S1E2: Monsters and Mental Healthcare - Vivian Asimos & Kathleen Hale
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[Sounds of footsteps walking on gravel / Perry muttering under his breath… like he’s practicing a line]
Perry Carpenter:
The fairytale flies, the legend walks, knocks at your door.
The fairytale flies, the legend walks, knocks at your door. I'm the legend.
[Perry getting louder… more confident… ending an an ultra dramatic delivery as he knocks at Mason’s studio door]
The fairytale flies, the legend walks, KNOCKS AT YOUR DOOR!
Mason Amadeus:
Per- Perry, Perry, the door's... the door's open, dude. Also, I heard you the whole time.
Perry Carpenter:
(sheepishly) Oh.
Mason Amadeus:
That's kind of lame, actually. Um-
Perry Carpenter:
Um-
Mason Amadeus:
... I'm in the middle of something, though.
[Mason returns to what he was doing – we hear frantic searching / shuffling of objects]
Perry Carpenter:
(under his breath) .. but I'm the legend...
Mason Amadeus:
We never have... uh… like…. what is the reason that we still need to use tape?
Perry Carpenter:
What-
Mason Amadeus:
I don't understand why we have to find everything on-
Perry Carpenter:
... what is all this crap?
Mason Amadeus:
It's the four hours of interviews that we cut for the first episode, Perry.
Perry Carpenter:
I wa- this, uh, this was a high tech studio you had before we got started.
Mason Amadeus:
You're the one who said we had to use tape for everything, because it was more real.
Perry Carpenter:
Oh, you're lucky I didn't ask for vinyl. It's authentic. Ostension, dude!
Mason Amadeus:
Ostensing a Zoom call onto reel-to-real. How about efficiency? How about the folk... how about the folkloric tie-in to not going insane?
Perry Carpenter:
Uh, is that a VHS cassette of Candle Cove, sitting in a 10-year-old contain of off-brand Twinkies?
Mason Amadeus:
Yes, but also no. It's not quite 10.
Perry Carpenter:
It's probably not great for the tape.
Mason Amadeus:
Let's... Um… stop looking. Stop looking anywhere.
[sound of crashing and an animal chirps and skitters]
Perry Carpenter:
What?... is that a raccoon?
Mason Amadeus:
That's Digby. He's a business expense and also my best friend.
Perry Carpenter:
I'm mean... I'm not... wh- what? You're a business owner, Mason. This is like... this has gotta be breaking some kind of code.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, um, Perry. I'm a business owner and this is my business, not yours. So, we don't need to worry about it, all right? Do- you, you be nice to Digby.
Perry Carpenter:
I really hope you're not charging me for Digby's time too.
Mason Amadeus:
I pay him a decent living wage.
Perry Carpenter:
He's eating mayonnaise covered tape. He can't be doing too well. And he's-
Mason Amadeus:
Digby makes me 50% more efficient at editing, just by being there.
Perry Carpenter:
That explains a ton.
Mason Amadeus:
So, what, what? Did you just show up to make fun of me, Perry? Or like, what's the... what's the plan?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. Didn't-
Mason Amadeus:
Why are you here?
Perry Carpenter:
... didn't you get the calendar invite?
Mason Amadeus:
No. Ye- Yes.
Perry Carpenter:
The, the one-
Mason Amadeus:
Yes, proba- probably.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, you definitely check it. This is for us to go through the extra tape that we had from Vivian and Kathleen, so that we can let listeners hear some of the great stuff that they had to say, that we couldn't fit in episode one.
Mason Amadeus:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the off-week episode. The folk episodes.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
[sounds of cascading crashes as Mason sweeps the desk clean]
Mason Amadeus:
Here, why don't we... I can just sho- I can get this.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Off the desk.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, let's clear some of this crap out of the way. And then we can sit down and talk about it.
Mason Amadeus:
You can have this chair. I'll, uh, I'll stand.
Perry Carpenter:
What about that beanbag over there in the corner. It doesn't look too disgusting.
Mason Amadeus:
I'd appreciate if you'd be a little bit more charitable towards my business furniture, Perry.
Perry Carpenter:
I know this might be too much to ask, but do you have any, like, uh, sanitary wipes?
Mason Amadeus:
Just use my sleeve, it's fine. Here. Okay-
[squelching / squishing sounds]
Perry Carpenter:
Um-
Mason Amadeus:
... so, this off week episode then. Two of the roles of tape that I have that are ready are actually Vivian Asimos and Kathleen Hale. We got Vivian talking about Monster Theory narrative. Bit more on the Slenderman story and some of the other work she does. And then we got Kathleen Hale, talking a bit about mental healthcare in the United States, as well as our juvenile justice system and some really interesting things I didn't know. So, we can run those later. But I was thinking, we should probably start with, like, some takeaways that we have personally for doing the episode.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Since you're standing and already in presentation mode, what, what did you learn from this?
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, sure. Uh, so, for me, I think it was the basic fact that folklore is any kind of mass generation of a story. You know, something told by a community with no centralized or defined cannon. Because that just opens the floodgates, right? Fan-fiction, fan art, urban legends, conspiracy theories. There's just so much to talk about here.
Perry Carpenter:
I mean, we associate folklore with all these dark tales or, you know, things like songs and quilt making. But when it comes to the digital realm that we're in, all these systems that we interact with, from Facebook, to TikTok, and Twitter, and even LinkedIn, they're like folklore creation machine. In, in future episodes, we'll talk about how memes and everything else fit into this. Because it is the memetic nature of all these stories and ways that people just kind of make that their own, put their own little spin on it, tell their own story with it, and shoot it out into the world.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah. Memes are folklore. I think that's sort of the, the wildest thing that I've picked up in my brain as we stared this journey. And like Vivian mentioned, those platforms that we use to make it, inform the way those stories look and appear. It's so cool. What was, for you, a takeaway or interesting bit that we didn't really get to cover in-depth?
Perry Carpenter:
I think Vivian had a quote about this, and I think she's gonna talk a little bit more about this in today's interview that we hear. But it is really this concept of Jeffrey Cohen's Monster Theory, where he had all these different thesis, but the fact that so much of monsters, the way that they manifest themselves in stories, in our imagination, are caused by some kind of cultural crisis, where these ways that we view the world come in conflict with one another. And so, um, really knowing that somebody has theorized these seven different thesis of how monsters get created and spun out into society was, uh, kind of eye-opening to me.
Mason Amadeus:
So, monsters, as a harbinger of categorical crisis is one of Jeffrey Cohen's Monster Theory thesis, but there are seven of them. And, uh, in the interview we'll hear with Vivian, she goes more into the category crisis one, but maybe we should briefly hit on what the rest of them are. Because they're all interesting. Although I do think that one's the most pivotal.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, and we'll, we'll put a link in the show notes for anybody that wants to look this up. But we'll quickly go over those and then we'll get into the rest of today's show.
[Sound of mouse click – dramatic music starts]
So, Thesis One is the monster's body is a cultural body.
Mason Amadeus:
Like, the body of the monster literally incorporates fears, anxieties, desires, and fantasies, built around whatever culture that created it.
Perry Carpenter:
Number Two is that the monster always escapes.
Mason Amadeus:
Pretty self-explanatory, right? It always gets away. No matter how many... I think the example that they give in there is, "No matter how many times King Arthur kills of the ogre of St. Michael, it's always there again.
Perry Carpenter:
Thesis Three is that the monster in a harbinger of category crisis.
Mason Amadeus:
Which is the one that we talked about briefly and we'll talk about more in a few.
Perry Carpenter:
Four is the monster dwells at the gates of difference.
Mason Amadeus:
Basically, the idea that the monster is any exaggeration of some cultural difference that is off limits.
Perry Carpenter:
I think we see that whenever we're hitting these big cultural crisis moments. So, around anything related to, uh, civil rights, or identity, and different national interests between countries, monsters and folklore get created out of that all the time.
Mason Amadeus:
Because, uh, you're taking whatever the contentious issue is and making one side of it a monstrous difference.
Perry Carpenter:
Exactly.
Mason Amadeus:
It's very dark, but (laughing).
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, very, very dark. But once you know these things, once you have these in your head, just as a framework of thinking about how we create monsters and spin them out into the world, it's hard to un-think these things. You start to see how these get created everywhere. And then thesis number five is that the monster polices the borders of the possible.
Mason Amadeus:
Basically something that indicates that exploration is not encouraged. What it says in the paper, "Curiosity is more often punished than rewarded."
Perry Carpenter:
Thesis Six is fear of the monster is really a kind of desire.
Mason Amadeus:
The fear that's built around a monster is also an embodiment of wanting to know what it's hiding.
Perry Carpenter:
And then Thesis Seven is the monster stands at the threshold... of becoming (laughing)-
Mason Amadeus:
It has a built-in ellipsis. I like it.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
This one confuses me a little bit. This was the one that I sort of had a hardest... the hardest time-
Perry Carpenter:
Hmm.
Mason Amadeus:
... like, wrapping my head around into a single sentence.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, because it's, it's very truncated. It's like, one paragraph of text, they ask us to re-evaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, or perception of difference, our tolerance towards its expression. And they ask us why we have created them.
Mason Amadeus:
So, really, a monster is a reflection.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
But again, they all... like Vivian says, they call kind of bleed together a little bit.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah, they do. There's, there's no strong border between any of these. But it is really interesting, because as you start to think about society and whatever the current boogeyman is, or whatever the current crisis is, you can start to see how these get reflected in monsters. How they start to get personified in popular culture.
Mason Amadeus:
It is. It's a fascinating little toolkit to pick apart boogeymen. I think that's enough geeking out from us, though. We should take it over to our interviews. Uh, a little bit later we're gonna hear from Kathleen Hale about mental health, mental illness, access to mental healthcare, and the judicial system, specifically the juvenile justice system in the United States.
Perry Carpenter:
But first we'll hear from Dr. Vivian Asimos, who will take us a little bit deeper into topics like narrative monsters and some of the other work that she's been doing.
[Sounds of tape being inserted and ‘play’ button being pressed]
Vivian Asimos:
Oh, I've always been a big fan of storytelling and narratives and all things narrative. When I went to do my undergrad, I actually was originally doing a master's in creative writing, because I wanted to be creating the stories and stuff. I very quickly ended up getting absorbed into the religious studies realm (laughing) of life. So, when I started to do a lot of work with religious studies and as an anthropologist of religion, I was always drawn to storytelling. I firmly believe that as humans we are just stories wrapped in bags of flesh. And pop culture has always been a huge part of what I did. When I was doing my undergrad and really falling into love with religious studies for the first time, I always was writing my papers about something in pop culture that it was relating to. So, I have so many papers on like, Lord of the Rings, and Legend of Zelda, and, like, whatever I could get my hands on that it somewhat, in some way related to, I would throw it in there. And it wasn't until I started to go into my master's that I went, "There's something really important here and it's definitely fun, but it's more than fun. There's something more deep here and more important that I want to dig into."
Perry Carpenter:
You're doing a lot of study and, and writing on religion. You're doing a lot of study and writing on cosplay. You've got the digital folklore piece. And then you also have the, the alt-ac.uk. How do all those worlds fit together?
Vivian Asimos:
With a lot of late nights and not a lot of sleep. No, it, it actually all kind of boils together fairly well (laughing), because of the fact that, you know, again, I, I see storytelling as being so involved in everything that, for me, when I was studying digital monsters and online storytelling, that was all kind of the same. And the way that I'm approaching cosplay is that cosplay is an embodiment of contemporary mythology and our storytelling. It's storytelling through clothes. Alt-ac is an organization that I co-founded with a friend of mine, who is also a sociologist of relation, Aled Thomas. Basically, it's the idea of alternative academia. Uh, alternative to it, as well as people who don't necessarily fit what you traditionally think of as an academic, still identifying as academia and giving a home for those people and that research. For me anyway, a lot of anthropology in particular, they privilege the kind of semi-colonialized idea of going to the exotic location and talking to the people who are often not white, in order to talk about these exotic, weird, different locations. And I was coming in being like, "I don't know. I chatted to some people online and I thought that was super cool."
Perry Carpenter:
(laughing)
Vivian Asimos:
And it's just this really different experience. I had someone tell me I wasn't actually doing fieldwork, because I wasn't in the jungle. You get a lot of, um, trouble with that. People, I think, sometimes struggle with understanding... and not just academics, but even just people who maybe don't spend as much time on the internet, sometimes struggle with the idea that you can form real relationships and real communities purely virtually. And so, there is always that kind of backlash or that fighting of going, "Yeah, but we're, we're talking about something real over here. And you're talking about the internet." And you have to go, "No, the internet's real," (laughing) like, and the experiences are real.
Mason Amadeus:
I remember that being the prevailing opinion a lot around the time Slenderman happened in, like, 2009. Like, up until then. It feels like that's changed in the... probably not in academia, but in sort of the mainstream thought about the internet not being a "real" place. It seems to be more acknowledged as real now.
Vivian Asimos:
Obviously, I think some of the kind of chat language is still... even if it's a little bit tongue in cheek, it still kind of hints to that. You know, the, "Oh, well, my friends in real life," you know (laughing)? Those kinds of phrases?
Mason Amadeus:
Right. Yeah, that's true.
Vivian Asimos:
Which again, connotes that there's a... there's a slight difference there. But I do think that things are changing. I do think also that COVID has really altered it as people were forced to a lot of things online and forced to find communities online.
Perry Carpenter:
Focusing on digital monsters, in your Udemy course, you referenced Jeffrey Cohen's Monster Theory and the seven thesis of what makes a monster a monster. Can you describe some of that? And what makes that relevant for you when it comes to the study of folklore and digital monsters?
Vivian Asimos:
Jeffrey Cohen was kind of one of the very fist people to, I think, coin the idea of Monster Theory, which is this idea of this kind of interdisciplinary group of people that are all studying monsters. And he kind of gathered together an edited volume of all these different people. But he started it by explaining what he thought of as the kind of main, primary ways that you can understand, analytically, what a monster is. The one in particular that I'm always draw to is the monster that is a harbinger of categorical crisis, I believe is the way that he phrases it. Where it's basically monsters has hybrids. If you think of a griffin, for example, which is bodily a mixture of a lion and an eagle. It's a hybrid monster. It shows that these categories don't really exist in the world that this griffin exists in. But the categorical crisis monster can also be more cultural or social. You might not necessarily see it as a hybrid monster when you first look at it. And as an anthropologist, this is of primary interest to me.
There's a, a thought in anthropology that we categorized our world as we start to interact with it. And these categories are very social or culturally based. So, when we are growing up and we're being taught the world by our parents or our parental units, they will point out things into the world and say, you know, "That's a tree." And then you go, "Okay, that's a tree," and you put it in the tree box. And then later you go and you see a tree that looks really different from that first tree, but they still point to it and say tree. And you catalog it as tree in the same little box. Different cultures might have different boxes. And so, this is why it's very socially or culturally-based. And what the monster does is it says, "You know those neat little boxes that you grew up with them very cleanly set aside of, 'This is why this is. And that is what that is'? We're gonna break it (laughing). We're gonna show that these categories aren't necessarily as firm set apart as you thought they were. Or that they blur together. Or that this box that you set aside doesn't actually exist."
That's the thing that the monster does. And that's really fascinating for me, because that really gets into the heart of what a society or a culture sees as important or sees as necessary for protection. A good example of this is just the vampire, who is breaking the categories between living and dead, which are supposed to be very firmly set assigned, different categories, at least for typically Western cultural boxes. And so, the vampire's fear is that your cultural categories are broken.
Mason Amadeus:
If you had to apply that specifically to Slenderman, what would you say are the dominant categories that Slenderman is transgressing the boundaries off?
Vivian Asimos:
Basically the category between reality and fiction. The, the storytelling mechanic of the Slenderman is this idea of pretending it as if real. And this is the case for a lot of Creepypastas, but the Slenderman, I think, does it just, chef's kiss, the best.
Perry Carpenter:
When you're thinking about Creepypastas, it is a genre and people are knowingly writing fiction and fan-fiction around that. And then, all of the sudden, now you have groups of people that know it's fake, and are reading that, and then somewhat being scared, or pretending to be scared, or wanting to be scared. And then you have other groups of people who hear about it second or third hand, that now believe that it is a real thing. As a folklorist, as a sociologist, as somebody who's, who's interested just in people and how they work, wh- what do you take from that?
Vivian Asimos:
I mean, I think that's just how all storytelling is. I think a lot of people like to point at the Slenderman in particular, and really online storytelling, as this special thing of, "Oh, well someone might be listening to it and not knowing." But urban legends have been around for a really, really long time, that essentially have that same idea of, you know, "I heard from a friend, of a friend, of a friend, about this thing. And I've gotten some of the details wrong, but I'm gonna still repeat it and tell my friends about it. But it doesn't really matter whether or not it happened. And I think that what makes the Slenderman particularly really interesting, and, and when you're looking at monsters, is that monsters essentially prove that stories can kind of live on their own. And that it is the story that matters and not anything else. And belief is secondly, you know? We can kind of talk about belief as being this ultimate end all, be all, oh, "Oh, this person believed, or this person doesn't believe." But that's not really important. What's important is the story. And the way that people hold on to a story. And the way that people find import in a story.
Mason Amadeus:
I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on that willful suspension of disbelief that we perform when interacting with these stories and creating them? Because it's such a fascinating thing.
Perry Carpenter:
Even from the perspective of urban legends and the way that we do that, there is a willful suspension of disbelief that seems to come with that. But tha- that just makes people wanna buy into it even more.
Vivian Asimos:
I honestly don't like the idea of suspension of disbelief, because I don't think that's how we work. I think we start with the willingness to believe. We start full-in. When you go into a movie, you're not like, "All right, let me wait until this movie gets me."
Perry Carpenter:
(laughing)
Vivian Asimos:
Like, you're gonna go in being like, "Yeah, man. I'm excited to see Dune." And then it's something happens that you're like, "Oh, that's right. I'm in a movie. So, it's something breaks you, rather than something pulls you in. So, I preferring willingness to belief, rather than (laughing)... rather than suspension of disbelief.
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Nice. I never thought of it that way. And that's really... I really like thinking of it as a willingness to believe.
Perry Carpenter:
It does seem like with Slenderman, I guess that are so many boxes that got checked, all the things that make contemporary legend and the newness of the digital world as it was starting to come up. And then, of course, there was tragedy around it as well. But there's... Slenderman specifically seems to have captured the attention of a lot of the, uh, folklore's community. I mean, you mentioned Slenderman as kind of the chef's kiss of all... of all these things coming together. What do you think really you can attribute that nexus to?
Vivian Asimos:
It's a little bit of all of it. Even if you had every single element the same, except for the timing, and you tried to do it now, I don't know if it would really work the same way. And the same for, I think, all of those elements as, if you removed one of those aspects, he's not alone. There are other creep pastas that really do have a really strong life of their own. I think the Slenderman is the most recognized, and has really lived for the longest. Which is really abnormal for internet stories, that people are still making jokes about the Slenderman and, and referencing it as a meme. And that's not really normal for the internet of something back in 2009 to still be at least somewhat kicking around. And I, I think that it has to do with the, the original post by, I'm gonna use his username, which is Victor Surge, was a... just a super-well done Photoshop. It was so beautifully done, and it allowed for a lot of fill-in the blanks, which is always what the best kind of those paranormally photos do. And the posts that followed it were also so good (laughing).
Like, there was somebody that edited a German woodcut to look like the Slenderman. And it looks so much like him, that you can imagine someone, at some point's gonna be writing, like, a history of German woodcuts and there's gonna be a Slenderman one just, like, thrown in. And they're not gonna know, because it's like a skeleton with multiple arms. (laughing) Like, you just don't really realize. So, it's, it's really amazing what people did. And it was also the fact that they kind of both explicitly and implicitly had this understanding of, "We're not gonna tell you what makes a Slenderman post a Slenderman post. We're not gonna define him." There was a similar figured that popped up just before the Slenderman, called The Rake, which was a kind of similar, weird, um, although it was a bit more animalistic, The Rake. There wasn't as many people involved in it, first of all. And also, they tried to define what The Rake looked like from the very beginning. They were like, "This is what The Rake is. These are its kind of primary features that it's going to have."
Which is great for, for getting a little mythos together. But really, what makes the mythos is all the differences. What makes the mythos is the kind of alterations in the agency of the storytellers. But a- again, even if you had the beautiful storytelling with the kind of agency of the stories, I don't know if you would get that in today's internet in quite the same way. There was something about 2009. It was also a, a very anxious period for internet communities, because of what we were talking about. You know, people thinking that these communities aren't real, you're not forming real connections. But the internet was established enough that people were. And that anxiety of it exists but it doesn't exist. The, the, it's real, but it's not real, is what kind of got tied into this storytelling.
Mason Amadeus:
That's a fascinating parallel that had not occurred to me, was the way the internet was treated is similar to the way Slenderman transcends those boundaries in, in his own mythos.
Vivian Asimos:
Yeah. So, the, the monster of the Slenderman, of breaking this real and unreal category isn't just in his storytelling, it's also in the way that people felt about it. They saw these categories breaking and it was scary. You know, that... to, to think of things that you've always thought of as not being real, as suddenly being real. And vice versa.
Perry Carpenter:
With some of the tragedy that surrounded Slenderman, do you feel like every now and then you, you have to be an apologist, because there is this really interesting facets of Slenderman that you wanna study about and that you actually get passionate about as a folklorist, and then it's kind of tainted by this, you know, tragedy that happened, that you also have to acknowledge as part of the story of what Slenderman has become today.
Vivian Asimos:
I honestly think that it kind of killed Slenderman, in a way. People didn't really return to the storytelling in quite the same fervor. And a lot of them felt like they needed to justify it. I remember finally getting annoyed by about my fourth conference presentation, when every single time I had done it, there was always a question about it. Every single time. Because that's normally the only reference point that people would have. And then I wouldn't mention it. And in fact, in my book, in my introduction I say, "Just so you know, I'm never mentioning this again." Because particularly the Wisconsin stabbings, the more important question is issues of mental health, and issues of access to healthcare in the United States. I am not equipped to have those conversations (laughing) in the same way that I'm equipped to have the conversations about my community.
[Sounds of tape being stopped and ejected]
Mason Amadeus:
We're gonna take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk with Kathleen Hale about the mental healthcare side of this conversation.
Perry Carpenter:
Stick with us.
[Sound of tape spinning down – transition to ad break]
Welcome back. Before the break, we had just finished-
[Sounds of Digby scurrying around, general clattering and chaos…]
Mason Amadeus:
Stop Dig- Digby, no. That's not food.
Perry Carpenter:
Well, that type of have mayonnaise on it. I mean, you gotta cut him some slack.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, you're not helping, Perry.
Perry Carpenter:
You're not helping. You're putting mayonnaise-
Mason Amadeus:
No! Stop it.
Perry Carpenter:
... on the tape.
Mason Amadeus:
No. Not food.
Perry Carpenter:
Um-
Mason Amadeus:
That's a total loss.
[sounds of Digby running into the distance… clattering stops as Mason gives up]
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. We don't have time to mess with that. We gotta go straight back in.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, no. We'll just finish this. I'll order another reel, uh, reel on eBay.
Perry Carpenter:
So, before the break, we had been talking with Dr. Vivian Asimos. And we had kind of ended off when she mentioned the fact that she's always asked about the Slenderman stabbings. And she doesn't feel equipped to deal with the mental health aspects of that. So, we're gonna led now into our interview with Kathleen Hale.
Mason Amadeus:
And something that didn't make it into this interview, but that I thought was fascinating. Kathleen was the first person to actually request the court documents from the courts in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Because they hd this weird practice there where they're like, up to $5 a page for court documents. And those are hundreds of pages long. And the first person to request them pays more money. And so, uh, at the time, all of these journalists who are going to be writing about this, at the time what seemed like, you know, uh, a fade news story, uh, a viral news story, didn't really have the budget for it in 2014, as everything was shifting to the online space and no one really knew how to monetize it. So, and she's literally the first person who bought those documents and was able to read them. And it's also kind of obscene that you have to pay for court documents. That's not very good for free press, you know?
Perry Carpenter:
Yeah. The... it's, it's not good for anybody trying to seek the truth or to really understand what's going on. But luckily, Kathleen was the one that did that. You know, within the past few years. So, very far removed from 2014. And what that does is it give her some unique insight that hasn't really been brought to bear around the mental health aspect specifically, which we'll talk about today. But also, a lot of the procedural aspects that may have had the effect of rearing their own monstrous heads in all of this.
[Sounds of Mason inserting a cassette tape and pressing play]
Kathleen Hale:
Over the past five years I was researching and re- reporting on this Slenderman stabbing in Waukesha. So, my book, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls, is the first full account of the crime. And it dispels a lot of myths surrounding the case. Uh, the biggest one being that the victim died. She miraculously survived and in fact, there were two horror stories that happened as a result of this crime. One was the crime itself and the second horror story unfolded afterwards, when the state of Wisconsin, where I'm from, proceeded to prosecute two mentally ill, 12 year old girls as adults.
Perry Carpenter:
They way you've pulled it all together really feels like... I feel like I know them a lot better and understand them. Because it... these were kids who needed help. And I feel like that we lose nuance in a lot of discussions.
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good way of putting it. I think what I realized over the course of writing this book is that we have this association in our minds, especially in the United States, that if we are compassionate toward the assailant of a crime in any way, on any level, even as small of a thing as acknowledging their existence or listening to what they have to say, then we are being disrespectful toward the victim in the case. And I think it's very hard for people in this country, because of how our justice system is built, to hold these two things in mind that, you know, Morgan Geyser victimized, uh, Bella Leutner, also known as Payton Leutner in terrible, uh, grisly, unforgivable ways. And it is also true that Morgan was then victimized by our justice system. The other thing that just kept driving me on, and on, and on when I was writing this book was the fact that she did not receive medication after her diagnosis. She was diagnosed post-arrest and she did not receive medication for 19 months, because of a number of things. Because of how the adult judicial system is set up, and they were charged as adults. They were not charged as children, even though Morgan had just turned 12.
But it was also just, you know, negligence. The judge on this case continued to make decisions that meant Morgan would not receive medication. And so, during that entire time, she was in a state of psychosis. Which I learned is extremely bad for you. She was isolated away from her parents in a windowless facility that did not allow her to touch her parents or see sunlight or anything like that. And so, the conditions of the jail where she was awaiting trial, those exacerbated her psychosis. And she lost the ability to read and do basic math. She was... had a... had a high IQ. But she lost certain cognitive abilities during that time. And I was just shocked by the fact that no one cared. And it was not being talked about when the case was being talked about.
Mason Amadeus:
Yeah, we seem to have this... We seem to have this weird thing where we treat empathy as weakness. And it's weird, because I can't think of any situation where having more empathy would lead to a worse outcome.
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah. Totally. Or like, any kind of empathy or humanity for people who've committed violent crimes somehow diminishes the seriousness of their crime. Or if we show them compassion that, you know, it diminishes their punishment. We are so desensitized in this country to endless, never-ending punishment for people who've committed acts of violence (laughing), we have a really, really long history of blaming child on child violence on new media. Whatever the new media is at the time. So, with Columbine, uh, the new media was violent video games and Marilyn Manson songs. When in reality, if you read Dave Cullen's book, Columbine, it dispels so many myths around the case. But it goes back, and back, and back. Even Leopold and Loeb, which was 1924. That was called the crime of the century at the time. It was these two teenage boys who killed a 12 year old boy, Bobby Franks. And that was blamed on detective novels, which were new. So it's like, we'll do whatever we can. We will bend over backwards to avoid talking about mental illness.
Mason Amadeus:
You had the opportunity to actually... to talk with Morgan, right?
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah, we spent a long time together (laughing).
Mason Amadeus:
Is she doing better? Is she in a better situation? Is she getting the help that she needs?
Kathleen Hale:
Well, she is in a setting that is physically safer for her than a prison. And so, that was a huge win for her family, because odds were high, if you look at statistics and just everything that was working against her, she was looking at 65 years in an adult women's prison, that had a 200 name wait list for anger management programs. Uh, much less any mental health, uh, therapy that would have been available to her. And that would have been a very unsafe environment for her. And instead, she's at Winnebago Mental Health Institute, which is a forensic hospital. Which is one of the only kinds of public psychiatric hospitals we still have. And it's for people... forensic means for people who have committed crimes. And so, she's in an adult women's ward. And has been since the age of 15. Although she first when there shortly after her crime when she was 12 to get diagnosed. I would say is definitely probably not what people imagine when they call hospitals a get out of jail free card. I don't think anyone would want to trade places with Morgan, and particularly not if they knew the odds around her release. She will probably never get out if statistics around not guilty by reason of insanity laws, uh, stay anything about it. It's a very, very bad place to be. It's, it's easy to get forgotten by the world in a forensic hospital.
In a women's prison, if she had been sentenced to 65 years, she probably would have been up for parol, you know, and gotten out early, if her behavior warranted it. And that would be up to the prison. And after 65 years, if she... as long as she hadn't committed any new crimes and, you know, let's say she's still alive, she'd be set free. But in a hospital, it's not up to the hospital if she leaves. It's up to the elected judge whether she leaves. And she was sentenced to 40 years. And let's say 40 years comes and goes, he doesn't have to let her out. He can just... and I say he because it's currently a man, but let's just say, they don't have to let her out. They can just let it roll over, which doesn't exist in a prison system. So, it's v- it's mind boggling.
Mason Amadeus:
I had no... okay. I had no... ab- absolutely no idea that that was how that worked at all. But that fact is horrifying to me. And now even more horrifying, because I didn't realize that it... that the rules of the whole thing change that way and you're... wow.
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah. I didn't realize either.
Mason Amadeus:
That's a lot to take in (laughing).
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah (laughing). I didn't realize either. Yeah, our juvenile justice laws and our mental healthcare laws are, like, very draconian and weird and would not take place in any of the countries that we consider to be our peers. I mean, the reason that Morgan was tried as an adult is because of this 1990s theory, invented by a Christian fundamentalist named John Dilulio Jr, who was a professor at Princeton in the 90s. And he came out with all this fake research, was very racial coded, about how kids in "urban areas" were becoming wolves, because they were being rose in, in "moral poverty" and the only way to stop them from, uh, committed crimes was to punish them more harshly and stop treating like... treating them like children, because they weren't children. They were what Dilulio called a super-predator. And he said that this was all based on research. Very quickly, Democrats and Republicans came together in a rare act of unity to bake this fake theory into law. And across the country, everyone rushed to lower their minimum age for adult prosecution. And those laws still exist to this day, even though Dilulio came out just a couple years after this all started happening and was like, "Hey, guys. I made it all up."
Nothing happened to him. He went on to work for the Bush White House. So many of these laws still exist to this day. And in Wisconsin, children as young as 10 are prosecuted as adults in, in attempted homicide cases.
Mason Amadeus:
I think in some aspects, much like how people can be forgotten when they get put into a place like this, the fact that this is what that's based on is just forgotten and peo- it's just... or the fact that this is how it is, is forgotten.
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
Because the people who have to interact with it and live by it, are the people, like you said, who aren't good poster children for change.
Kathleen Hale:
Right, exactly. Yeah, nobody... uh, uh, Morgan's mother did not know about this law until it was enacted against her daughter. Like, it's not something that people really know about. And I think the most ironic thing in this case is that, at the end of the day, the super-predator's no more real than Slenderman. How can we be so down on these girls for believing in Slenderman, when a majority of adult lawmakers across our country came to believe in something called a super-predator.
Mason Amadeus:
To, to come back to the, the, the story itself, like, it's very easy to see the story and just say, like, "Oh, these kids did something horrible, because they believe something horrible." But if you, like, think back to being a kid and playing pretend and, and doing all of these other things, like, it's not... I don't know. It's just... it's a very human thing that spiral in a... in a bad way. I think it's important to look at these people as the human beings that they are.
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah, with the limitations that come with age. And in Morgan's case, the limitations that come with having such a rare kind of schizophrenia. Maybe you can tell yourself, "I would never stab anybody." I mean, I believe that about myself. You probably believe that about yourself. But what about our ability at the age of 12 to understand death? You can't. I remember thinking that if I died, it would be really fun, because then I could go to my own funeral and hear people say nice things about me.
Mason Amadeus:
Right.
Kathleen Hale:
Like, I, I fully believed that in my mind.
Mason Amadeus:
It hearkens to how you mentioned, uh, Anissa thought that it would be like, in a video game. "Oh, you, you bop somebody one time. And then they fall down, and poof, and vanish." And like, that's how I thought it worked when I was that age, too (laughing).
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah. Yeah. And you didn't really think of it as permanent either. Like, because you can't grasp permanence. Like, it's actually the way our brains de- develop, it's impossible at that age to grasp permanence. So...
Mason Amadeus:
I mean, that's why peekaboo works on babies (laughing).
Kathleen Hale:
Yes.
Mason Amadeus:
If you think about it (laughing).
Kathleen Hale:
Yes. That's so funny.
Mason Amadeus:
You just extend that a little bit into bigger concepts that are overwhelming as an adult, with a mostly fully formed brain (laughing).
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah (laughing).
Mason Amadeus:
And then try and put that on someone who's, uh, not even a teenager. Yeah.
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah.
Mason Amadeus:
There's no easy solutions to any of this. I mean, the, the issue is massive and ties just right back to both our attitudes about mental health, and the systems we have in place. And-
Kathleen Hale:
Yeah. That was a question that I got recently is like, "What would need to change?" And unfortunately, I think that this is too broken to fix, certainly in our lifetime. I would be bowled over with surprised if anything came to pass in a real way, because it would require so many different sectors of government to cooperate with one another. And it would require, uh, lawmakers in places like Wisconsin to completely change the minds or stop caring about the minds of their constituents. It's just a very th- hard thing to, uh, to change. Because we have no more public mental healthcare centers. Those were shutdown in, uh, the 80s, big time in the 80s, was... most of them were converted into prisons. That's why we have this massive diaspora of homelessness.
People who have schizophrenia. It costs a lot of money to treat it without healthcare. And most people who have healthcare, don't have mental healthcare, because that's not really considered to be a medical problem, by the large across healthcare plans, which is its own problem. But if you don't have healthcare, staying in a public hospital costs $2,000 a day. And you can imagine that many people can't afford that. And so, it makes mental healthcare a privilege of the rich. And everyone else is just sort of left to fend for themselves in this system that doesn't really exist. And unfortunately, our largest mental healthcare system has become our prison system. And so, in the United States, you don't have anywhere to go. Uh, the police can't pick you up and take you away, even if your family is like, "No, you don't understand, just a few minutes ago he was trying to cut his wrists."
What the police will do is they go up to him and be like, "Are you a danger to yourself or others?" And this person who is mostly likely in psychosis, and psychosis does not want to end itself, and, and it speaks for the person and they say, "No. I'm not a danger to myself or others." I mean, it's the stupidest question in the whole world. So you have to, like, talk this code in order to, like, get a 72-hour mental, mental health hold. And then, after that, it starts costs exorbitant amounts of money, so a lot of people, they don't receive the mental healthcare that they needed from the beginning until they commit a crime out of fear confusion, paranoia, delusion. And so, we've created this system where mental illness has become criminalized, because the only method we have to treat it is prison.
[Theme music plays for ending credits]
Perry Carpenter:
A huge thanks to Dr. Vivian Asimos and Kathleen Hale, for lending us their time and expertise. You can find more of Vivian's work on her website at vivianasimos.com. She's also written multiple books, co-hosts a podcast called The Religion and Popular Culture Podcast, and publishes the blog, Incidental Mythology. Check out the show notes for links to all of her work.
Mason Amadeus:
You can find Kathleen Hale's new book, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls, in bookstores or online, in hardcover and e-book formats. We were lucky enough to get a pre-release copy of the book, and it was a very compelling and thoughtful read. Again, check out the show notes for a link.
Perry Carpenter:
Digital Folklore is a production of [inaudible 00:41:06] Media, which is really just Mason Amadeus and myself, Perry Carpenter, doing our best to learn everything we can about the fascinating world of folklore.
Mason Amadeus:
If you're enjoying the show, please, help us get the word out. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Text a friend about the show, post about us on social media. All of our information is in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening.
[Crashing and scurrying sounds as Digby shows that he’s the reason Mason can’t have nice things.]
[Inaudible -- Tape fragment????]:
Inaudible audio at 00:41:52. Possibly reversed? Recommend removing before episode airs.
Perry Carpenter:
Whoa, whoa.
Mason Amadeus:
Digby, no. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Oh, God.
Perry Carpenter:
Oh. Oh my God.
Mason Amadeus:
Digby!!!
-
Monsters and Mental Healthcare - Vivian Asimos & Kathleen Hale
This is the first of our 'Folk' episodes, where we share longer excerpts from our interviews!
We talk with Dr. Vivian Asimos about the importance of storytelling and narrative, what makes a monster significant, and a deeper analysis of how of Slenderman - and the circumstances around his creation - catapulted a legend into our collective consciousness.
Then, we'll hear from author Kathleen Hale about her journey to uncover details around the Slenderman stabbings in Wisconsin, the surprising insights she gained about our juvenile justice system, and a discussion about access to mental healthcare services in the United States.
We'll also meet Mason's pet raccoon (and unofficial Digital Folklore mascot) Digby!
Guests:
Dr. Vivian Asimos, author of Digital Monsters and Digital Mythology and the Internet's Monster: The Slender Man
Kathleen Hale, author of Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls
Connect with us and Support the show:
📚 Check our book list for some great folklore-related books
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