Ironically [Titicut Follies] is so effective because it is not another Snake Pit, another brutal and unrelenting exposé of life behind the closed doors of a mental hospital. Yes, there are some scandalous and disgusting moments, but by and large they are not those that offer us the standard "backward" scene, with its shrieks and groans and hilarious desolation or grim excitement. I have seen much worse in other state hospitals that Massachusetts maintains.

Something else is at work to give this film its power, and to unsettle its critics, many of whom are objecting to the nudity allowed or demanding to know why the faces of inmates are used, in clear violation of the right to privacy…. If Frederick Wiseman has offended the sensibilities of his fellow citizens he has done it I believe by making them nervous about far more than nudity (in this day of bikinis and miniskirts) or the individual's right to privacy (in this day of wire-tapping, of cleverly manipulative advertising, of espionage that has been into so many things that any number of people can reasonably doubt whose purposes they have served and with whose money).

After a showing of Titicut Follies the mind does not dwell on the hospital's ancient and even laughable physical plant, or its pitiable social atmosphere. What sticks, what really hurts is the sight of human life made cheap and betrayed…. But much more significantly, we see the "professionals," the doctors and workers who hold the fort in the Bridgewaters of this nation, and they are all over. (pp. 29-30)

Titicut Follies is a brilliant work of art, and as such it will not go unnoticed, despite the opposition to it. We are asked not to be outraged at others—a cheap and easily spent kind of emotion—but to look at ourselves, the rich and strong ones whose agents hurt the weak and maimed in the name of—what? Our freedom. Our security. Our civilization. Were men's "rights" violated, or do places like Bridgewater strip men of everything, their "rights," their dignity, their humanity? Does a man like Frederick Wiseman have the obligation to say, tell or show what he saw, or is the state entitled to its privacy?… All the while our Bridgewater State hospitals still stand; and the human beings in them bother us only rarely, when a film like this one comes along…. (p. 30)