FA7 - Caring about BPD: A New Reading of Emotional Dysregulation in Fatal Attraction
SCURS Disciplines
Interdisciplinary Studies
Document Type
General Presentation (Oral)
Invited Presentation Choice
Not Applicable
Abstract
This interdisciplinary project uses film as a vehicle for educating the public about the lived experience of emotional dysregulation, attachment disorder, and mental health stigma in the United States, especially toward the controversial diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). I have selected Adrian Lyne's blockbuster film, Fatal Attraction (1987), as the case study for this presentation.
Fatal Attraction has been understood by mainstream audiences as a psychological thriller, a slasher film, and a morality tale discouraging men’s extramarital affairs. Some scholars interpreted it quite differently, criticizing its political subtext as a negative commentary on the changing roles of women in U.S. culture in the 1980s and reading the film’s violent treatment of Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) as a dramatic devaluation of career women who appeared to prefer work over family.
More recently, audience members have reconsidered Fatal Attraction as a missed opportunity to talk about mental health. Building on this perspective, “Caring about BPD” examines Fatal Attraction as a disability film, part of a long lineage of cinema that isolates and victimizes disabled characters. Drawing on the creative traditions of minoritized audiences—a rich history of resisting readers, queer gazes, and crip spins—“Caring about BPD” refuses the film’s “preferred meaning” of disability isolation in favor of a “subversive interpretation” driven by disability solidarity. This solidarity is expressed by reading against the grain of its punitive plot trajectory and identifying scenes that preserve narrative space for disabled and neurodivergent emotions.
For this presentation, I will focus on selected scenes from Fatal Attraction to demonstrate this approach. By amplifying neurodivergent narrative spaces and “turning with tenderness” toward “subjects who unravel,” as I have advocated elsewhere (Johnson 2021), this new reading of emotional dysregulation in Fatal Attraction contributes to cultural conversations about disability awareness that seek to destigmatize borderline personality disorder, support neurodivergent women, and, borrowing from Jina Kim's crip-of-color methodology, dream up networks of care that counter their isolation.
Keywords
Borderline personality disorder, neurodivergence, feminist film studies
Start Date
10-4-2026 4:10 PM
Location
CASB 103
End Date
10-4-2026 4:25 PM
FA7 - Caring about BPD: A New Reading of Emotional Dysregulation in Fatal Attraction
CASB 103
This interdisciplinary project uses film as a vehicle for educating the public about the lived experience of emotional dysregulation, attachment disorder, and mental health stigma in the United States, especially toward the controversial diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). I have selected Adrian Lyne's blockbuster film, Fatal Attraction (1987), as the case study for this presentation.
Fatal Attraction has been understood by mainstream audiences as a psychological thriller, a slasher film, and a morality tale discouraging men’s extramarital affairs. Some scholars interpreted it quite differently, criticizing its political subtext as a negative commentary on the changing roles of women in U.S. culture in the 1980s and reading the film’s violent treatment of Alex Forrest (Glenn Close) as a dramatic devaluation of career women who appeared to prefer work over family.
More recently, audience members have reconsidered Fatal Attraction as a missed opportunity to talk about mental health. Building on this perspective, “Caring about BPD” examines Fatal Attraction as a disability film, part of a long lineage of cinema that isolates and victimizes disabled characters. Drawing on the creative traditions of minoritized audiences—a rich history of resisting readers, queer gazes, and crip spins—“Caring about BPD” refuses the film’s “preferred meaning” of disability isolation in favor of a “subversive interpretation” driven by disability solidarity. This solidarity is expressed by reading against the grain of its punitive plot trajectory and identifying scenes that preserve narrative space for disabled and neurodivergent emotions.
For this presentation, I will focus on selected scenes from Fatal Attraction to demonstrate this approach. By amplifying neurodivergent narrative spaces and “turning with tenderness” toward “subjects who unravel,” as I have advocated elsewhere (Johnson 2021), this new reading of emotional dysregulation in Fatal Attraction contributes to cultural conversations about disability awareness that seek to destigmatize borderline personality disorder, support neurodivergent women, and, borrowing from Jina Kim's crip-of-color methodology, dream up networks of care that counter their isolation.