Abstract:
Film and literature often reflect the most difficult and complex issues of society, including examinations and explorations of history’s forgotten characters. This paper explores the connections between film and literature published in a fifty-year span that feature homosexual characters imprisoned in mental asylums and the sexual, emotional, and physical abuse they receive at the hands of their caretakers. This paper also examines how each homosexual character, despite their traumatic circumstances, is allowed to emerge from their imprisonment with dignity. Research on historical asylums and homosexual patients are compared to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), Fingersmith (2002), and The Handmaiden (2016) in an examination of history’s often-overlooked mental asylum patients.
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