Suicide Movies - Social Patterns 1900-2009

Copycat Effects

There is evidence that cinematic suicides can contribute to imitation or copycat effects on the social suicide rate. The suicidal behavior of the model in a movie is sometimes copied in the audience. Reviews of this literature are available (Pirkis & Blood, 2001; Stack, 2003) and include the first meta-analysis, which is based on a review of 183 findings contained in 26 existing studies (Stack, 2009a). Importantly, the rise in the youth suicide rate between 1950 and 2000 was found to be related to the number of suicides in American feature films per year (Jamieson, 2001). Further, suicides by youth were found to increase after the showing of a student suicide by a young male in the German film, Death of a Student (Schmidtke & Schaller, 2000). The effect of the film was especially strong among persons of the same age and gender status as the model in the film. For example, the suicide rate of young males on the rails increased by 86% over the 70 days after the showing of the film. In New York City, for the year following the publication of Final Exit (1992) by Derek Humphry, a book recommending suicide by asphyxiation by plastic bag, the number of suicides by that method increased by 313% from 8 to 33. A copy of Final Exit was found near the bodies of 27% of the suicides (Stack, 2003). Hawton and his colleagues studied the incidence of persons reporting suicide attempts (N = 4,403) at 49 emergency rooms across the UK for three weeks before and three weeks after the showing of a drug overdose on a popular television drama, Casualty (Hawton et al., 1999). There was a 17% increase in attempts after the showing on television. Importantly, interviews were performed with the attempters, and one in five reported that the suicide on television had influenced their decision to overdose.

The full effect of exposure to suicides in movies needs to be measured over long periods of time. Many feature films shown on Home Box Office (HBO) and other television outlets are downloadable from the web, and most are available for rental or purchase on DVD. For example, the suicides by Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter (1978), continued to influence copycat suicides for at least 25 years after the film. Between 1979–1986 there were 46 confirmed cases of such copycat suicides. Typically the person had watched the movie airing on television or rented a copy of the movie before suiciding (Coleman, 1987). Additional reports of persons watching The Deer Hunter and suiciding shortly thereafter continue to be documented, although there is no longer a coordinated effort at locating all cases (Coleman, 2004, pp. 233–235). Indeed, there is recent evidence of a movie imitating a classic movie. In the film 187 (1997), the lead characters watch The Deer Hunter, and proceed to play Russian roulette to demonstrate macho fearlessness. Two die in the process. Suggestions for research on the long-term copycat effects of suicides in film will be discussed more fully in the conclusion of this book. We turn now to a discussion of the research strategies for the present investigation.

Overview of the Book

The first part of the present treatise is devoted to a series of three chapters on the individual centered motives for suicide. Chapter 3 deals with the traditional modes of explaining suicide from a psychiatric perspective. The two psychiatric explanations that are recurrently dealt with in film are depression and substance abuse. Chapter 4 delineates a nontraditional psychiatric explanation of suicide: the suicide of the psychopath, known currently as the antisocial personality disorder. While this particular psychiatric disorder receives little attention in psychiatry, it is a major cause of suicide in nearly one of five cinematic suicides. Chapter 5 deals with what we call the biological dimension of suicide or physicality. In film there are three subpatterns: pain, physical illness, and physical disability. The second part of the present volume deals with the four social causes of suicide, one each per chapter. These four chapters reflect the cinema’s emphasis on the causes of suicide which lie outside of the lone individual. Chapter 6 starts with the immediate circle of significant others and an age old recurrent life crisis event: death of a significant other. Chapter 7 deals with the largest set of film suicides. These suicides emanate from strains in social relationships. Subcategories are explored. The subcategories include intimate partner problems, including divorce and lovers’ triangles, strain involving parent-child relationships, bullying, societal prejudice (including homophobia, classism, racism, and anti-Semitism), and shame. The latter is a rather neglected phenomenon in suicide studies. It involves suicide due to exposure, or anticipated exposure, of some form of deviant behavior in the person committing suicide (Lester, 1997). Chapter 8 is an exploration of economic strain as a causal factor in film suicides. Major subcategories include financial problems and job problems including unemployment and occupational stress. Chapter 9 explores altruistic suicide, perhaps the most neglected cause of suicide in suicide studies. In film, however, such suicides account for nearly one in five cases. These encompass a series of categories including military suicides with a desire to kill (e.g., movies regarding suicide bombers and Kamikaze pilots), military suicides to save lives, political suicides to call attention to a cause, and suicides for the financial benefit of others. The latter include the suicide in Death of A Salesman (1951), where money from a life insurance policy will go to a family in need. Generally, when people suicide in response to feeling like a burden to others, their behavior is an altruistic suicide. Chapter 10 of this volume deals with cross-national comparisons, and the globalization hypothesis. Are the patterns in American film found in other nations as well? British films are compared to American films in terms of the seven causes of suicide in American films. The major difference between nations concerns altruistic suicides. British film has fewer military oriented heroic suicides and more socially oriented altruistic suicides than American films. This is related to the standing of these two countries in terms of their rating on the cultural axes of nations derived from Inglehart & Baker (2000).

The conclusion contains a summary of the principal findings of the seven chapters on causes of suicide. The results on five hypotheses are summarized. For example, is the degree of representation of each cause of suicide in film representative of suicides in the real world (artistic construction hypothesis)? Are the seven causes of suicide in film gendered? On the whole, what can we conclude about changes and continuities in the seven motives for suicide over a century of film? In what respect are the films today quite similar in the presentation of suicide motive than the films from the earlier periods in suicide film history? Are the causes of suicide in film rooted in the explanations of suicide in popular world literature? Given that there is more evidence of continuity than change in the presentation of the seven basic motives over time, what do the films reveal about deeper, more general aspects of American culture? The comparison of British and American film is discussed and largely supports the globalization thesis. Implications of the findings are discussed. A key implication involves the reaction of the “survivors” (significant others of the victim) to the suicide. Since film teaches us that suicide is caused by external forces, then it would be expected that some survivors might opt to be avengers, as opposed to just mourners. They would be expected to be portrayed, sometimes, as taking action against the people or institutions that drove their loved ones to kill themselves.

There are some suggestions for future research based on ideas in the films themselves. A summary is provided of many of the insights gained from film. These can be used for points of departure for future work. The findings of the present volume are briefly compared to the limited literature on other art forms as they relate to suicide. These comparisons stress how strain in social relationships are portrayed not only in film, but also in paintings and music as drivers of suicide. Our investigation is then also briefly compared to 32 book length studies on patterns in the portrayals of behavior and institutions (including crime, education, physical handicaps, prostitution, racism, and religion) in the American cinema. Elements of our hypothesis testing and sampling approaches are seen as distinguishing our investigation from most of its predecessors.

Some additional recommendations for future research are provided. These include a study of suicide attempts. Does the cinema present suicide attempts as stemming from a similar set of motives to those driving completions? Since social and economic strains are the principal causes of completed suicide, does the cinema stress these constructs more than psychiatric treatment in the rehabilitation of suicide attempters?

We now turn to issues regarding the research strategies or methodology of the study. These involve definitions, procedures for finding appropriate films, coding strategies, and the classification scheme of the seven motives for suicide found in the films.