This blog started out when a friend of mine recently asked (there will be spoilers): "I know it's old, but have you see Shutter Island?"
I laughed and said the book was better. But she asked me an interesting follow-up question that I didn't expect. "Is that what it's like? Being Bipolar I mean."
I was floored. This is a master's degree graduate asking me if delusional Leonardo DeCaprio, running around engulfed in this entire fantasy world, was how I lived my everyday life. I raised my eyebrows. "Why would you think that?" I asked.
"Because movies always show stuff like that and I just want to know if you really live like they show. Because that'd be hard."
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"Living with a mental illness-two of them actually for me--is quite hard. But I manage my mental health better than I manage my physical health. I'm on meds, I see my therapist once or twice a week depending, I see my psychiatrist once a month, and I use my coping skills. I don't live in a fantasy world--any psychosis I get I know isn't real and it's from being manic out of my mind for weeks on end which happens rarely. I have a job, a relationship, friends. You're all real." I shrugged. "My therapist just finished telling me that it's only like the smallest percentage of people who get so lost in their delusions that they're stuck in them, but it's so rare and those people are usually medication-resistant in some form or the other."
"Then why do they show it like that almost all the time. Look at Joker, he killed people."
"Well Joker is different, but I get your point, and I really don't know. I'm going to explore it."
And here's the exploration. As always, all opinions in this blog are mine and all experiences I speak about are my own.
I think horror sells. And I don't think there's anything more terrifying than losing control of the human mind. Think about it, we need our brains for everything. They house memories, they make sure we can function, they're our source of language and what we do every day. Without our brains, we're nothing. I watched my mom go "brain dead" so I know what losing your mind, literally, looks like from the outside. Function is non-existent--it's almost like you cease to be a person. So I think the concept of losing one's mind through psychology is an easy horror trope because I think, on some level, we all fear it.
Comedy. We all have quirks and there are painful stereotypes associated with every known psychiatric illness. I'm Bipolar so I must be the crazy bitch that has mood swings constantly and flips out of my mind manic and loses control like multiple times a day. I have ADHD so therefore I must be bouncing off walls with so much energy that it's not manageable. I must've been a failure at school because I just couldn't focus. And there is an element of truth to all these stereotypes, but they're not the full truth. However, they make, I assume for Hollywood, either good comedic fodder or make really "good" "original" character traits. Look at Monk for example with his OCD. Many people don't remember him because of his detective work--they remember him as the quirky detective, even though, from my understanding, OCD is a serious and can be a debilitating psychiatric disorder.
Some disorders have negative connotations: Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, DID, to name a few. Because these have such negative connotations, perpetuated by the media, it is easy to make someone suffering from one of them the villain. I was madly in love with someone with DID and I am Bipolar and we made it work as long as we could. We weren't violent, her alters (for the most part) were easy to live with and we went about our merry way. She wasn't violent and didn't turn into a new person every second of every day. In fact there were many days were she was just R. I'm Bipolar and I think anyone who knows me knows I'm not a violent or homicidal person. (Occasionally suicidal yes, but homicidal no). I have friends who have Schizophrenia--they aren't crazy, they don't live in a delusional world. But it's easy because many people don't know much about these disorders, to turn them into something they're not and to highlight the worst aspects of each disorder to make good entertainment.
And this is where stigma, perpetuated in many ways by the media, comes into play. In Shutter Island, for example, Leonardo DeCaprio's character was "manic depressive" (the correct term for the time period) or Bipolar as it's now called. He was violent and was completely lost in his delusions. I watched it and I remember going oh my God this sucks for me. People are going to think I'm this way. It's why it took me so long to come out of the closet with mental illnesses. People watch horror movies or movies in general that portray mental illness in a negative light and then start to believe that is what the mental illness is. Those broad strokes, those worse case scenarios while they make good entertainment are detrimental to people like me, who struggle for acceptance and understanding.
Now, I'm not saying all media portrayals are bad or wrong. Silver Linings Playbook did a great job of showing what a manic episode was like, the potentially disastrous consequences of having Bipolar Disorder, and how when someone tries to understand and accept it makes all the difference in the world. The movie built real empathy for each character, realistically flawed in their own way. That's more what I like to see. Yes, Bradley Cooper's character is still odd, he still has issues, but his issues are handled in a smart way, a way that can both entertain and educate. Because the biggest weapon we have against stigma is education.
I'm not saying you can't use psychatric illness in creative ways, many artists, including filmmakers do. I'm not saying you can't make light of mental illness when appropriate. I'm not saying you can even find the joy in mental illness--hell sometimes I love my ADHD and my Bipolar Disorder--sometimes they're my superpower. All of this is valid, and needed even. But what is needed less is stigmatizing by an industry that has a lot of influence over people both young and old, and more realism. More education by showing the harsh reality of having a mental illness and fostering conversation. In summary, less Shutter Island (besides aren't there more creative ways to create monsters and demons than highlighting the worst case scenarios of mental illness--aren't there more creative motives for killers out there than Bipolar Disorder) and more Silver Linings Playbook.
