“He’s totally insane.”
A victim will wail before finding themselves sliced up by a maniacal killer. There will usually be some sort of backstory – an asylum where our murdering psychopath had grown up, we’d have been told repeatedly that a mental illness ravaged the humanity side of our killer and that he is deranged beyond repair. People die, red stuff gets sploshed about, the killer dies (sort of,) and we’ll comfort ourselves that we’ll never be like the psychological tortured soul because only the mentally ill kill.
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest work Split, which sees James McAvoy play a kidnapper with 23 personalities, has caused a lot of backlash due to it’s usage of Dissociate Identity Disorder. Many argue against its use. Similarly to schizophrenia, DID has often been the go to illness when making your villain insane. In movies such as Psycho (1960,) Sisters (1973,) and Identity (2003,) – for example – the man antagonist suffers from DID where a personality is vindictive or even a killer, therefore insane and has to be locked up for everyone’s safety.
In Split, this is no different and yes, it is damaging to people with the disorder. Whilst many would like to believe that they aren’t suckered in by what a movie tells you, you subconsciously absorb it as rhetoric. The farcical element is that Kevin can literally transform into a subject called The Beast (whether you take that at face value is your own interpretation.) It’s harmful for sufferers who are often quite placid to be shown in a demonic and murderous manner and it’ll ripple throughout their lives.
Arguably, however, there is an element of suspended disbelief. The horror genre is known for its distortion of the truth or elaboration on reality. Though thrillers are best known for their under the skin portrayals of life through grit and grimness, horror has been an exploration into the unknown dark parts of our mind. Through monsters, ghosts, and copious amounts of blood, horror has thrived on depicting the world around us through a broken lens. With Split’s Kevin being able to transform into a monster (again, it is said that this is a physiological change rather than supernatural, you could interpret that the excessive strength and wall-climbing were skills Kevin always had,) you have to have the intellect to put it to one side and say: “This isn’t real and sufferers of DID can not do this.”
When it comes to sensitive issues, horror has never relented in its exploitation. Rape and sexual violence is a common tool to provoke reaction from an audience and become the focal point for films such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978,) The Last House on the Left ( 1972,) and Ms. 45 (1981.) In these films, there are graphic rape scenes as a woman is violated, only for her to exact a revenge on the perpetrators. But far beyond the rape revenge plot, sexual violence is used in horror as a throwaway shock: The Hills Have Eyes (2006,) and Straw Dogs (1971,) have used rape and often it is to provoke the male protagonist into emotion. Like mental illness, victims of sexual assault have to find comfort in these wild depictions despite uproar at its definite exploitation.
Womanhood, sex, drugs, alcohol, addiction, religion, children, and more have all been battered around horror in a perturbing manner because, fundamentally, horror is meant to crawl all over your mind and allow you to think, to debate, and to question who you are.
Similarly, it’s not just horror that have exploited a mental illness for the big screen. Bipolar disorder and depression have become a staple diet of Oscar nominated movies and, in many ways, are simpering, sad, and dishonest. There is pity porn that is driven solely to make people cry and get people saying; “Oh isn’t it sad?” with barely any understanding of folks who live with this daily: It’s simply there to earn award-hype and critical acclaim. Even Sally Field’s Sybill is wrought with it, especially as the person it was based on made up her symptoms. Similarly Cake (2013,) and A Beautiful Mind (2001) are examples of how dramas can use mental illness to manipulate emotions and The Academy while twisting real life mental illness to their whim.
For many people, like myself, we veer more to the an outlier version of mental illness. Speaking candidly for a moment, but another James McAvoy movie – Filth (2013) – is my favourite film of all time for this very reason. It’s ultra-violent, hilarious, perverse, crude, and – yes – extreme. Yet McAvoy and director Jon S. Baird have an understanding of bipolar that beckons this level of grace, sorrow, and understanding within the crazed moments because they feel more realistic. This is similar in risky movies such as Fight Club (1999), Black Swan (2010,) and the aforementioned Psycho (1960) earn a lot of support because of the outrageous way mental illness is portrayed. Not all mental illness is pitying and lowly, it’s chaotic, and violent, and brutal too.
In a recent interview, of his character, James McAvoy stated that because they are suffering from a mental disorder doesn’t mean you can’t be in an entertaining feature and I am compelled to agree. There isn’t a blueprint for where mental illness belongs: What genre and by whom.
With the recent furore around Split, I do believe there is a level of understanding and empathy towards Kevin and DID as well as research extrapolated for the part. There’s also a delicate web of resonance that is touching in its way it However, I am in no position to defend it completely, having not suffered the illness in question, I do not know whether it’s completely wrong in its depiction. I can see why most people are angry because, yet again, the sufferer has become the bad guy but underneath this, there is a stirring connection to the character that McAvoy plays and shouldn’t be, wholly, dismissed forever.
But the important part of representing an illness on the big screen is that it opens conversation and dialogue. Films are meant to provoke discussion. Always. The truly remarkable ones churn over in your brain on many different points as you try to slice it down. With Split hitting the top of box offices, and many concerned about the DID element here, then the best thing we can do is talk about it.
What do you think?
