Starman: Mental Health and Cancel Culture?

The movie “Joker” tried to shine a light on mental health. Ultimately, it fell back on a decades-old Hollywood trope on the subject. As Director David Fincher said in an interview with Robbie Collin of The Telegraph, he believed the film was “a betrayal of the mentally ill.” Ironic coming from the director of a film with the exact same problem.

Incel Culture and Representation

The commentary episode with a licensed therapist and the playwright Pippa Mackie brought great insight into the reasons behind making the main character arguably an incel. That is a male who hates females for not sleeping with them. While it doesn’t go out of its way to humanize him, the parts that do earn sympathy are uncomfortably cringy. Starman’s mental health—after being denied his comfort food—in most other contexts, would be outlandish and somewhat funny. Here, it’s portrayed as more of a tragedy. The non-Greek kind.

Starman suffers from the opposite problem of films like the Joker. Instead of Hollywood’s belittlement of mental health through harmful tropes, Starman’s message is proof you can go too far in the other direction. There’s nothing funny about a person spiraling and this audio drama from Theatre for the Ears’ “Sound the Alarm” podcast feels indifferent toward it. When the motto of the podcast is to illuminate issues in the world today, indifference might as well be negligence. At the very least, it’s not helping with the stigma.

Dark Comedy Play or Dark, Comedy Play

When you hear the words “dark comedy” to describe a story, you expect it to have dark and somewhat controversial humor. The story of Starman goes to a dark place, but it’s not funny in the same way Deadpool’s opening credits are. Some people had vastly different experiences according to the playwright. Some people found it funny, others not so much. When dealing with mental health, comedy is not the best way to describe or execute that theme effectively or healthily for someone struggling with it.

Theme and Characterization of Mental Health

Starman, or Daryl’s characterization, is somewhat of a contradiction. He’s acting consistently like a person who’s been “canceled.” However, we don’t ever get the reason behind his decision. In terms of realism, that makes sense. People have different triggers and responses to As far as the story goes, it’s a bit inconsistent. The attempts at socialization through podcasting result in Daryl feeling worse about himself until the pizza delivery incident where he completely breaks down. Oddly enough, you can understand his predicament.

To go from cringy behavior to empathizing with the main character might as well be a unicorn in non-fantasy fiction. The end result, in this case, is more effective than the problematic journey itself.

7/10 Stars