This post is an incomplete draft.

What is the Problem with DID’s Representation in Mainstream Media?

If you look at the mainstream media, a lot of the portrayal of DID will be in the horror genre. If not in the horror genre specifically, it will still be around the general plot of “someone has a secret alter ego who is a serial killer and this is the mystery they have to uncover”. If this were just a plotline for one or two shows or movies, and DID had an alternate representation, it wouldn’t be an issue. The problem is that our community doesn’t get other representation – or hasn’t in the past.

Trigger Warning – skip over if you need – Miscarriages

Let’s create another example as a point of reference. Imagine that the only time miscarriages were portrayed in the media was when the women who had the miscarriages went crazy and went on a killing spree or tried to kidnap someone else’s child to replace their miscarriage. Imagine that being the only mainstream media portrayal of miscarriage for decades. Even though miscarriages are common, movies would still make women who have miscarriages out to be monsters, and that would be problematic and something that needed to be addressed. A movie that had that storyline wouldn’t be an issue as a localized horror movie, but if that’s the only representation, it becomes an issue.

End Trigger Warning Section

This has been the case with media portrayals of people with DID for decades. People with DID have been portrayed in the media as monsters, when in fact people with DID are victims of trauma and abuse and are much more likely to be re-victimized in their lifetime than to be perpetrators of abuse.

Examples of DID in Media

The following are examples of representations of DID in the media. There are many representations of DID that feed harmful stereotypes (i.e. one episode of the TV show Psych where it turns out the killer has DID). Similar things happen with DID storylines or references in shows and movies all the time, and they will not all be listed here. We will focus on the ones below, but remember that all these little things add up and contribute massively to the impact on our community.

Disclaimer: I (the person writing this) have not gone through and watched all of these myself – I have listened to the community response to them and am writing based off of that. Some of these are full TV series with multiple seasons, and have very triggering content throughout – I am taking the reflections of many systems from our community and multiple voices but it’s important to be transparent that I have not myself seen all of these myself.

Split and Glass

Overview of Community Response

Split is by far the most famous depiction of DID in Hollywood/media. Unfortunately, it also is a horror movie depicting the person with DID as a monster.

Genre: Horror

What it Got Right

While the portrayal of DID in Split and Glass has been massively critiqued for inaccuracies, being very problematic, and wildly stigmatizing issues, there are a few aspects that the film gets right:

• The movie did get it correct that the character with DID developed it from childhood trauma which is how the disorder develops.
• The movies understood the role of dissociation within DID, recognizing that dissociation is a key symptom and the alters would switch in at times to avoid painful triggers, memories, and emotions.
• The movies understood that different alters can have different and distinct personalities.
• The movies understood that there is a need for specialized treatment for patients with DID

What it Got Wrong

• Portrayals of violence: The movies depicts the character with DID as violent and dangerous, which perpetuates harmful stereotypes about people with mental illness and those who experienced childhood trauma being a threat to society. In reality, people with DID are more likely to harm themselves than others.
• Misrepresentations of symptoms: The moves massively exaggerate the symptoms of the disorder, portraying it as having supernatural abilities and a highly exaggerated form of dissociation, which is not accurate to the actual symptoms of the disorder.
• Failure to portray the actual complexity of the disorder: This franchise portrays DID as a simplistic and exaggerated condition, failing to explore the complex and nuanced experiences of individuals with this disorder. DID is a serious mental health condition that comes from traumatic experiences, and the movies massively oversimplify and stigmatize the disorder.
• Perpetuation of stereotypes: The movies reinforce stereotypes about people with mental illnesses being “crazy” and violent, which contributes to the stigmatization of people with mental health conditions.

Moon Knight

Overview of Community Response

Genre: Superhero Action-Adventure Fantasy

What it Got Right

What it Got Wrong

How Does This Type of Media Affect the Community?

United States of Tara

Overview of Community Response

Unfortunately, United States of Tara (UT) might be the most dangerous of all of the pieces of media on this list to our community, which might be surprising. UT is dangerous because it actually gets things so right in so many ways – it’s viewed as ‘the good one’. It’s put on a pedestal as the one that is trustworthy – that is the ‘right’ and ‘true’ representation – if perhaps dramatized for television. And it does get a lot correct – however, particularly in later seasons, they made some truly horrific choices and mistakes that completely tarnish their integrity. They spread awful and damaging misinformation about the disorder as well as portraying it in an incredibly disparaging light. The fact that it’s viewed as an authority on the disorder and then makes these egregious errors is what makes it so incredibly dangerous and, in many’s opinions, worse than the ‘big bad’, Split. It destroys every bit of good they did do along the way and makes it a dangerous and awful misrepresentation of our disorder and a disappointment to our community. Additionally despite them getting things factually fairly good along the way until the end, many do find it uncomfortable the level to which they dramatize the disorder for the television show – it is highly dramatized which some feel plays into to the stigma that people with DID look ‘crazy’. 

Genre: TV show Comedy-Drama

What it Got Right

• Showcased the existence of different alters with different and unique behaviors, mannerisms, and personalities.
• Addressed trauma as a root cause.
• Highlighted the challenges of living with DID and the unpredictability of switching in daily life.
• Acknowledged the importance of therapy.

What it Got Wrong

• Made alters into exaggerated and stereotypical caricatures.
• Misrepresented the nature of switching as always being sudden and dramatic when in real life it can often be subtle and gradual – difficult for others to detect. It also depicted switches as being triggered only by external factors when switches can often be much more internal.
• Failed to accurately portray the experiences of people with DID. Many people with DID lead normal, functional lives and are able to manage symptoms with the help of therapy and other treatments, while this show depicted DID as a chaotic and debilitating disorder.
• Does some truly egregious things in the last season (again I haven’t personally seen this season and will not watch it but I’ve heard from a system who has watched it so I’m recognizing here that I’m writing from a secondhand POV, but it was very disappointing to hear).

The Crowded Room

Overview of Community Response

Genre: Psychological Thriller

What it got right

• DID comes from childhood trauma.
• DID includes amnesia between alters.

What it got wrong

• Using DID as an excuse. Ignoring system responsibility.
• Yet another depiction of DID in mainstream media that uses Billy Milligan as the representation of the disorder – we don’t need a horrific criminal who did awful things to so many people representing our community of survivors who are much more likely statistically to be revictimized than to become perpetrators ourselves.

Many Sides of Jane

Overview of Community Response

Many Sides of Jane – as a Docu-series – actually follows someone diagnosed with DID. This grants the show some more legitimacy than a lot of the Hollywood shows and movies on this list. Still, we all know that with the power of editing, ‘reality’ television and documentaries can be made to be very different than true reality so you have to watch with that awareness and the understanding that nothing on your screen will ever emulate what a disorder is truly like to live with. 

Throughout the series, viewers follow the life of Jane Hart, getting a look into the life of Jane’s system. They meet the alters, learning names, personality traits, and parts of their life stories.

Viewers learn about the complexity of living with DID – challenges of communication, amnesia, fusions, and trauma processing in therapy. 

Overall Many Sides of Jane gets a lot of praise. However there is some criticism. Most critique is that the show is hyperbolic – sensationalizing things and focusing on the most severe moments and symptoms – in potentially a system that has more severe presenting symptoms than the standard. This portrays the disorder in a warped light that isn’t representative of the true nature of the disorder for most and feeds into stereotypes, fetishization, fear, and more. 

Genre: Docu-series

What it Got Right

What it Got Wrong

Sybil

Overview of Community Response

Genre: Mystery Drama

What it Got Right

What it Got Wrong

How Does This Type of Media Affect the Community?

Frankie and Alice

Overview of Community Response

Genre: Drama

What it Got Right

What it Got Wrong

How Does This Type of Media Affect the Community?

Mr. Robot

Overview of Community Response

Genre: Drama/Psychological Thriller

What it Got Right

What it Got Wrong

How Does This Type of Media Affect the Community?

Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan

Overview of Community Response

Genre: Docu-series

What it Got Right

What it Got Wrong

• Focusing on a violent criminal as a representation of DID.
• Yet another recent piece of media focusing on Billy Milligan – more educational, inspiring, positive, or just different stories could be told, yet we keep returning to this same incredibly problematic topic and story.

How Does This Type of Media Affect the Community?

Things People Like to Compare to/Speculate Referring to DID in Media

We are speaking specifically about movies/TV shows here – recognizing that some of these have books or comic versions of their stories. 

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Many people speculate about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde being related to/an example of media portraying DID.

Here are some reasons for the speculation…

• Dual identities: The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde revolves around one person with two distinct identities: One morally upstanding side, and one darker, uninhibited side. This could be (while crude) representing alters.
• Loss of Control: Dr. Jekyll loses control over the transformations, which could be a parallel to how switches in a DID system are often not under the system’s control.
• Amnesia and memory gaps: Dr. Jekyll experiences amnesia regarding Mr. Hyde’s actions, which could be a reflection on dissociative amnesia, a symptom of DID.

The Lord of the Rings (Smeagol/Gollum)

Some people speculate that Gollum from the Lord of the Rings has DID. This is for a few reasons, including…

• Gollum refers to himself as both Gollum and Smeagol throughout the movies.
• Gollum experiences an internal conflict, changing between the two identities of Gollum and Smeagol and speaking to the other – having arguments with himself. This internal conflict between two seemingly separate identities can be seen as media trying to replicate DID.
• Gollum sometimes has memory gaps and forgetfulness, a symptom of DID.

Inside Out

Inside Out is a movie that many people with DID actually find useful as a tool to explain how DID works. Many systems speculate that there were people with DID or OSDD working on the movie because it has so many themes that tie so closely to the ‘DID experience’. It – of course – is not made to represent DID so it’s not an accurate representation of DID – but it’s not trying to be. However, there are many things that lead people to draw comparisons between the movie and this disorder, and these are all in the positive realm unlike most things on this list. 

The things that cause comparisons include but are not limited to….

• The main character having beings (alters) in their head who take control over their body. Those beings also have specific memories that are just theirs but also have memories that are shared amongst all of them.
• They have an ‘inner world’.
• The story deals with mental health and trauma.

The Hulk

Many people speculate that Bruce Banner/The Hulk has Dissociative Identity Disorder. They speculate this due to the fact that…

• Bruce Banner and the Hulk have amnesia between their states.
• The transformation between the two states are triggered by external stressors/”triggers”.