Depicting crazy ala A Beautiful Mind

Cafe Society
1

A Beautiful Mind was the first time I’d ever seen crazy depicted like this. However, since then, I’ve seen multiple examples of crazy being signaled by the discovery of some room where a huge tangle of strings connects a bunch of news clippings, etc. I’ve also seen numerous examples of the non-crazy version – someone trying to solve a complex problem with a huge board where strings are used to show connections between various elements.

My question is this: Is A Beautiful Mind the first time that particular way of visually representing craziness was used???

2

I didn’t go through it completely to find the first incarnation, but there are some before A Beautiful Mind.

3

Here’s a whole, entertaining article on the crazy wall.

4

Great article! Thanks!

5

I can’t point to a particular movie or TV show using it prior to “A Beautiful Mind”, but charts connecting-the-dots or using lines and arrows to link disparate events and people into what the unbalanced see as a coherent whole, have been around for quite awhile.