(3 of 4)
Titicut Follies is an 87-minute documentary film that uses a series of unforgettable incidents to show that Massachusetts' Bridgewater State Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane is a hellhole where the unbalanced can only grow more so. Film Maker Frederick Wiseman's camera watched while one man was taunted by guards into a frenzy, while incoming patients were ignominiously stripped naked, while a young inmate pleaded to be sent back to prison because the hospital was only making him worse. The film was shown briefly in New York, and fulfilled Wiseman's intent to stir public outrage. Since then, it has stirred nothing but bitter legal controversy over whether it should ever be shown publicly again. The state of Massachusetts, Bridgewater's director and others have brought suit to bar Wiseman from showing it anywhere, mainly on the grounds that Wiseman breached his agreement with them and invaded the privacy of the inmates. If the state wins, other states will likely have to honor the decision.
The trial began in Boston last week. It promises to drag on for weeks, but already the issues involved have divided civil libertarians, law professors and legislators. Trouble began brewing when the film was shown at the New York Film Festival (TIME, Sept. 29), but it did not really get serious until the Massachusetts legislature decided to see what the commotion was all about. The film had already been temporarily banned on a petition of the state, so the legislators ordered a screening behind guarded doors. Many of them emerged muttering over the outrage, not the outrage that existed in the hospital, but the outrage of the film's having been made. A few were shocked that the inmates were shown naked.
First-Amendment Reliance. But the central question was over the invasion of privacy of the prisoners. In one scene, a sex offender confesses to a psychiatrist that he had molested his own daughter. In others, dozens of inmates are shown clearly enough to be identifiable. According to a hospital psychiatrist who testified before the legislature, at least one patient has subsequently been released and could suffer a relapse if he were ever to realize that he was on public display. To all this, Wiseman replies in defending the suit that in this case the individual right to privacy must be inferior to the public's right to know about conditions at the hospital. He relies on the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to free press and free speech.
"The right to take pictures of Bridgewater is as clear as the right to take pictures of a traffic accident in Scollay Square," says Wiseman. "The state has asserted the privacy rights of the individual as a screen for its own desire for privacy." Nonetheless, Wiseman admits that while he got written releases from more than 100 inmates, he did not get them from everyone in the film.* And there is, of course, considerable reason to believe that a man adjudged insane is not ever competent to sign a binding waiver.