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in-this-body-of-mine · 3 years

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To The Bone (2017) - Analysis and Charting

Let’s go! I’m NOT excited because life is hard but what better way to distract myself than to do this kind of shit. No one cares, anyways.

Since this is the first one, let me tell you what we’re gonna do here. I’ll include the IMDB summary, a summary with spoilers, the placements in the chart, we’ll go over each item (also, spoilers abound) and finally my review and final thoughts. Yes, it’s gonna be long. Read at your own risk.

IMDB summary: A young woman, dealing with anorexia, meets an unconventional doctor who challenges her to face her condition and embrace life.

Summary with spoilers: Lily Collins plays Ellen/Eli and from the start of the movie she is on the brink of her disease. She was just kicked out of a recovery center and she gets an appointment with a ~cool unconventional doctor~ played by Keanu Reeves. She goes into ANOTHER inpatient treatment home to be treated by him. Shit happens, she seems to be getting better somehow, but then she spirals down, runs away, and after a... near death experience (I wish this was an euphemism) she decides to try recovery again and goes back to the treatment home. That’s where the movie ends.

Chart placements!

Now for each item:

White: Ellen or Eli is played by Lily Collins, who once played Sandra Bullock’s daughter in that movie were she was a Karen. It doesn’t get whiter than that.

Female: She changes her name to Eli mid film (which is how I’ll be calling her here bc we respect chosen names in this household) but she still seems to identify as female and be referred to as such, so here we have it. We do have a guy in the treatment home, but we’ll come back to him later.

Teenager/Young adult: I’m pretty sure she is 19 but every review I see says she’s 20. Either way, she dropped out of college even though she just started it. The actress, however, was 28 at the time the movie was released.

Wealthy/seemingly well-off: Her family has the money to send her to inpatient a bunch of times, and they make a point to mention how they have connections so she didn’t have to wait in line to see this new doctor. Case closed.

Skinny actress from the start: As we know, Lily Collins is already thin and she did struggle with anorexia in the past. Why, however, did she lose weight for this movie? They said it was her decision “to make the character more authentic”. As if not being skin and bones wouldn’t be enough. As if eating disorders don’t come in every size. They shouldn’t let her. The need to shock people is a very dangerous sign to me.

No distinctive personality or hobbies/interests: I’m glad Eli has a thing she loves. It’s not super present, but it’s there, and it’s plot relevant. She loves art and in the story, she had a tumblr (look, it’s us!) where she shared drawings related to her ED and a girl liked her drawings so much that, when she killed herself, she mentioned Eli by name in a note. But that isn’t really explored too much and I kind of got disappointed by that.

Good student: We don’t really know about that... and I don’t think it matter, it’s ok.

Seemingly irrelevant love interest: Why? Just why do we need Luke? Luke is the only guy in the home, and we can SEE that he’s only there to be Eli’s love interest. He wasn’t needed. None of the important plot points have anything to do with him. Make her date a girl. Make her date NO ONE. This is about eating disorders. She could have closer friends in the house. Why was this necessary. Her whole speech about how love is a lie could come from a friendship but no. They had to shove pretty white boy there.

Daddy issues (sometimes coupled with mommy issues): I find this extremely funny but her dad isn’t in the movie. At all. He’s alive and well, but he makes a point to never come home when Eli is even awake. I don’t think they cast an actor for that. As for mothers, she has three, and it’s a trip. Her stepmom on her dad’s side is very out of touch but she wants what’s best for Eli, but she really hates Eli’s biological mom. Bio mom, in turn, is described as a “bipolar lesbian” and the stereotypes are just... ugh. Bio mom has a wife and she is a bit weird too. They sent Eli to live with her absent dad bc “they couldn’t deal with it anymore”. This brings us to a great scene where we can see Eli shrinking in her seat and when the psychiatrist asks her what she is feeling she says “I’m sorry I’m not a person anymore. I’m a problem.” And that’s great to see. But at the same time, I hate that her whole issue in this movie seems to come from her family and anorexia is just a thing that happened, with some vague references to control.

*Triggering event*: We never see it and it’s okay - but I kind of wanted some more explorations of motives because we have ZERO.

Anorexia as diagnosis: As I always say, what is even the point of making a cool looking movie about EDs if your protagonist is not only anorexic, but also terminally anorexic? Ugh. That’s the only portrayal of anorexia that happens in media and I’m fucking tired.

Checklist of habits (manual for those looking for one): I mean, I mark this down but as I always say: everything is a manual if you’re looking for one. But if you’re doing more than not eating or purging or exercising I’ll judge it as a new tip. A lot of us already thought of/did most of them probably. But the marking remains.

Inpatient treatment (or extended hospital stay): As I said, she is kicked out of one treatment center and goes straight into another. What fucks me up is that the movie HAS other characters with other diagnosis, but we never see anything about them. We don’t see their journey. We only know Luke is a dancer bc he is the love interest. We only know Megan is pregnant and then she’s not bc this sends Eli in a spiral. We only know Kendra is not straight bc she makes a joke about it (and Doctor Beckham follows with a horrible joke about conversion therapy). Did you notice Ciara Bravo was in this movie? I didn’t on first viewing. She has like two lines. The whole movie is centered around Eli and every scene in the house feels like all the other patients only care about her too.

Emotional tipping point: Megan loses her baby and for some reason this affects Eli. Luke kisses Eli and for some reason she’s pissed. At that point, I was annoyed. She has a bad session with Doctor Beckham who basically tells her to grow a pair and stop complaining (which is insensitive as a doctor, but as a person I wanted to do the same) and she decides to quit and leave. She has to go to her mother’s home and I’m supposed to care. Stepmom is mad but doctor says she needs to hit rock bottom. She weights like 70 pounds dude. Rock bottom was about ten pounds ago, next stop is a coffin, mate.

Mom hugs: And here we have the emotional turn around of the movie and it’s just... make it make sense. She goes to her bio mom’s ranch. Her stepmom # 2 tells they’ll have therapy with horses (?). Eli goes sleep in a tent and bio mom cries and says she accepts if Eli wants to die. Very supportive I guess. They have this weird bonding moment where the mom feeds her a bottle like a baby and look, if you liked that, good for you, but I don’t get what I was supposed to feel about it (but that’s mom hug #1). She goes on a hike next morning and... dies? Either way she has an out of body experience where she talks to Luke and sees how she looks - which is weird to me. Didn’t we go over this in the beggining of the movie? Didn’t we establish that she does know what she looks like and doesn’t care? But still she seems shocked and they have a cryptical conversation and she wakes up. And just like that, she’s ok now. She meets up with the other stepmom (mom hug # 2) and goes back to the home.

Happy ending: In the last scene Eli is back to the home and we understand she’s going to try to recover for real this time. I’m okay with that specifically, I think it would be bad if they pretended she just got better with no relapses and everything is fine, but it’s a hopeful ending. Despite the fact that we have no idea if she won’t have a fit and leave in two days and that we never know anything about anyone else and Megan, who lost the baby, never comes back. It’s fine. At that point, I didn’t expect much.

Analysis: I was hesitant to be critical bc this movie was based on the real life experiences of the director and Lily Collins. But fuck it, this is my circus and I’ll clown as much as I want. While I do understand that, I have a lot of thoughts.

Mainly, I need to say that while I understand this is her story, this is a story that was told so many times. I’m tired.

The general public that wants to defend the movie says “well you can’t tell ALL stories”, and while I agree, these people probably only saw this movie about the subject. If you HAVE (or had) and eating disorder, you probably saw tons. And they ALL tell the same story. Which is why I started that chart in the first place.

This movie does have good moments. I do like the acting, I saw people complaining about Keanu Reeves performance - but I do know these were people who disliked the movie entirely. I think his performance was great, Lily Collins performance was great, and their chemistry was great. The best scenes in the movie happened between the two of them. The one thing that I LOVED was their first interaction when he calls her on her bullshit. “You’re not thin, you scare people, and I think you like that.” YES. I never heard anyone talk about that. And I guess I’ll never will, bc the movie itself never talk about this again either. Also when she justifies the tumblr where her art triggered a girl so much, she says that she was just drawing what she knows, he calmly tells her that she can draw, but she doesn’t have to share it online tho. I liked their interactions because often ED patients are treated with silk gloves (is that the expression?) and sometimes there is a need for some though love. I also love Liana Liberato who plays her sister and that’s about it.

The problem with the doctor ends up being: what’s his method? How are you going to cure her? The method makes no sense. I don’t see the reasoning. I don’t think anyone does. And somehow it works and she goes back there.

I think my major problem with the movie is that it has the same issues every ED portrayal before it. It’s the same story again. I think it shines the most in the whole “it’s not about food, it’s about control!”. It IS about food though. For a lot of people, it is. Maybe not for this director or for Lily Collins, but for so many people it is about food. It’s about control as well, and it is possible that there is other factors related to it, but you can’t chalk it all up to a control issue and pretend it’s just whatever. If the food didn’t matter, it wouldn’t be an eating disorder.

Because of that, we have this heavy focus on her family issues and nothing to do with food. We have people trying to rationalize - maybe it’s bc your mom is a lesbian, maybe it’s bc i didn’t bond with you as a baby - and all that does is to make her lesbian bipolar mother seem like a crazy asshole and her dad seem like an absent asshole as if this is the only factor here. Give me SOMETHING. Any connection to food. Any sense. Nope. She just won’t eat bc her family is fucked up. Hoe, that’s all of us.

And I think the movie unintentionally DOES glamourize anorexia. Subtly, yes, but it does. Eli has SUCH an easy time refusing food. She doesn’t seem to think about food as much as she thinks about herself and her family and Luke and being annoying. She knows a bunch of calories and she overexercises. Idk. Not to mention that moment when Kendra asks her about purging and she says “it’s not her thing”. I mean. It is no one’s thing. No one likes it. It’s a compulsion. And if you have anorexia that severe and you are not with a feeding tube, you do eat every now and then, and you do have purging mechanisms. If she had said she prefers overexercising as a purging mechanism than to throw up, I would believe her. But the movie acts as if she just never eats ever and somehow she’s still standing. Give her a feeding tube then. It would be more believable.

I know it sounds kind of ranty, but my point here is: this extremely anorexic girl, that looks like a sack of bones, and gets that by never eating and doing crunches all the time, it is the wet dream of a fatphobic society with a 71 billion weight loss industry. This is the dreamy and frugal idea of anorexia that people have when they are deep into the illness - not when they recovered as the people involved say they did. I get that this is a very personal project. But it’s flawed. It doesn’t do anyone any favors. It just tells the same story, for the millionth time, but since this time it was in a big platform, more people saw it, and it was better done, with a better budget and with a good enough resolution so I can see every bone in Lily Collins body.

Anyway, that’s it for today. If you read all of that, thanks. Since this is Netflix, I’m assuming everyone saw, but the other movies are out there and if you need liks, hit me up. Be back soon.

#eating disorders #eds #pro ana #not pro and you know the rest #to the bone #thinspo #thinspiration #ed things #eds in media #thinsppi #anorekcia

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in-this-body-of-mine · 3 years

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ED in media bingo - masterpost

This is the post where I’ll be explaning the chart I made for movies and shows featuring eating disorders - and how they are all similar. This chart will change over time if I think of more items or more movies/shows, but for now I included all I could think of. I’ll make a separate post for each movie/show, but this post is just to explain the chart. I took another screenshot for now bc I realized I grouped race, age and gender in one item and it wouldn’t be right. Now the chart looks like this:

Here’s the breakdown for each item:

White: self-explanatory. I cannot find the exact numbers on eating disorders by race, but the fact that only white people are portrayed is also a reflection of the people making the movies, not the ones suffering with it.

Female: althought the number of people with eating disorders is incredibly higher among women, there is an increasing number of people with EDs that identify as male or non-binary or otherwise. Still, only female patients are portrayed.

Teenager/Young adult: from what I watched so far, all the people in these movies is portrayed between the ages 15 - 20. They’re either in high school or starting college. Even though a lot of disordered eating starts way before that and might continue for the rest of a person’s life, that is all we see on media.

Wealthy/seemingly well-off: This might not necessarily be said in the story, but I will include in this category anyone who is clearly well off enough to send their kids to college, pay for them to stay at the hospital for several months, own a big beautiful house and have the whole family wearing beautiful clothes. They’re not struggling with insurance? They’re probably rich.

Skinny actress from the start: this is a tricky one. I do know some actresses lose weight to play anorexic characters, but they are usually already thin. What they seem to do with the “before” is having the actress wear a bunch of baggy clothes. Or use a fat suit. Gross!

No distinctive personality or hobbies/interests: yes, I know eating disorders are all consuming, but most of the time that’s all these characters are. We don’t get to know (or like) them as much beyond that. We might get some glimpses of a hobby or a random reason for the eating disorder, but even that feels a little flat on the script.

Good student: all straight As. All have their grades drop suddenly. Yes I know “gifted kids” tend to develop issues but c’mon.

Seemingly irrelevant love interest: Why? Just why? To implicate how hard eating disorders can affect your romantic prospects? Are you trying to tell us we’re hard to love? I can get that from BPD in media, thanks.

Daddy issues (sometimes coupled with mommy issues): the divorce rates in movies about eating disorders is through the roof. They all have some sort of family issue going on. Which is generally considered the real root of the issue. Bleh. Might be, but honest, I don’t think is the most important factor here.

*Triggering event*: It might or might not be explained, but usually it will be. Very often, something dumb. But we can see the exact day Miss Thing decided not to eat. That never happens in real life, but okay.

Anorexia as diagnosis: bulimia? Binge eating disorder? What are those? Why have a movie about eating disorders if we can’t have a slim white girl pushing away her plate in frame at all times? It’s always ONLY anorexia. Purging is only last resort. And we might know the real reason.

Checklist of habits (manual for those looking for one): we’ve all been there - there’s always something we learn new with this movies that was not supposed to be learned. The writers probably googled “common signs of anorexia” and put them in the movies as warning signs for parents, or shocking moments for “normal people”. Yeah. It ain’t working.

Inpatient treatment (or extended hospital stay): as stated before, people always seem to have money to put their kids in special facilities for months on end. There we can see a glimpse of other ED patients that, for sure, we will never know anything about. We don’t get a different view of EDs, unless is through the lens of the protagonist.

Emotional tipping point: Something happens. Something awful. There’s screaming and crying and a protagonist that no longer cares if she dies. We’re finally hit with the realization (we had it from the beginning) that she might die. This is rock bottom. Doctor Beckham said it was essential, but what does he know, he’s just Keanu in button up shirts. Go back to saving the matrix, Neo!

Mom hugs: finally, usually in a conversation with a therapist, or parents, or both (or a dream sequence when you’re dying!), we get to the bottom of the issue of a crying protagonist. The real problem is never really clear, neither is the solution. It doesn’t really work. It solves nothing. But the crying and the swelling music are supposed to make me feel something I guess. Usually a mom gets a hug. That’s how you know the family issues are magically solved, after all.The mom is also crying. Even though, you know, she probably had something to do with the disorder, or wasn’t ever helpful. But sure, whatever. We’re moving past that, Karen.

Happy ending: She’s recovered, or on her way to recovery, or even willing to try recovery for real this time. She might eat a bagel. We’re promised everything is fine now, and fade to black. No one died. Or at least, the protagonist didn’t die. they can stop doing her make up like she is dying, now. Nevermind about 10,200 people die every year directly from eatng disorders. We need to end the movie on a hopeful note: recovery is possible. I still think “recovery is necessary if you don’t wanna die” would be a better and more important message, but what do I know. I’m not Keanu in a button-up shirt. It’s fine, it’s okay.

There are more things I wanted to add, like how they always seem to have such an easier time refusing food and how they almost never binge or purge unless we need a bigger emotional scene and how so many of them are so unlikable, but I think these are things I can talk more about for each movie individually.

Also, I know there are more shows with characters with problems and those problems sometimes are more diverse - Blair from Gossip Girl has bulimia and Hannah from PLL has binge eating disorder, but those only appear as plot points a couple times and like, pretty much disappear except for a couple mentions here and there. I know at least two characters in Dance Academy have eating disorders but I haven’t watched and I don’t wanna look it up now, so maybe later I’ll update this.

Anyway, I’ll make individual posts later and then we’ll see. I know not a lot of people might get interested in this but... I enjoy it so f*ck it.

#eating disorder masterpost #eating disorders #pro ana #anorex1a #to the bone #will prob be the first #bulimia #binge eating disorder #ed in media #ed things #thinspo #thinspiration

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