The legendary actress Angela Lansbury recently passed away (1925-2022). She was famous for so many Broadway shows and movies, not to mention starring in the long-running TV hit, “MURDER, SHE WROTE.” Many may not realize that as a young ingenue in Hollywood, she played a supporting role in the 1944 movie “Gaslight,” earning her an Oscar nomination. Angela played a saucy young housemaid who had a mutual flirtation with the husband of the house (Charles Boyer), who was psychologically manipulating his wife. He slowly drove his wife to second-guess her actions and question her own sanity by surreptitiously turning on and off the gaslights, which lit their home in this period piece. The vernacular term “gaslighting” was taken from this movie’s title, referring to this sort of mind game. (Ironically, I got to play this same role about 100 years ago in a community theatre production in Atlanta, GA. It is for the good of mankind that my career took me other directions….but I digress.)
The young maid’s complicity in gaslighting her boss’s wife is a common dynamic in enabling a gaslighter. One could say that this great George Cukor film has become a psychoeducational film that foreshadowed the current groupthink, that we are seeing played out through the sensationalism of media coverage. Now, in our incredibly fast-paced, high-tech, instant information world, it is is more important than ever before to slow down, rationally and critically think, make our own assessments of what is going on politically vs allowing the constant, in-our-face sound bites, memes and stereotypes to overly influence us.
Manipulating a significant other, or any team or political faction involves packaging, reinforcement, and an insistence that the other side is crazy, stupid, demented, or just plain wrong. There are currently several shows that masterfully depict this psychological tool: episodic shows such as “The Dropout,” “Bad Vegan,” “Inventing Anna” and the new Julia Roberts TV series about the Watergate scandal “Gaslit.” Without taking political sides, Infowars’ Alex Jones recently demonstrated gaslighting by his denial of the Sandy Hook massacre, and many of his followers were complicit in supporting him. The concept of “fake news” has caused some to eschew science and experts, conned if you will by the well-packaged and incessantly repeated messages that are based on fear or false information.
Understanding the concept of gaslighting, and having a name for it, can give profound relief to those who have begun to question their own mind, voice, ethics, and the truth. Then they can stop buying into a master manipulator’s influence and reclaim the self.
Rest in peace, dear Angela Lansbury. Thank you for your body of beautiful work.