cheap gucci sunglasses Nights in the Robot Asylum

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‘instead of calling attention to conflicting human needs ...the notion of mental illness provides an amoral and impersonal “thing” (an “illness”) as an explanation for problems in living’ – from Szasz, ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’.
‘Bender’s Game’
The shock collar she is wearing activates whenever she thinks angry, profane, or sexual thoughts, and when she lies, or tries to be violent in any way. A disturbing thought on the surface, certainly, but Futurama parodies it brilliantly by portraying Leela as eventually gaining a pseudo-sexual thrill from the shocks; a complete reversal of it’s authoritarian intent.
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This episode features the robot asylum also. This time, Fry is sent there, and it is being in the asylum that drives Fry ‘mad’. The court sends him to this institution for robots since all the human asylums are full, due to the judge having proclaim
When Bender falls through the ceiling into ‘Dr Perceptron’s’ office in 'Bender's Game', the robot doctor says his name in a dislocated tone: an even more mechanical one than his already speech-bot mimicking voice. This implies, in hyperbolic fashion, that he has no idea [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], nor does he care, who Bender is, and is merely repeating the name from a database.
This is not only a play on how comparable real-world psychiatric mechanisms are so simplistic and treat the human mind so objectively and so ‘medically’ that they disregard the possibility of the mind adapting to physical stimuli in a complex [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], unpredictable fashion, but it also wraps the horror of wearing a 'torture collar' in comic absurdity, which allows such a sensitive issue to be brought up in the first place.
Leela is Given a Shock Collar
Leela’s acceptance of such a totally absurd (insane?) diagnosis evokes, in exaggerated fashion, the criticism of, ‘How do we really know the doctor is smart enough?’. But it also, on a subtler level, references the idea, first championed by Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization, that physically coercive treatments and incarceration are first and foremost mechanisms of power, and accomplish and encourage, if anything, an arbitrary acceptance of doctoral authority.
This correlates with the criticism, articulated by Thomas S. Szasz, that psychiatry, through generalized models of diagnosis and the bio-medical approach to the mind, is radically impersonal [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and gives little to no credence to the patient’s individual experience or identity:
It reacts to angry thoughts. She is told that only the company doctor (Zoidberg) can authorize its removal. Zoidberg tells her: ‘Here’s your problem right here! You have a skull embedded in your head.’ Ridiculous. Leela, collar around her neck, sighs, quite aptly. Then she replies, with a faux smile, ‘You’re absolutely right doctor. Can the collar come off now?’
Matt Groening's Futurama features two scripts – those of the movie ‘Bender's Game’ and the episode ‘Insane in the Mainframe’ – where a psychiatric institution plays a thematic role. In each, the show manages to achieve a rare combination: deep subtlety and outright hyperbole. The subtlety comes from illustrating many nuanced and serious criticisms concerning the psychiatric world and its history; the hyperbole from the over-the-top, ridiculous sketches that frame those illustrations.
‘Insane in the Mainframe’