The Terror’s The Devil in Silver, The Buffalo, and The “Machine”
Have you been committed to a psychiatric hospital? Have you? It’s okay, you can tell me! You can tell me all of your little s- okay maybe not. Ew, don’t tell me that. Fucking freak.
I get it, you don’t have to tell me about your mental health history, and I don’t have to tell you mine… just don’t read any of these essays. We’re not at Friend Level 2, you haven’t shown me your butthole, I haven’t shown you my feet, we haven’t even exchanged cat photos!… I mean mine’s dead now, but I took at least 10 photos him a day, and… why are you crying? Stop crying.
Alright let me start again. Have you ever felt like you were going crazy? And I don’t mean you are some Network-style breakdown (although kudos if you have) or whatever the fuck is happening over on TikTok at any given moment. I mean have you felt like you are living or communicating on one wavelength and the people around you, let’s narrow it down to healthcare professionals, are on another? Like you’re on the Pacific Motorway and they’re on the Ipswich Motorway.
Well, that’s what this latest season of the anthology series, The Terror, is mostly about. If you’re new to the series, each season takes place in a different time and place that mixes the horrors of people doing dumb things and mixes in a bit of the supernatural. Fun stuff! Everything a growing kid needs to function in the world. I also feel like The Crypt Keeper during winter time, so it’s very fitting.
So if you’re new to the show or new to me talking about gaslighting and blind spots healthcare, en…joy?
Devil in Silver is based on the short story by Victor LaValle which I haven’t read but it appears the series keeps to the themes of the original story.
There will be some spoilers for The Terror season three below. I will be talking about certain healthcare topics while referencing some scenes and characters for the show while trying to keep it to a minimum, so if you’re interested in the show and haven’t watched, you’ve been warned.
This season is about everyone’s favourite fella, Dan Stevens, playing not-Dan Stevens — or a little freak, for once — who finds himself involuntarily committed for a reeeeal shitheap of a psychiatric ward, New Hyde. Like, this place is barely holding on with minimal staff, no funding, and a thing running around. Was Dan Stevens character, Pepper, court-ordered? Nope. What did he do? He gets into an altercation with his girlfriend’s ex and instead of going to jail, the cops cart him off to said Shitheap. He literally gets cuffed by the cops and taken to the hospital because of budget cuts and not wanting to do paperwork.
Does that sound crazy? Absolutely? Does that sound unrealistic? Well, a woman was arrested for posting about the dirty water in her town and people of colour get harassed and arrested by the police for really anything.
So when you think of the real world we live in (sorry for reminding you), it’s not really not hard to believe.
So, we’re already off to a cracking start. It immediately reminded me of the UK show, 24 Hours in A&E, where in one episode, the cops take people to A&E instead of, I don’t know, taking them to a shelter, or home, or even the psych wing. No, take them to the busiest place in the hospital, I’m sure they’ll figure it out!
Back to Dan Stevens Pepper. He is a normal kinda dude trying to get money to get his girlfriend’s daughter a drum kit and, as the series goes on, you find out that he had a girlfriend? partner? one night stand? and a son who he abandoned when the boy was three. He’s not a perfect man — and good! he shouldn’t be — but he is evidently not mentally unfit. Yes, he punched a dickhead, and he is a bit of a dick himself, but that other guy was a massive more dickier dickhead!
Anyway, Our Hero — Dan Stevens Pepper Stevens — is told he is just there for the weekend. Shocked and perturbed by his new predicament, he soon finds out that this place is off. Really off. The other patients are a bit eccentric, but they don’t appear emotionally or mentally unstable, at least at first. While we don’t really know at first how long everyone’s been there, they all know the official rules: Be compliant… actually that’s really the only rule. You find out pretty quickly that this rule is incredibly broad, which Dan Pepper finds out quickly when his weekend stay is suddenly extended to two weeks, all because he was given such strong drugs that he was asleep for a day, and thus wasn’t awake to take his next round of meds, and so he was deemed “non-compliant”.
Silence is Compliance, Compliance is Silence
I can tell you right now this sort of “do what the doctors/specialists/people of medical authority tell you, stay vigilant, take your meds, look after yourself, do exercise, and everything will work out” is a message that my body seems unable to decipher. Autism will have you deciphering the talk around you only for the script to flip on a whim.
You’re sure you have endometriosis, but the doctor will say you have no cysts.
You will work out, eat right, be incredibly militant in everything you do, and PCOS will have you gaining weight, breaking out, and forgetting what someone said to you 10 minutes ago. And to everyone else that doesn’t see your effort 24/7, they will say your lying, or.. yes you know I’m gonna say it — “you’re not trying hard enough!”!
Whether it is for autism, ADHD, lupus, PCOS or endometriosis or another diagnosis, there are a plethora of symptoms that will be invisible to everyone. They can be felt, but not measured. They can try to be explained, but it sounds like 20 other disorders, illnesses or diseases.
This is the insanity of diagnosis and life with an invisible illness or disability; the fact that you will be driven to the edge through your body, your mind, your family, your friends, and your medical specialists. You will come to realise that sometimes, no matter how much you try, no matter the blood, sweat, tears, the “but I’ve done everything you said”, the rules get changed, they feel stricter, and your attempts for compliance have only driven you mad.
In episode four, we see the compliance noose tightening when the patients sit together and enjoy food that the new nurse, Josephine, has brought in, and it’s the first time we see them laughing and chatting in the series. This doesn’t last long, though, as Josephine, Scotch Tape (literally the nurse that holds everything together) and the patients are reprimanded initially (or what appears to be) for eating together, then for the metal forks (which, sure) because it’s “out of compliance”? I say that questioningly because it seems Miss Chris comes in and sees them together which sets off her scolding, then the metal forks, and maybe the food itself?
I guess it doesn’t matter because that’s the point. These are people who must be quiet, in their own space, compliant.
We should talk about the staff as they represent the type of personnel you could find in any medical institution. We have Josephine, the new, kind, caring nurse. Scotch Tape is the more experienced one that knows what goes on, upholds and enforces rules but tries to protect the patients and has no power to change anything. Miss Chris is the veteran and most senior of the nurses and acts also as administration. She’s there to make sure enforcement is enacted and leans more into that admin role than actual one-on-one care. Then there’s Dr Badger, a doctor who leads the book club and basically is there for some light duties but has as much impact as a fart in the wind.
But every facility needs a head fucko and that comes in the form of Dr Anand, who’s like Miss Chris in the sense that he is medically-trained but takes his role of facility manager much more seriously. A true noose-wielder of Compliance.
These are the people you see in hospitals if you’re there long enough. Hell, you be part of any work team and you’re bound to see this bunch, no matter if you work retail, hospitality, or whatever other hell you have to get your pay from.
Similarly, if you’re a patient for long enough, you’ll notice these figures; the jaded one with no power who just has enough energy to go through the motions to make sure you don’t die on their watch, the absent administrators, the new ones that will have their soul stolen from them piece by piece. You can’t help but emphasise with some of them. Some. Because at the end of the day, the system — and the bureaucracy bullshit that comes with it — pushes everyone without any say into the mud, inch by inch.
Good Ole Fashioned Gaslighting
Look, listen. I will stop talking about this soon and go back into fun video games or a horror movie that apparently no one likes, but we gotta talk about this bullshit again. I’m sorry. You don’t like it, I don’t like it, but we can’t pretend it isn’t there.
I mean it wouldn’t be a show in a medical setting without some of that gaslighting that got your ma, aunt, neighbour down the road shipped away never to be talked about again. These days, it’s usually family posting on Facebook essays as long as this one about how you’re just going through a “phase” of neurodivergency. Because those people have it easy and stuff!
You see, whether you’re autistic, or have ADHD, you have an invisible illness, and thus, prepped for gaslighting. ‘Lubed up to the gills’, as my grandma says. If something is your reality and people — especially people of authority — are telling you otherwise, you can’t help but start questioning it.
This is the first unofficial step of getting a PCOS/PMOS diagnosis; getting gaslight into not having it because you have no cysts. It sure as shit happened to me, and like I said in that other essay, it was by a woman doctor that specialised in women’s health and routinely did pap smears and pelvic exams. I really do wonder how many people before and after me were told they absolutely, 100% couldn’t have PCOS/PMOS because they didn’t have cysts. I think of people who can’t get diagnoses. I mean, I still can’t get some diagnoses and I reached a point years ago where I came to terms with the fact I probably never will… unless you got like, $2500AUD lying around? Do you?
In the show you notice straight out of the gate that something is up with this place. We see through Pepper’s eyes and experience that there is something not human in the ceiling, the walls, down the end of the hallway in a room patients are not allowed to venture near.
The official response? There’s nothing there.
Pepper gets attacked, he notices at a book club session that everyone has some welt-looking wounds on them somewhere, just in different places. He asks about it, but no answer is sufficient.
To me, this is a clear representation of overlooked abuse in the system by other patients, doctors and administrators. We hear so much about nursing home abuses that it’s almost normalised, it even gets written into movies sometimes for comedic effect… which is… great.
We’ll talk about this topic below, but this pervasive form of abuse is so casual. We are conditioned to think that’s how it’s supposed to be, or the way it is, or that a certain group of people are always complaining to get attention or want something (usually more pain medication), that just dismissing people and their concerns right at the start can be incredibly dangerous.
The Buffalo
While bison and buffalo are from different genus, both are used interchangeably in the show and events below, so while I do mean both, for brevity I will be using “buffalo”.
Warning: suicide ideation is mentioned in this section
Early into Pepper’s stay, the oldest resident, Dorry, tells him the story of the American buffalo, how there numbers were abundant in the western United States until European settlers came and made bank. These people would lean out of trains and kill them for the sake of killing them. For the pure sick love of the game.
But the easiest way, she continues, to kill herds of buffalo was to drive them towards a cliff so they would have no choice but to jump off, killing themselves en masse.
“Hundreds of bison broken into pieces at the bottom. Heads, horns, hooves. Those buffalo were just fodder, a consumable resource… until… they damn near went extinct. Folks like us, we’re the buffalo. And New Hyde is the cliff.” — Dorry.
Now the image this conjures might sound familiar…
Ahh… yep.
Untitled (Buffaloes) by David Wojnarowicz was created after the artist’s partner, photographer Peter Hujar, died from AIDS complications.
According to artnet.com, after Wojnarowicz saw a diorama depicting a buffalo jump, he “recognized parallels between the cruel treatment of the animal and the U.S. government’s cold indifference to a public health and social crisis. “It is exhausting,” he wrote in his 1990 memoir, “living in a population where people don’t speak up if what they witness doesn’t directly threaten them.”
None of this is lost on me. The Wojnarowicz’s inspiration, the intent in Eddington, and Dorry’s words show the blatant disregard for the people not deemed “normal” and hide away, as well as for complacency when action is required
The buffalo, like people searching for diagnosis, treatment, representation and awareness, feel like they’re driven to the edge. The gaslighting, the minimising, being pushed aside, even the hostility towards wearing a fucking mask, makes you feel like you’re insane and that you have nowhere to go.
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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt that I’m losing my mind; there is no hope or no other way, that I should give up and end it, that life isn’t going to get any better. I’m stuck with this body and mind and that help is just one. motherfucking. doctor. away are thoughts that can get so loud.
These days, I know that in some ways, official diagnoses would be beneficial, but mostly it’s just a paper that I can tell family and strangers “Hey, I have this thing! It’s official now! See, I’m not making it up!”. But the effort to go down that road gets tiring very quickly, and I have spoons to count and instead, I redirect myself to diagnosis and treatment of issues that impact me day-to-day. It’s something I can’t generally recommend to everyone because my story is different to yours and your cats and your cows. There will feel like a point of no return, and you have to figure out whether to jump or just turn around, say not today, and just bulldoze past the people pushing you to the brink.
[Editor Lucy: For all you fact-loving freaks: Yes, tribes like the Clovis, Blackfoot and many others did practice the “buffalo/bison jump” to hunt buffalo/bison. Hunt being the important word. It was never to drive an animal to extinction or funsies, but for survival and the animal itself is very respected and revered. I feel like I don’t have to tell you the difference between actual hunting for food and resources, and almost wiping out a species because you want glue, remove said resource for native people orgive every hunter a license to kill — literally.
The National Parks Service has a great write-up about this topic, including how drought and the spread of horses greatly impacted the buffalo population]
The delicate brain can only take so much, and like the buffalo, there is a point where good people will do unimaginable things they wouldn’t have done if they weren’t under duress.
The Straight-Arrow Treatment
In the show, Dorry and the other residents claim the creature that attacked Pepper is a patient controlled by a former doctor… guy… let’s just call him a “guy” known as “Dr. Walter”. A man who has only one way of treating anything. Lobotomy! Pretty sure if you told him you stubbed your toe, he’d have you in the chair faster than actually stubbing your toe.
I talked about this briefly in my PMOS/PCOS essay, but some treatment options like GLP-1s, medicinal marijuana or generally looking into new options seems to be something that is completely on the patient to research and bring up. I’ve heard it’s from plain doctor laziness, little time to research or not wanting to suggest treatment because of possible litigation. I don’t take much stock in the latter as it’s usually someone saying it from the US: the Land of Lawsuits!, but more importantly because these are the people who already suggest treatment — including chiropractic care!!!!! — and are the ones urged to be constantly learning and have the experience to make a professional opinion. Like they’re experts or something.
In the show, we see the compliance = sedation and/or the bed shackled route as an easily identifiable way to show what the show and author are trying to convey in terms of A-C with no other stop on the way. Sure, these are options that medical personnel in hospitals have to resort to with high-risk, violent patients, but something the show illustrates especially with Pepper, is that accidents happen, someone might not be actively violent, but strong sedation is treated as the first line of their compliance rule.
And remember, there’s also the lobotomies!
Medical Violence and Trauma
While it’s now understood as an unethical, non-reversible and discredited form of treatment that leaves patients incapacitated, dependent (though kept in institutions for the rest of their lives and not with family), emotionally blunted or just dead. In the show, we find out that Dorry was committed by her husband because she kept painting the house walls different colours. True 1960s fuckin’ bullshit. Within moments of stepping into Dr Walter’s office, she is guided to an adjacent room with staff and lobotomy instruments at the ready.
This wasn’t the last time she will be subjected to this kind of treatment.
Medical violence isn’t just having bits of your brain severed or being tied to your bed overnight. It’s having to get your IUD without pain relief/anesthesia, assaults while awake, in twilight or under for surgery, assaults while you fucking work there, refusing alternative pain relief to people with chronic pain disorders, using too little sedation, using too much sedation, the denial of fibromyalgia and endometriosis pain, all the race-targeted violence, all the elder-targeted violence, all the LGBTQIA+-targeted violence, performing unnecessary procedures without consent, pressuring patients into treatments or threatening them to stop treatments.
During and after neglect, gaslighting and other abuse is added to the trauma. Dr Walter seems to be able to continue to haunt the patients, especially Dorry, no matter when they have come through and why.
Without spoiling too much, we these abstractions or illustrations of long term and generational trauma through a mysterious character called Arnold, the only patient that’s been there longer than Dorry and Pepper’s son, Anthony.
Trauma and evil consume. They need food. No better is this articulated than when both Arnold and Pepper are told by Dr Walter that ‘he could use a man like [them]’, and that whatever their problems, he can make it all go away. Like any oil salesman old and new, they need prey to survive, and to continue on. This trauma/evil needs new blood, new victims to feast upon. Whether qualified or not, the salesman will give you shoddy information so you’re made you believe that it’s real and the only true remedy to get anything you desire.
New Hyde is getting dire and dire. The bodies are stacking up with no new staff, financial support or patients are coming in. The evil residing there needs to break free at some point with a willing host, to continue on their work. To feed.
That’s what’s really at stake in this hospital. When desperation is reached, people get hurt, and that includes the young. Anthony, was abandoned when he was young. He is estranged from Pepper and only comes to him for money for his mum’s funeral. Again, without going into detail, Pepper is at risk of becoming Dr Walter, and Anthony is at a risk of becoming Pepper, and if neither is strong enough, this pattern will continue on and on, and on.
The Great (Bureaucratic) Machine
In the end, everything mentioned above are components of the Great Machine; the well-meaning or jaded medical personnel, the treatments and investigation routes painted in absolutes, the imperfect patient, the compliance, the silence and the distrust, all chug along in an ouroboros of horror. Our relatives on Facebook love talking about “Big Pharma”, but the Machine is boring but so much more than anything they could believe. The medical field (as well as the media and fucking idiots) can say that neurodivergent cases are at a strange high as a result of overdiagnosis, while also profiting off of it. Governments slashing healthcare. Medical personnel can say patients are belligerent know-it-alls (hi!) who aggressively self-diagnose off webmd (it was even a meme), and patients are more and more distrustful or hesitant around doctors — either because of a belief they’ve adopted from somewhere online, or their own experiences. Some may feel like they’re driven to the brink with nowhere left to go.
And everyone mentioned above is right in some way, but these are the times of absolutes, nuance doesn’t cut it. Got sick after getting a flu shot? Never get it again! Sex in movies? Bring back the Hays Code! Skull looking evil? Bring back the phrenology diagrams, we must see if you are prone to violence — or hotness!
The Machine doesn’t have a mirror attached because no introspection is required, just a nice funnel for the feed to go into so it continues. It must be strong and constantly fed and maintained. Look at how shiny it is! But for the love of all things holy, don’t look the individual parts, because you will find the secret that keeps it all lubed up and working perfectly.
Tasty, tasty bureaucracy.
Near the end of the season, the evil is at risk of spreading and seeping out of the building into society. Not only the threat of evil, but that people will learn of the conditions and death that’s happened there — and there’s no fictional Geraldo to turn to.
We find that the Dr Walter doesn’t plan on actually retiring from being a evil freak. Once finishing up at New Hyde, he wants to get a camper wagon and become mobile to do continue performing lobotomies. A Kevorkian fan? Let’s not go there.
Crawling Out
At the news of the impending closure of New Hyde, Dr Anand [to remind you, head fucko facility manager] decides to actually be a healthcare professional; he takes over reading time, tries to give them some care, but it’s too late. The evil threat, as well as news of the events that have unfolded at the hospital, are at risk of crawling out. The patients too will be transferred to other facilities. Nothing will stay silent anymore.
Exposure in this series has a double meaning. Like the real life horrors of Willowbrook State School, the ongoing news of the horrors that occurred in Canadian residential schools against indigenous children, specifically St Anne’s, Colonia Dignidad, basically news of any cult or religious figures and institutions’ abuses that have come to light, New Hyde’s will too. In secret, corrupted power will go unchecked, just *gestures around* for a real-life example.
There is also the exposure of the patients to the outside world. To light, fresh air, freedom.
And yeah there’s Dr Walter and everything he represents too.
Spoiler from the finale
In the finale, we see one of the patients, Loochie, has made a successful escape with documents containing “the truth” about New Hyde. When we see them next, they’re sitting in an art gallery, sketching Van Gogh’s Starry Night into their art book. They’re still taking meds; they aren’t “cured”, but are content.
It was something that was so refreshing to see. Media likes to think that medication is temporary and that a happy ending means pain and pill-free. The reality is that if someone needs medications and are taking it for the right reasons at the right dosage, that can bring less pain and more contentment, and boy howdy, even happiness.
Loochie didn’t just crawled out of the physical place that held them, but out of the beliefs and attitudes that kept them there. Now, they are able to have control to take their meds, drive whereever they want, live their life according to them.
end of spoilers
We don’t have a choice on everything that happens to us, or how our mind and body try to deal with it sometimes, just like we don’t have a choice to be a set gender, sexuality, or neurodivergent pathways.
At first blush, The Devil in Silver’s finale might seem bitter, but for me it leans more into the sweet. It shows that we do have some choice in how to deal with some of the things that happen to us, and who to have in our life, what gives us joy, treasuring what we have and protecting our peace.
Look I’m not giving you the toxic positivity shit because things are not always fine, it’s not fair, people hurt and the hurt can last a long time. Feelings need to be felt because burying it down is much more detrimental. There are pockets that we can create and dip into, though; people we can find that make us feel seen, heard and understood. We fight for ourselves, our loved ones, and our community.
In the end, The Devil in Silver is about surviving The Machine, thriving in spite of it, and walking away from the cliff’s edge.
Now if you excuse me I need to book a pap smear.
