Keep Mental Illness in Nonfiction

I truly enjoy entertaining as well as experiencing most genres of entertainment, especially film. Even before I could I could talk and walk, movies have been a major source of entertainment. People who know me know my love for movies; movies are an outlet, an escape from reality, even if just for an hour or two. Some of my particular favorite genre of movies and films fall within the Horror category. It’s true, the once diehard Disney princess fan who had memorized every line and song of the happily ever afters, exchanged the tiara and glass slippers for a chainsaw and a machete’ and a taste for the supernatural, This unconventional love for the scary and unnatural started when I was fourteen years old. It was a cold post-Halloween night in a small town of Indiana, because everything strange and bizarre happens in Indiana in the films. I was at my best friend’s house coming down from a serious sugar high and warding off the chill of the cold fall night. It was my first true horror movie, John Carpenter’s 1978 original Halloween, typically one of the big movies that everyone says was their first ever exposure into the wild, dark world of horror movies, along with iconic movies like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. That was all it took, my first movie with the masked Michael Myers slowing stalking his victims while innocent children paraded around in costumes getting candy. I was mesmerized by the silent murderer with a traumatic past that haunted him and created the diabolical monster that now plagued the streets of the peaceful town of Haddonfield. After watching this classic movie with eyes wide open, embracing each shock scare and the anticipation of the next attack, I was hooked. I wanted to know more about this culture of movie that had terrified me in every sense of the word and left me unable to sleep, wondering if that famed masked horror murderer was lurking in the shadows or just outside the window. Halloween opened my thoughts to a new world of interests, sparking my desire and passion for film-making.

Throughout the history of horror films the desired outcome has been to tap into the fear of the viewer; play or prey upon the terror of the unknown and the reality of the world that are hidden in the recesses of the mind. Some of the best horror films simply play upon the themes just within the reaches of truth and reality, because the truth is, fact is stranger than fiction. After all, that little itch in our minds, that feeling in our gut that is known as our instinct tells us to question or be cautious of what we don’t understand or cannot see. It’s a subjective intuition that is hard wired in our DNA, and influences the types of media we tolerate and consume.

Over the decades films have played into the current fears of the day. The 1920’s and 30’s saw the horror of creatures of the night followed by scares in the 1950’s of alien invasions and nuclear warfare. These fears translated into films with over the top, and by today’s standards somewhat comical monsters. Terrors translated into iconic movie monster films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which showed an unnatural creature terrorizing a small town, or The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with emotionless aliens one by one taking over the human race playing upon the real life fear of communism taking over the world. The 1960’s, when people spent a lot time traveling and staying the night in roadside motels preyed upon on fears in the movie Psycho with innocent enough seeming Norman Bates turning into a psychotic killer stabbing single young women staying alone at the motel. Currently, the trend seems to be psychological horror films, dealing with the parts of our mind and how we are wired; like M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 ’s horror/thriller film Split, with the premise being where three girls were kidnapped by a man who was discovered to have been diagnosed with DID, otherwise known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. According to the definition on WebMD.com, the disorder is where a person develops one or many personalities that evolves over time due to severe trauma and abuse. Shyamalan based his film off of criminal Billy Milligan, who was afflicted with DID, having a multitude of twenty four personalities, and was accused of multiple felonies and rapes without having prior knowledge of them whatsoever, and was acquitted due to reasons of instability.

Now, unless you do not watch a lot of movies or you live under a rock, then you know the simplistic cliché of the escaped mental patient who goes on a mass killing spree, just like the infamous Michael Myers. To set the scene there are usually a bunch of teenagers being reckless and somewhat rebellious, making less than responsible decisions about life. Add a coming of age story with a cathartic release in the form of a party and sometimes morally grey choices that are feared at by parents. The scene opens with the group of people having a good time but then one by one in a somewhat comically brutal fashion people are picked off, until there is one survivor who bests the killer. Viewers are left thinking the survivor is the victor until the sequel a year later when the killer reemerges, somehow miraculously surviving impalement through the chest after a multiple story fall or suffering from several gunshot wounds to the chest, set on finishing off the survivor and any new friends that are now part of the plot. It makes one wonder about a screening tool for new friends to avoid becoming the next victim in a horror movie.

To that end, in a cruel sense of irony, fiction it seems has an influence over our perception of the world. How many times do we find ourselves looking in the rearview mirror wondering if that car behind us is following us, or if the noise that just woke us from a peaceful slumber is a killer lurking just outside the doorway? Movies have often been a way of telling the story of how our world is; the story can become aggressively flamed up, especially when the message revolves around tragedy. Movies influence the way we perceive people and situations, most tragically when the villain or evil character is depicted by someone with a mental illness.

In my own life I have had the experience of the misperceptions and stigmas around having a disability. I was diagnosed with autism when I was about three years old. I had been in daycare for about a year with no problems or issues. My parents disclosed to the director that I had been diagnosed with autism and that they were learning and willing to share information as they received it with the teachers and staff. Within two weeks of notifying the school of the diagnosis my parents were requested to find alternative care for me with immediate removal. I was being kicked out of preschool simply based on a fear of an unknown, a fear of having a child with autism at the daycare center. The irony to this situation is that my older sister (13 months older) was in trouble on a routine basis in daycare for her strong-willed nature and temper. When my parents took us both out of the daycare the director encouraged them to leave my older sister, but they stated they had no intention of doing business somewhere with such narrow minded practices. This wasn’t my only experience with judgement. I remember being left out groups, being called a freak, and being made fun of because I was different from everyone else. Perhaps being judged like the creature from the Creature from the Black Lagoon, people feared what they did not understand and did not have the capacity to try to understand. It’s quite possible that the creature would never have harmed anyone, but out of fear the group’s team members who encounter the creature lash out in an attempt to kill the creature, only to be killed by the creature in its efforts to defend itself.

The film industry has capitalized on our fears and turned it into a multi-billion dollar business. Halloween grossed over $47,000 million in the box office and became one of the most profitable independent films of its’ time. The Alfred Hitchcock box office thriller Psycho made $50 million in 1960 followed by $592.6 million on the 2017 remake. The 2016 movie Split earned $40 million the first weekend it opened and topped $98.7 million after only three weeks in the theatres. There’s clearly a market out there for horror films based on the fears of people with mental illness.

Overall, the media has influence over how we perceive things and how we act about those things, especially over what we don’t understand. The horror film The Blair Witch Project is a perfect example with its $60,000 budget of a “found footage” documentary had viewers believing the filmmakers were truly missing. The Saw movies, depicting the impact of a mentally unstable John Kramer on his victims as he teaches them the value of life is another example where a twisted mind leaves viewers questioning how things would have turned out if the victims had made different choices. It’s amazing how films like Saw or Psycho portray that stereotypical mentally ill individual leading a perfectly normal existence until something happens that makes them snap or causes a break that sends them off on a killing spree. Movies like these cause people to fear, the movies reinforce fear, and create perceptions that people with mental illnesses are harmful and dangerous to others. Contrary to what some would like to think there is no designation for being evil in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5. The reality is that mental illness doesn’t have an effect on how evil one is, evil doesn’t go away with treatment or medication, evil is simply evil.

I hope that people like me or anyone with mental differences can be treated with the respect with better treatment for the future. Overall, the current misunderstanding of mental illness is unnerving and makes me terrified for the future and the current generation of people with mental disabilities that act differently than the neurotypical person. With all of that said I don’t plan on exchanging my love for hacksaws and things that go bump in the night any time soon for my tiara that has long ago been packed away in my old toy box, though I do still enjoy bringing the tiara out from time to time. I still love horror movies and my desire for film making and experiencing all of the fascinating types of horror films remains on my bucket list. My desire would be to see a time when we can simply enjoy horror films for the beauty of blood and gore, the shock scares, and psychological mind games they have to offer, and keep the perception of issues like mentally ill people being evil firmly in the fiction section.