A Star Is Born, Content Warnings & Mental Health

CW - mental illness, suicide This contains spoilers for A Star Is Born.

Ah spoilers. All us millenial bleeding heart snowflake liberals want to spoil people's fun and have the whole plot of a film recorded in minute detail, removing any suspense and impact because we are too sensitive. If you are of that mndset, you can kindly fuck off. Not so sensitive now are we? Just to clarify, content warnings are not supposed to protect people who have had it too good and don't want to deal with challenging issues, they are for people who are vulnerable because they have faced challenging issues in real life and don't need to relive thet trauma because it seriously hurts thier mental health. We can't claim to take mental health seriously if we continue to say that spoiling the entertainment of a suprise element in a story is just as important as protecting people who struggle with mental illnesses. In no case is this more important than when it concerns suicide. If we are to properly promote understanding and destigmatising of suicide and suicidal ideation, it has to be represented transparently and with sensitivity to the person who is suffering from it first and foremost. The impact on their loved ones is also important, and representations of that can be honest and difficult, but they have to be responsible. The biggest disappointment about A Star Is Born is not just that it hasn't contained content warnings, but that the way in which suicide is represented, and the impact it has, is irresponsibly bleak and hopeless. 

If you haven't seen it a) spoilers ahead and b) Bradley Cooper plays Jack and Lady Gaga plays Ally. 

My main issues are with the final act of the film, which represents suicide and it's aftereffects in a clumsy and rushed way, without the care or nuance of the preceeding story about the complexities of love and addiction. There are many wonderful thngs about the film, including the sympathertic way Jack is portrayed, the understanding we get about how his childhood has shaped his behaviour, and the tenderness of Jack and Ally's relationship despite the very real difficulties addiction brings. It's also not to take away the agency and responsibility of the person for thier behaviour and it's effects on others. I think the intention was good, and it was trying to make some valid points, but that it hurtles through them so quickly that it can't do it in a sensitive way. Firstly, there's the scene with Ally's manager and Jack, who is just back from rehab, where he discloses to a therapist that he tried to kill himself as a child and that his issues go way beyond his waning career. Ally's manager tells Jack pretty much all the things that you should never say to a person who is vulnerable; basically, that she would be better off without him, he can't change and he is worthless. I think this is included as an example of the devestating effects our words can have on others and that we should be careful with them, no matter how right or rightous we might think we are. To be clear, I don't think he should take the blame for Jack's behaviour, but there is a middle ground where we can acknowledge that his words caused harm. It's also a major overstepping on the part of the manager intervening in her personal life instead of respecting her choices, and comes off as self centred but thinly veiled as concern for her. But we never really get any pushback on it because we don't see the manager having to deal with the repurcussions of his choice to be deliberatly hurtful. In fact, we get the opposite; Jack's brother, who had been deeply affected by his addiction but also benefitted from his sucess, says to Ally that Jack's suicide is not his fault, it's not her fault, it's Jack's fault. I actually had to watch that scene again to make sure that was what he said. Now, he is trying to comfort her and make sure she knows that it isn't her fault, but it could have easily been left there. It could have easily been more understanding of Jack and the illness that causes suicide, but at some point, a choice was made to include blaming Jack for his illness, and suicide is the terminal end to mental illness. This is where the lack of understanding of how such a statement, even made in fiction, can have a devastating impact on people who are effected by suicide, is shown. If you are someone who has had to come to terms with a loved one who has died by suicide, hearing that is painful. If you are someone who has ever had to cope with suicidal ideation or attempts, it is brutal. It is the essence of all the bad thoughts in your mind telling you that your illness is your own fault, the pain of your loved ones is your fault and only serves to amplify the lies the illness tells you that lead to suicide. It is this part which is the most reckless and the most troubling. People who feel that they want or need to end their life often don't want to die. They just want to end the life they are living now, the suffering they are enduring, and what kills them is the hopelessness brought on by and illness that tells them there is no other way out. To directly and specifically put the fault on the person who is ill is totally unecessary and very harmful. The final way the film lets us down is in the last scene where Ally sings I'll Never Love Again. Unfortunatly, despite any intention to show love or that her music can be a tribute to Jack and help her, it leaves the film with an incredibly hopeless and lonely ending. We get that one song, and then it's cut to black. The cumulative effect of these scenes is the overwhelming feeling that those who tell us 'the truth' - that we are a burden to our loved ones - are right, that no matter what we do, we hurt those we love, their pain is our fault, and that all that is left is more despair. 

I think the reason this happend is that we still struggle to comprehend and articulate the complexity of suicide. It's incredilbly difficult to navigate being responsible for our own behaviour and it's effect on other people, and the tension between that and acknowledging that people still have agency and can choose how they respond even when mental illness isn't a factor. There is no real answer to questions about how much of a mentally ill person's behaviours are because of their illness and how much are their own choices. When you've got a war going on inside your own mind, you can't even always know yourself. This is exactly why it's so important to take blame or fault completly out of the narrative. People only change when they want to and when they are supported enough to be able to. 

Of course I'm aware that not everyone will see the film this way. Maybe some people will take something different from it, and that's just as valid. But the point is, that with a content warning, people who are vulnerable to the harm these scenes can cause are able to protect themselves by preparing for them or choosing not to watch at all.