identityproject

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Evaluation of identity project

I am not entirely happy with my animation as I struggled with learning After Effects and it took a lot longer to make than expected. I had also hoped to make some music to go with it but ran out of time. I had also struggled with actually making it and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with it. I don’t think I managed to successfully get across the message of what my experience was like. I am happy with how the ants look; I think they turned out looking as intimidating as I wanted them too. I think that was important to show how scary hallucinating them was for me. However I think the way they move around is a bit too comical and that part is too long. I am also happy with ending and how I keyframe animated the pill burning away the ants but I’m worried that it does mislead people into thinking that the pills take effect immediately. This is what I was worried about from the beginning – that I would misrepresent my experiences and my identity as someone who has psychosis. I think this work partly shows part of my experiences (particularly the visual hallucinations) but doesn’t show the use of the medicine accurately.

Overall, in this project I learned a lot about a number of topics: I learnt how to use Adobe After Effects, I learnt more about myself and my experiences of psychosis as this project allowed me time to think over them which I hadn’t really allowed myself to do before. I also learnt a lot about identities in general, from my classmates (during seminars) and from the set reading and lectures. This helped me think of myself and how I see my identity in different ways. It made me realise how much I assign labels to myself and how that helps and hinders me in different ways. It made me realise how passionate I am about my identities (e.g. my identity as someone with a mental health condition, my identity as someone who is nonbinary, my identity as someone who is asexual panromantic). I also found learning about queer theory, stereotypes and subcultures particularly interesting – those were my favourite parts of the lectures. I especially enjoyed researching into ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’ and investigating how different people viewed their representation of psychosis.

I think if I did this project again, and with more time, I would plan out my outcome more fully than I did this time and try to focus more on how to accurately present the passage of time and how the psychosis medication took time to work. I wanted to challenge the misinformation and stereotypes that the media spreads about mental health conditions and I don’t think I’ve done that properly because I’ve only partially presented my experiences. This project has made me realise how difficult and personal identity is to articulate.

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My animation outcome.

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Ants

Below are the ants I drew in ink for my animation. I like how the ink looks because I think it makes them look more chaotic than a digital version would look. I was careful to make the legs very spindly as I think that makes them look creepier. I want them to look scary because they scared me before I had the medication to keep me away and these visual hallucinations are part of the reason my psychosis medication is so important to me. I added the words on with a white pen. I think those are also important as the words represent my auditory hallucinations which I had much longer than the visual ones.

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Reading Report:

I read the excerpt from ‘Queer: A Graphic History’ by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele which is about explaining queer theory. The excerpt (which seems to consist of the entire introduction) covers a number of topics. It includes a timeline of the uses of the word queer as well as explaining the multiple interpretations of the word queer. It explains the differences between queer activism, queer studies and queer theory. It also covers sexology and how various sexual identities were and are viewed and how these views came about as well as sex therapy and the gay rights movements.

As well as explaining queer theory and the ways it can be contradictory the text also seems to argue against many assumptions that exist about sexuality and gender. For example, it states that “recent research has found that sexuality is fluid” (pp. 28) and “neither sexuality nor gender is experienced as binary (clearly either/or) by everyone” (pp. 29). I think these arguments are quite strong as people take on a number of identities throughout life and it makes sense that this involves sexual orientation and gender identities too.  I can personally relate to these points as someone who identifies as queer. I am non-binary as well as asexual pan-romantic. It took me a while to find out about different identities, meaning that I have cycled through a couple identities to find ones which fit me and I thoroughly believe that gender and sexual orientation are spectrums. The text also explains that queer theorists challenge the “whole notion of individual identity” (pp. 28) and the “whole concepts of gender and sexual identity” (pp. 29). As the text presents these arguments, as well as others (such as everything being contextual) in an objective manner I’m not entirely sure if they are being argued by Barker. I think it makes sense that sex and gender are contextual. As Barker wrote on page 17 “that means they have all been understood, and practised, in very different ways over time and across cultures”. I think this argument is very strong as interpretation of identities have clearly varied across history.

I think the creators of this introduction were very successful in how they wrote about queer theory as it involves many complex concepts but they made it very clear and accessible and this is in part due to the illustrations done by Jules Scheele. There is a good balance of text and image. The illustrations are very clean, clearly relate to and expand on the text and they make the text easier to understand. The text is also quite clearly broken up into different topics so that not all the different concepts are introduced at once.

I think in general queer theory is very interesting and brings up a lot of questions I haven’t necessarily thought of before. I think you could best support an argument for queer theory by explaining, as this text does, that context is important and everyone relates to different identities differently. I think the concept of questioning and challenging things is important. Such as identities and labels and how ‘fixed’ they are.

I think this text was very informative and has helped me think about how I view identity. I will probably question categorisation more now and will think more about how context plays a part in people’s identities, especially my own. I think it relates to my work as an illustrator as even just the format and layout of how text and image interact makes me think of how I can combine the two. It also relates to this project of identity in particular as it has made me think of how many different people experience and interpret their identity in different ways. For example, some people are comfortable identifying as queer and for others that is a slur that has been forced on them and may have tainted their identity. This can also apply to the identities of people who suffer from mental health conditions. For example, in my case my understanding of psychosis before I experienced it was very different to the one I hold now and that is primarily due to the influence of the media. This makes me more insistent on wanting to draw from my own experiences of psychosis for this project.

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These are the thumbnails I made for my animation, I wanted to show myself taking my medication with evidence of my psychosis in the background that would fade away with taking the medication. I used my auditory hallucinations in two of the thumbnails and my visual hallucinations in two others. In summer 2019 I struggled with seeing creatures - mostly ants but occasionally spiders and worms - that I was convinced were trying to eat my brain. I decided to use these in the thumbnails as for me they were probably the scariest part of my experience of psychosis. In the thumbnails I also drew a calendar as I wanted a way to show that time passed before the pills took effect as I don’t want to mislead people into thinking that the medication worked immediately. The thumbnail I liked the most was the one on the bottom right with the creatures and words combined. My tutor agreed and suggested I try drawing them in ink. He also suggested I removed myself from the animation to make it simplify it and to use adobe after effects to put everything together.

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Research Report Task:

I first found out about ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’ from an article on ‘Checkpoint’ a website for a charity that aims to help people who play games manage their mental health. This article (Mental health representation in games, 2018) categorises a number of video games that represent mental health conditions in some way into either ‘Games that Represent Mental Health Well’, ‘Middle-Sitters’ and ‘Games to Avoid’. The very first game in the first category is the aforementioned ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’. Under the subtitle ‘Use of Mental Health Themes’ it mentions that the game depicts “the experience of psychosis”. This intrigued me as I suffer from psychosis which I now take medicine for. The description on the webpage contained praise such as “It’s a powerful and moving game, which is exceptionally rewarding.”

As I am focusing on my psychosis for this project I was looking for a piece of visual media that focuses on psychosis. I was struggling to find one, as, although there are quite a lot of comics, animations and illustrations centring on mental health not so many of them discuss psychosis, and when they do it’s not usually in a positive or respectful light, so I remembered ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’ and decided to research into it.

There are many texts discussing ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’ and in particular how it represents psychosis. Some of them are more academic than others. In the end I decided to compare two journal articles: Fordham and Ball’s ‘Framing Mental Health Within Digital Games: An Exploratory Case Study of Hellblade’ (2019) and Aron’s ‘Feeling the Pain’ (2019). Fordham and Ball’s article is an analysis of the game and specifically how it portrays psychosis whereas Aron’s article is a review focusing more on the game itself and its playability. Aron’s article also compares it to another game portraying mental health conditions (‘Sea of Solitude’) and before discussing ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’ states that: “That isn't to say games can't successfully examine mental health.” This implies that ‘Hellblade: Senua’s sacrifice’ is a successful portrayal of psychosis.

Overall, both articles seem to view the game in a positive light, although Fordham and Ball’s text is more critical, noting the use of perma-death in the game and how “the sheer possibility of a permadeath mechanic within the game was viewed by some as a heavy-handed metaphor for a full break from sanity or suicidal machinations” while Aron sees the perma-death mechanic in a more positive light, as “lending a sense of genuine peril.”

Fordham and Ball state in the section titled ‘Principal Findings’ that:

“Hellblade is important because it is perhaps the best-reviewed and best-selling video game to attempt a well-researched and appropriate representation of mental health through the medium of digital games.”

I agree that ‘Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice’ seems to be a step in the right direction in regard to how the games industry treats mental health. Especially as so many games vilify mental health conditions either by only portraying them in villains or by setting horror stories in mental asylums implying that mental health conditions are to be feared rather than educated about. The creators clearly had good intentions as is shown by the amount of research they put into the game concerning it’s portrayal of psychosis. For example they worked closely with Professor Paul Fletcher, psychiatrist and professor of health neuroscience Cambridge University, Professor Charles Fernyhough, Professor of psychology university of Durham as well as working with staff and students of Recovery College East. They used a binaural microphone in order to accurately capture the experience of hearing voices.

Reading these articles makes me think of how mental health is portrayed and how often it is stigmatised. It makes me consider my own experiences of psychosis, how out of control I felt before I was prescribed my medicine and how I felt crazy because of all the media I have consumed that portrays people with severe mental health conditions as ‘crazy’, dangerous, unpredictable and to be avoided. This makes me want to ensure that I represent my experience and my understanding of my identity accurately.

References:

Aron, J. (2019) ‘The games column: feeling the pain’, New Scientist, 243(3240), pp. 32-32. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(19)31383-1

Fordham, J. and Ball, C. (2019) ‘Framing mental health within digital games: an exploratory case study of Hellblade’, JMIR Mental Health, 6(4), pp. e12432 – e12432. doi:10.2196/12432.

Mental health representation in games (2018) Available at: https://checkpointorg.com/mental-health-representation/ (Accessed: October 2019)

Ninja Theory (2018) Hellblade: Senua's psychosis | mental health feature.10 October. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31PbCTS4Sq4&t=345s (Accessed: 12 November 2020)

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Meeting with tutor

The final outcome for this project is meant to be a time-based media of a sort. I had thought of maybe making a short game as I have a little experience making games in Unity but I wasn’t sure how I could make the story I wanted to tell interactive, as it was more narrative, so decided an animation would be easier. I wanted to make an animation showing my diagnosis and receiving my medication but my tutor told me that we probably didn’t have enough time to do an epic length narrative animation like that. He suggested that I show the result of the medication as that is the object I am focusing on. I agreed that this was probably the best course to take. He asked me to draw thumbnails to figure out the aesthetic of the animation.

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For a visual response to my object I decided to focus on my experience of hearing voices, which was my most common symptom of psychosis. I heard many voices but only two were ever clear enough to properly make out what they were saying. One was a male voice the other was female. The male voice was often aggressive, always pointing out my mistakes and flaws and it very much destroyed my self-esteem. The female voice developed later and was much kinder. She didn’t speak as much but when she did she was encouraging. I wanted, in this image to show how conflicted I felt always being told contrasting points of views which lay over my view of the world and changed how I experienced every social interaction and every hobby. So I drew myself with my brain showing (because psychosis is a mental health condition) and the voices around me - the red words representing the male voice and the blue words representing the female voice. I realise that the pills aren’t the focus of the drawing, but I think that only shows how although they aren’t a big change in my routine (I only take one a day), they nevertheless have had a large impact in my life - namely taking away the voices.

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Writing about an object in relation to my identity

We were asked to choose an object that relates to our identity. There are many facets of my identity I could have explored through this choice. In the end I decided to choose on an object that has to do with my mental health - I chose my psychosis medication. I was diagnosed with psychosis when I was 19 and that brought about quite a few changes. One of those was the medication I was prescribed, which, after some time, helped me manage my auditory and visual hallucinations (as well as my delusions). I chose these pills as my object because they really changed my life and how I understood myself. I also felt like enough time had passed (around a year) that I could revisit what it was like to experience those psychotic episodes.

The medication comes in a white and blue box, is packaged in foil and consists of small round white pills. They don’t really taste of anything. I have a lot of emotions I have associated with these pills. Mostly relief, for finally having found a way to avoid hearing and seeing hallucinations. I did struggle, when I was first taking the pills, to adjust, as it felt like a large part of me had gone. I missed the voices despite some of the horrible things they said to me, simply because I had been so used to having them.

These pills are therefore very important for me, as they have helped me stop my hallucinations and delusions which has in turn led to me being less fearful and paranoid in my everyday life. At points when I was still experiencing hallucinations, I felt crazy and out of control, as I struggled to tell what was real and what wasn’t and that terrified me. I think this fear was worsened by the stigma that surrounds mental health conditions and particularly portrayals of mental health conditions, such as the one I struggle with, in the media. There are many depictions of people who experience psychosis, particularly schizophrenia – which is a type of psychosis – as violent criminals in movies when in actuality people who experience psychosis are much more likely to be victims of violence. The media also generally depict such mental health conditions as either impossible or very rare to recover from and unmanageable which made me feel like I would never be able to escape those hallucinations until I found out otherwise from my GP. This is why I wanted to focus on mental health for this project. Because there is so much misinformation and confusion and I want to bring awareness to what living with psychosis is really like in any way I can.