I am not really a supporter of the media and Hollywood. I have issues with what I can only describe as hypocrisy.
The way they present people with mental illness is defaming and misguided and has been such for decades. I have a hard time being supportive of a community who is certainly not supportive of people like myself.
Hollywood has claimed to have made it's cause to fight for minorities, the underprivileged, and the supposed ignored. They complain about how women are treated and paid in the arts. They even talk at award shows about how disabled people were referenced by outsiders with passion and frustration. But when it comes to depictions of the mentally ill coming out of their own camp, they are strangely silent. They have a lot to say and a lot fingers to point at others but where is the outrage when it comes to how they portray us?
In the last twenty years Hollywood has put out maybe four movies that have represented mental illness and stigma with dignity and compassion. The Hurt Locker, The Aviator, Silver Lining's Playbook, and A Beautiful Mind were some of the most representative movies of the plight of people that suffer from mental illness released to date. In that same twenty years, they have released countless movies where those of us that suffer from mental illness are presented in a magnificently misinformed way, steeped in stigma, and left to boil over on the stove with a side of bullshit that only some place like Hollywood could fashion.
Hollywood does not usually depict us at all but most of the time when they do it is as mentally ill maniacal murderers, creepy stalkers, or the cruel dangerous monsters that maim and rape. I just have to ask where is the outrage for that? Where is the shame for participating in the stigma spreading of our disorders for profit?
How can Hollywood be pissed about a man being made fun of for a birth defect and yet not be pissed about it's own people making movies that end up perpetuating a belief that ends up killing people by making them afraid to get help? A belief and representation that hurts so many by labeling them with false presentations?
This....this is what they stand for? They will stand for everyone else and be mad for everyone else and yet remain silent when it is about mental illness that they actively contribute to. Really? Wow, just wow.
I was horrified to see a movie trailer today called Split. It depicts a person with multiple personalities abducting women and scaring them.
First off, the actual diagnoses for that is called DID or Dissociative Identity Disorder. If you are going to make some big bullshit movie about it, at the very least get it's name right.
The thing is, DID is not something that makes you a serial killer or mass abductor and honestly, I am beyond irritated about this movie.
Lets be honest, There is no other disability that Hollywood would allow to be used to imply dangerous behavior.
This movie would never be called "Wheels" and imply that a man was a phsyco murderer because he was in a red wheelchair.
It would never be called "Dresses" and infer that the character was dangerous because he was transgender.
That would be inappropriate and wrong.
It is the also just as inappropriate and wrong to make movies about the mental illness community and labeling them dangerous simply because of that diagnosis.
There is nothing else that receives the unfair and biased damning that Hollywood does to the mental illness community for entertainment purposes and profit.
Movies are exciting. I get it, and I know that statistics aren't but that doesn't make them any less right. When the facts show that mental illness sufferers are twice as likely to be victims of violence rather than to cause violence, one would think Hollywood would get a new script and leave us out of the killer/slasher/murderer roles.
And I am sure people will say that I am just being over sensitive to it but I live this life under the full weight of the stigma that movies like these help promote and propagate so yeah, I may be a tad bit fucking over sensitive about it.
I am angry and I don't even suffer from DID.
I am angry that in 2017 we are still fighting to end stigma so we can save people that need help but are too afraid to get it because of how they will be looked at, judged, and treated. I am angry that in 2017 movies are still being made making us all out to be dangerous maniacs when something as simple as a google search could prove how inaccurate that draconian thought is. I am angry that is 2017 and people will go see this moronic film call it horror and then go home to their normal lives and not think about the struggle someone with actual DID is going through. What everyone with the moniker of being mentally ill goes through daily. As we try and do the best we can with stigma and misrepresentations all around us not only just blindly being accepted but also being actively promoted as entertainment. Especially, by the very people who claim to be tolerant and understanding of everyone's hardships, that is unless you are mentally ill I guess. I suppose when you struggle with mental illness it is not important or, at the very least, not as important as movie ticket sales.
Wow, just wow.
Neurotic Nelly
