Para/texts for the movie Archie’s Final Project: navigating stigma and profit imperatives to discuss suicide and human connections

Abstract

In light of the high suicide rates among youth in the United States and the role that media can play in educating the public about it, this paper examines how the independent film Archie’s Final Project (2009) navigated the lingering stigma attached to suicidality. On the one hand, the film as a text advances the conversation around both teen suicide and the teen experience by defying the silence that the stigma of suicide often imposes. On the other, some of the film’s paratexts such as posters and titles appear to have been negatively influenced by the stigma of suicide. This situation allows for a discussion of movie advertising material as a contested territory. Among the several negotiations between various social players, the trade-off between allure and accuracy in the advertising material is examined both from the filmmakers’ perspective and indirectly from the audience’s perspective, on the basis of interviews with the filmmakers and a close readings of the movie paratexts.