CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sharon Packer
Few terms for the mentally ill are more irreverent than the appellation “Loonie.” It reminds us of yet another outdated derogation about the “loonie bin” that housed so-called loonies. The words derive from “lunatic” or “lunacy,” which owes its origins to luna, or moon, because many people of the past associated psychosis and seizures (and various other ailments) with phases of the moon. The error in scientific understanding is excusable, but the abbreviated form loses its clinical meaning and generally intends to offend and undermine the mentally ill.
Yet the chronically psychotic inhabitants of Halfworld’s “Cuckoo’s Nest” [sic] in Rocket Raccoon comics self-identify as “Loonies.” They show no signs of the shame or stigma that the term carries elsewhere. For them, it is a neutral, descriptive term. Moreover, they celebrate their outsider psychiatric status and ritualize their treatments in colorful ways.
The “Loonies” don sacramental straightjackets for ritual worship at their holy temple, known as “The Asylum.” They sanctify their departed psychiatrists’ Logbook, calling it Gideon’s Bible (and recollecting the Beatles’ comedic cowboy song about Rocky Raccoon as well as bedside Gideon’s Bible). Men in white coats—called “Good Humor Men” here—give gifts to the Loonies and so are welcomed, rather than reviled, in contrast to the proverbial “men in white coats” who cart unwilling people away to institutions.
Despite their segregated status in Halfworld’s “Cuckoo’s Nest,” and despite Halfworld’s hierarchies, the Loonies seem happy with their lot in life. They sing, they dance, they pray, and produce dramas. They play with toys and companion animals (which include Rocket Raccoon). If we take the farcical story seriously, we suspect that the Loonies’ contentment reflects the concern and compassion showered on them by their “shrinks,” who find a safe haven for “Loonies” in Halfworld, and who delegate caretaking tasks to equally committed robots and sentient companion animals after the “shrinks” are forced to depart.
When a cure comes their way, via the “Wonder Toy,” the Loonies are equally happy to embrace sanity and dispose of other toys that amused them while ill. In the end, they collaborate with the companion animals who cared for them in Cuckoo’s Nest. It sounds like paradise, and maybe it is, were it not for the fact that the theme song, “I am the Walrus,” written by John Lennon, was a parody.
Making Lennon’s parodic—but memorable—melody so central to the text makes us wonder if the comic book story itself was produced as satire, rather than as a solution. For Lennon wrote his nonsensical Walrus lyrics to satirize music critics who read meaning and nuance into every word of the Beatles’ songs, even when no meaning was intended. Perhaps Rocket is making a mockery of a sorry state of affairs or presenting a tongue-in-cheek commentary derived from countercultural disdain for mental hospitals and institutionalization. This colorful comic book may be black humor, intended to denounce mental health care more and to poke fun at those who expect to find relief from psychiatric services. Or it may represent a “wish-fulfillment” fantasy on the part of the authors … or audience.
Before we speculate further, let us look at Rocket Raccoon comics miniseries from 1985, which inspired Guardians of the Galaxy, the 2014 blockbuster film that made us take a second look at this short-lived cult comic published nearly 30 years earlier.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), the Film Version
Guardians of the Galaxy conquered the box office in 2014.1 Based on a four-issue comics miniseries Rocket Raccoon (1985),2 Guardians of the Galaxy skyrocketed in popularity in the summer, when the best action-adventure films usually premiere. It remained the year’s top-grossing movie. In response to its success on the big screen, it became an animated Disney Channel TV show.3,4 Another Guardians of the Galaxy is on its way.
The film’s broad appeal to adults and children alike surprised everyone, for it stars a talking raccoon (Bradley Cooper) and a sentient tree voiced by Vin Diesel, an actor otherwise known for tough-talking, street-smart roles in more standard action-adventure films. With its cast of improbable characters and a human-like animal star, Marvel’s film could be billed as “Disney meets Wizard of Oz” (which is not so far-fetched, considering that Disney bought Marvel Comics and now owns Marvel Cinematic Universe and The Wizard of Oz).
Yet the Guardians of the Galaxy film moves in a decidedly different direction from the Rocket Raccoon comics original. Rather than elaborating on Rocket’s relationship to the Loonies of Halfworld, the film focuses on Rocket’s space travels after he leaves Halfworld and after he has fulfilled his obligations to Halfworld’s Loonies. It avoids mention of Rocket’s mission as a companion animal and sentient pet for “Loonie incarcerates” of the planet’s psychotic society. By choosing this starting point, spectators miss out on Rocket (Rocky) Raccoon’s immutable connections to mental illness and pop culture’s commentary on mental illness in the mid-1980s, when psychiatric standards were shifting, and moving forward as fast as Rocket’s rocket ship.
Rocket Raccoon (1985), the Comics Original
Marvel’s cult comic book classic Rocket Raccoon (1985) is mostly attributed to Mike Mignola (penciller), Bill Mantlo (writer), and Bill Potts (editor). Mignola has since gained fame for his Hellboy series, which moved away from this early contribution to comics. The career of his collaborator, Bill Mantlo, in contrast, plunged a few years later, and headed in a direction that eerily—and sadly—parallels the comics’ theme. We will elaborate on those tragic events later.
Rocket Raccoon comics function as a superhero story, complete with death-defying Toy Wars waged by competing tyrants and a kidnapped damsel-in-distress who waits for rescue by her intended, Rocket Raccoon. Killer clowns combat sentient animals. With its strange asylum and its even stranger inhabitants, Rocket Raccoon stretches far beyond the standard mythic “hero’s journey.” Guardians of the Galaxy the film begins after the Wonder Toy cures the Loonies of insanity and increases the intelligence of animals like Rocket. On-screen, we never see scenes of the Wonder Toy and are never treated to images of the Loonies’ strange rituals.
The film’s abbreviated approach to the Rocket Raccoon origin story deprives us of Rocket’s “real story” of how and why he acquired speech, technological enhancements, and a supra-human sense of responsibility. In contrast, the comics illuminate the era’s attitudes toward long-term care of incurable psychiatric patients. It forces us to question contemporary (1985) trends toward the “integration” of the mentally ill into society—and makes us ponder the value of setting seriously ill persons (who cannot care for their own needs) apart for their own safety and not because of stigma, as happened in Halfworld. In hindsight, the Raccoon comics also remind us of the seismic shift in psychiatric theories about odd behavior or perceptions, circa 1985.
By 1985, reigning psychoanalytic explanations for psychosis were largely laid to rest and the standard of practice shifted in favor of neuropsychiatry. The groundbreaking Osheroff v. Chestnut Lodge case of the 1980s cemented that shift. Rocket Raccoon comics show no doubt about the biological basis of serious mental illness. The comics acknowledge the genetic contributions to psychosis, without undermining the added contribution of environmental, parental, or societal factors.
In the real world of 1985, the deinstitutionalization movement freed psychiatric patients from back wards of state hospitals and scattered them into the “community,” resulting in the near-extinction of state hospitals, the virtual disappearance of so-called funny farms, the emergence of squalid squatter communities in city streets, and “transinstitutionalization,” whereby former asylum inmates become prison inmates after their arrests for vagrancy, disorderly conduct, or various petty (or sometimes serious) crimes or drug-related offenses.
Rocket Raccoon, also known as “Ranger Rocket” or Rocky, witnesses a very different approach to mental illness on Halfworld. On Halfworld, talking animals like Rocket care for patients while an advanced, industrialized, robot-controlled sector exists on the other half—hence the name “Halfworld.” Those robots genetically enhance the animals, enabling them to function as “psychiatric aids” and companion animals for patients. Surgical modifications enable the animals to jet-propel. In the film, Rocket hints that something extreme happened in his past. When we see surgical scars on his back, we (wrongly) suspect that animal rights violations and unethical animal experimentation are at issue. But surgery is only a small part of Rocket’s back story.
This futuristic story arc starts hundreds of years in the past, when space-traveling humanoids searched for a place to conduct scientific research and to provide a safe place for chronic psychiatric patients who could not survive in general society. Their host society cast these patients out, but their psychiatrists retained hopes of a cure. Importantly, no one argues about the validity of psychiatric diagnoses or whether some patients are detained inappropriately or involuntarily—even though antipsychiatry activists, as well as some civil libertarians plus many academicians, would ask such questions at the start of the story arc.
Without debating about the diagnoses—but disagreeing with their superiors about their patients’ grim prognoses—the space-traveling psychiatrists chance upon Keystone Quadrant in the outer reaches of the galaxy. They turn it into an “Insane Asylum.” The quadrant’s name references the bungling “Keystone Cops” of silent cinema. The first issue of the four-book miniseries warns, “You are about to enter a strange and not always rational galaxy … a sector of space called Keystone Quadrant.” The comic book frames the story by quoting the words of the psychiatrists: “We psychiatrists were determined to prove that those poor souls deemed hopelessly insane could be cured.” The comic book explains that the “shrinks” [sic] “administered to them from our headquarters in ‘Asylum,’” where they “studied and experimented, expanding our knowledge of the functioning—and dysfunctioning—of the human mind … while animals were brought along for the purposes of entertainment and companionship.”
In the Marvel comic book, space-traveling psychiatrists make robots to aid their patients and to assist their own quest to learn how and why some people become psychotic. The robots also manufacture toys to entertain the patients. Compared to horrific reports about mid-20th-century state hospitals and some contemporary “adult homes” for persons with “serious and persistent mental illness” (SPMI), the imaginary arrangement of Halfworld sounds idyllic—even if patients are segregated from society and even if they are infantilized and treated like children, albeit cherished children who receive Santa-like toy deliveries, every day.
Rocket Raccoon’s psychiatrists and psychiatric robots recorded their observations in “Gideon’s Logbook,” playing upon the term, “Gideon’s Bible,” which recollects holy books stored in hotel dresser drawers. It directly references the Beatles’ cowboy song parody, “Rocky Raccoon,” where Rocky plans to “shoot off the legs of his rival … only to find Gideon’s Bible.” Other touches, such as references to Alice in Wonderland characters, amplify the comics’ parodic approach to psychosis and connect it to the drug culture and counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s.
In the comics miniseries, the home planet eventually cuts research funding and forces psychiatrists to return home—but not before devising ways to care for patients after their departure. In their Log/Bible, the psychiatrists defend their actions and document their reasoning: “It having been decreed by the council that certain forms of insanity are incurable, we have been ordered to transport our planet’s insane to a world of their own, where they may be cared for by robots and kept amused by pets for the rest of their natural lives.”5
To protect patients from potentially harmful intruders (rather than the other way around, where locked wards protect society from presumably harmful patients), the psychiatrists created a force field around the star system, known as the “Galacian Wall.” This protective attitude is intriguing, even more so today than it was in 1985, because the Raccoon comics portray Halfworld’s Loonies as potential victims of predators rather than as future perpetrators. Indeed, statistics show that persons with serious psychiatric disorders are more likely to fall victim to criminals rather than victimize others, despite relatively rare high-profile crimes committed by persons with untreated mental disease. That sympathetic portrayal suggests that Halfworld’s shrinks knew that unsuspecting psychotics make easy targets for the unscrupulous.
After the shrinks leave, the robots stay behind to meet the immediate needs of the planet’s patients and to continue their advanced research. Life in Halfworld grows more complicated when patients produce progeny who become psychotic, both because of genetic influences and because of the effects of living in an insane environment with psychotic parents.
The patients appear to be unperturbed by their outcast status. They call themselves “The Loonies” and even begin a religion of their own, devising rituals which worship the ancient “shrinks” as gods. In keeping with the entertainment theme, they call their priests “The Good Humor Men.” This appellation reminds us of the childlike antics of the Loonies. The white garb of the Good Humor Men recollects the proverbial “men in white coats” who work in psychiatric institutions and who come to “take people away” and perhaps tie patients in straightjackets.
Instead, Halfworld’s Good Humor Men wear white straightjackets as ritual “priestly” garb. They practice an elaborate rite. Each ties the straightjacket of another priest, while reciting sacred hymns about the “Cuckoo’s Nest.” They chant, “One flew east, one flew west, and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.” Those verses originated in a popular children’s poem that predated Kesey’s novel and Forman’s influential film version about the “cuckoo’s nest”—but most fans are far more familiar with Milos Forman’s rabidly antipsychiatry film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), which he based on Ken Kesey’s best-selling novel from 1962. The benevolent “cuckoo’s nest” on Halfworld stands in stark contrast to these pop culture icons.
The Loonies call the old Asylum logbook their “Bible” and store it in a sacred place known as the “Admissions Ward” of the ASYLUM. The comics note that “ASYLUM was the most sacred shrine of the Loonies on Halfworld, and the focal point of their annual pilgrimage and celebration,” when they wear costumes of their own choosing. The comic books capitalize the letters of the word “ASYLUM,” presumably as a sign of respect or religious reverence.
The comics say, “On the night of the Great Masquerade on Halfworld, each Loonie Incarcerate of Cuckoo’s Nest can act out his or her fantasies.”6 This phantasmagorical touch alludes to historical facts about “Lunatic Balls” of the past,7 which attracted curious onlookers as well as confined “lunatics.” This peculiar practice merited mention by no less a source than Charles Dickens.8 Halfworld, however, has no gawking spectators peering into the Lunatic Ball to amuse themselves, after paying admission, as happened in 19th-century Europe and America.
Reciting their Bible, the Loonies affirm that, “The acting out of fantasies is therapeutic, so sayeth the ancient lore of the shrinks, which we must all obey.” They are describing psychodrama, a form of therapy that was in vogue through the 1970s and that is resurfacing today.9 Their arcane jargon, with words such as “sayeth,” recollects the King James Bible.
The patients’ deification of long-departed psychiatrists seems preposterous to readers and yet it reflects a certain truth. This deification and idealization goes far beyond garden-variety “positive transference,” which, in psychoanalytic parlance, refers to the analysand’s reactions toward the analyst. “Transference” represents displaced reactions to real-life relationships that are “transferred” onto the anonymous analyst. (“Positive transference” refers to the analysand’s positive feelings toward the analyst; “negative transference” is the opposite.)
For the Loonies, their psychiatric care has become their religion—not surprisingly, considering that many critics deride the “Cult of St. Sigmund” and accuse psychoanalysts of functioning as shamans (rather than scientists) by making unprovable proclamations that carry near-canonical authority. We laugh at the slapstick-like rituals of the Loonies, where chorus lines of straightjacketed patients chant incantations and quote “sacred” writings of their long-departed shrinks as if they were reciting Scripture. This scene recollects Philip Rieff’s influential sociological book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966), which explains how psychotherapy usurped religion’s authority in post-World War II America. As they say, many a truth is said in jest.
According to the comics, Halfworld’s patients remain stable, but “As the ages passed the robots exceeded their original programming—perhaps caused by radiation from a nova, affecting their inner workings. Anyhow, they developed an artificial intelligence … and yet they still faithfully looked after the generations of loonies who, if not congenitally insane as their ancestors had been … were born into and affected by parents’ insane environment. Here, insanity was normal.” The comic book continues, stating that, “the robots—supremely logical—began to chafe at the illogic of the humans in their care. They sought a way out … and found one.” The robots “played around with genetics and enhanced the intelligence of the animals, enabled them to talk, gave them prosthetics that mimicked human movement … and set [Rocket Raccoon’s] ancestors to the task of tending to the Loonies’ needs.”10 At this point, fans have an “aha moment” as they recall Rocket’s offhanded reference to “unethical experiments” performed on animals. Rocket’s glib explanation in the film suddenly makes sense.
Rocky Raccoon continues to listen intently to his elders. He learns that “the robots retreated to their own industrial side of Halfworld …” and there “they have manufactured machines for us and toys for the Loonies, while they have labored on their huge humanoid Starship ever since.” Rocky seems shocked to hear of his origin story. He stammers when he responds, confirming that, “T-then we animals started out as … as pets for mentally deranged humans?!?” A community elder—a walrus—speaks, (in keeping with the walrus theme of the Beatles’ nonsensical song). Wal-rus concurs with Rocket’s conclusion, but Rocket grows more perplexed and retorts, “B-but that means that I’ve spent my whole life searching for sanity in a universe established to house the insane!”
The comics do not quote R. D. Laing but parallels to Laingian antipsychiatry ideas are obvious.11 Laing, the radical psychiatrist, claimed that society is insane, so the mentally ill are merely mirroring their surroundings or reacting to those insane situations. We can identify tacit references to Erving Goffman’s often-cited sociological study, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates.12 Goffman contended that society is simply an insane asylum run by its inmates. The seminal 1973 studies of Stanford social psychology professor, David Rosenhan, “On being sane in insane places,”13 are equally apparent. Rosenhan sent supposedly “sane” shills to psychiatric hospitals, tutored his shills on what to say to admitting psychiatrists, and found that his shills received serious psychiatric diagnoses based on the unsubstantiated histories they relayed, even though they showed no superficial signs and symptoms of psychosis. Rosenhan proved that it is easy to fake psychiatric symptoms and even easier to confuse psychiatrists. Rocket’s comments to Wal-rus reify Rosenhan’s conclusions.
Surprisingly, the Loonies do not question their diagnoses, whatever the specifics may be. They do not argue that they were unfairly declared insane or incarcerated against their will, as many antipsychiatry advocates would claim. For them, their state of “insanity” is a given fact—just as the curative Wonder Toy Helmut of the future is also a given, and is welcomed by all who acquire it, without resentment or recriminations for all that they endured before its invention.
The comic book story grows more complicated. In the comics, Rocky and fellow animals regard their work with the Loonies as a mission, just as doctors are trained to do. Then a comic-book villain and toy tycoon who supplies toys for the “loonie incarcerates” challenges Rocket’s altruistic attitude, saying, “If the Loonies want their laughs, they’re going to have to buy them from me!” Rocket objects and says, “Buy? It’s every animal’s duty to entertain the incarcerates of Cuckoo’s Nest—free of charge!” Rocket’s philosophy of life and purpose for living is polar opposite of the for-profit approach of the malicious owner of Mayhem Mekaniks.
Eventually, Mayhem Mekaniks and competitors engage in the Toy Wars, which are essentially Trade Wars. The Toy Wars turn into a complete story arc that is beyond our scope here, except to say that during the Toy Wars, the Loonies’ Bible—the one-time logbook of the departed shrinks—falls into the wrong hands. Rocket heroically retrieves the Bible and gives it to the robots, hoping that they can decipher the data contained within. And that indeed happens!
The robots consume the sacred tome in a very concrete fashion. They literally “digest” its contents and follow its instructions to make a “Wonder Toy.” This Wonder Toy helmet cures the Loonies instantaneously. It looks like the helmet used in TCMS (transcutaneous magnetic stimulation), which was not commercially available in 1985. Unlike contemporary medications, which require weeks of exposure, and unlike the much-maligned ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), which takes 8–12 sessions, the Wonder Toy literally works wonders in a single wearing. Even companion animals benefit from “Wonder Toy” because “it works on imbeciles as well as on those who are just plain looney!” Low IQ animals become as intelligent as humans. The comics mention that Rocket, for one, had an unusually low “A.I.Q.” (animal intelligence quotient).
Optimism abounds. Someone announces, “Soon, they’ll [Loonies] be as normal as the ancient shrinks who left them on Halfworld eons ago!” “Soon they’ll become productive people instead of passive patients—and they’ll no longer have the need to be entertained by … toys.”14
With the Loonies cured and freed from psychosis and no longer in need of the toys, the Toy Wars end. Animals and Loonies elect former Loonies to refashion their world. At that point, Rocket chooses to accompany robots that leave the planet via Starship and seek adventure in the company of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The blockbuster film begins here, minus the origin story.
Reality Intervenes
Readers could rejoice in this happy ending, and that is probably what they did for a few years. Sadly, the issues raised by the miniseries became eerily relevant to the life of its writer, Bill Mantlo, who suffered grievous injuries from a hit and run driver in 1992, just a few years after Rocket’s 1985 publication.
Mantlo had already left comics when he had his accident. He had become an attorney and public defender, having studied law at night while working for Marvel. According to online blurbs, this choice was in keeping with his character; he was always socially and politically committed and the role of public defender allowed him to exercise that part of his personality.
After the accident, he was unable to practice law, collaborate on comics, or even remain in an ordinary rehabilitation facility that did not offer extensive psychiatric staff. Mantlo’s closed head injury stripped him of the ability to care for himself. He could not move independently from bed to wheelchair, maintain his balance, articulate clearly, or control his emotions. So Mantlo traveled from treatment center to treatment center, before settling into an “adult home” that serves persons whose mental or physical conditions require 24/7 nursing assistance as well as psychiatric care. His brother has carried the torch since that time, enlisting the support of fans and reminding the public (and corporate controllers) of his brother Bill’s contribution to the original Rocket Raccoon story.15 Where is Halfworld when you need it?
Notes
1. Ray Subers, “Weekend Report: ’Guardians’ Holds Top Spot on Slowest Weekend in Two Years,” Box Office Mojo, September 7, 2014, http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3902&p=.htm.
2. Mike Mignola, Dave Stewart, and Scottie Young (Editor-in-Chief Alex Alonso); Series Editor Mark D. Beazley, Rocket Raccoon and Groot (Salem, VA: R.R. Donnelly, 2013). Originally published by Marvel Worldwide, Inc., 1960, 1976, 1982, 1985, 2011, and 2012.
3. Brook Barnes, “Disney Pins Hopes on ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ Show,” New York Times, October 10, 2014.
4. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2015-). www.Imdb.com, accessed February 19, 2017.
5. Mignola, 88.
6. Mignola, 79.
7. Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes, Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness before 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
8. Sharon Packer, review of Encyclopedia of Asylum Therapeutics, 1750–1950s by Mary de Young, Metapsychology 19, no. 24 (June 10, 2015), http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=7411&cn=139.
9. Sharon Packer, “Using Psychodrama to Teach CBT,” Psychiatric Times (April 29, 2015), accessed April 29, 2015.
10. Mignola, 115.
11. R.D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1960).
12. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1961).
13. D. L. Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science 179.4070 (January 1973): 250–258, accessed October 13, 2014, doi:10.1126/science.179.4070.250, PMID 4683124.
14. Mignola, 137; See also Bill Mantlo, Rocket Raccoon #1–4 (1985 mini-series), Marvel Comics, May-August 1985.
15. Sharon Packer, “The Secret Psychiatric Origins of Rocket Raccoon,” Psychiatric Times, October 24, 2014; Dave Itzkoff, “Armed Animals Don’t Invent Themselves: Guardians of the Galaxy Character Creators Eight for Cash and Credit,” New York Times, August 6, 2014.