The Receptacle for all that is Monstrous and Vile: The Island Asylum in Scorsese’s Shutter Island

Abstract

In Shutter Island (Scorsese, 2010), the gothic mental asylum metonymises the symbolic powers of madness. The asylum’s position on an isolated island encodes a dichotomy between nature and culture homologous to the film’s depiction of madness and rationality, while marking the asylum as an uncanny domain subversive of the rational structures of mainland society.

Keywords

• scorsese
• shutter island
• gothic
• mental asylum
• madness
• island
• nature
• culture
• film
• cinema
• uncanny
• horror
• foucault