It's Mental Illness Awareness Week.
This may mean nothing to some people, and it may mean everything to some people, but if one has read many of my recent blog posts, one will know that I feel rather strongly about the issue of mental illness awareness. Naturally, I have something big planned for this week, some great manifesto or well-thought-out speculation to share.
Well, I don't.
I spent most of the past few days trying to think up something to write about, coming up with a single relatively silly idea (which, while interesting, was not the great contribution to Mental Illness Awareness Week that I wanted to make), then coming up with a bunch of ideas (none of which really stood out to me as particularly interesting or strong), then coming up again with a single idea. This single idea, however, was not silly, and it was perhaps the exact thing I needed to write. And, to make a satisfying idea even more satisfying, it relates to art.
Have you ever heard that saying, "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable?" It occurred to me that it's very applicable to the issue of mental illness. Any sort of mental illness of any variation in severity is enough to qualify one as "disturbed", where "disturbed" could mean "having great difficulty with something that most people would find easy" or "recovering from something hugely traumatic" or "unable to cope with life on a regular basis because of how one's brain works". And while I acknowledge that not all neurotypical people have easy lives (far from it; misery and hardship can strike anyone), there must be something very comfortable in having a brain that works properly and which you don't have to constantly fight.
The mentally ill are the disturbed, and the mentally well are the comfortable. I will comfort one and disturb the other.
To those living with mental illnesses:
First off, I don't pretend to be able to speak for all of us, and I know that I have it pretty easy in comparison to some of you folks. However, I can somewhat understand your problems since I am, after all, one of you, and, using my experiences and the experiences of the many mentally ill people I have known, I can hope to make some sort of statements that you might relate to and that might comfort you. If say anything that is somewhat offensive, I apologize, and if I say something that, while not offensive, does not apply to you...well, it was not directed at you.
While I can't say that your problems are normal (since the reason we even have a concept of mental illness is because it is not what people normally experience), they don't make you bad or wrong or dysfunctional or even sick. At least not by necessity. Different people handle different things in different ways - it's just something that happens because we are all very human and thus all very different from each other - and as long as the way you handle your mental illness does not hurt others or yourself, however you choose to handle it is perfectly fine.
If you're one of the roughly one out of four who have a mental illness, ideally you can treat it with professional help and/or medication, but if that's not possible, then know that (at least in some cases), it is still possible to cope with what you have. Depending on what you have, you can either learn coping tactics for how to deal with things that cause you trouble and aggravate your mental illness, or you can learn to avoid certain things while still functioning in life. Your life may look very different than other people's lives, but it will still be a life, and as long as you're pleased with it, it will be a perfectly sufficient life.
People talk about "recovery", like you get better from your mental illness someday, through a lot of therapy or a lot of meds or a lot of luck, but that's not always what happens. Some people do not recover from their mental illnesses. Actually, I could speculate that most people with mental illnesses don't "get well". But that's okay. Maybe you don't have to recover. If you're hallucinating grandiose scenarios that aren't remotely happening or so depressed that you literally cannot get out of bed or unable to go out in public for fear of panic attacks, then you need help and hopefully you get better, but that doesn't mean your problem is going to go away. You might get to a point where you just sometimes see things you can tell are probably not there, or you might have trouble motivating yourself because life is empty, or you might have to work up a great deal of courage before going out into crowds. But even those challenges aren't those experienced by most people, and you're still not entirely "well". That's not bad, though. Not everyone functions completely well or easily, and that's okay. We live in a world where things aren't perfect and where people have struggles. Some have more struggles than others, and some people's struggles may be fewer but greater, but everyone's struggles are real, and if you can cope and if you can be okay with who you are and what you're like, you don't need to worry about "recovering" or "getting well".
You go through an astonishing amount of trouble every day, trouble that the rest of the world cannot comprehend, and you deserve a bloody medal for it.
To those not living with mental illnesses but possibly around and beside them:
First off, I'm going to try to be respectful of you when I say these things, and I might get some of my perceptions of you wrong because I am not one of you, and we with mental illnesses have perhaps some negative preconceptions of you (as you have negative preconceptions with us), so if I say anything that is somewhat offensive, I apologize, and if I say something that, while not offensive, does not apply to you...well, it was not directed at you.
While it's not possible for me to speculate how your minds work (given that I am not one of you), it is quite likely that (unless you have previously suffered from a mental illness) you will not be able to comprehend what people with mental illness go through everyday. Do not tell us our problems are "normal", because despite that a relatively large percentage of us have such problems, the reason we even have terms and diagnoses for mental illnesses (and why the field of "abnormal psychology" has that name) is because they are not normal. The fact some of you say that "people with OCD should stop worrying about unimportant little things" or "people with depression should just cheer up and stop bringing everyone else down", or "people with anxiety need to chill out" show that they do not understand what we go through nor why these things are quite impossible for most of us.
Just because you cannot understand us, however, does not mean that you can't respect us. You can read things written by people with mental illnesses (and, sometimes, truthful, unbiased medical descriptions of what's going on with us) and, if you know someone with a mental illness, you can (hopefully) talk to them about it and hear them tell you what's going on with them personally so you can better understand how to help them.
Don't take my usage of the word "help" to mean that you should feel personally obligated to "save" people with mental illnesses, though. Because you can't do that. You may well be a very helpful and good person, but you do not possess the superhuman powers necessary to "save" someone from depression or anxiety any more than you have the ability to "save" someone from cancer or asthma. No matter how much good you bring into the lives of mentally ill people or how much you help your mentally ill friends cope with life, don't ever think of yourself as a "savior to the mentally ill", because you're not. You don't have that power.
The brain is an organ. While it has quite a few differences from lungs or hearts or kidneys (which all have quite a few differences from each other), it can get sick or be "abnormal" like any other organ can, and it should be treated as an organ. The only thing that really separates how we perceive the brain from how we perceive other organs is that it is happens to be the organ that serves the purpose of letting us make choices and control things. It doesn't mean that it can control itself.
You hear about mental illness recovery all the time, but the truth is, not all of us "recover" in the sense you'd think of, and that's okay. We don't need to be like you to be okay. You are who you are, with your own challenges and abilities, and we are who we are, with our own challenges and abilities. You are not the yardstick for success. And that's okay.
For those of you who are accepting and supporting of us, I possibly shouldn't thank you for doing so, as we are human beings, and it's your duty to accept and support your fellow human beings (and not a polite act for which to be thanked), but I am going to thank you because, being a good human being aside, you put up with some things that must try you and confuse you, and that's no small thing. Thank you.
And now, concluding this, I'm certain I haven't done a lot of good in "comforting" the disturbed nor "disturbing" the comfortable. Probably the things I said to people with mental illnesses came off as either platitudes or known facts, and probably the things I said to people without mental illnesses came off as the same. But who knows. Maybe someone with a mental illness will be reading this and be comforted by my affirmation that what they're going through doesn't make them "wrong" and that, if they never fully "recover", they're okay. And maybe someone without a mental illness will be reading this and be disturbed by my proclamation that they are not able to "save" people with mental illnesses, nor can those with mental illnesses control what they have in the ways the neurotypical would often like to them they can. And maybe something I've said here is relevant, regardless of what it was intended for or what it accomplished.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Saturday, October 5, 2013
New Publication, or, What I Learned from Welcome to Night Vale and Put Into a Story
I recently got a piece of flash fiction accepted by a literary magazine called Grim Corps. Specifically, my story was in their online flash fiction series. The story can be read here. (At least, it can be read there throughout the month of October. I'm not sure what will happen to that page when the October issue is no longer the most recent one. I'll find out and fix that link as necessary.)
The story is extremely short, but for those who can't or don't want to read it, it's about a family moving into a house and then noticing that something is rather...off. There's a doorknob that looks exactly like an oak leaf unless you're looking directly at it, there are whispering voices in the bathroom, there's an oven that plays the first few notes of "The Sound of Music" when the food is done. Basically, it's a bunch of small, surreal events that the family at first would like to get rid of but slowly adjusts to, treating them as perfectly normal things because, for them, this is normal. They come to get used to it and even like it, which they can do because, even though some of it is kind of creepy, they understand that it's okay because it is the way it is, and knowing that makes it less weird.
I'm dedicating a whole blog entry to this story because there's a bit of a story behind it, and it involves a podcast called Welcome to Night Vale.
Some of you reading this might know what Welcome to Night Vale is. For those of you who don't, it's a surreal comedy/horror podcast about a town called Night Vale, which is a very surreal place where bizarre, Lovecraftian things happen on a regular basis. Its format is that of an NPR-style radio program whose announcer reads off the daily news (with events like a mysterious glowing cloud appearing out of nowhere and joining the school's PTA or a five-headed dragon running for mayor) with a sense of mundanity that is either creepy or hilarious or both, depending on who you are.
The reason these surreal or horrifying events are treated so normally in Night Vale is because, for the people in Night Vale, things like that are normal. The weird is the everyday, and they never thought it was strange to begin with, or if they did, they quickly adjusted their worldview to match their circumstances.
Welcome to Night Vale was the first piece of fiction I really got into after my mother's death (which was, as of now, six months ago). A lot of strange things had been happening since her death - or, at least, things I considered strange, because my life simply hadn't contained those things before. I had previously been using references to and interest in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a coping tactic, since I interpreted that work of fiction as (intentionally or not) conveying the message, "Sometimes, weird and drastic things happen, and it plunges you into a series of weird events you weren't expecting and that you didn't necessarily want, but it happens, so get over it and embrace the absurdity of the universe."
Whenever I enjoy a piece of fiction and can tell it will become important to me, I say to myself, "Alright, what am I going to learn from this?" Because as soon as something becomes important to me, it can teach me things and I will listen. While my life isn't nearly as weird as life in Night Vale, it's still a series of events that, for rather a while, I considered strange and almost surreal. When I realized that the strange can become a part of one's everyday life and that one can come to consider almost anything as normal if one needs to, I figured out how to cope with my own life.
In some ways, what Welcome to Night Vale taught me was the opposite of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The message I got from Hitchhiker's was that of things suddenly changing and having to cope with it as a matter of adjusting to new things. The message I got from Night Vale was that of strange things being a way of life and not having to think about adjusting to them because maybe life was always like that and maybe it's just a different sort of normal after all.
Now, if you're familiar with Welcome to Night Vale, one would expect that I don't think the people of Night Vale should come to trust their surroundings, as they are unpredictable and frequently actually malevolent. This would be correct. Strangeness and unfamiliar events are perfectly fine, but there comes a point at which one should not naively trust the new developments to be safe.
If one is going to have to live with something, though, one may as well get used to it and accept it as not a strange development but a part of one's life, no different than any part of one's life that existed before and that one was used to. That was a life lesson I learned from a Lovecraftian humor podcast, and I thought I could retell it in a story about a haunted house that turns out to be not so much "haunted" as "just a bit uncommon".
The story is extremely short, but for those who can't or don't want to read it, it's about a family moving into a house and then noticing that something is rather...off. There's a doorknob that looks exactly like an oak leaf unless you're looking directly at it, there are whispering voices in the bathroom, there's an oven that plays the first few notes of "The Sound of Music" when the food is done. Basically, it's a bunch of small, surreal events that the family at first would like to get rid of but slowly adjusts to, treating them as perfectly normal things because, for them, this is normal. They come to get used to it and even like it, which they can do because, even though some of it is kind of creepy, they understand that it's okay because it is the way it is, and knowing that makes it less weird.
I'm dedicating a whole blog entry to this story because there's a bit of a story behind it, and it involves a podcast called Welcome to Night Vale.
Some of you reading this might know what Welcome to Night Vale is. For those of you who don't, it's a surreal comedy/horror podcast about a town called Night Vale, which is a very surreal place where bizarre, Lovecraftian things happen on a regular basis. Its format is that of an NPR-style radio program whose announcer reads off the daily news (with events like a mysterious glowing cloud appearing out of nowhere and joining the school's PTA or a five-headed dragon running for mayor) with a sense of mundanity that is either creepy or hilarious or both, depending on who you are.
The reason these surreal or horrifying events are treated so normally in Night Vale is because, for the people in Night Vale, things like that are normal. The weird is the everyday, and they never thought it was strange to begin with, or if they did, they quickly adjusted their worldview to match their circumstances.
Welcome to Night Vale was the first piece of fiction I really got into after my mother's death (which was, as of now, six months ago). A lot of strange things had been happening since her death - or, at least, things I considered strange, because my life simply hadn't contained those things before. I had previously been using references to and interest in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a coping tactic, since I interpreted that work of fiction as (intentionally or not) conveying the message, "Sometimes, weird and drastic things happen, and it plunges you into a series of weird events you weren't expecting and that you didn't necessarily want, but it happens, so get over it and embrace the absurdity of the universe."
Whenever I enjoy a piece of fiction and can tell it will become important to me, I say to myself, "Alright, what am I going to learn from this?" Because as soon as something becomes important to me, it can teach me things and I will listen. While my life isn't nearly as weird as life in Night Vale, it's still a series of events that, for rather a while, I considered strange and almost surreal. When I realized that the strange can become a part of one's everyday life and that one can come to consider almost anything as normal if one needs to, I figured out how to cope with my own life.
In some ways, what Welcome to Night Vale taught me was the opposite of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The message I got from Hitchhiker's was that of things suddenly changing and having to cope with it as a matter of adjusting to new things. The message I got from Night Vale was that of strange things being a way of life and not having to think about adjusting to them because maybe life was always like that and maybe it's just a different sort of normal after all.
Now, if you're familiar with Welcome to Night Vale, one would expect that I don't think the people of Night Vale should come to trust their surroundings, as they are unpredictable and frequently actually malevolent. This would be correct. Strangeness and unfamiliar events are perfectly fine, but there comes a point at which one should not naively trust the new developments to be safe.
If one is going to have to live with something, though, one may as well get used to it and accept it as not a strange development but a part of one's life, no different than any part of one's life that existed before and that one was used to. That was a life lesson I learned from a Lovecraftian humor podcast, and I thought I could retell it in a story about a haunted house that turns out to be not so much "haunted" as "just a bit uncommon".
Monday, September 30, 2013
Disability Superpower: A Troubling Trope
When I was writing my last blog post (regarding my theory that Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games is an accurate depiction of a person with PTSD and thus a mentally ill fictional protagonist), I asked some people I knew if they could give me some examples of fictional characters with mental illnesses. (This was, incidentally, why, at the beginning of that entry, I listed the characters I listed.)
One person provided some specific characters, whom I did not list because they are not commonly perceived as being mentally ill and the status of one of them as "mentally ill" is largely speculation based on actions and patterns of thought that aren't much explored in the work said character is from. However, this person also cited obsessive-compulsive disorder as a (canonical or speculated) trait of many fictional detectives "because they're so detail oriented."
The deduction that many fictional detective have OCD because of their eye for detail (which is pretty much a requirement to be a successful detective) sounds at first like a stereotypical generalization, but, like many stereotypical generalizations, it really does appear in fiction. The title character of the television program Monk (a detective drama) has obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is alternately treated as an actual illness, a source of comedy, and a veritable superpower. And if speculations on TV Tropes * (a website dedicated to cataloging patterns of characterization and storytelling that appear in fiction) is to be believed, Hercule Poirot (in some depictions) has it as well. Even the great Sherlock Holmes (in adaptations and in the original canon) displays some leanings towards disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome or ADD (though different adaptations may emphasize certain traits over others, and some adaptations may characterize him as having different disorders, or perhaps as having no disorder at all).
However, mental illnesses are not the only disorders whose fictional representations often "compensate" with incredible powers. How many fantasy tales have blind characters whose lack of sight gives them other abilities, like precognition or mind-reading? How many science fiction stories feature someone who loses a limb only to receive a prosthetic replacement that makes them amazingly stronger? How many fictional wheelchair-users have incredible minds to make up for their lack of mobility?
TV Tropes has another page dedicated to examples of this characterization tool. The article is titled "Disability Superpower"** , and that's a pretty accurate description of what these characters have.
I'm not sure if I wish writers would just give more realistic examples of this trope or if I wish they'd just stop writing it altogether. In some cases, it makes sense. Many real-life people who lack one sense will, as a matter of functioning in life, have to strengthen their other senses, to the point where their abilities may seem superhuman in comparison to those who have all their senses. And, for whatever reason, there does seem to be an actual connection between mental illness and creativity (thus perhaps justifying the existence of all those fictional artists whose ambiguous disorder allows them to become creative geniuses). At least those make sense.
Characters whose "superpower" have nothing to do with their disability are, in my opinion, also acceptable if their skill doesn't negate their disability. Even better if their "superpower" is something a person might realistically be able to do Forrest Gump, for example, is an extremely good runner and athlete, and he's extremely obedient. Both of these things get him very far in life (with his athletic ability getting him into college and garnering him fame as a runner and his obedience serving him well in the military), to the point where they may be equivalent to other characters' superpowers, but they do nothing to affect his lack of mental capacity.
Disabled characters whose "superpower" has nothing to do with their disability (or is only tangentially-related), however, need to be very well-written or otherwise written "differently" than normal for me to feel comfortable with them. The popular webcomic Homestuck has a character (Terezi Pyrope) who, for much of the comic, was "blind", but she had synesthetic powers that compensated for her lack of sight. If it weren't for the fact that I enjoy her personality and like her as a character, I would probably dislike her depiction, as her extrasensory abilities are such so that she may as well not be blind at all. (In fact, Homestuck deals similarly with disability so frequently, I may well end up writing another blog entry about this.)
How, then, should writers go about writing disabled characters "differently" while still giving them "superpowers"? Well, if you're writing a realistic fiction novel, where "superpowers" are really just extremely honed skills that any normal human could have, write them exactly like that - extremely honed skills that any normal human could have. After all, people with disabilities, physical, mental, or otherwise, are normal. They're just different in regards to some of the things they can do or what they have difficulty doing. It's entirely possible to have a blind character with amazing oratory abilities and write them the same way you'd write a sighted character with amazing oratory abilities. The only real difference is that the blind character wouldn't be able to see their audience. (Hey, maybe their blindness could help them in that regard. In which case that would be an example of disability bolstering one's other abilities in an entirely realistic manner. If you wrote a story featuring such a character, you could probably get a fair bit of mileage out of that fact.)
The reason this sort of thing is problematic is because it gives non-disabled readers an unrealistic expectation of what people with disabilities are like, and it gives disabled readers a somewhat insulting picture of their demographic. While seldom explicitly-stated, there are usually troubling undertones to the "disability superpower". Some of these suggestions include the ideas that disabled people are only valuable if they have something to "make up for" their disability (thus devaluing the person themself), disability automatically comes with some kind of power (thus making real disabled people without any "superpowers" feel inferior to fictional characters), and powers like these not only make up for the disability but make it so that it may as well not exist (thus invalidating the difficulties of actual disabled people, whether they have any special skills or not, and providing a very cheap attempt at "representation").
I understand that most writers are not disabled, because most people are not disabled. However, if you are going to write about disabled characters and give them any kind of "powers", that's all well and good, but please write it realistically. Please write it in such a way so that it doesn't trivialize the disability, suggest that people with disabilities are all fabulously gifted, or devalue people with disabilities. People are people, and they're all valuable in some way. Please don't make non-disabled people think that the only disabled people who are valuable are those who have some kind of power that more than compensates for what they lack, and please don't make disabled people think they have to be twice as skilled as their non-disabled counterparts to be seen as half as good.
* The cited page can be found here.
** The cited page can be found here.
One person provided some specific characters, whom I did not list because they are not commonly perceived as being mentally ill and the status of one of them as "mentally ill" is largely speculation based on actions and patterns of thought that aren't much explored in the work said character is from. However, this person also cited obsessive-compulsive disorder as a (canonical or speculated) trait of many fictional detectives "because they're so detail oriented."
The deduction that many fictional detective have OCD because of their eye for detail (which is pretty much a requirement to be a successful detective) sounds at first like a stereotypical generalization, but, like many stereotypical generalizations, it really does appear in fiction. The title character of the television program Monk (a detective drama) has obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is alternately treated as an actual illness, a source of comedy, and a veritable superpower. And if speculations on TV Tropes * (a website dedicated to cataloging patterns of characterization and storytelling that appear in fiction) is to be believed, Hercule Poirot (in some depictions) has it as well. Even the great Sherlock Holmes (in adaptations and in the original canon) displays some leanings towards disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome or ADD (though different adaptations may emphasize certain traits over others, and some adaptations may characterize him as having different disorders, or perhaps as having no disorder at all).
However, mental illnesses are not the only disorders whose fictional representations often "compensate" with incredible powers. How many fantasy tales have blind characters whose lack of sight gives them other abilities, like precognition or mind-reading? How many science fiction stories feature someone who loses a limb only to receive a prosthetic replacement that makes them amazingly stronger? How many fictional wheelchair-users have incredible minds to make up for their lack of mobility?
TV Tropes has another page dedicated to examples of this characterization tool. The article is titled "Disability Superpower"** , and that's a pretty accurate description of what these characters have.
I'm not sure if I wish writers would just give more realistic examples of this trope or if I wish they'd just stop writing it altogether. In some cases, it makes sense. Many real-life people who lack one sense will, as a matter of functioning in life, have to strengthen their other senses, to the point where their abilities may seem superhuman in comparison to those who have all their senses. And, for whatever reason, there does seem to be an actual connection between mental illness and creativity (thus perhaps justifying the existence of all those fictional artists whose ambiguous disorder allows them to become creative geniuses). At least those make sense.
Characters whose "superpower" have nothing to do with their disability are, in my opinion, also acceptable if their skill doesn't negate their disability. Even better if their "superpower" is something a person might realistically be able to do Forrest Gump, for example, is an extremely good runner and athlete, and he's extremely obedient. Both of these things get him very far in life (with his athletic ability getting him into college and garnering him fame as a runner and his obedience serving him well in the military), to the point where they may be equivalent to other characters' superpowers, but they do nothing to affect his lack of mental capacity.
Disabled characters whose "superpower" has nothing to do with their disability (or is only tangentially-related), however, need to be very well-written or otherwise written "differently" than normal for me to feel comfortable with them. The popular webcomic Homestuck has a character (Terezi Pyrope) who, for much of the comic, was "blind", but she had synesthetic powers that compensated for her lack of sight. If it weren't for the fact that I enjoy her personality and like her as a character, I would probably dislike her depiction, as her extrasensory abilities are such so that she may as well not be blind at all. (In fact, Homestuck deals similarly with disability so frequently, I may well end up writing another blog entry about this.)
How, then, should writers go about writing disabled characters "differently" while still giving them "superpowers"? Well, if you're writing a realistic fiction novel, where "superpowers" are really just extremely honed skills that any normal human could have, write them exactly like that - extremely honed skills that any normal human could have. After all, people with disabilities, physical, mental, or otherwise, are normal. They're just different in regards to some of the things they can do or what they have difficulty doing. It's entirely possible to have a blind character with amazing oratory abilities and write them the same way you'd write a sighted character with amazing oratory abilities. The only real difference is that the blind character wouldn't be able to see their audience. (Hey, maybe their blindness could help them in that regard. In which case that would be an example of disability bolstering one's other abilities in an entirely realistic manner. If you wrote a story featuring such a character, you could probably get a fair bit of mileage out of that fact.)
The reason this sort of thing is problematic is because it gives non-disabled readers an unrealistic expectation of what people with disabilities are like, and it gives disabled readers a somewhat insulting picture of their demographic. While seldom explicitly-stated, there are usually troubling undertones to the "disability superpower". Some of these suggestions include the ideas that disabled people are only valuable if they have something to "make up for" their disability (thus devaluing the person themself), disability automatically comes with some kind of power (thus making real disabled people without any "superpowers" feel inferior to fictional characters), and powers like these not only make up for the disability but make it so that it may as well not exist (thus invalidating the difficulties of actual disabled people, whether they have any special skills or not, and providing a very cheap attempt at "representation").
I understand that most writers are not disabled, because most people are not disabled. However, if you are going to write about disabled characters and give them any kind of "powers", that's all well and good, but please write it realistically. Please write it in such a way so that it doesn't trivialize the disability, suggest that people with disabilities are all fabulously gifted, or devalue people with disabilities. People are people, and they're all valuable in some way. Please don't make non-disabled people think that the only disabled people who are valuable are those who have some kind of power that more than compensates for what they lack, and please don't make disabled people think they have to be twice as skilled as their non-disabled counterparts to be seen as half as good.
* The cited page can be found here.
** The cited page can be found here.
Monday, September 23, 2013
In Which I Put Forth that a Certain Bow-Wielding, Revolution-Leading Heroine Is an Example of Mental Illness in Fiction
If I asked you to name some fictional characters with mental illnesses, who would you think of? Doubtless the psychopathic Joker from the Batman comics would come to mind, or perhaps the less obviously deranged but no less sociopathic Hannibal Lecter. Some people might be further able to name Alex from A Clockwork Orange (a mentally unstable violent teenage delinquent), Jim Moriarty from the BBC television show Sherlock (an all-but-outright psychopathic adaptation of the character Professor Moriarty from the original Sherlock Holmes stories) or even Renfield from Dracula (a mental patient whose obsession with blood and consuming life leads him to do things like eating flies).
What do these characters have in common? Well, they certainly fit the common definition of "crazy" (even though many actual mentally ill people do not seem "crazy" by society's standards). And all of them exhibit some kinds of violent tendencies or perverse interests. None of them are really treated sympathetically, and certainly none of them are heroes.
These characters are unfortunately very indicative of how mental illness is treated by writers and the media. The vast most of fictional characters with mental illness are unsympathetic, and those that are sympathetic are either unrealistically-written or have stories or characterizations based around their illness, to the point where it is hard for the audience to imagine the character having any sort of experience that isn't related to mental illness. The outlook for mental illness representation is pretty dim, and many people must wonder when they'll finally get a hero with mental illness whose adventures are not determined by their disability.
Would you like to know the name of a fictional hero with mental illness whose characterization and storyline isn't about mental illness?
Katniss Everdeen.
Yes, I am talking about Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I bet you wouldn't have thought Katniss, the Girl on Fire who bravely took her sister's place in the Hunger Games, had any sort of mental illness. "But she's so normal and well-adjusted!" you might say. Yes, well, a number of people with mental illnesses are normal and well-adjusted. "Mental illness" doesn't mean "abnormal" anymore than, say, "blind" or "wheelchair-using" mean "abnormal". (And if you think disability does preclude normality, I urge yourself to educate yourself on the nature of disability as well as normality.)
"Well, this is all very well and good, Jude," you might say when you get past the initial shock, "but please tell us why you are making this absurd statement about Katniss Everdeen's mental capacities." (Unless you know why I'm saying this. In which case, sit back and enjoy the show. And unless you don't want spoilers for The Hunger Games or just don't enjoy talk about that series in general. In which case, you should probably stop reading because those things will ensue.)
I trust most people who've read past this point are familiar with The Hunger Games. (If not, please read a synopsis from elsewhere as I'm providing a commentary, not a summary.) If you are familiar with it, you will know that Katniss's father died in a coal mine accident, which caused a huge personal crisis in her family. An event like that is enough to give someone post-traumatic stress disorder, and growing up somewhere like District 12 is traumatizing in and of itself. Certainly it couldn't have helped Katniss's and her family's recovery. It is very logical to assume that it would have resulted in PTSD, which is classified as a mental illness.
"Now, where are you getting this from?" you may ask me further. "Right, it makes sense that Katniss could have PTSD, but does she even display any symptoms?" Yes. Yes, she does.
Up until and including their time in the arena, Katniss constantly distrusts Peeta (especially in regards to his claims that he's in love with her). She believed it was an attempt at manipulation, when other people might have simply believed him. Well, symptoms/effects of PTSD include emotional numbness and avoidance. Katniss's lack of trust in Peeta could definitely count as the results of such qualities. Furthermore, Katniss has a tendency to get irritated with people, sometimes abruptly and unnecessarily so. Irritability and the tense feelings accompanying are common of PTSD. And after Katniss experiences the Hunger Games themselves and their brutality, her symptoms intensify and branch into recall and sleeping trouble.
A lot of people tend to fault Katniss for the aforementioned things, but what a lot of people don't realize is that she has an actual mental illness - post-traumatic stress disorder - and while her behavior is certainly not ideal, it's the very legitimate result of traumatic events.
"Now, Jude, this is all well and good," you say. "I can see why you think Ms. Everdeen has a mental illness. But why should I believe she was intentionally written as such when it's not even mentioned in the books or films?"
Well, that question's answer is a bit self-evident. Do you think there are any therapists in District 12? Do you think there's anyone specializing in psychology? Do you think Katniss's family would have been able to afford therapy even if there were therapists around. No. Of course not. The folks in District 12 are having a hard enough time managing their physical health and survival. No one is going to have the education to become a psychologist or psychiatrist, and no one is going to have the money to afford that sort of thing. I doubt they'd even care about that in the Capitol. (While the Capitol is very rich, I don't know if they really care enough about the mental health of their citizens to have psychiatry around as a practice, and I doubt the people at the Capitol would be willing enough to admit to having a mental illness for such a practice to even be profitable.)
If Suzanne Collins were to procure a canon diagnosis for Katniss (or Peeta, or Haymitch, or any of the other characters who come to exhibit symptoms of PTSD - because I don't think Katniss is the only one who's been through enough trauma to have it), that would probably break our willing suspension of disbelief and ultimately go too much out of the way of the story to make us blatantly aware of something that's ultimately not that important. Because while mental illness is an important issue (especially in real life!), Katniss's story ultimately wasn't about her struggling with the aftermath of traumatic events like her childhood or the Hunger Games. It was about her fighting for her family and friends and standing up to the government when it got increasingly dangerous to do so. It wasn't about her being mentally ill. It was about her being brave. And that, my friends, is something anyone, regardless of (dis)ability or mental (un)wellness, can do.
"Alright, Jude," you say. "We understand your point of view. We understand why Katniss is a realistic, well-written portrayal of the mental illness of post-traumatic stress disorder. We even understand why her lack of diagnosis is acceptable and relevant. But did Suzanne Collins really mean for you to make this kind of analysis?"
Well, you've got me on that one. I am unaware of anything Collins has said on the subject, and it seems like PTSD was at least slightly intended. It would be an astonishing coincidence if all of the qualities she gave Katniss made her what seems to be a good, researched depiction of mental illness where this sort of thing wasn't even intended. However, unless Suzanne Collins says something about the subject (or if she's already said something and I don't know it), I think it is acceptable and good to interpret Katniss as a trauma survivor with post-traumatic stress disorder and thus a person with a mental illness. And besides, you know what they say - "The interpretation of a work of fiction is ultimately left up to the readers." I've found this theory reiterated on the internet, so I'm definitely not the only reader who interprets Katniss this way. I'm not the only person who's reads The Hunger Games and found not another psychopathic, violent madman but instead a wonderful heroine whose mental illness is not only not dehumanizing but in fact a sign of strength - she can survive horrible things, even after her mind has been permanently affected by her circumstances - and (wonder of wonders!) doesn't hijack the story but adds to it, giving her another set of challenges as she bravely fights for what's right.
What do these characters have in common? Well, they certainly fit the common definition of "crazy" (even though many actual mentally ill people do not seem "crazy" by society's standards). And all of them exhibit some kinds of violent tendencies or perverse interests. None of them are really treated sympathetically, and certainly none of them are heroes.
These characters are unfortunately very indicative of how mental illness is treated by writers and the media. The vast most of fictional characters with mental illness are unsympathetic, and those that are sympathetic are either unrealistically-written or have stories or characterizations based around their illness, to the point where it is hard for the audience to imagine the character having any sort of experience that isn't related to mental illness. The outlook for mental illness representation is pretty dim, and many people must wonder when they'll finally get a hero with mental illness whose adventures are not determined by their disability.
Would you like to know the name of a fictional hero with mental illness whose characterization and storyline isn't about mental illness?
Katniss Everdeen.
Yes, I am talking about Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I bet you wouldn't have thought Katniss, the Girl on Fire who bravely took her sister's place in the Hunger Games, had any sort of mental illness. "But she's so normal and well-adjusted!" you might say. Yes, well, a number of people with mental illnesses are normal and well-adjusted. "Mental illness" doesn't mean "abnormal" anymore than, say, "blind" or "wheelchair-using" mean "abnormal". (And if you think disability does preclude normality, I urge yourself to educate yourself on the nature of disability as well as normality.)
"Well, this is all very well and good, Jude," you might say when you get past the initial shock, "but please tell us why you are making this absurd statement about Katniss Everdeen's mental capacities." (Unless you know why I'm saying this. In which case, sit back and enjoy the show. And unless you don't want spoilers for The Hunger Games or just don't enjoy talk about that series in general. In which case, you should probably stop reading because those things will ensue.)
I trust most people who've read past this point are familiar with The Hunger Games. (If not, please read a synopsis from elsewhere as I'm providing a commentary, not a summary.) If you are familiar with it, you will know that Katniss's father died in a coal mine accident, which caused a huge personal crisis in her family. An event like that is enough to give someone post-traumatic stress disorder, and growing up somewhere like District 12 is traumatizing in and of itself. Certainly it couldn't have helped Katniss's and her family's recovery. It is very logical to assume that it would have resulted in PTSD, which is classified as a mental illness.
"Now, where are you getting this from?" you may ask me further. "Right, it makes sense that Katniss could have PTSD, but does she even display any symptoms?" Yes. Yes, she does.
Up until and including their time in the arena, Katniss constantly distrusts Peeta (especially in regards to his claims that he's in love with her). She believed it was an attempt at manipulation, when other people might have simply believed him. Well, symptoms/effects of PTSD include emotional numbness and avoidance. Katniss's lack of trust in Peeta could definitely count as the results of such qualities. Furthermore, Katniss has a tendency to get irritated with people, sometimes abruptly and unnecessarily so. Irritability and the tense feelings accompanying are common of PTSD. And after Katniss experiences the Hunger Games themselves and their brutality, her symptoms intensify and branch into recall and sleeping trouble.
A lot of people tend to fault Katniss for the aforementioned things, but what a lot of people don't realize is that she has an actual mental illness - post-traumatic stress disorder - and while her behavior is certainly not ideal, it's the very legitimate result of traumatic events.
"Now, Jude, this is all well and good," you say. "I can see why you think Ms. Everdeen has a mental illness. But why should I believe she was intentionally written as such when it's not even mentioned in the books or films?"
Well, that question's answer is a bit self-evident. Do you think there are any therapists in District 12? Do you think there's anyone specializing in psychology? Do you think Katniss's family would have been able to afford therapy even if there were therapists around. No. Of course not. The folks in District 12 are having a hard enough time managing their physical health and survival. No one is going to have the education to become a psychologist or psychiatrist, and no one is going to have the money to afford that sort of thing. I doubt they'd even care about that in the Capitol. (While the Capitol is very rich, I don't know if they really care enough about the mental health of their citizens to have psychiatry around as a practice, and I doubt the people at the Capitol would be willing enough to admit to having a mental illness for such a practice to even be profitable.)
If Suzanne Collins were to procure a canon diagnosis for Katniss (or Peeta, or Haymitch, or any of the other characters who come to exhibit symptoms of PTSD - because I don't think Katniss is the only one who's been through enough trauma to have it), that would probably break our willing suspension of disbelief and ultimately go too much out of the way of the story to make us blatantly aware of something that's ultimately not that important. Because while mental illness is an important issue (especially in real life!), Katniss's story ultimately wasn't about her struggling with the aftermath of traumatic events like her childhood or the Hunger Games. It was about her fighting for her family and friends and standing up to the government when it got increasingly dangerous to do so. It wasn't about her being mentally ill. It was about her being brave. And that, my friends, is something anyone, regardless of (dis)ability or mental (un)wellness, can do.
"Alright, Jude," you say. "We understand your point of view. We understand why Katniss is a realistic, well-written portrayal of the mental illness of post-traumatic stress disorder. We even understand why her lack of diagnosis is acceptable and relevant. But did Suzanne Collins really mean for you to make this kind of analysis?"
Well, you've got me on that one. I am unaware of anything Collins has said on the subject, and it seems like PTSD was at least slightly intended. It would be an astonishing coincidence if all of the qualities she gave Katniss made her what seems to be a good, researched depiction of mental illness where this sort of thing wasn't even intended. However, unless Suzanne Collins says something about the subject (or if she's already said something and I don't know it), I think it is acceptable and good to interpret Katniss as a trauma survivor with post-traumatic stress disorder and thus a person with a mental illness. And besides, you know what they say - "The interpretation of a work of fiction is ultimately left up to the readers." I've found this theory reiterated on the internet, so I'm definitely not the only reader who interprets Katniss this way. I'm not the only person who's reads The Hunger Games and found not another psychopathic, violent madman but instead a wonderful heroine whose mental illness is not only not dehumanizing but in fact a sign of strength - she can survive horrible things, even after her mind has been permanently affected by her circumstances - and (wonder of wonders!) doesn't hijack the story but adds to it, giving her another set of challenges as she bravely fights for what's right.
Friday, September 20, 2013
A ukulele interlude
And now for something completely different.
Some of you may or may not know that I have the special talent of ukulele-playing. I figured I'd put up a recording of me playing a ukulele. (It's not actually my ukulele that I'm playing here; it's my sister's, but she doesn't play it, and since it's literally just lying about the house, I decided I'd try to figure out how to play it.) I specifically figured I'd play the song "Make Me Moo", which is by a very interesting band called the Residents. Look them up if you're unfamiliar with them. This is not the oddest thing they've written.
Anyhow, here's the song.
Some of you may or may not know that I have the special talent of ukulele-playing. I figured I'd put up a recording of me playing a ukulele. (It's not actually my ukulele that I'm playing here; it's my sister's, but she doesn't play it, and since it's literally just lying about the house, I decided I'd try to figure out how to play it.) I specifically figured I'd play the song "Make Me Moo", which is by a very interesting band called the Residents. Look them up if you're unfamiliar with them. This is not the oddest thing they've written.
Anyhow, here's the song.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Why Electronic Publications Are Actually a Pretty Great Thing
Hello. First off, I have the pleasant and exciting news of a publication in Emerge Literary Journal (to which the link will take you). I have been waiting for this since perhaps the month of May but probably sooner. I am very excited about this new publication, something my dry speech is not letting on but something that is very much the case.
Second off, I'd like to recount an interesting conversation I had with my grandpa today.
We were talking about books and publishing, and he (bless him) has a sort-of aversion to technology, and he was telling me about how e-books and the like are going to run print publishers out of business. The implication of "evil newfangled technology" was present in how he said it.
I had to correct him on that matter, citing Stephen Frye's thoughts of, "Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators." As long as there are people who like to read and truly value the art that goes into creating a physical book (for while there's nothing wrong with e-books, certainly, there's also nothing wrong with the beauty of a physical collection of words), there will be a group of people who want physical books, and there will be a supply to meet this demand.
And furthermore, I told him, there is a particular benefit to e-books and online literary publications that print books (bless them) just don't have.
Namely, electronic writing is much easier to distribute to large numbers of people.
When a book is available to buy and download online, anyone with internet access and sufficient funds can purchase it and get it usually instantly. This is probably a larger demographic than people who have the ability to find books at bookstore (or maybe order the physical things from the internet) and sufficient funds. (Also, I'd like to point out that print books, for perfectly reasonable reasons, are often much more expensive than e-books. So there is that as well.) But basically, it's oftentimes just easier for one to get an e-book than a print book, and if your goal is wider readership (as opposed to creating a nice object or looking "prestigious"), then there can be no harm in having your works published in electronic format.
And as for online literary publications (which have so far been the majority of the publications in which my works have appeared), they seldom cost anything at all to read, so they are usually available to literally anyone who has internet access. This is especially important when one remembers that print literary magazines are, unfortunately, not as widespread or well-known a phenomenon as books (print or electronic). Electronic publications have the advantage of being more easily-stumbled-upon during casual searches of the internet, whereas I imagine it's unlikely that one would find a print equivalent while not particularly doing anything at home or in a coffee shop or wherever one uses the internet. And while I admittedly don't know what editors for literary magazines (online and print) or Legitimate Publishing People do, it's safe to assume they Google-search the writers whose work they've been sent, and having something out there on an online publication will not only prove that you're good enough to get published somewhere, it'll give them a sense of what your work is like, a very good thing to give them.
The most important thing about online publication, however - and this is my personal view, though I'm sure it's shared by many others - is that it allows your work to be seen by numerous people. Not just numerous people; potentially lots. Ideally, a writer - and indeed an artist of any kind - wants an audience. A writer wants a wide audience. A writer, truly believing in their craft and truly believing it will affect people for the better, will want it to be read by the world; the world will almost certainly benefit from it, too. Having work published online will not guarantee worldwide readership, but it will certainly make it a possibility, something that print publication, while still wonderful and beautiful, couldn't even dream of.
"So," I concluded to my grandpa, "e-books and stuff aren't really going to run print publishers out of business, and electronic literary publications are actually a pretty great thing."
"Oh," he said. "I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me."
Second off, I'd like to recount an interesting conversation I had with my grandpa today.
We were talking about books and publishing, and he (bless him) has a sort-of aversion to technology, and he was telling me about how e-books and the like are going to run print publishers out of business. The implication of "evil newfangled technology" was present in how he said it.
I had to correct him on that matter, citing Stephen Frye's thoughts of, "Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators." As long as there are people who like to read and truly value the art that goes into creating a physical book (for while there's nothing wrong with e-books, certainly, there's also nothing wrong with the beauty of a physical collection of words), there will be a group of people who want physical books, and there will be a supply to meet this demand.
And furthermore, I told him, there is a particular benefit to e-books and online literary publications that print books (bless them) just don't have.
Namely, electronic writing is much easier to distribute to large numbers of people.
When a book is available to buy and download online, anyone with internet access and sufficient funds can purchase it and get it usually instantly. This is probably a larger demographic than people who have the ability to find books at bookstore (or maybe order the physical things from the internet) and sufficient funds. (Also, I'd like to point out that print books, for perfectly reasonable reasons, are often much more expensive than e-books. So there is that as well.) But basically, it's oftentimes just easier for one to get an e-book than a print book, and if your goal is wider readership (as opposed to creating a nice object or looking "prestigious"), then there can be no harm in having your works published in electronic format.
And as for online literary publications (which have so far been the majority of the publications in which my works have appeared), they seldom cost anything at all to read, so they are usually available to literally anyone who has internet access. This is especially important when one remembers that print literary magazines are, unfortunately, not as widespread or well-known a phenomenon as books (print or electronic). Electronic publications have the advantage of being more easily-stumbled-upon during casual searches of the internet, whereas I imagine it's unlikely that one would find a print equivalent while not particularly doing anything at home or in a coffee shop or wherever one uses the internet. And while I admittedly don't know what editors for literary magazines (online and print) or Legitimate Publishing People do, it's safe to assume they Google-search the writers whose work they've been sent, and having something out there on an online publication will not only prove that you're good enough to get published somewhere, it'll give them a sense of what your work is like, a very good thing to give them.
The most important thing about online publication, however - and this is my personal view, though I'm sure it's shared by many others - is that it allows your work to be seen by numerous people. Not just numerous people; potentially lots. Ideally, a writer - and indeed an artist of any kind - wants an audience. A writer wants a wide audience. A writer, truly believing in their craft and truly believing it will affect people for the better, will want it to be read by the world; the world will almost certainly benefit from it, too. Having work published online will not guarantee worldwide readership, but it will certainly make it a possibility, something that print publication, while still wonderful and beautiful, couldn't even dream of.
"So," I concluded to my grandpa, "e-books and stuff aren't really going to run print publishers out of business, and electronic literary publications are actually a pretty great thing."
"Oh," he said. "I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me."
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
The Many Ways to Like a Thing
I'm back in school. In fact, I've been back for a while (i.e. a few weeks). For those who didn't previously know, I'm a college student, and class is once again in session.
I was talking to my grandfather about my classes (because I spend a lot of time with my grandparents, and they take a great interest in everything I do - they've been listening to me ramble about my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, which I may or may not blog about in the future).
"Do you like your classes?" he asked me.
I had to consider the question. The subjects were English, history, and math - fairly pedantic, at least by my standards. (I took astronomy and psychology in my first and second semesters of college, respectively, and this semester is my third.) I didn't dislike the classes, if that was what he meant. I was going to say something to that effect before it occurred to me that there's more than one way to live something, and there's more than one thing to like about a situation like a class. You might not like the subject matter, but you might like the teacher, or the way things are taught, or the specific parts of the otherwise-dull subject that are taught, or that you're going over things you already knew but in a different way, or that a once-confusing subject is finally, finally making sense.
"You know, I do like them," I said. "I like my English class because I understand the stuff we're talking about and there's a lot I can add to the discussions, I like my history class because we're basically going over stuff I studied for fun as a kid but we're revisiting it and learning it in different ways, and I like my math class because math is finally making sense and I'm not dreading it." (I am horribly mathematically-challenged.)
"Good." He smiled. "That's good."
It was good. It was good that I was enjoying my classes, and it was good that I identified the way that I liked them, and it was good that I'd realized that there are many ways to like a thing. I think that, if people understood that, they would broaden their spheres of what they "liked", and we'd just be slightly happier in general.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)