“To Show the Problem Inside and Out”: Representations of Mental Illness and Suicide in Eric Steel’s The Bridge

Abstract

The 2006 documentary The Bridge focuses on the lives and deaths of six suicide victims who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in 2004. Shot over a twelve-month period, the film presents the footage of each victim’s demise, recorded from the distant shoreline by director/producer Eric Steel and his crew. The Bridge has been criticized for publicizing these six individuals’ deaths and even blamed for the rise in bridge jumps following the film’s release. In contrast, Steel insists that his documentary serves to raise awareness of the need for more effective methods to identify and dissuade potential jumpers, as well as to rejuvenate efforts to secure the bridge with physical barriers. Is The Bridge a catalyst for change, or does it merely reduce suicide to spectacle? In addition to addressing such queries, this chapter analyzes Steel’s portrayal of the Golden Gate Bridge as a suicidal cluster site whose victims seem drawn to its beauty, simplicity, public profile, and high fatality rate. Also examined are the filmmakers’ efforts to humanize each suicide victim by reimagining the bridge as a contact zone between the individual’s struggle for peace and the broader social systems that might have failed this person.