Shreeya Sharma Week #14: Gas Lights and Gaslight
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Paula questions her sanity as she remains locked up in the house, with Gregory attributing the seemingly dim gas lights in their home to her mental illness. In short, the movie is centered around Gregory’s deception, which he does for personal gain. From this movie, we get the term “gaslight”: when a person lies for their own gain to another person so repeatedly and with so much confidence that the victim begins to doubt their own sanity.
I actually haven’t watched this movie, though I’ve heard quite a bit about it. I think it’s interesting how this movie demonstrates a way to, in a sense, cheat a person’s memory. In essence, that is what gaslighting truly is: deceiving someone’s memory, progressively making them question their sanity. Additionally, seeing how such an important word in modern psychology and mental health counseling arose from a play written in the late 1930s is, frankly, very surprising—I didn’t expect this word to come from a place like the theater.
Nevertheless, the movie still has a relevant message today due to the growing awareness of manipulation in relationships. Surely enough, the moments where Gregory is literally gaslighting his wife when he lies about dimming the gas lights must be frightening to watch. I can imagine the lies easily flowing off his tongue and Paula holding onto every word, as she would rely more on him due to her presumed downward spiral to insanity. To gaslight someone is a despicable thing to do, yet it’s worth noting how this modern term, used in relation to abuse and emotional manipulation in relationships, has its origins in cinema.
Hey Shreeya,
ReplyDeleteI love the topic of your blog because especially in our culture right now, "gaslight" is a term we use very often and some people use it often without actually knowing the meaning. It annoys me when people use the term lightly even though it's a very serious form of manipulation. I also loved your blog because it informed me of the origins of the word "gaslight" and I had no idea it was from a movie with the same name. Origins of things such as this are often lost as it's used more and more and I truly find it fascinating that your wrote your blog on this because in some perverse way I suppose gaslighting is also adjacent to memory as it is a manipulation of memory.
Hi Shreeya! I had never heard of this movie before and found it very exciting because I read a similar book by Roald Dahl a few years ago. Although I do not remember the name of the book, I remember that the girl would cut off part of an adult’s walking stick each night so that he would eventually think that he is shrinking. By gaslighting this adult that they were growing shorter, the girl was able to subtly play with her guardian’s most insecure feelings. I found the summary of the movie that you provided to be very similar to this. When Gregory deceives Paula, he messes with her mental state although nothing is actually happening to her in reality.
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting that the movie was published in the late 1930s, which is almost a century ago. When I first heard the term “gaslight,” I was almost certain that it was a modern slang word because many of my elders did not know what it meant. However, I find it interesting that the term “gaslight” and started to become popular again almost a century after its creation. I believe that it is very similar to trends in fashion, which continuously re-occur thirty to forty years after their peak. It is amazing how words and langauge can also go through these same cycles and re-enter the lifestyles of the young generation. In some cultures, it is common to believe that people are rebirthed when they die. Therefore, it is ironic that ideas from the older generations are similarly rebirthed in the new generations because it implies that these ideas may have been carried with the soul.
Hi Shreeya, your blog is very informative and it is interesting to learn about the origins of a word that is so widespread nowadays. Gaslighting is a terrible and toxic thing to do but it is extremely prevalent in culture everywhere, which is a huge problem. Gaslighting can be very common in relationships, and unfortunately, women are the ones that are usually susceptible to this phenomenon. I have seen multiple Tik Toks where women have shared their experiences with their ex boyfriends. In many of the stories, the man is cheating on his girlfriend and when the girl finds out and confronts her boyfriend, he starts to act like she’s crazy and making it up in her head. This can be an extremely infuriating situation and it pains me to know that so many women go through experiences like this with men. I think my mom has also gaslit me a couple of times as well, but unknowingly. Sometimes, she gets mad at me for not completing a task when she never told me to in the first place, yet she insists that she has told me. This could be due to faulty memory and it is hard to determine who is at fault- my mom for not mentioning the task, or me if she did in fact mention it and I tuned her out. It is hard to tell what exactly is a real memory and what is not as memory can definitely be deceptive, but gaslighting makes this even worse, and can eventually drive an individual to insanity.
ReplyDeleteHey Shreeya, I found this movie very interesting, and I think I find it so interesting because I have heard a similar story to this. In fact, it could be maybe the same story. My mom once told me about this one girl that got kidnapped. She was put inside a basement of a house far far away from her original hometown. In the new hometown, the kidnapper introduced the girl as his wife and said she had a mental illness, so if she seems crazy that is something normal. If she screams for help or anything it is something normal and the neighbors don't have to worry about anything. The girl was kept in a basement for some time and whenever she got to go out she would act "insane" but no one would call for help since they thought she has some mental illness. This made her think as if she was actually insane because everyone told her, and the kidnapper also constantly told her she was insane. I find this story crazy because it could actually be something that has or is happening in real life to some poor person. Gaslighting is now a common term used in todays language, and people now use it for fun. I think that gaslighting shouldn't become something common though because as you can tell by the movie that gaslighting can do some dangerous stuff.
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