preview

The Movie ' Sunset Boulevard '

Good Essays
Open Document
The film Sunset Boulevard (1950), directed by Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond exemplified a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) by being demanding, intense and unstable. These behaviors that are consistent with the elements of abnormality include suffering, social discomfort, dangerousness, and irrationality and unpredictability. The first element that is consistent with Norma Desmond’s character is suffering. Desmond being one of the greatest movie stars in history suffers as she experiences the fall from stardom. She also suffers from identity disturbance as she reaches an unstable self-image notion. In one scene when Desmond recognizes for a moment about her age, she claims, “Look at me. Look at my hands, look at my face, look under my…show more content…
Fourth element is irrationality and unpredictability as stress-related and paranoia leads to irrational thinking. In the very last scenes of the film, an unpredictable event occurs when Desmond kills Gillas, and all of a sudden she then quickly hurries upstairs to prepare for a movie set while being surrounded by the reporters and police officers. More importantly, with the case of Desmond, the people around her feed her false belief because everyone is aware that she no longer is herself, which leads to Desmond securing herself permanently into her fabricated world, then eventually led to her demise. The film then ends as Desmond experiences the most unpredictable and irrational behavior.
The causal models that best represent Norma Desmond’s Borderline Personality Disorder abnormality would be the Biological, Sociocultural, and Cognitive-Behavioral model. Firstly, the biological model helps to determine the causal factors as research suggests that genetics play a significant role in BPD as the text supports, “people with BPD often appear to be characterized by lowered functioning of the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is involved in inhibiting behavioral responses” (344). Generally, genetics are a main aspect to BPD, however other models help to identify Desmond’s abnormality such as the sociocultural model, which helps to determine further explanations on how the potential impact
Get Access
Related
Get Access