“I AM THE KING OF ENGLAND. NO SIRE, YOU ARE THE PATIENT”

foucauldian analysis on the movie "The madness of King George"

Abstract

This article aims to provide the articulation of Foucauldian research on madness, society, and psychiatric power with the questions present in the movie The Madness of King George (1994). Thus, the theoretical analysis will discuss the themes of the constant exclusion of madness, as well as the conception of madness itself, which, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, is no longer on the "truth-error-consciousness" axis, but on the "passion- freedom" one. This theme is observed on the figure of King George, who is affected by madness and whose sovereign power is taken by the disciplinary power of the doctor who makes him docile and passive. The figure of the great physician as he brings to light the truth about madness, from the knowledge that he holds, providing a relation of domestication with the patient with the purpose of repressing perverted passions and wills. In the nineteenth century, the process has a healing bias. It is a therapy, thus it is observed through the inflections of psychiatric power in the production of a docile and subservient body. Finally, as a conclusion, it is verified from the analysis of the film the practices of domination of madness by reason in the nineteenth century, perceived on the figure of the king, having the doctor as the one who knows about his suffering and maintains him a docile and subservient body, the coping scene constituting the psychiatric power.