“Gaslighting” is another term that is so misused today that it’s becoming meaningless. It seems as though the denizens of reality shows accuse each other of practicing it and gaslighting is now rife through the media – but it appears that the word is not being understood in it’s original, proper conception. This term did not come into common usage until the late 2010s, which suggests that many people don’t fully grasp how and where it originated.
The practice of gaslighting has never been depicted in a more memorable and vivid account (albeit fictional) than in the 1944 film Gaslight starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. Bergman won a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Actress of that year as a beautiful young woman who is being psychologically tormented by her manipulative husband (Boyer) who wants control of her finances. Gaslight is a sterling example of a turning point in cinematic history when Hollywood became fascinated with narratives portraying psychopaths and the victims they cause to be psychologically disturbed starting in the 1940s.
This was also the era when film noir began to flourish. Noir is a cinematic style (and sometimes considered a genre) notable for cynical, pessimistic characters, dreary settings, harsh lighting effects and a pervasive fatalism. Gaslight does have a few characteristics in common with the noir style, but is usually classified as a psychological thriller – and is one of the finest films of that category. It should also be noted that Charles Boyer was nominated for a Best Actor award as the malevolent, scheming husband, setting the stage for numerous imitators.
Gaslight is set in early 1900s London when gas was still the main source of lighting in private homes and for street lamps, thus the title. The early Edwardian townhouse inhabited by the film’s protagonists with its cloying, heavy-handed decoration and flickering gaslights paired with its haunting, interior cinematography lends itself well to the encompassing aura of malevolence. In the film Paula (Ingrid Bergman) experiences the full range of gaslighting techniques as her husband Gregory (Charles Boyer) fully intends for Paula to start doubting her reality.
He skillfully accomplishes this by berating her for misplacing items like brooches and pocket watches, and then claiming she just has no memory of it, removing pictures from walls and hiding them, hearing footsteps coming from a sealed attic at night, seeing the lights brighten and then go dim for no apparent reason. He claims these last two issues in particular are figments of her overwrought imagination. What’s worse is that he embarrasses her in front of the servants so they think she’s on the verge of a mental breakdown and humiliates her in a very public setting during a music recital, to reinforce the impression that Paula is going to pieces.
These examples are exactly what denying someone else’s reality is all about, and doing it to someone publicly is particularly egregious. However, it should be clearly understood that one person providing constructive criticism to another person or merely disagreeing with them on a political or social issue is not a form of gaslighting. Accusing someone of gaslighting just to avoid a conversation or using it as a means to win an argument is not the correct application of the term.
The website wellandgood.com accurately points out that the term gaslighting is moving down the same path as other terms such as “narcissist” and “psychopath” which have clinical definitions that are now too commonly used in casual, everyday conversation. The overuse or misuse of the term gaslighting clouds the real issues where it applies and does a disservice to those who are actually victimized by it.
