Maura and I recently released an episode called “Movie Madness” in which we talk about how Hollywood and other forms of entertainment portray those with mental illness. I will admit that I never really thought about how I felt about it before this. Mental illness plays a part in so many people’s lives, should Hollywood strive to get it right?
The topic came to fruition when a listener contacted Maura. She had enjoyed our episode about horror movie tropes and wanted to know what our take was on mental illness in horror movies. We decided to expand that to all movies, tv, and stage. I was surprised when I started thinking about what I’ve seen, and the number of shows that touch on it.
My focus is being drawn back to the horror genre as I write this. We didn’t touch on the topic too much in the episode as I couldn’t think of too many horror movies that get mental illness “right”. After the episode I was questioning why. Is it just lazy writing? Ignorance, willful or otherwise? I also questioned “what is right?”
I think that horror has come a long way in the last 10 years with how it uses mental illness. Most likely because of how the world is seeing mental illness today. Thinking back on the history of horror, it doesn’t really surprise me that movie studios would use mental illness to frighten people. Today, one could make a horror movie just depicting treatments that were used on the mentally ill in the past.
Horror has had a lot of social commentary within it’s history, which is one of the reasons that I gravitate towards it. Looking at modern horror, I’m still wondering why there are movies that get so much wrong. While Psycho (1960) is still considered a great classic horror movie, it is partially responsible for current misconceptions about Dissociative Identity Disorder. Not to mention the films that followed that wanted to 'out psycho' Psycho. Strait-Jacket (1964) is one the first one that pops into my head. While these movies are the beginning of modern horror, it would still take several years before awareness and education even started to make a dent into the stigma attached to mental illness. I don’t think that D.I.D. is really understood by many people, and thankfully it’s not used in too many movies.
I think one of the reasons why it is so easy for horror movies to default to the killer being 'insane' is that it is difficult to imagine how a sane person could commit such atrocities. I know that I wonder these things when I hear of a mass shooting. I think part of this misinterpretation lies in the confusion between antisocial personality disorders and mental illness. I’ve been looking into this myself, and I find it confusing and rather macabre. Trying to find statistics of killers with mental illness proved to more difficult than I thought. First was discovering that antisocial personality disorders such as sociopathy and psychopathy are not considered mental illnesses by the American Psychiatric Association. Also, legal insanity does not mean that someone does not have a mental illness it just means that they didn't understand at the time of the crime that what they were doing was illegal. Some of the statistics I found were a little contradictory. Like only 20% of serial killers have a mental illness, but then I read that 48% have depression. Over 40% have substance abuse issues. I’ve read that serial killers like Bundy, Gacy, and the BTK killer (pictured below), had psychopathy. But then I look at a list of killers with sociopathy and both Bundy and Gacy are on that list as well. Dr. Scott Bonn, a criminologist, says that 'at least 40 percent of all serial killers are unrepentant psychopaths.' What is right?
The reason why I’m bringing this up is, as a writer, it becomes very confusing. As someone who likes to get the details correct, I’m frustrated. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that all writers care. I think in some regards it’s safe to say that Hollywood likes to dumb things down for us. Archetypes are easy. In some ways I think that they are even easier in horror. Most viewers don’t have much in common with characters in horror movies, especially the killers. I think this creates opportunity for writers to take liberties when it comes to these killers.
Modern audiences seem to want to know motives. This could be because of shows like Criminal Minds. While I have enjoyed Criminal Minds over the years, I’ve never really taken it seriously. They always depict the criminal as having a 'something'. I get that it is supposed to make it more compelling, but the number of times they have used the words ‘sexual sadist’ you would think that absolutely everyone who dabbles in BDSM is a killer or a victim.
I know that I wasn’t a fan of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake for this reason. In the original, Dr. Loomis says that Michael is just evil. He comes from a normal family and there is no reason for what he has done other than 'evil'. In the remake we see Michael had a bad home life. We see him being treated in the hospital. The movie tries to explain why he does the things he does. I didn’t want to know what exactly was wrong with Michael. I didn't want to feel empathy towards him. I have had discussions with others who have said that it makes it much more real. But I ask, is it more real when they aren’t being accurate with a mental illness? If each person is an individual, can we really say what is or isn’t accurate? I cannot say that I enjoyed the movie ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ but it did leave a lot open. It didn’t hammer the viewer over the head with ‘he has this’ or ‘it’s because of this’. I am unsure how people who can relate to anything in that movie felt about it, but I thought that it was one of those movies that mostly got it right.
I know that I have talked about The Descent in a previous post, but I thought that it was relative here as well. This is a movie that has undertones of mental illness, but it's not in your face. I like this movie because it can be taken in different ways. It can be taken as a straight monster horror movie, and it's a great monster movie. What I have enjoyed over the years are the discussions I've had about what the crawler's are. I have considered that they aren't really monsters at all, that they are a manifestation on the lead character's depression. Now that we've had this conversation about mental illness in movies, it's now more of a gray area for me. While this movie may not be the best representation of mental illness I think that because it has been talked about for over 10 years, it gets a bit of a pass from me. Another more recent movie that used a similar tactic was The Babadook. I did find that movie to be a little more straight forward in regards to what the monster is.
So how careful does Hollywood need to be? I honestly don’t know the answer. I know that one of the reasons this is an issue, is that we don’t want to make those with mental illnesses or antisocial personality disorders feel like they should be someone to fear. Likewise we don’t want people to fear anyone who might have an illness. I think that like other issues that have arisen in the world, with more education on the subject, movies will get better. We have come a long way from 1932's 'Freaks', so I can only hope that it keeps getting better.
I'm not a doctor nor a professional in the mental health field. I'm just a girl with experience, and opinions (and a love of horror movies). I also look forward to any feedback.
Peace,
Kate
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