it seems like there’s kind of a history there of him, him always being around. This is kind of how I ended up reading it, but it’s not necessarily super clear. But but yeah, there’s this kind of disconnect words like even when you are around people, right. You’re not necessarily having that deep communication, like, again, with with Laura’s friends. She’s only got Kitty coming over because Kitty’s husband, Ray, is friends with her husband, Dan. They don’t exactly have shared interests. They don’t exactly have shared history, your experiences, or anything like that, right?

ALEX: And honestly, she came over for one to get something.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. Please feed my dog. You know, and, yeah, so it is it’s really isolating and when and especially if you’re in a position where you are either hearing literal voices or you have the self-talk of perhaps not feeling like you’re worthy or perhaps feeling like you’re stuck to also not have anyone to confide those feelings in, because who is Clarissa going to tell that she’s feeling stuck? She kind of tries to tell Julia, who gets offended, like, I can’t imagine having that conversation with my partner saying I feel like we’ve wasted the last 10 years. Like, that would be a really hard conversation to have if you haven’t built up that habit of communication.

ALEX: Right. And it will it will probably come crashing down very quickly. I do I do agree with that. I think she kind of tries to tell Louis, played by Jeff Daniels a little bit as they’re talking about, Richard, because he is one of Richard’s exes. So, she has a breakdown and because she’s like trying to get it out and she just can’t and it’s just kind of all floods and he’s like, I don’t want to do anything. Do I do I go, what do I do with a sobbing woman? I don’t know how to do— Some random acting choices by the director and Jeff Daniels. Do you what do you want me to go? Strange. She’s across the room.

CRYSTAL: Do I just leave?

ALEX: I don’t know how to deal with crying people! So we’re going to take a quick break. And then when we come back, I think we’ll jump into some of the more specialized staff that Clarissa—heh, Clarissa, Meryl Streep—that Crystal spotted in the film. So stay tuned and stay with us.

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ALEX: And we are back with Dr. Crystal Steltenpohl talking about the film The Hours. So we were finishing up our discussion about mental health. And I realized during our quick break that we didn’t actually—you sort of danced around a little bit, but we need to get right into the other big mental theme/life, I suppose, theme, which is that of suicide, which can accompany depression, as we talked about before in the last segment before the break. But I think that can lead us into the discussion around right to life, right to death, and patient rights that are sort of depicted throughout the movie. So, Crystal, what were your thoughts about the suicide, sort of the somber, sort of dourest of topics in the movie?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I mean, I think the movie does an interesting thing where it starts off with one.

ALEX: Oh, yeah, I was totally surprised.

CRYSTAL: So you’re like, oh, this is going to be that kind of movie, which is part of why the trailer is so funny, really, because it just does not have the same feel vibe as the actual movie ends up having. But they start with that. And I think it’s kind of I don’t want to say the less… shocking of the suicides that are portrayed.

ALEX: And to be clear, that’s Virginia Woolf’s real life suicide.

CRYSTAL: Yeah, the the where she walks into the river and kind of just floats away. It’s less, I must say, graphic, because I don’t want to say that Richard’s suicide is necessarily graphic, but there is this kind of visceral feeling that you have when it happens. It’s more sudden you kind of gasp along with Clarissa, you know, and you feel that that kind of sinking dread, whereas I feel like Virginia is doesn’t evoke that. I mean, still like you’re still like, holy crap, this is happening. But it’s it’s not this I don’t know. It’s it’s a different vibe. So I think it’s it’s slower that almost two to kind of get you prepared for the end and for the themes that throughout, because it’s not like it’s it’s not like that’s the only two times that that is discussed or that that it happens because Laura contemplates it, actually makes a plan for it, shows up, and then second guesses herself and just kind of has a real good cry, a breakdown in in the hotel. And then as she just discloses later on, that’s when she makes her other plan, which was which was to leave and to move to Canada. So, you know, it is it is it is interesting to see these these different people and to think about like the reasons why they would end their lives when they were feeling and also the effect on the people, the people around them and the circumstances under which one of the things that’s echoed between Virginia and Richard’s deaths. Virginia writes a note which is fairly uncommon, as I understand it, in suicides. And she writes this, this fairly lengthy letter to her husband, Leonard. And at one point she says, “I don’t think two people could have been happier than we’ve been.”

VIRGINIA: Dearest. I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of these terrible times and I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can’t concentrate, so I’m doing what seems to be the best thing to do. And you have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I’m spoiling your life. And without me, you could work and you will. I know. You see, I can’t even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me. And incredibly good. Everything has gone from me, but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. Virginia.

CRYSTAL: And then, Richard, when he’s talking to Clarissa right before he rolls out of the window, he says the same line. So it’s kind of wrapping up that that those near the foil there, I guess you could say. But we can see, you know, with Virginia and also with Richard, who I think are kind of in a way that maybe the main foils of this movie. We do see that everyone else—er I don’t want to say everyone else—their partners. I feel weird calling Clarissa Richard’s partner, but the caregiver, they live with that anxiety of something bad happening. They live with that frustration of not knowing how to help. And they know that that threat is there. I don’t know what you thought about when you were when you were watching.

ALEX: About Richard?

CRYSTAL: About about any of it, I know you always have a lot of different thoughts. I had somebody when I was when I was in high school, my cousin had completed suicide. So I always have those, you know, I have that personal connection to those personal reaction to that. But it’s kind of hard sometimes to take a step back and look at it more academically.

ALEX: Sure. Yeah. I do not have that particular kind of. Well, I take that back. One of my cousins died by suicide. Coming up, coming up very soon on 10 years. So I didn’t know him very well. He is one of the older cousins of my gigantic family. I didn’t know him very well. But yeah, I, I suppose I have a similar take to it. Obviously not a great subject to talk about, but one that we should. Regarding the two completed suicides in the movie, historically, Virginia Woolf’s and I went and I looked at up afterward after she did, and I was like, oh , OK. That’s why they started the movie with this one, because, you know, people who know about Virginia Woolf probably know that this is a thing. And I figured what you figured out what she was doing, and you’re right, it’s a little bit slower. So it’s less visceral because I figured out what she was doing when she put the rock in her coat pocket. I’m like, OK, yeah. All right. You can take the coat off, but OK, that is exactly where my mind what it’s like. Is it really going to be a weight? Because if you really did want to survive, you could just peel the coat off. It was fine. That’s me interjecting humor into a very weighty subject. But I had no clue that that’s what I’m actually I take the back. I’m like, okay. Yep. He’s going to do something. I didn’t realize he was going to fall out of the window on purpose. But to do it in front of Clarissa, I think, is another level. It’s very shocking because like as you said, we are Clarissa gasping at the same time. But just as a as a means in real life, to do it in front of somebody is another level visceral It is intentional. It is an act for sure.

CRYSTAL: Although I will note that he was not planning on her being there right? She was early. And so—

ALEX: That’s true. She was early.

CRYSTAL: She was early. And he was kind of upset about that. But he had taken a lot of medication, so.

ALEX: OK, that’s a fair read. Like we can jump into the right to life, right to death discussion as well, here. In an earlier conversation, which is a very morbid conversation, but an important one to have with a long term partner is, like, what-what are your wishes? What what do you want to do? And both my wife and I have stated that we would like a DNR. And for those who are not familiar with that acronym is a “do not resuscitate” order. So essentially, we would we sign off on no life saving measures. Which is a tough conversation to have with somebody. But it is a required conversation. You don’t have a lot of say in how you go sometimes. I will say a lot of times.

CRYSTAL: Probably most times.

ALEX: Yeah, 99.9 percent of times. But at least that gives you some control. You can’t be mad about it afterward, which is also, I guess, part of it. But, you know, it is what it is. At least you would hope that people who love you would respect your wishes, you know, and don’t bury you when you’re sad. When you said, damn it, I wanted to be cremated.

CRYSTAL: Right.

ALEX: But yeah, it’s these kinds of things. And so the I found the the right to life, right to death and patient rights. An interesting take in the notes that you compiled. So I don’t want to step all over what you found here, but because I think I think. Yeah, go ahead and give it a little give a little bit more to that.

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think to kind of wrap up on on Richard, you know, Richard says early on in the movie that he is only hanging on to satisfy Clarissa. There’s that exchange where Clarissa is obviously taken aback, which to me was kind of surprising because I, I can’t imagine that that was the first time that he brought it up, just because it seemed like so much of the movie revolved around repeated conversations, the things that he said to her. And so that it was still if if this was multiple times, I mean, maybe it was the first time that he brought it up with her. But I, I, I still feel kind of—I find that difficult to believe. But she—it’s we don’t talk about death. We don’t talk about dying. We don’t. We have this image of folks with chronic illnesses or people who are literally dying as being brave and soldiering on and being survivors, right? And when your body is wasting away and you’re in pain every day, and especially if you’re also isolated and you have all those other things going on, it’s a little hard to put that brave face on. It’s a little hard to be that the perfect survivor of a chronic illness. And so, you know, it’s it’s one of those moments where he’s really trying to be real with her and having that conversation with her and her responses. People stay alive for each other and says, you know, the doctors said that you could live like this for years and clearly missing like what he’s trying to say. which is he feels like he’s done, like he’s ready to let go and she’s not ready to let go of him. So at that point, I think that that’s that’s a good I think way, way, way before this point, we should be having conversations about what those points are. But yeah, it’s definitely like if not, then the now having that conversation about when you’re ready to go. And I think that that’s an interesting contrast to Virginia and Laura, who both ended up providing, they said, some version of the statement like either “I stay here and die.” Like staying here in this environment for me is death or even I live and I’m choosing life. And they were both younger and healthier than than Richard was. But I found it interesting that they both kind of have that-that same expression, and that the monologue from Virginia at the train station, you know, I have it written down, but I am not going to read it out. But it’s it’s one of my favorite parts of the movie, because she I mean, Nicole Kidman, just delivers it beautifully.

LEONARD: Went for a walk, a walk. Is that all? Just a walk. Virginia, we must go home now. Nelly’s cooking dinner. She’s already had a very difficult day. It’s just our obligation to eat Nelly’s dinner.

VIRGINIA: There’s no such obligation, no such obligation exists!

LEONARD: Virginia, you have an obligation to your own sanity.

VIRGINIA: I’ve endured this custody endured this imprisonment!

LEONARD: Oh, Virginia!

VIRGINIA: I am attended by doctors everywhere. I am attended by doctors who inform me of my own interest.

LEONARD: They know your interests.

VIRGINIA: They do not! They do not speak for my interests.

LEONARD: Virginia, I can see that it must be hard for a woman—

VIRGINIA: Of my what?

LEONARD: your…

VIRGINIA: What, of my what, exactly?

LEONARD: Your talents to see that she may not be the best judge of her own condition!

VIRGINIA: Who then is a better judge?

LEONARD: You have a history! You have a history of confinement. When we brought you to Richmond, because you have a history of fits, moods, blackouts, hearing voices. We brought you here to save you from the irrevocable damage you intended upon yourself. You’ve tried to kill yourself twice. I live daily with that threat. I set up the press. We set up the printing press not just for itself, not just purely for itself, but so that you might have a ready source of absorption and a remedy.

VIRGINIA: I needed work.

LEONARD: It was done for you! That was done for your betterment! And it was done out of love! If I didn’t know you better, I’d call this ingratitude.

VIRGINIA: I am ungrateful? You call me ungrateful? My life has been stolen from me. I am living in a town I have no wish to live in I’m living a life I have no wish to live. How did this happen? It is time for us to move back to London. I miss London. I miss London life.

LEONARD: This is not you speaking, Virginia. This is an aspect of your illness.

VIRGINIA: It is me, it is my voice!

LEONARD: It’s not your voice!

VIRGINIA: It’s mine and mine alone!

LEONARD: It’s not your own voice that you hear.

VIRGINIA: It is not. It is mine. I’m dying in this town!

LEONARD: If you were thinking clearly, Virginia, you’d recall it was London that brought you low.

VIRGINIA: If I were thinking clearly…?

LEONARD: We brought you to Richmond to give you peace.

VIRGINIA: If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark, and that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with a threat you tell me. You live with the threat of my extinction and that I live with it, too. This is my right… tis the right of every human being. I choose not the suffocating anesthetic of the suburbs, but the violent jolt of the capital. That is my choice. The meanest patient is even the very lowest is allowed some say in the matter of her own prescription. Thereby she defines her humanity. My wish, for your sake, Leonard, that I could be happy in this quietness. But if it is a choice between Richmond and death, I choose death.

LEONARD: Very well, London then. We go back to London.

CRYSTAL: And I just feel like that’s such a powerful moment of of just pushing back against the institutions that are telling her how she should be feeling, right. Her husband, who at times is telling her how she should be feeling this moment where she takes a walk in the morning and says something like, well, if I could take a walk mid-morning, I’d be a happy man, right? And so she’s got all these people telling her how she should be and who she should be. And this is her pushing back and saying, my right to life and liberty. Right? Is is being trampled on and I won’t allow it to happen. And Laura is not so passionate about it as as as Virginia is. But she still shares the story of, you know, feeling trapped as a mother, feeling trapped in this in this marriage with, I mean, John C. Reilly plays Dan. Wonderful—he seems like a wonderful guy, but she’s not into it. And and, you know, after she shares that kiss with Kitty and has that break down and, you know, kind of realizes that, you know, everything feels really wrong. You know, she says it was death. I chose life. And she you know, she left her kids. It was hard to do. She moved to Canada and became a librarian, if I remember correctly. And it seems like she’s she’s OK with that decision. She doesn’t expect anybody to forgive her. But she had to make that decision for herself. And so in those two cases, I would call those, you know, almost right to life or patient life, you know, types of examples.

ALEX: Yeah, I 100 percent agree. And I felt like her—Laura—and Laura’s monologue in the end, not as not as powerful as as Nicole Kidman delivering Virginia Woolf’s, but decently elucidating. Is—In that in-in that monologue, she says that she did it because she had to and that she didn’t want she didn’t want people to think after her, think-think about her anymore, because I don’t think her self-esteem was at an all-time high. So she just sort of wanted to live a life of quiet resolution. And I think. I don’t know if it was the child actor or not, but I was sort of thrown with this. It was kind of hard to tell what the child actor was thinking when they kept zooming in on his lifeless face. But Ed Harris, on the other hand, feels what was viscerally great disdain for his mother. And I think she reiterated that at Clarissa’s house at the end.

CRYSTAL: He had her die in his book.

ALEX: Yeah. Oh, OK. There you go.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. He had her kill herself in it and in his book and she said, I understand why he did that. It’s not what happened, but I understand why he did that.

ALEX: Oh, OK. I missed that bit. OK, that that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. So Ed Harris is Richard or Ritchie has this has this great disdain for her. But the little boy, Ritchie, when she’s just a new mother, it’s kind of hard to tell. And I, I wish they had gotten a better, better a little boy actor for that, because I think it would have been interesting to know what he was thinking, what he was supposed to be thinking in those moments where they just had zoomed in on his face, because I think that would have been much more powerful to know whether or not he adored her. Or thought she was a dummy. Because some of his dialogue sort of seems to represent that she was a big old failure, especially the cake baking. “Don’t remember! Remember, you gah, don’t forget to grease the pan!” and all that stuff. And then, of course, that’s reiterated later by Kitty. So I don’t know how—but, you know, obviously he’s banging on the window for her because he doesn’t want her to go do something. But it’s kind of hard to tell what he— I wish I wish so much for-for more from that little kid to tell me a little bit more about his relationship with her. I could tell you that Julianne Moore was acting the hell out of those scenes because she had very little to go on. I think yeah, I got the impression. I do agree that they probably could have used or did more like work with him or whatever. On on the acting part, I don’t know. It’s probably really hard to work. But no, but I got the sense that he was conflicted because I got the sense that I mean, Laura was conflicted . Yeah. Right. You could tell she loved him, but also like she kind of didn’t want him around. Right. And I think that my impression watching the movie was that he picked up on that. And so a lot of his response to that is also a little bit off. So like he’s attached or is following her around, he’s asking her what she’s going to be doing the day and like all that stuff. Right. But then there’s also that moment where after the kiss happens with Kitty and she’s obviously she’s really mad and he’s just staring at her and she’s like, “what do you want?” or whatever. And then he just runs away. Like you get the hint that maybe she’s not always super kind to him, like not necessarily abusive, but like. Yeah, like it’s probably a lot of really conflicting, and I think he can kind of tell that something is off, like there’s that moment in the car where he’s just like looking at her and she’s like, what’s wrong? And then I think I can’t remember exactly what he says, but I think he might have just said, I love you or something. And she was just kind of like taken aback.

CRYSTAL: Right. So I think I got the impression that he he knows something is wrong, but he’s like, what, four or something? I don’t know his age is very well, but like he’s very young. I don’t think he really has the words to be like mom has depression.

ALEX: Yeah, that’s true. I will I will give I will give that age group that leeway. The child actor., however, I will not give that leeway. OK, so as I promised the listeners, let’s talk about your expertise a little bit with respect to the movie. But before you jump in to the community psych aspects of the movie, please do tell us, because like I said, this would be edifying for me. What is community psychology and what do community psychologists do?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, so community psychology is is a subfield of psychology. It actually it’s probably easiest to explain what community psychology is by talking just very briefly about how it started. All right. So in the, about-about 50 years ago, I can’t do times is it 60s or 70s at this point? Yeah, I think it was late 60s, 68 seems to be right to be some psychcol—clinical psychologist got together and they said there are some issues we can.

ALEX: Understatement of the of the millennia.

CRYSTAL: There are some issues here. Right. Even if we even if every single person who started a Ph.D. program graduated with a Ph.D. and spent all of their time doing clinical work, we still would never have enough to serve everybody that needs help. But also, we can recognize that who tends to be able to afford therapy, who tends to be able to get therapy. Right. People who can afford to take off of work, people who have money, especially because, you know, mental health care system in the U.S. doesn’t always cover, you know, it’s not always covered by insurance. So you have all these other issues. Plus, there’s like stigma within certain cultures around different disorders and stuff like that. And then also like why as clinicians are we getting involved like after all these symptoms show up and it’s bad enough that they feel like they need to come talk to somebody about it? Why aren’t we out there preventing issues before they happen? So there all these issues that were happening like one, we’re never going to have enough capacity to do individual therapy with every single person who needs it. Two, there’s not even equal access to that. So good luck getting to one. Right. And then three, we’re-we’re intervening at the worst possible point, which is where it’s already negatively affecting people’s lives. So community psychologists don’t—well, yes and number four, we focus so much in clinical psychology. I don’t think this is as true today. But in clinical psychology, we focus so much on the individual. Like if a kid’s not doing well in school, what is wrong with that kid? Do they have ADHD? Do they have depression? Do they have something else, ODD? Whatever. Right. Like we find out what is wrong with the kid. Instead of perhaps looking at what is wrong with that kid’s environment.

ALEX: Mm hmm.

CRYSTAL: What are the things that are not going well? Is there violence in the community or at home? Like are they—is the school system underfunded, like, you know, what are all the things that are going on? Is there a mismatch between the environment that the kid needs and, you know, and where the kid is? And so community psychology says we’re not going to just look at the individual, but we’re also going to look at all the different things around them. It could be immediate things, families, schools, churches, stuff like that, or it could be broader, it could be policies, it could be, you know, the culture, media, stuff like that. And how do these things interact with one another? So it’s not even just about one of those things, but how do these things all interact with one another? Right. Because policy changes can be affected by cultural changes, and policy changes can also affect what resources go into what communities. And that can affect outcomes for kids even beyond like what what is going on with the kid themselves. And so there’s also a really big push in community psychology for prevention. How do we how do we notice when things could go wrong and how we prevent those things from going wrong? So that’s community psychology in a nutshell, is is we like to look at beyond just the individual. So we share a lot in common with sociology and anthropology. And then, you know, how do we prevent things from from getting worse, how we fix systems, how do we engage and system change? And yeah, that’s community psychology.

ALEX: Nice. Well, that was a great advertising spiel. I guess it was really good. So what what community psych stuff did you pull out of this film?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think kind of a meta point that I would probably want to talk to students about is every single person in this movie is white. I even looked for it this time because it’s set in New York. So like surely there’s an extra girl who who is not white. And I don’t think I don’t think I spotted one. So I do think—

ALEX: No, it’s probably because they actually filmed on a backlot, made it look like New York and did not get New Yorkers.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. Or just, you know, anybody. I don’t know. But it it’s it’s you know, so one of the things that I would probably want to chat with folks about is, you know, given what we know about the history in this country, but also potentially if people have experience with other countries, how might this story have looked differently? And in cultures where maybe mental health is more stigmatized or less stigmatized when we have other things too. Like, these women were also, you know, they were all women means, right? They all had either jobs or they had partners that had jobs. Clarissa’s apartment is pretty nice. And you can contrast that with Richard’s apartment. It’s not very nice. You know, Virginia had servants and, you know, Laura had a nice middle class. You know, that GI Bill is probably helping out with with some stuff, so…. you know, you’ve got you know, you’ve got women who also have money to at least be financially stable or, you know, produce, got doctors that she goes to. Right. So—

ALEX: Yeah, doctors, plural, doctors.

CRYSTAL: Right. They come in and examine her and all this stuff. And so, you know, taking those issues together, like what, you know, how does that affect the outcomes for these women? And also in in some sense, how are these knots still not protective?

ALEX: Because they do all still suffer from depression. They do still have have these issues with communication with their partners and isolation. Right. And in some cases, you know, perhaps money makes it worse in Virginia’s case, where, like, they could afford to bring a printing press out to Richmond and set up shop.

CRYSTAL: And, you know, he’s doing the real work from home stuff before-before that was a thing.

ALEX: That’s very true! Right.

CRYSTAL: He does have that.

ALEX: His employees come out to Richmond.

CRYSTAL: Yeah.

ALEX: Like. Yeah, sure. Well, we’ll make a book out in Richmond. That’s fine.

CRYSTAL: Why not? You know, and so, you know, in some cases that makes it worse because maybe maybe if they had a little bit less money, they wouldn’t have been able to afford it—

ALEX: And they would have stayed in London, which was what Virginia wanted all along, of course. Yeah. And I will bring up the quick point about her suicide. It happens in Sussex. So at some other point, they leave London again.

CRYSTAL: Mm Hmm. Yeah, so she moved around a lot, I think, in real life. And so, yeah, you know, so money money obviously plays a huge role in this. And I think also cultural factors play a huge role in this. And even though. Right. Even though the thousands is considered to be more progressive and you’ve got people living freer lives, you know, Richard’s getting awards for his poetry and stuff, which he attributes to having AIDS and—

ALEX: Oh, yeah. The Pity Award.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. Yes. It’s a pity award. And, you know, but he still can’t clearly, you know, in part, you know, he’s chronically ill, but also like his place is kind of a mess, it’s kind of rundown, it’s isolated. There’s if you notice when class is coming in and out, there’s like trash in the hallways are kind of piled up. And so because I mean, that money that that medication is is incredibly expensive.

ALEX: Yeah. No, it was. Yeah. And it is still it is still today. It’s it’s much cheaper and there better alternatives. 20 years later, but it’s still bad. And it was bad. And it’s surprising for what they explain away for how long he’s lived with AIDS slash HIV. He’s been he’s been doing pretty well for himself regardless of the situation. But as you say, he is sort of on that the downward spiral to squaller.

CRYSTAL: Right. And so and so you have all these factors I think are playing in so you can talk about like the history, especially if folks are able to delve into the history of of, you know, you know, like you were mentioning with shellshock and PTSD and know understanding that. Right. Virginia story takes place between two World Wars. Between World War I and World War II, Dan’s take place after World War II. And this isn’t really touched upon in the movie, probably because of filming and the just the timing of it. But like 2001 is when 9/11 happens. That’s not referenced at all. But the war part is just kind of constantly throughout all of this. And I think I think sometimes that can kind of bookend some of our understanding of mental health because of the different diagnoses that kind of came out of those different world wars and stuff like that.

ALEX: Yeah, that’s a really good point. I didn’t even I didn’t even realize the whole 9/11 aspect to it. The movie came out in 2002, which is interesting that they filmed it in 2001, which is why they set it in 2001. And they it’s clear that they filmed it before the attack in New York, because even though they are referencing the award in like October, there’s snow on the ground. It’s it’s clear that this is not the beginning of the year of 2001, but meant to be later in 2001. And so, yeah, they didn’t they did not reference that because they did not know it happened yet.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. And I think, you know, I think that there are these other community issues as well? Caregiving. You know, a lot of folks don’t necessarily think about the stress of caregiving. It’s it’s really underappreciated and especially when those caregivers are themselves isolated. Right. So Mr. Woolf—Leonard—he also seems like he’s pretty isolated. The only other person he really talks to in the film. I think well, other than he’s the servants and his one employee. Right. And then Virginia, I don’t even think he says anything to Virginia’s sister when she visits or the kids like we-we don’t even see him during that part.

ALEX: Yeah, I don’t I don’t recall him saying anything to-to the children.

CRYSTAL: He’s also isolated and he has the additional stress of of of caretaking. And he does have the language for this. And he can express it to Virginia when she runs off and doesn’t like they talk about it a lot, but he is able to actually talk about it. But then if we contrast that with Clarissa taking care of Richard, she she doesn’t really have the language for it. She struggles to tell Louis and her daughter also Julia, what’s going on in the deepest part of her struggles while she’s in that kind of mental breakdown. And she doesn’t ever resolve that breakdown. Right. She just kind of tucks it away. And I think that that that can happen a lot. And so, you know, it’s not just about the network that these individuals have, but the people that care about them. Who else do they also have to lean on so that they can be at their best as they’re providing care? And, you know, do they have institutions that they can receive support from? I’m actually remembering, as I’m saying, that I have a friend who lives in France, a couple of friends actually that live in France. Unfortunately, Guy has passed away, but he had Marfan syndrome, which is a genetic disorder, I guess. And it’s it’s very rare. And he they I remember them telling us, I, I did like a fundraiser or something and raise some money for the foundation. And she mentioned like, oh, this Helen, his his wife had mentioned, oh, we actually get some materials for them. Sometimes it’s a U.S. foundation, but we get some materials for them sometimes that we can share with doctors because doctors don’t know what this is. Right. And so they use that educational materials, too. And so thinking about like especially if you have like a rare chronic illness, it can be very difficult to get doctors to understand what’s going on, to get community members to understand what’s going on, even sometimes to get family members to understand what’s going on. And so when you’ve got something like bipolar, which I would still argue is not very well understood today.

ALEX: Oh, hundred percent agree.

CRYSTAL: You know, who is he going to talk to? Right. And how is he going to get the support that he needs? And so I think I think about the caregiving aspect, you know, a lot, when I watch this film.

ALEX: Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. My mom was an isolated caregiver. As soon as you started describing and I’m like, oh boy. For—so she was the caregiver for my grandmother for many years. And she’s up in Wisconsin. Most of my aunts and uncles are elsewhere in the country. Most of them are in California still. And, you know, it’s a it’s a long trek to go from California to Wisconsin regularly. And, you know, she so she didn’t have a lot of help. And I will go out on a limb for her. I don’t know if she listens to the show, but I will go out on a limb for her and be like, yeah, she was an isolated caregiver. And we we felt very bad for her dealing with my grandmother and this amazing woman, my grandmother. But she was very she was a very difficult woman too. The best damn lady ever, but very, very difficult and stubborn. So, oh, you can imagine how tough that would have been isolated like that. So, yeah, that’s a really good point about the three caregivers and the aspects of their illnesses that are hard to have conversations with with other people. So Leonard Woolf didn’t have anybody to talk to really. Dan probably had no idea what kinds of things that Laura was going through and may at the time have attributed, like many men in the, you know, 40s, 50s, 60s, et cetera, may have just attributed that to pregnancy weirdness. Right. “I don’t know what a pregnant woman do!” Yeah, so and just like maybe deluded himself in some way like it, and it’s sort of diluted in in or mentioned in a diluted kind of sense, when Ray—Kitty’s or—Dan’s friend, who is is Kitty’s husband, says, oh, she’s just going to the hospital for routine stuff, even though it’s actually literally probably something like ovarian cysts or endometriosis or something like that. Right.

CRYSTAL: Or even even potentially like ovarian cancer. Right? Are you willing to growth in her uterus?

ALEX: Sure. Yeah, exactly.

CRYSTAL: Not routine.

ALEX: Yeah. Right. And so so we have that aspect of the 1950s playing there and then with Clarissa and taking care of a for all for what appears to be all intents and purposes, our last, which is our last topic of of the episode, which is the sexuality and LGBT community aspects of the film that are represented by the characters is ostensibly a gay man. And probably from what is assumed in the film, at least from my take, is that he got HIV through being a being a member of the gay community and how it was transmitted there in the 1980s and 90s. And we don’t know, like I said, how long he’s had it for, but it has advanced to a stage where he’s got sores on his skin. They do make an effort to show that and that he’s done with living as he he says. And then Clarissa seems to be part of that community as well, because she has a she’s had a 10-year relationship with a woman named Sally, and so she’s either a lesbian or bisexual, as you had mentioned, Crystal. And so. She’s still, as you said, refers to Sally is a friend as opposed to her partner, and so this is 2001. And you said about the, you know, the whole 2000s, turn of millennium, being all super progressive and everything like that, but it was still very difficult to find community. In that world, and especially for Clarissa talking to other people about a gay man with AIDS. So you have these three characters, three caretakers who are their own victim of time, period and circumstance, in addition to the three women who are or actually, I should say, three characters, because we have to flip Richard and Clarissa as far as who’s who in the dyad. But then you have the two women, Virginia Woolf and and Laura and then Richard, in this case for the modern dyad. You have them being victims of their own, their own issues, whether they be mental health issues or physical issues. And the the the caretakers, I think that’s an amazing point. And I’m so, so happy that I got to noodle on that while you were talking.

CRYSTAL: Yeah, I think I think that these are interesting tensions that they’re going through some similar issues within their relationships. Throughout these time periods, you, Virginia Woolf—We did mention briefly that that kiss with her sister. It’s it’s hard to tell. To me, I’ve never read that as like a passionate kiss in terms of like incest. Sexual passion.

ALEX: Yeah. And not incestual.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. It seems more like I need to feel something. It’s kind of the gist that I get with it. But there is still that interaction between women. The real Virginia Woolf, as I understand it, did have some romantic letters that she exchanged, I think with like a nurse or something that she’d had at one point. So, you know, there is kind of that that kind of background there, but certainly it would have been stigmatized during that during that time period.

ALEX: Oh, yeah.

CRYSTAL: You know, we’ve got Laura, who is kind of a she’s kind of trapped both in her gender roles, also trapped in terms. sexuality as well. There’s this kind of awkward conversation between Laura and Kitty before their kiss where Laura just kind of seems a little bit out of it. But she says, you know, they came home from the war. They deserved it, didn’t they? And then Kitty says, what did they deserve? And then Laura says, I don’t know us. I guess all of this. And she kind of motions the house. So it almost feels like she’s minimizing her own agency in her marriage. Indirectly, she’s it almost sounds like I was given away to this man who came home from war, apparently been thinking about me while he was at the war. And I decided, why not, right? It just seems like this is the thing that you need to do, right? And she’s she’s expected to have to be this perfect mother and to bake cakes and to take care of her kid and to love taking care of her kids and to want to, right? Kitty—I hate it when she says, like I cringe every time when she says, I don’t think you can really be a woman until you’ve had a child or something like that.

ALEX: Yeah, she does mention that. Mm hmm.

CRYSTAL: Oh, it just makes me feel so gross every time she says it. But it is I mean, it is a common a common feeling. And so and then you have this subversion of that, right. When Laura is trying to calm Kitty down, who’s really upset because she’s worried about this upcoming surgery and how there’s going to be this guy that she’s never met rooting around in there. And like, what does he care about her well-being? Right. And then they kiss and they share this moment. And it almost seems like it’s it’s it feels like it’s a mutual attraction. It’s a mutual enjoyment of that guess. But then, you know, as soon as that happens, like that spell is kind of broken and Kitty gets up and she just immediately pretends like that from my memory, you know, she’s men and blocked herself with the little the little pen. And, you know, Laura tries to address it, like, can we talk about what just happened? You know, and she’s like, what? You know, and just just kind of leaves. And that leaves Laura to be really upset and confused. And I mean, I would be confused if I made an advance on somebody and then they immediately pretended it didn’t happen. That would be really upsetting.

ALEX: Right. And I it’s just it’s almost as if it was the unstated rule at the time, the unwritten rule, like, oh, we did the thing and I experienced like the Katy Perry song. And then, well, it’s apparently Las Vegas. And what stays what happens here stays here. “I’m sorry. What were you talking about? We had a great conversation, but I for the life of me, I can’t remember it!”

CRYSTAL: Right. And so it’s just really, you know, it’s that kind of awkward moment. And I can’t ever tell what’s going on in in Laura’s mind at that point, because probably a lot both like, am I going to get she going to tell anybody? Am I going to get in trouble for this? Because also it’s an extramarital kiss, you know? You know, is she ever going to talk to me again? Because if if Kitty’s her only friend, then now she’s going to be even more isolated if their friendship is ruined. Right. So it’s like a lot going on there. And then maybe also just some surprise that she did that, right. Because she almost seemed surprised that that happened.

ALEX: I think possibly also the impetus for her resolve to create a plan to execute her suicide. And even though she changes her mind before she starts taking any pills, I think it’s still the impetus for what she decides later. You know, it’s interesting as a viewer to watch that time jump. Obviously, we we see her again after this moment. We see her again as as an older woman where, you know, 50 years have passed. And but we we see it like is, you know, it’s been five minutes or whatever, and then we see this explosion and then we will hear this explanation of why she left. But we don’t actually see her agony. Over the course of the remainder of the pregnancy, because, you know, she’s probably what seemed to be halfway along, maybe I don’t know. We’ll just say that. And, then she doesn’t say how how soon after her daughter is born that she that she leaves, but the agony still in over that, as well as probably other incidences before she decides to leave for Canada, for her for her next life. So I thought that was I thought that was an interesting, interesting take as you were talking about all the things that were going through her mind right after that kiss.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. And I also wonder, you know, one of the things that I hear about frequently in terms of suicide is often people are kind of most at peace once they have that plan and they know that there’s you know, there’s an action that is going to occur. And sometimes I wonder if with her plan to to leave, if there maybe was some of that same like now there’s an end date, right. Like, OK, let’s say three months after my daughter is born, I’m out of here. Right. Then it’s it seems like it’s almost a little bit more doable then. I might potentially have to spend the rest of my life as a as a wife and then as a grandmother and then as you know, all of these other things. And so it’s hard to tell. I mean, we’re projecting. And then what’s the word?

ALEX: We’re trying to extrapolate beyond?

CRYSTAL: Yeah, we’re extrapolating at this point. But it is kind of interesting to think about, like what would that have experience been like? Because they’re part of it is the agony of like I’m still going through with this person. I’m not really interested in going through. Right. And I’m still married to a guy and seems nice, but I’m just not really not that into him. I’ve still got this kid and maybe Kitty never talk to her again. Maybe Kitty pretended it never happened. Who knows? Right. I mean, I think I think we can pretty safely rule out that Kitty came back and said, “I love you. Let’s run off together” because that didn’t happen.

ALEX: I was kind of hoping after we saw after we saw Laura show up after the death of her her son, Richard, that she was going to be saying that she was going to say, oh, yeah and then Kitty came back and I decided that’s not the life that I wanted. And I left my kids. And because she had already said that, you know, Dan had died of cancer and the sister had died young, etc., like I was just I was really hoping for that. But in retrospect, it seems like that was never going to happen, because that was, like I said, the impetus for a life changing moment. And I don’t know if, as you said before, Kitty and Laura ever shared commonalities.

CRYSTAL: Yeah. And I, I think about sometimes, like, you know, did if you see Laura seems resolute with, you know, she seems OK at peace with the decisions that she made, understands that that makes her a monster and a lot of people’s eyes. But like she seems like she has made peace with that. But I still wonder if. What did she do and Canada, did she did she date women, did it doesn’t she probably wouldn’t have dated men. Right. It just did not seem like she was interested in Dan, maybe not even interested in men at all. Hmm. Maybe she stayed by herself. Maybe she was asexual. And that was just the testing water. You know, we don’t we don’t know much about Laura, but I think sometimes about that, like even though obviously she’s a fictional character, you know, what kind of life does she lead in the last 50 years as a librarian? Was she happy to be introverted and be with herself? Or did she did she have romance or any of those experiences?

ALEX: Yeah. Was, you know, did she just love, you know, the books? Die Bücher, you know, you’re just a fan of those books.

ALEX: And I want to thank Dr. Crystal Steltenpohl, for joining me to discuss The Hours! Before we say goodbye, Crystal, is there anything that you would like to plug? Where can others find out more about your work and what you do?

CRYSTAL: Sure. Yeah. So if you’re interested in my work, I suppose you can go to my website, which is cns—almost like central nervous system—young.com. That’s not intentional,those are my initials. Where are you? You can find my work there. You can also follow me on Twitter at Cristol and Young. I’d also like to let folks who are interested in psychology know about the psychological science accelerator, which is a global network of psychology labs that are working together to do some really cool team science stuff. And for those, I’m sure there are a lot of listeners who are interested in education. So I’d also like to plug the Open Scholarship Knowledge Base, which is a community of volunteer advocates who are working with researchers, educators and really anybody that’s interested in open scholarship. So to share open access, educational resources. So anybody that’s looking for a great classroom material or if you’ve anything that you’d like to share that you’ve made, check out the OSKD.

ALEX: Awesome. I will link those in our show notes for this episode. So thank you for shouting them out. They’ll definitely get some clicks from me. Thank you again, Crystal!

CRYSTAL: Yeah, thanks for having me. This has been really fun.

ALEX: I’m glad to hear that. And that’s going to do it for this episode. Until the next episode… thanks for listening.