#after reading a bunch of fucky fan fiction

[trxsh-mxuth]

how quickly do u think i'd go to hell if I were to write a natsby omegaverse fic like I hate myself but also

[beatlenumber9]

My thoughts on the movie Split (as well as the outrage it’s seemed to have generated). *SLIGHT SPOILERS*

So, I saw the new Shyamalan movie, Split last night. When I first saw the trailer months ago, it peaked my interest, but also worried me. I thought the premise sounded interesting; a man who suffers from DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) has 23 different personalities, and one of them kidnaps a group of girls. But what worried me was how they were going to portray the real mental illness that is DID. I wasn’t just worried that they would portray the mentally ill antagonist as a mindless cold-blooded murderer and nothing more, but was also worried how accurately they were going to represent DID.

But I was still curious and, because I work at a movie theater, I get to see movies for free, so I decided to check it out. I figured if it was bad or offensive, at least I didn’t financially support it. I went in kind of expecting the worst, considering it’s Shyamalan. I was expecting an interesting idea and story, held back by a problematic portrayal of a real disorder. But I got something very different. I’m not sure if I “loved” it exactly, but it’s definitely not the “demonizing of people with DID” movie that everyone on Tumblr has already labeled it as.

Here’s the thing, the trailers and other advertising are very misleading, and I think purposefully so. The only scenes they really show are those that happen within the first 30 minutes of the movie. In the first half of the movie it does seem like James McAvoy’s character is in fact suffering from DID. I could be wrong because I don’t suffer from DID, but from what I’ve read on the illness, they portray it relatively accurately. Similarly to how I feel they portrayed high-functioning autism in The Accountant. Each of the personalities we see has their own age, sex, and manner of speaking and body language. But we also see other symptoms associated with DID, like anxiety, mood swings, and compulsive behavior.

But as I said before, at the beginning it seems like he’s suffering from DID, but as the movie goes on, you see that it’s something else entirely. Essentially, he suffers from a fictional disorder, it’s basically like if DID, or any mental illness could some how mutate into something worse, which obviously can’t happen in real life. And that, I think is one of the signs that this is not trying to “demonize” mentally ill people, or people with DID, specifically. The movie knows that it’s fictional, and doesn’t claim to be real or a representation of something a person with DID, or mental illness in general, could do. It’s obvious that as the plot unfolds we can see that it’s not something that can happen in reality. And it’s not like M. Night’s other movie The Happening where it’s pretty much treating the ridiculous plot like it’s totally something that could actually happen.

The other reason I feel it’s not trying to demonize mentally ill people is that it does try to get the audience to sympathize with James McAvoy’s character. In fact we probably spend just as much time, if not more, with his character as we do with Anya Taylor-Joy’s character, who we see also seems to be suffering from some sort of mental illness (not DID). We learn more about McAvoy’s character, about his past, and about why these personalities might have formed. I really appreciated that it showed these two characters as actual people, and not just a bunch of sociopathic nut-jobs.

This movie is not something like The Visit (I still like that movie), that’s very grounded in reality, so you could make the claim that it might be exploiting the elderly or mentally ill people. This movie is very unexpectedly a science fiction story in addition to being a suspenseful thriller. 

The movie is genuinely very suspenseful, with a story I didn’t always know where it was going. 

I also like that they didn’t make the three kidnapped girls dumbasses in distress. They don’t just sit around looking terrified and wait to die. They actively try and think of ways to escape and try to learn more about the different personalities.

I also have to really give credit to James McAvoy, he has to essentially play 9 characters, and I think he pulls it off. He’s not just wearing different clothes and talking with different voices, but he’ll have different body languages specific to certain personalities. He’ll move his lips or parts of his face in different ways when he talks.

The last third act of the movie, while pretty ridiculous in retrospect, was so intense that I was willing to buy the unreal reality it was presenting.

But I do have some problems with the movie. The major one being that although the movie says that McAvoy’s character has 23 different personalities, we really only see 9 in the movie. I don’t exactly know why they didn’t just say he has 9 personalities. If you don’t show the other 14, there’s really no point for you to say that they’re there.

Another one is that we’re spoon fed pieces of Anya Taylor-Joy’s backstory as to why she acts the way she does. It will often cut to scenes from her childhood, which some are only a few seconds long. And it cuts to them seemingly at random, without warning. I mean, you know they’re building up to something, but I feel like they could have revealed it gradually in a better way.

Another problem I have is with the Psychiatrist character. I was really worried she was going to end up being another antagonist who willingly makes McAvoy’s condition worse, but thankfully that’s not the route they took. But I still have an issue with how not entirely observant she seems. It’s like, there are moments in the movie where she can clearly see that something is going wrong with McAvoy’s personalities, but she doesn’t pursue it as much as she really should until it’s kind of too late.

Some of the dialogue is a little awkward too, it is a Shyamalan movie after all. It’s never laughably bad like with The Happening, but some of it is still random and just like, “Why are you telling me this?”

Also, after the girls are kidnapped, we don’t really see very much being done to try and find them. All we really see is a news clip a few hours after they’re taken, but that’s really it. This makes for a few really confusing scenes, including one in which one of the girls gets their hands on a walkie talkie, with someone else on the other line. They are clearly expressing that they’re in distress, but the person on the other line doesn’t really seem to take her seriously, it’s really weird.

Another small problem I have is with the ending. I won’t give too much away, but it’s one of those endings where I feel like the writer kind of didn’t know what to have for the ending so they just kind of settled on something. The ending really just kind of leave more questions than answers, and not the good kind. I’m not exactly sure it’s trying to sequel-bait with this, but this wasn’t a very satisfying ending.

Overall, I would still say to give this movie a chance, even if you already have preconceived notions about the film. Though, I would caution people who suffer from DID who might see this movie. Some might be offended by the portrayal of their illness, but I think most would find the events that come later in the movie to be so over the top that it’s just annoying. I personally really enjoyed it, but I would totally understand if people thought it was asking a lot of them, even for a sci-fi type movie.

Final Rating: 7/10

I feel like I really have to say something about the outrage this movie has generated, but I know some people might only be hear for the review, I’ll just insert a “Keep Reading” link so this post doesn’t take up 80% of your dash. Click the link to read my very long rant.

I feel like I need to talk about the outrage that this movie seems to have caused, at least on Tumblr, no real surprise there. I’ve constantly seen people, who haven’t seen the movie mind you, saying that it’s just another movie that demonizes mentally ill people, specifically people with DID. I understand why some people would have some uneasiness about how the mental illness will be portrayed in the film, but some of the comments I’ve seen from people treat this movie like it’s some sort of documentary proclaiming that this is how DID operates, and this could totally happen to you.

I can’t help but wonder why it’s this film that’s suddenly got people raging about something like this. Because I haven’t really seen as much outrage aimed at other similar pieces of media in recent years.

I don’t remember seeing people get outraged for this reason at the first Outlast game. I mean that game takes place in a mental institution, and the people you are trying to avoid, and most of the fear factor comes from are the patients. The patients even look monstrously deformed.

I’ve never seen people get outraged about the show Bates Motel, as the character Norman Bates has a clear mental disorder, very similar to the character in Split, and he’s killed so many people over the course of the show.

I didn’t hear any similar outrage for Shyamalan’s previous movie The Visit. Where the grandparents are clearly deranged, and the main child characters are clearly not safe around them.

Ableism, like the word triggered, is a word I see tossed around often on the internet (not in the same ways, but still). I’ve seen people use it to describe something as serious as Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter, to something ridiculously unimportant like that one Steven Universe fan artist that drew the character Rose in a slightly different style (that people harassed to the point of her attempting suicide). And now I’m seeing the word being tossed at people who go see this movie, and the actors and anyone else involved in the production of the movie. And frankly, as someone currently recovering from a mental illness, I’m sick of a word to describe a very real prejudice being thrown around so casually like this. This movie is not fucking ableism, not even close.

Ableism is a restaurant owner refusing to install a wheelchair ramp because he doesn’t want to pay the money, or because he doesn’t “believe” in giving people “special treatment.” Ableism is someone telling a person they know is suffering from Depression to “Get over it.” Ableism is what Autism Speaks does on a regular basis; constantly treating people with autism like they’re completely non-functional, and that a family’s life is 100 times harder if they have to care for a family member with autism.

Ableism is not a fictional piece of media in which a person with a disability is the antagonist. At worst, it’s most likely someone who is ignorant of why what they’re depicting might be seen as bad taste. And if they’re truly ignorant of they’re actions, and had no malicious intent, they should be educated, not blindly insulted.

I feel like giving people who seem to be apart of this “Cult of Outrage” on this site some advice. The next time you encounter someone you think is doing or saying something “offensive” and they’re clearly ignorant as to why it’s offensive, instead of relentlessly spreading information about them online saying that they’re a terrible person with “Call Out” posts, potentially ruining their life, how about you actually reach out and try to calmly educate them as to why what they did or said was wrong, so that they understand why they shouldn’t do that again? Try having a fucking conversation with them, instead of blindly labeling them as racist, sexist, ableist, etc.