Bog Post #6

 The 2015 short film Paralysis directed by R. Shanea Williams follows a 30-year-old woman named Jessica who is a photographer and is suffering from chronic sleep paralysis. At the beginning of the short film, Jessica expresses that she is not taking on any new clients and it is revealed that she experienced childhood trauma when her mother passed away when she was 10. During a conversation with her father, it alludes that Jessica has a history of self-harm as a deep parallel scar is shown on her wrist. For the entirety of the film, it is clear that Jessica’s life is unraveling and constraining. For the majority of the film taking place in Jessica’s apartment, the lines between reality and fantasy are blurred. Just like Jessica has a dwindling perception of time and reality, so too is the audience sure what is real and what is a dream. Jessica’s sense of personhood begins to dissolve as two variations of her sense of self emerge, her nighttime self and her wakeful self. As the perception of reality and dreams continues to be warped, Jessica’s neighbor eerily alludes to the previous tenant of Jessica’s apartment who allegedly had a mental breakdown after also suffering from insomnia or sleep paralysis. When Jessica visits her psychiatrist and expresses all of the issues she’s been experiencing, the psychiatrist raises questions of what are Jessica’s true monsters. Conceptually, perhaps Jessica’s monsters have manifested from the lingering grief of the traumatic death of her late mother or the recent divorce of her husband. I think this short film conceptualizes the complexity and diversity of mental illness, and it’s a rarity in mainstream media for black people let alone black women to gain recognition for mental health issues. Even if that wasn’t the main point of the film, it’s essential that Black characters are portrayed with complexity and depth and not fit artificial molds or fitting stereotypical standards. In the broader sense of the film, the audience is left with an unsettling and unconfirmed understanding of the foundation of Jessica’s monsters. Perhaps they truly are some sort of a demonic entity that lurks in the darkness of Jessica’s apartment while she sleeps, or perhaps in a more psychological sense the true monsters are a symbolic manifestation of the trauma of Jessica’s past. After watching the short film in its entirety it appears that Jessica’s monsters have nothing to do with any paranormal occurrence, but rather the haunting sensation she experiences throughout comes from within her. 

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