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Abstract

Media content, particularly screen fiction, faces growing accountability in representing mental disorders ethically and accurately, aligned with the principle of ‘nothing about us without us’. This article interrogates the way notions of authenticity and ethicality are applied to screen narratives by examining the content and reception of Idioterne (The Idiots, 1998), Lars von Trier’s first and only Dogme95 film. Rather than an attempt to mediate ‘authentic’ disability or illness, I suggest that the film is better understood as an ‘encounter with madness’ that provokes audiences to reconsider how they assess illness legitimacy based on superficial observations. Analysing critical and academic responses, this article reveals how critiques of Idioterne, in fact, employ oppressive language while dismissing its nuanced portrayal of the ‘performance’ of a mental disorder. Arguing against the reductive biogenetic framing of mental disorders, the article advocates for media that embraces complexity and ambiguity, thereby fostering dialogues around what it means to ethically represent markers of identity.

Keywords

disability Dogme95 film media representations mental disorders

Introduction

Media content – particularly screen fiction – now has an unprecedented responsibility to represent marginalised groups, including people with mental disorders, accurately and ethically, and to abide by the slogan often associated with disability and mental health: ‘nothing about us without us’. The accountability for which media producers are now held is crucial and overdue, and has motivated audience demands for ‘authentic’ narratives grounded in truth, particularly from individuals with personal experience (often termed ‘lived experience’). These shifts, though, foreground two important questions: who has the right to speak for whom, and who is best positioned to determine the legitimacy of representations? This article addresses these with reference to Lars von Trier’s first and only Dogme95 film Idioterne (The Idiots in English), released in 1998: a black comedy celebrated by some scholars and critics for its experimental form and complex themes, but also condemned by others for its perceived insensitivity and even belittlement of people with neurodevelopmental conditions.

In existing analyses, the issue of what it means to ‘perform’ a mental disorder is often lost within a broader exposition on its formal qualities. The novel ways that Dogme95 filmmaking allows for cultural phenomena and human experience to be rendered through cinematographic and editing techniques – such as the handheld camera, jump-cuts, extreme close-ups, and unevenly lit scenes – is relevant to film and cultural studies but is oft-mentioned and, thus, will not be reproduced here. Reducing ‘spassing’ to a formal exercise designed to mirror the aims of the Dogme95 movement, as many scholars have, negates meaningful engagement with Idioterne’s complex representation of illness, madness, and disability. Rather, my perspective herein contributes new insights to this much-discussed film and invites further examination of the ethical representation of mental disorders in cinema. Through content analysis of the film, I critically examine the characters’ simulation of mental disorders (which they term ‘spassing’) as a performance of symptoms aligned with the current Western psychiatric discourse. ‘Spassing’ is situated within this discourse to illustrate how the present biogenetic model for conceptualising mental disorders risks obfuscating the complexity, equivocality, and uniqueness of mental disorders in favour of readily apparent, externalised characteristics. Indeed, I problematise critics’ tendency to evaluate these performances according to their perceived authenticity, identifying the persistent rationalisation of ‘spassing’ based on imprecise and speculative evaluations of the characters’ backgrounds.

Far from presenting a singular conception of mental disorders, Idioterne possesses an undeniable capacity to incite critical dialogues about what it means to ‘ethically’ represent a markers of identity. Departing from the current screen media trend towards content that is based on a ‘true story’ and increasingly high audience expectations regarding perceived ethicality in representation, I draw from Jon Venn’s (2018: 61) argument that ethical, radical engagement with mental disorders and ‘madness’ needn’t ‘seek recourse in gestures towards “authenticity” or presume the inherent radicalism of presence’ but can be radical through inciting, not answering, questions. That the ‘spassers’ choose to display characteristics usually associated with deficiency and illness way could be conceived as a kind of madness that mitigates psychiatric categories of illness and wellness, and the dichotomy of diagnosed/undiagnosed (Harper, 2005: 462; Henderson, 2018: 114). Using a case study of Idioterne, this article serves to promote the generative value of media content that embraces ambiguity and rejects diagnostic reductionism, thereby provoking audiences to reconsider their assumptions about ‘authenticity’ and ethical representation.

Defining mental disorders

The plot of Idioterne is premised on a group of white, able-bodied Danish people forming a community and bonding over their common interest in ‘spassing’: a troubling activity (with a troubling name derived from the outdated moniker ‘spastic’) that involves assuming behaviours and bodily comportment – such as disordered speech and restricted movement – commonly associated with some neurodevelopmental conditions. The group’s action unfolds through the perspective of its newest member, Karen (Bodil Jørgensen) who, by chance, is lunching in the same expensive restaurant as Stoffer (Jens Albinus), the group’s apparent leader, and Henrik (Troels Lyby), whom she believes to have neurodevelopment disorders, as well as Susanne (Anne Louise Hassing), who appears to be their carer. When the trio are asked to leave for fear they will disrupt the wealthy patrons, they drag curious and impressionable Karen out with them. As the four depart in a taxi together, the performance ceases; seeing how the trio laugh as they recall uptight waiter’s reaction, Karen initially equates ‘spassing’ with ‘poking fun’ but, despite her cognitive dissonance, eventually participates alongside them. Like Karen and the restaurant patrons, the film’s unsuspecting audience is led to believe Stoffer and Henrik’s presentation of a neurodevelopmental disorder is truthful. Thus, from the opening scene, von Trier subverts the idea that a legitimate display of illness is one that is externalised, visible, and readily demarcated.

The specifics of the ‘spassers’’ performance of illness and disability are often overlooked in discussions of Idioterne, but it is necessary to distinguish between the terms ‘mental illness’, ‘mental disorder’, ‘neurodevelopmental disorder’, and ‘disability’ to clarify how they relate to the behaviour of ‘spassing’ and how they will be used henceforth. In so doing, I rely on the descriptions within the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) and the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), both of which enumerate the multitude of diagnosable conditions with a scientific acuteness that obfuscates just how much these publications change with each revision. As Dalal (2018: 54) explains in CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami, psychiatry has attempted to construct itself as a scientific discipline grounded in reliability, validity and objectivity. In fact, the procedure for ‘diagnosing’ conditions is an exercise in attributing imprecise symptoms to abstract categories that are often overhauled every decade or so, leading to assertions that it ‘is more a cultural than a scientific document’ (Shorter, 2013: 17; cf. Kirk and Kutchins, 2017 [1992]; Kutchins and Kirk, 1997). Despite this, the terminology deployed in the ICD-11 and DSM-5 remains dominant in countries subject to the reach of the WHO and APA.

The very inclusion of neurodevelopmental disorders in the DSM-5 – a manual comprising only mental disorders – indicates a medical view that mental illnesses and neurodevelopmental disorders fall into the same broad category of conditions. The ICD-11, which spans the full spectrum of health conditions, also groups together, in chapter six, mental, behavioural, and neurodevelopmental conditions. Here, neurodevelopmental disorders are defined as ‘disorders arising during the developmental period that involve significant difficulties in the acquisition and execution of specific intellectual, motor, language, or social functions’ (World Health Organization, 2022: 389). Interestingly, no definition is provided for behavioural or mental disorders, which range from catatonia to disruptive behaviour disorders (see Kinghorn, 2013 on the biopolitics of defining mental disorders). While the descriptions in these documents fail to capture the complexity and subjectivity of conditions, for the sake of clarity I use ‘mental disorder’ for any condition appearing in chapter six of the ICD-11 and/or in the DSM-5, while ‘mental illness’ encompasses these conditions with the exclusion of neurodevelopmental and neurocognitive disorders (the latter including conditions like Alzheimer’s and amnesia). Disability might refer to the obstacles one faces in interacting with social and physical architecture, though is now often used, in contrast to ‘impairment’, to reference extrinsic rather than intrinsic features; thus, it is sometimes society that is framed as disabling, rather than the individual who is disabled.

These definitions, while imperfect, help clarify what ‘spassing’ comprises: it is more akin to simulating a neurodevelopmental disorder than a mental illness. This curated decision, of both the characters in Idioterne and Lars von Trier as the writer and director of the film, to conceptualise neurodevelopmental disorders as signifiers of difference is significant. Compared to the often-invisible features of mental illnesses (de Montellano, 2017: 185), neurodevelopmental conditions often produce visible or externalised symptoms – such as irregular bodily comportment or speech – which suit the visual format of cinema. The ‘spassers’ must also appear socially disruptive but largely benign to sustain their commune-like lifestyle at Stoffer’s uncle’s house in suburban middle-class Copenhagen. This choice of condition is, then, demonstrably premised on Western cultural attitudes towards people with neurodevelopmental disorders which, while reductive and stigmatising, include the positive qualities of determination, innocence, and optimism (see Beunza-García et al., 2023; Pelleboer-Gunnink et al., 2021; Sadler et al., 2013). By contrast, dangerousness, unpredictability, and unlikability are more often associated with mental illnesses, particularly psychosis-related conditions like schizophrenia (see Bratbo and Vedelsby, 2017; Corrigan, 2018; Gaebel et al., 2017 Koschorke et al., 2017; Riles et al., 2021; Sheehan et al., 2017 cf. Werner, 2015 for an alternative perspective).

It is crucial to recognise that people with neurodevelopmental disorders have been widely feared and ostracised in the distant and near past, and are still misrepresented and discriminated against today. In contemporary Denmark, for example, parents report feeling obliged to justify the welfare state’s financial investment in their disabled child by guaranteeing his or her eventual productive engagement in society (Spalletta, 2025). People with such conditions are not uniformly treated more favourably than those with mental illnesses, but research has suggested that the degree of culpability that a person is perceived to have for their circumstances is proportional to the empathy and support they attract; given that neurodevelopmental conditions, by definition, emerge early in a person’s life, the degree of perceived culpability is low relative to those with a mental illness (see Boyle et al., 2010; Corrigan, 2018; Flanagan et al., 2017 Johnson and Walker, 2021; Sadler et al., 2013; Schomerus and Angermeyer, 2017).

The behaviours in which the ‘spasser’ group members engage mirror the stereotypes surrounding intellectual disability reflected in studies by Beunza-García et al. (2023) and Pelleboer-Gunnink et al. (2021): that persons with intellectual disabilities (the terminology used in the studies and which, according to the DSM-5, are a type of neurodevelopmental disorder) are friendly and happy, but also vulnerable, dependent, and occasionally aggressive. Underwriting these characteristics is the assumption, implied in the term ‘intellectual disability’, of low intelligence. The perception of child-like naivety may account for some stereotypes (‘friendly’, ‘happy’), while the association of impaired cognition with confusion and a lack of healthy outlets for self-expression may give rise to others (‘vulnerable’, ‘aggressive’). When they are ‘spassing’, behaviour that might otherwise appear confronting or provocative – such as at public swimming pool, when Nana (Trine Michelsen) requests male strangers to adjust her bikini strap or when Stoffer gets an erection in front of a group of women in the change rooms – is dismissed as bizarre or amusing but not threatening because of the public’s assumption that they have a mental disorder. It is as if the performance of recognisable symptoms permit the ‘spassers’ to engage in behaviour that would be less socially tolerable without the guise of a readily observable condition.

Though, in scenes like the one at the public swimming pool, the public is generally accommodating, von Trier incites discomfort in his audience who, lacking context for why the ‘spassers’ act as they do, are positioned to sympathise with the bystanders being deceived. Knowing their display is disingenuous, the film’s audience likely views the ‘spassers’ as undeserving of the courtesy or slack they are paid. This could, and perhaps should, prompt critical consideration of who ‘deserves’ patience, compassion, or assistance. Perhaps inadvertently, von Trier harks back to a period in the early Danish welfare state when those receiving social support were categorised as either ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’ based on value-laden assumptions about their circumstances (Smed, 2020: 36). As I expound later, discourse analysis of critical commentary reveals that the only character to attract sympathy is Karen: the one about whom the most is known. This suggests that those interacting with the ‘spassers’ – within the film and in watching it – are content to judge the characters according to speculations about their backgrounds and motivations: speculations that, upon greater scrutiny, prove unfounded.

Demands for accuracy in media depictions

‘Spassing’ is only considered ethically questionable by audiences – within the film and of it – who do not believe the performance to be a ‘authentic’ display of a mental disorder, which begs the question of the basis on which assumptions of disorder legitimacy and authenticity are made. This section situates Idioterne within the literature on mediated narratives of illness and disability, connecting the contemporary trends towards truth-based content to the widespread acceptance that media representations interact in significant ways with public perceptions (see Carter, 2015; Henderson, 2018; Link and Stuart, 2017; Mildorf et al., 2023 O’Hara, 2019). I identify the risks arising from the psychiatric discourse permeating popular cultural texts and social imaginaries, affecting social expectations of how a person with a mental disorder will or should behave. The intention is not to encourage the negation of truth, accuracy, or responsibility in media imagery. Rather, it is to argue that striving for verisimilitude and cinematic realism can reduce the complexity of human experience. Conversely, texts like Idioterne are significant in their capacity to problematise social conceptualisations of and responses to mental disorders. ‘Spassing’ is better understood as a narrative construct – the manifestation of an idea embodied by actors under the direction of von Trier – and a cultural product that speaks to the way mental disorders have been conceived of and responded to within societies influenced by Western medical models.

Since early studies by Shirley Star, Cumming and Cumming, and Erving Goffman, researchers have critiqued role of western (especially American) social stereotypes and media images in perpetuating mental illness stigma (see Diefenbach, 1997; Duncan, 2022; Francis et al., 2004; Goulden et al., 2011; Harper, 2005; Hyler et al., 1991 O’Hara, 2019; Packer, 2023; Philo, 1996; Philo, 2013 [1999]; Pirkis et al., 2006; Rhydderch et al., 2016; Rubin, 2012; Wahl, 1995). Recognition of the systemic and everyday disadvantages faced by people with mental disorders, and the responsibility of visual media to rectify historical injustices, has produced various strategies to reduce stigma. This includes, among other approaches, the rebranding of mental disorders as ‘an illness like any other’ (Larkings and Brown, 2018: 928). The biogenetic paradigm for conceptualising mental disorders as organic in origin has not, however, shifted negative public perception and may even exacerbate it (Angermeyer et al., 2015; Angermeyer et al., 2011; Angermeyer et al., 2014; Haslam and Kvaale, 2015; Larkings and Brown, 2018; Pescosolido et al., 2010; Speerforck et al., 2014; Yao et al., 2020). It is thought that the framework reinforces an unhelpful essentialist conception of mental disorders, framing them as immutable, homogeneous conditions producing discrete symptoms, from which recovery is unlikely (Haslam and Kvaale, 2015: 400).

Audience assessments of the ‘authenticity’ or ‘accuracy’ of mental disorder representations are influenced by the current psychiatric discourse articulated in the ICD-11 and DSM-5, which have been criticised for focusing on symptoms over patients and reducing complex human experiences to identifiable, discrete symptoms. Wong (2021, 140), however, suggests the dehumanising effect of emphasising ‘presumed pathologies’, as the biogenetic model does, is mitigated when the person with the given disorder takes ownership of their story. Another strategy used to combat stigma, then, involves amplifying previously unheard voices in order to inform policy and promote personal empowerment through personal narrative and truth-telling (Carter, 2015; Henderson, 2018: 111–112). This has been enabled through factors such as an Anglo-European interest in media content focusing on ‘living history’ (Hunt, 2006: 843) and greater audience demand for high-quality content based on real events (Iordache et al., 2023; Parrot Analytics, 2023, 2024; Pippert, 2024; Stone, 2023; Sviličić and Vidačković, 2013), as well as the proliferation of video streaming on-demand (VSOD) platforms to circulate a wider range of stories to diverse audience groups.

For people with a lived experience of a mental disorder, this revisionist approach to offers a crucial chance to challenge and reframe problematic narratives and reductive schemas (Shapiro, 2011: 70; Venkatesan and Saji, 2021: 51; Venn, 2018: 145). Scholars have, however, identified the risk of perpetuating a narrow understanding of a disorder based on the symptoms discussed or displayed by the narrator or creator. Writing on the genre of autobiographical performance, Venn (2018: 51) highlights ‘the danger of an individual claiming to be representative of an entire identity, ignoring the vast heterogeneity of experience’. This genre can be a powerful format for reclaiming one’s lived experience of a mental disorder, though, like audience perceptions, personal testimonies are still vulnerable to the influence of psychiatry with its medical nomenclature and biological aetiology. Shapiro (2011: 70; cf. Garden, 2010: 123) contests the uncritical acceptance or rejection of first-person narratives about illness by both audiences and clinicians based upon ‘morally superior dichotomies of authentic/inauthentic, true/invalid, right/wrong’ which, again, are likely reliant on stereotypes and pervasive misrepresentations. It is also worth noting the limitations of the given medium – in this case, film. As Shohat and Stam (2014: 178) remark, ‘“Reality” is not self-evidently given and “truth” is not immediately “seizable” by the camera’. In an age of an unprecedented access to user-generated screen media content and firsthand testimonies, these concerns must be considered.

It is undoubtedly essential to foster sites of cultural production that mobilise marginalised and disadvantaged communities and individuals to speak for themselves. Like the above authors, though, I contest the idea that representations of mental disorders and disability are best mediated through narratives based on true events and real people, or that applying a diagnostic lens or category to characters is more ethical than leaving conditions ambiguous. I discuss elsewhere (Hallsworth, 2023: 16–17) how viewers, particularly of US TV series where mental disorders are explicitly referenced, ‘learn to view tokenistic traits as indicative of particular disorders or conditions’, which can lead to further silencing of ‘that which does not fit into the dominant discourse’. Given the common representation of mental disorders as unfortunate anomalies that must be rectified before the individuals can assume any social standing, the ‘spassers’’ embodiment of impairment is, in a sense, radical. Whether or not their display mirrors an actual impairment or internal struggle, the ‘spassers’ reject the notion that people manifesting symptoms that might be perceived as disruptive or confronting should remain unseen and unheard. Idioterne is not a film striving to depict the experience of having a neurodevelopmental disorder, nor is it necessarily an attempt to filmically render the subjectivity of a person with a mental disorder through a ‘disabled aesthetic’ (Britt, 2013: 291). Rather, it is a film that, through inexplicable choices realised in its plot and form, challenges the idea that adherence to social and cultural norms and formulas is preferrable to difference, defiance, and experimentation.

Gleaning ethics, truth, and credibility from fiction

Although any media-literate viewer could be presumed to exercise critical discretion regarding the truth-value of content, the discourse surrounding Idioterne often fixates on the ‘spassers’’ right to behave as they do, as if they are real people whose actions should be evaluated in-line with real world ethics. Indeed, Harper’s (2005: 478) assertion that ‘a major problem with existing critiques of images of madness is their overreliance on verisimilitude as the criterion for judging representational acceptability’ applies to Idioterne. Despite its documentary-style features – such as the typically Dogme95 lack of set lighting, diegetic sound, and handheld camera usage, as well as the interview-style scenes where von Trier asks the characters to reflect on their involvement in the group – Idioterne is not masquerading as a documentary nor striving for cinematic realism. Rather, these features remind viewers that what they are witnessing has been mediated through the minds and bodies of the creatives involved, as well as the technology of filmmaking and the industrial and cultural contexts in which it exists (Christensen, 2000: 35; Kostopoulou, 2023: 96). Although the Dogme95 manifesto advocates cutting through cinema’s illusory façade to ‘the last grains of truth’, the document, like the resulting films, is a playful provocation that needn’t be taken literally; like Idioterne, the manifesto identifies problems more than it offers solutions, inciting rather than negating further reflection.

Discourse analysis of commentary on Idioterne reveals a propensity to frame the characters’ ‘spassing’ as a subversive affront to Denmark’s apathetic middle-classes, or simply cheap provocation (see Badley, 2010; Bainbridge, 2004; Birzache, 2016; Britt, 2013; Christensen, 2000; Gaut, 2003; Koutsourakis, 2013; Krisjansen and Papadopoullos, 2015; Little, 2004; Lübecker, 2013; Simons, 2008; van der Vliet, 2009; Walters, 2004; Weber, 2004; White, 2001). The tendency to subject elements of plot and character to logic and causation – the way modern psychiatry does with mental disorders – reveals an interest in rationalising, and even criticising, that which is anomalous or inexplicable. These conclusions assume that the purpose of narrative depictions is to strive for representational accuracy and authenticity. As John Berger (2008: 10) famously asserts in Ways of Seeing, however, ‘The more imaginative the work the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist’s experience of the visible’; art need not render events realistically or literally to capture human experience.

Despite this, much of the criticism and censure levelled at Idioterne is on the basis of its complication, and perhaps gratuitous flouting, of the binaries of real/pretend, authentic/inauthentic, and sympathetic/unsympathetic, insofar as the characters perform symptoms associated with disorders they do not have. I would argue, though, that the film is better conceived as an exploration of socially conditioned expectations of illness manifestation. That Idioterne is an artistic experiment, not a filmic rendering of an actual social experiment, does not diminish its potential to explore the ‘constructedness of the social world’ (Robinson, 2024: 543) though. As Robinson (2024: 543) states, ‘The very process of producing a credible fiction entails engaging with the socially-mediated conditions through which credibility is established’. The ‘spassers’’ performances are sufficiently credible that members of the public are largely sympathetic and even obliging; the scenes at the insulation factory, where the tour guide patiently simplifies his presentation, and in the bar, where bikers help reluctant Jeppe (Nicolaj Lie Kaas) to use the urinal, typify this. If the public is discomforted or repelled – as are the council representative and prospective homebuyer – it is by what appears to be a person with a mental disorder, which reflects more on social prejudices (particularly those of the middle-upper classes) than the ‘spassers’’ morality, or that of the film’s creators.

Concerns surrounding the film’s motive might seem to speak to an audience invested in responsible representation, but it is necessary to recognise that the depiction of deceptive, even manipulative, behaviour is not synonymous with the advocation of it. Indeed, within the fictional world, the ethics of the pretence are questioned by Karen, who asks Stoffer how he justifies ‘spassing’ when ‘there are people who really are disabled’, to which he admits, ‘you can’t’. Such an enquiry could, and perhaps should, be levelled at the screen industries in general: the target of the Dogme95 manifesto more broadly. Far from maligned, non-impaired actors who play characters with impairments are often celebrated. Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (1988), Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot (1989), Leonardo di Caprio in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump (1994), and Sean Penn in I Am Sam (2001) received various accolades and awards for portraying characters with neurodevelopmental disorders, and these films are highly acclaimed. In addition, Mifunes Sidste Sang (1999) and julien donkey-boy (1999) – other Dogme95 films to which Idioterne is often compared (see Badley, 2010; Britt, 2013; Foltz, 2018; Simons, 2007, 2008; Walters, 2004) – escaped the polemic levelled at Idioterne. This may be because, in von Trier’s film, viewers witness the characters ‘toggle’, so to speak, between their usual behaviour and their manifestation of irregular comportment: we discern that they have full control over how and when they ‘spass’. Despite the parallels between an actor depicting a person with a neurodevelopmental condition and ‘spassing’, Idioterne generates more discomfort because it makes foregrounds the ethical ambiguity of an apparently able-bodied and -minded person performing disability.

If seeing the ‘spassers’ feign impairment proves confronting for audiences, the scene that is typically referenced as most ethically problematic is where they are visited by people with Down Syndrome whom Stoffer has invited to the commune-style share-house. This is, perhaps, because the juxtaposition of embodied experience and assumed experienced is most stark here. As the ‘spassers’ and people with Down Syndrome make polite small talk, Stoffer looks on, apparently dissatisfied with the result. In response to the kinds of questions the ‘spassers’ ask their guests, he declares with frustration that they might as well measure their skulls: a troubling comment that alludes to the historically dehumanising aspects of psychiatric and anthropological research, fuelled by misplaced curiosity rather than relationality. Britt (2013: 297) argues that ‘Unfortunately, people with disabilities are used here as props, as tools of real life brought in to shake up a make-believe scenario within a make-believe film’, suggesting von Trier’s intention necessarily matches Stoffer’s: to confront the performers with the lived experience that they mimic. Stoffer’s motivation might be insensitive or exploitative, but the film does not normalise or promote his choices; in fact, he is positioned as the most ideologically confused and emotionally unstable member of the group.

While there are countless examples of actors portraying (real or fictional) persons with mental illnesses or physical disabilities, from Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind (2001) to Jamie Foxx in Ray (2004), casting people with real embodied impairments is, paradoxically, often seen as exploitative – as a device deployed for its shock value – as if simply seeing a person with an impairment is confronting (a presumption, as Venn termed it, ‘of the inherent radicalism of presence’). Koutsourakis (2013: 130) argues that the interactions between the ‘spassers’ and the people with Down Syndrome arouse confusion in audiences, who now cannot distinguish acting from ‘authenticity’: supposedly, the film’s actors are rendered so uncomfortable they cannot stay in character, while ‘the Down syndrome sufferers do not act, but literally perform themselves’. Harmony Korine, director of julien donkey-boy and Gummo (1997) – who has responded to criticism over casting a person with Down Syndrome as a sex worker in the latter film – contends that:

I think that notion is, of itself, ridiculous. [. . . ] For a start, it suggests that people with handicaps are too stupid to know what a movie is. Is it exploitation to use someone with an illness to play someone with an illness? Or is it exploitation to get Dustin Hoffman or Tom Hanks to fake it? I mean, you won’t see any slobber on Tom Hanks’s face, no blood or shit on his underpants. What you will see is the lovable Hollywood-style eccentric schizophrenic, all exaggerated ticks and twists. That’s real exploitation. (in O’Hagan, 1999)

Citing this interview, Britt (2013: 295) characterises the ‘comparatively uncomplicated’ issue as one ‘of mere agency and participation in inspirational media portraits’, suggesting that the question of who has the right to represent whom is both fairly unimportant and negated when the ends (an ‘inspirational portrait’) justify the means (feigning impairment). On the contrary, I contend that narratives based on real people are not necessarily more ethical; under the guise of the true story, they can reductively answer the question of ‘who has the right to speak for whom’ with ‘only those whose illness is inspiring’.

The staged interaction between the ‘spassers’ and the people with Down Syndrome is frequently cited in attempts to contrast the actors’ candid or improvised reactions from those prescribed in the script. It is as if some kind of truth can be gleaned by pinpointing the moments where the actors slip out of character as a result of being confronted with the ‘genuine item’ (Little, 2004): ‘authentically disabled people’ (Badley, 2010: 64). Such a notion assumes, as Korine referenced, that people with disabilities cannot comprehend the distinction between fiction and reality and are reduced to their conditions, incapable of performing anything but disability, while the ‘real’ actors have the agency to embody multifaceted identities. Lübecker’s mistaken identification of two of the people with Down Syndrome as actors Vita Jensen and Morten Rolfe who appear in von Trier’s series Riget (1994–2022) further suggests that people with Down Syndrome can only represent their conditions and are, thus, indistinguishable from one another: a point reinforced by Weber (2004: 194) who claims that this scene naturally reminds viewers of Riget. I cannot discount that von Trier may have intended this controversial interaction to provoke viewers at the expense of those with a lived experience of a mental disorder; as I note elsewhere, the director has attracted valid criticism for relinquishing responsibility for his (mis)representation of marginalised identities (Hallsworth, 2021: 68). An equally valid interpretation of this scenario is that it makes plain the ease with which we, as audiences and social subjects, distinguish ‘real’ illness from pretence based on distinguishable differences in countenance alone.

While this scene creates an uneasy tension, the commentary surrounding it exemplifies the very issue that the film explores: scholars and critics make contestable claims about the authenticity of mental disorders based on reductive assumptions. Idioterne is regarded as ‘phenomenally offensive [. . .] filled with images that invite the viewer to regard the mentally handicapped as grotesque repositories of Denmark’s bodily anxieties’ (White, 2001: 77), and primarily concerned with ‘Mocking the disabled’ (Peyser, 2000). Such critiques, however, often perpetuate oppressive stereotypes around disability and betray a paternalistic preoccupation with passing judgement on von Trier’s sense of morality. ‘Spassing’ is described using the terms ‘retard’, ‘spastic’, ‘fool’, ‘handicapped’, ‘ape’, ‘buffoon’, ‘crazies’, ‘Mongoloid’ (used by Little, 2004 and van der Vliet, 2009 in reference to the people with Down Syndrome, who are also called ‘Downers’ by Christensen, 2000), and, of course, ‘idiot’. Crucially, though, these characterisations of the ‘spassers’ reference their actual performance of disorder, and not their decision to perform, effectively describing the symptoms and behaviour of those with neurodevelopmental disorders as foolish and crazy. Birzache (2016: 184), for instance, critiques the ‘faking of idiocy’ as inauthentic, implying that people with disabilities present ‘authentic’ idiocy.

Reframing Idioterne as an encounter with ‘madness’

Scholars have critiqued Idioterne through the lens of Denmark’s welfare state and screen industry and framed the film through various philosophical lenses, often emphasising the provocative nature of ‘spassing’ and the Dogme95 technique. Dismissal of the relationship between ‘spassing’ and neurodevelopmental disorders as mere provocation, however, negates the question of why embodying impairment might be radical or confronting. ‘Spassing’ transcends mere pretending – as how the film as a whole transcends mere representation of characters feigning disability – revealing an experience that resists biomedical diagnosis and explanation. In this section, I dispute the assumption that the ‘spassers’ are all necessarily mentally well people whose only experience with mental disorders is by way of gratuitous simulation, identifying how manifesting externalised symptoms offers the opportunity to reify an experience that would otherwise remain invisible. By focusing primarily on Karen, who is grieving the recent death of her young son, and Josephine (Louise Mieritz), who is suggested to have a mental health condition requiring treatment, I reframe ‘spassing’ – and, by extension, Idioterne – as an event that stages a multifarious encounter with madness rather than an attempt to poke fun.

More than any other character, Karen voices concern about the motivation behind ‘spassing’, echoing how the film’s viewer is likely to respond to each revelation about the group’s unusual activities. Interestingly, her initial unease is directed at Stoffer and the others’ trickery – apparently motivated by personal profit, as they are excused from paying for the expensive lunch in opening scene – than the immorality of feigning impairment. Aside from this first scene, though, the characters are not seen to exploit situations for material gain. In fact, their motivations for ‘spassing’ remain obscure and contradictory even as each character reveals aspects of their context and influences: Axel (Knud Romer Jørgensen) wishes to transcend the banal hyper-rationalism that celebrates ‘meaningfulness and purposefulness’, Stoffer glibly suggests the ‘idiot’ is the ‘man of the future’, Ped (Henrik Prip) has a vague ethnographic interest in their lifestyle, and Katrine (Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis) is pursuing Axel. Susanne never ‘spasses’ but adopts a maternal carer role, supervising and soothing the group members whether they are ‘spassing’ or not. As Karen learns that the primary audience for ‘spassing’ is the ’spassers’ themselves – that their public performances are opportunities to hone faculties that serve them just as well in the privacy of their shared house – she joins in, first in the carer role then as a ‘spasser’.

Recognising that each character’s circumstances are varied and that their motivations for ‘spassing’ cannot be conflated into a single ideological or material goal renders conclusive analysis of the film’s content difficult, and so the characteristics of the group are often generalised from those of Stoffer or Karen to the detriment of a more nuanced examination. Karen is the character with whom the film opens and closes, and about whose life the most is revealed, and so she naturally elicits the most critical attention and sympathy, whereas other characters are derided or ignored. Thomsen (2000: 52), Lübecker (2013: 441) and Elbeshlawy (2016: 62) argue that Karen is the only ‘true’ idiot, a term that Lübecker defines as one who is ‘naive and often enigmatic’, who ‘does not conform to social rules, [and] is marginal’. Koutsourakis (2013: 124) similarly asserts that ‘with the exception of Karen none of [the spassers] could be seen as representative of a marginal identity’. These authors dichotomise the group members based on their self- or externally imposed social isolation, but I argue that this distinction overlooks the dearth in context surrounding the other characters, and evaluates their deservedness for sympathy or concern based on limited information.

Indeed, minimal critical attention is paid to Josephine, despite her equally clear need for the respite that living in the commune – and particularly her burgeoning intimate relationship with Jeppe – clearly offers. Koutsourakis (2013: 108) contends that, ‘Apart from Karen, all of [the “spassers”] have the chance to go back to their everyday lives’, yet Josephine displays marked resistance to returning home when her father appears and persuades his daughter to leave the group or at least take her medication again. Her apparent unwellness is routinely ignored, though, perhaps because this plot-point comes so late in the film, thereby leaving little chance for viewers to reconsider how Josephine’s behaviour might reflect an invisible struggle. As Sarah Nettleton, (2006: 1176) explains, societies influenced by the rationalist, positivist biomedical approach to wellbeing do not afford ‘permission to be ill in the absence of an “accepted” abnormal pathology or physiology’; indeed, neither does Idioterne’s audience. The ‘spassers’, however, do: they do not demand she adhere to social rules, reduce herself to a diagnostic label, or justify her inability to be relentlessly productive and well. In fact, caring for each other is one of the few clear motives shared by the majority of the group members: their most regular and receptive audience appears to be each other, given that their activities take place in their shared house as much as, if not more than, they do in public. With the exception of Stoffer, whose main focus is criticising the others’ performances, the group members generally manifest compassion, especially when they are ‘spassing’, which suggests their desire is for connection rather than disruption.

This is exemplified in the final scene, where Karen is transformed from directionless and impressionable into a grieving mother seeking a sense of belonging and acceptance; she finds this in the calm and accepting presence of Susanne. Despite her initial reservations, Karen is the sole character to follow through on Stoffer’s last-ditch challenge that the group members ‘spass’ in front of people they know: something that the others resist because of the threat it poses to their outside relationships. In the confronting closing moments, she returns to the family home from which, the audience learns, she has been absent since before her son’s funeral two weeks prior, provoking a hostile reaction from her relatives, who demand an explanation for her absence. ‘Spassing’ appears to have offered emancipation from the demands on Karen as a woman and mother to grieve ‘appropriately’ (Bainbridge, 2004: 365; Elbeshlawy, 2016: 64–65; Krisjansen and Papadopoullos, 2015: 51; Tønder, 2015; Hallsworth, 2021). Thus, her grief, reluctant participation, and eventual act of confronting, uncompromised ‘spassing’ complicate simplistic readings of the group’s actions as primarily provocative or exploitative. Rather than striving to ‘accurately’ represent, say, grief or the specific illness with which Josephine has been diagnosed, Idioterne stages an encounter with a kind of madness defined by inexplicable behaviour that cannot and will not be reduced to a simplistic symptom-disorder relationship. For all their dubiousness as fictional creations, the ‘spassers’ subvert the notion that mental disorders necessarily produce deficiencies, and refuse to accept normative social participation as the only meaningful existence.

Conclusion

Stoffer’s response to Karen questioning how he can justify feigning disability – ‘you can’t’ – typifies the contradiction inherent to the film: it raises questions but, to the frustration of many critics, refuses to answer them. Is feigning disability more fundamentally immoral that any other kind of manipulation or modulation of one’s social identity? Is the central issue with the ‘spassers’ that they pretend, or that they disrupt? And if their behaviour is considered disruptive, what does this say about the way people with neurodevelopmental disorders are treated in society? Pondering these questions is, I believe, more valuable than entering into, as Shohat and Stam (2014: 201) have written, ‘fruitless debates about the relative virtues of fictive characters (seen not as constructs but as if they were real flesh-and-blood people) and the correctness of their fictional actions’. The film provokes audiences to consider what they find shocking, and why they respond this way.

The analyses that it has incited expose tendencies in some critics and scholars to rationalise the actions of fictional figures and the creatives that spawned them, and reveal the ways that academic work has deployed oppressive language in attempts to critique the film as unethical. Given that much commentary is concerned with the ethics of (mis)representation and the ‘spassers’ lack of firsthand experience of illness, the many (often unsubstantiated) claims about the motivation behind Idioterne and its characters are intriguing: the legitimacy and accuracy that commentators demand of the film are not necessarily exhibited in their own summations. Even those that champion von Trier’s project tend to view ‘spassing’ as a mode of resistance overlook the way that the film challenges the prevailing belief that, given the option, one would not choose to have a mental disorder. The impacts of the Western psychiatric discourse and social conceptions of mental disorders and disability remain strikingly absent from analyses.

Idioterne remains a significant film worthy of academic attention not just as a product of the Dogme95 movement, but because it resists the common trajectory of characters with mental disorders either being incarcerated, killed, cured, or successfully integrated into society. Idioterne obliquely problematises the biogenetic conceptualisation of mental disorders as comprising the discernible presence or absence of discrete symptoms arising from biomedical categories. It disrupts the idea that the presence of a mental disorder can be gleaned by observation of externalised symptoms and features, and provokes viewers to consider the ethics of non-disabled people pretending to have a mental disorder or disability. For these reasons, Idioterne remains an important cultural artefact worthy of analysis not just on account of its formal features, but as a text that grapples with mental disorders as ambiguous states of being that resist rational expression.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Djuna Hallsworth

Author biographies

Djuna Hallsworth is an early career researcher with teaching experience in media, cultural studies, sociology, and art history. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney for thesis examining motherhood in the Danish welfare state, which is published as a monograph titled Danish Mothers On-Screen (Palgrave, 2021).

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Mental disorders and the ethics of representation in Idioterne (1998)

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Defining mental disorders

Demands for accuracy in media depictions

Gleaning ethics, truth, and credibility from fiction

Reframing Idioterne as an encounter with ‘madness’

Conclusion

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Author biographies

References