#i’m not saying actually eat people but the idea of cannibalism is inherently romantic

[lest-we-forget-the-lamb]

[neurodivergentaf]

I could not stop my cursed brain from spouting the sheer amount of bullshit it loves to provide the public with on matters that I really don’t want to deal with but here we are!! Review of the movie Split (2017) by a person professionally diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I had to rewatch this crap on exam night so pay up anons and read under the cut. Warning for spoilers

I’m not going to be all “blah blah this is a horrible movie 1/5 stars” because let me be clear 2 u. This movie made me angry. This movie was also, from an objective standpoint, well done. I love psychological horror art, but as I weighed the pros and cons on the consequences that can arise from this movie existence, I can safely say Fuck All That. I know I missed a lot of details, but I didn’t want to waste time trying to explain the basics of DID and take up too much space on this post (lol failed).

Here is a half-assed review on Split by a sleep deprived college student messed up on about twenty different types of cold and flu medicine. Enjoy!

Accidentally watched on hulu the movie Split 2016. checked the genre halfway through and decided that the big fat ‘romantic comedy’ title probably meant it wasn’t the one i was looking for; proceeded to watch the actual Split movie via unsavory websites. i risked my life for this. the cops are coming any second to arrested me

Gave up and decided i didn’t want to ruin my night, so i watched John Mulaneyneyeney’s new movie on netflix. it was fantastic

Actual start of review:

I found it really interesting how the Buzzkill Girl protagonist was also shown to have experienced childhood trauma like Barry, yet the movie puts the antagonist as the only one with DID and homicidal tendencies. I think that a better way to have handled this was to also give the protag DID as a plot twist and to show that it really depends on the person, not the disorder itself. (But even if they had done that, there are still too many inaccuracies given about DID in the movie that are harmful to the community. I’ll explain more about that later.)

This woman looks EXACTLY like the therapist that also diagnosed me with DID. What the fuck. 5/5 stars for physical character accuracy 

“Nobody even believes that we exist!” Very true. Do you know how many people I know irl that I’ve told about my disorder to? 0. When was the last time you ever heard about DID on the news or in irl conversation? Exactly. We don’t feel like we really exist sometimes, because no one wants to even acknowledge it. Therapists would rather consider the most far-fetched ideas before even thinking about DID, because they are never really taught the skills on how to handle it or identify it. 

Some people with DID refer to themselves in plural form. Some don’t. Barry just happens to use the plural form, probably to remind the audience of his condition. Just wanted to point that out there.

“We always think of shattered people as ... less that us. What if they’re more?” I think that was a beautiful phrase. Really, I loved Dr. Fletcher’s quotes about DID and the way they wrote her. Too bad about pretty much everything else.

I was kinda “eh” about this part because alters don’t really talk out loud to each other; especially if we’re in a position where someone else can hear us, because we’re aware of how socially unacceptable it it. Usually conversations aren’t held with full sentences, most of the time it’s impressions of feelings or intentions. But Barry is shown whispering in a room alone, so I’ll accept it I guess

Oh yeah. This part. Fuck this part in particular. This doesn’t relate much to the DID topic as much as a transphobic one. They put the villain, a cannibalistic antagonist, in association with gender non-conformity and, by extension, trans women. Yeah. fuck that. On an actual DID note, differential genders between alters are pretty common, especially if you have 3+ alters.

I won’t post screenshots of it, but if you watch the movie it is obvious with it’s uncomfortable sexual displays of underage girls that it also associates DID with some form of perversion. This provides even more negativity towards people with DID when the fact of the matter is that people with DID are no more geared towards unethical actions than neurotypical people.

Some people with DID don’t see their alters as human, whether or not that comes from their trauma or as a type of coping mechanism. For me, I have a very scary looking alter that is that way as a defense system against the scary situations I’ve had to face. But that does not mean an alter is inherently violent.   

Child alters are also common because of the same reason listed above. DID is a disorder that manifests in childhood, and I have yet to meet a person with DID that does not have a child or child-like alter.

A side-effect of DID is memory loss, also called dissociative amensia. There have been cases where alters withheld information (usually traumatic events) from one another as a way to cope. DID is all about being able to function at the most optimal level when faced with persistent trauma, so missing information about daily life or important events are common.

*deep sigh* Okay...the skype call scene. Let’s do this shit. First off, I’m gonna have to call bullshit on how good the video in this looks. 1/5 stars for skype accuracy

This is pretty common with DID. It can present itself in different styles of writing or talking depending on the alter. Some alters are similar enough that this doesn’t really apply to them.

Uh, yeah, no. This is just straight up untrue. False. Nein. Ne. Doesn’t fucking happen. The only way I can kinda of see what she’s trying to say is if she’s focusing on the fact that an alter can be unaware of their own physical abilities and as such, can act in a limited way. But physically, we are not different. DID is not a developmental disorder. If the body was born with ADHD, then all the alters will have ADHD, even if the ADHD will manifest in different ways for the alters (e.g., one alter can focus a little more on a certain subject than another)

It ain’t that deep dude. I’m just trying to keep my cool when Melli eats all of my fucking york mint patties and Andrei has hidden my fucking keys in a fucking spot where I can’t fucking remember Andrei you piece of shit

I don’t understand what he is trying to say here. I think I’ve ever only heard of one incident where a person with DID could control when one of their alters can take over, and it wasn’t from a credible source. We can’t control who can front and who can’t. I use the word “front” in place of “the light” here because i have neverrrrrr heard any person with DID use that term.

It can be very hard to distinguish who is fronting and who is not. The person fronting can give an educated guess, but can’t be 100% certain because personalities always change and grow and can hide things about themselves that they don’t even recognize.

Ouch...that scene hit home for me. Internal conflicts are common and can lead to self-stigmatization within the group. There can even be cliques like ‘here are the bad alters’ and ‘here are the good alters.’ This happens because we are simply human. 

After more than an hour of rewatching Split i decided to stop because this post is getting too long and i want to focus on the more important issues of it instead of liveblogging. Also the small fact that my body has been trying to kill me via mucus in my lungs for 2 days straight.

Lets get one thing clear: “With DID patients, if they feel hostility or aggression they take it out on themselves with self-harm… They’re self-destructive and repeatedly suicidal, more so than any other psychological disorder. So that’s what’s typical – not this wild aggression, or stalking women [or robbery].” —  Dr Bethany Brand, on Billy Milligan and Multiple Personality Disorder (DID)

“But it could happen!” You can say. Yeah, sure. It could happen because of the simple fact it’s not entirely impossible that a person with DID could kidnap girls and be a cannibal. The issue is not that it’s not impossible, the issue is that This Is It. This movie is one of the very few that even reference DID, and it’s a horror movie with inaccurate information about the disorder. When was the last time you heard something positive about DID? When was the last time you came across accurate information about it without having to consciously search for it? This is it. The therapist tells us that DID is not evil, and then an hour later is murdered by her patient, which encourages the audience to disbelieve what she claimed. This movie tells people that we are inherently violent, perverse, dangerous, and it has taken the progress made to understand DID 10 steps back. Fuck this movie. We don’t deserve this. We’re not some parody to make money off of. We’re people who have had a ton of shit thrown at us to make us this way and now these people want to tell us that we’re monsters.

I wouldn’t be so prissy about this if there were 10,000+ good movies about DID and this just so happened to be the only bad one. I wouldn’t even be writing this review. Curse you, parallel dimension me, you lucky son of a bitch.

So. Yeah. Fuck this shit.