MURDER PSALM BY STAN BRAKHAGE
By Lauren Bliss
Murder Psalm is the closest film has come to figuring psychosis. That is not to say that there is anything wrong or sick with Murder Psalm. As Michel Foucault pointed out in Madness and Civilisation, it was the psychiatrists and not the psychotics who fostered the rationalisation and objectification of psychosis as a diagnosis for purposes of power and control. Thus, and in extension of this, I would suggest that the psychosis of Murder Psalm is neither irrational nor unreasonable.