On Selective Mutism

This is a purely informative post about Selective Mutism, a severe anxiety disorder no one knows and cares about. It is an unbelievably rare condition where a child or sometimes an adult is unable to speak in certain situations despite being capable of doing so due to severe unfathomable anxiety butterflies in their stomach.

Historically, it was known as elective mutism until the professionals realised how dreadfully awful that name is. Less than 1% of the population suffer from this condition at some point in their lives.

Selective Mutism is often misunderstood and misdiagnosed as autism spectrum disorder because of the professionals being unaware of the existence of SM which is absolutely absurd. Speaking of awareness, the UK is actually the only country in the world where there is some familiarity about SM among the general public. They even designated October as the Selective Mustism awareness month. Nice.

SM is generally very difficult to treat but symptoms can be alleviated greatly through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and other forms of therapy. However, most children with SM are left untreated.

From the depths of everything, I could find one movie with a character with SM played by the powerful Kristen Stewart. The movie is Speak (2004) and although it doesn't have a fitting story for SM in partiular, it's still quite good in the depiction of the condition itself.

On Tickled (2016)

So I watched Tickled and it was freaking fantastic. Tickled is a documentary by David Farrier that came out of nowhere last year. Farrier is an actual journalist from New Zealand who fearlessly made this film despite facing legal threats. The film's narrative unfolds with a certain recklessness as Farrier investigates something so bizarre it's almost unbelievable.

Are you ticklish?

About the plot, it's essentially a movie about competetive endurance tickling. Take a moment to conceptualize 'competetive endurance tickling'. So, David Farrier stumbles upon a weird looking Facebook about a weird looking tickling competetion.
He embarks on an investigative journey right away and decides to film it when faced with a legal threat by the agency running the competetion. What unfolds is a story more bizarre than anything I've seen before (except Exit Through The Gift Shop). This plot description might seem like too much of a reveal, but I promise you, it's not.

For movies like Tickled, it can get difficult to draw the line between the credibility of the subject matter and that of the filmmaking on its own. It could get difficult to put focus on the masterful craft on display because of the utter absurdity of the subject matter.  
But let it be noted, Tickled is a masterful film and my second favourite documentary after the mournful Dear Zachary. There are just so many things that Tickled does right.
Farrier never shys away from showing what needs to be shown with zero sublety in the storytelling, and mind you, that is not a bad thing for a documentary about competetive endurance tickling. The soundtrack for the film is directly taken from the movie Upstream Color, but doesn't feel out of place at all. I bet if anyone who hadn't watched Upstream Color already could figure that out.

The film has interviews of various personalities at different stages which serve as small but insightful character studies which make the film all the more interesting. This film made me feel a wide variety of feelings. I was sad, depressed, happy, laughing at different points in the film.

Lies, manipulation, money, absolute sociopathy, there is just so much to absorb from this movie. I give it a nine out of ten.

To the world of tickling.