BLOG #2: Information Found in "Constructing Panic" by Lisa Capps

For our capstone project, Nick Morgan and I have decided to create a short film.  For this film, we had two different ideas that we were trying to decide on to be the narrative for the film.  In the end, we decided to go with Nick's idea of the story of a man who suffers from agoraphobia and refuses to leave his home.  This character has two friends, one male friend who continuously tries to get the main character to stop behaving this way and leave his house so that he can have a "normal" life.  The other friend is female and she thinks that the main character should do as he likes as long as it makes him feel safe, and she enables him in this way.  Eventually, the character decides one day that he is going to go outside, but he ends of dropping dead once he's out there.

We're using a few different academic sources for research for this film.  Most of our resources are articles about filmmaking, such as lighting, composition, camera technology.  However, I thought it would be a good idea for at least one of our sources to be about agoraphobia.  So I found a book on Google Scholar called Constructing Panic: the discourse of agoraphobia by Lisa Capps.  This book defines what agoraphobia is, goes into who suffers from agoraphobia and how they suffer, but it also describes Capps interaction with a woman named Meg, a person with agoraphobia, who she interviews as a participant in her study of agoraphobia.

According to Capps (1997), "the term 'agoraphobia' means 'fear of open spaces', but is more appropriately described as a fear of being any place where one might feel vulnerable to fear and panic".  I thought this was very interesting because I always thought of agoraphobia as just being a fear of open spaces but knowing that it can be any place is an aspect that would be good to incorporate into the film.  Capps (1997) also notes that sufferers of agoraphobia "express fear of being in a place or situation where it may be difficult to escape or obtain help should they experience a panic attack or develop other potentially incapacitating or extremely embarrassing symptoms" (p. 3).  This means that agoraphobia can incorporate not only a fear of something bad happening to the person physically but as well as socially.

Another reason I wanted to do some research on agoraphobia on the film was to get an accurate idea of how a person who suffers from agoraphobia feels and behaves.  When reading, I came across this quote from Capps (1997): "Agoraphobic persons often describe feeling trapped by an over present threat of panic and their belief that they cannot risk leaving safe havens such as home" (p. 3).  This said to me that it is not as much the fear of the space but the fear of the actual experience of "panic" or a panic attack, so this creates a behavior of wanting to avoid any place that the person feels might induce a panic attack.

Capps also describes her meeting with Meg, a sufferer of agoraphobia and a participant in Capps' study of agoraphobia.  Capps describes pulling up to Meg's home and says that it had paint that was old and peeling but that front door looked beautifully detailed.  "The architectural contrast stood as a metaphor for a hallmark feature of agoraphobia: the attempt to exert control over a highly circumscribed space, to create a safe haven within a chaotic, often unwelcoming universe" (p. 3).  I thought this would be an interesting element to incorporate into the film; our main character's home could represent physical what it was a symbol of emotionally.

However, Capps makes a point in telling the audience that even though Meg has made her home a safe haven physically, the fear and panic from her past experiences haunt her as well as the possibility of future situations that induce the same fear and panic.  So even though the homes of these people are seen by them as their "safe havens", Capps says that still, "home is a paradise lost in that it cannot provide refuge from the mind and the scenarios it (re)creates" (p.4).  This element would be good to incorporate into the main character as to make the portrayal of him suffering with agoraphobia more accurate.



Capps, L. (1997). Constructing Panic: The discourse of agoraphobia . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.