#Star Stuff | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ahavatolam · 1 month ago

Text

As I sit here, trying to write this post, I struggle to find the words. So often in the last year I have not been able to adequately voice my thoughts and feelings. How much hedging do I need to do? How much qualifying, covering every possible bad faith interpretation until I can get to my point and the page is just filled with anxious ramblings? No, I don't think I'll be doing any of that. I'll just try to put words to a myriad of swirling images, patterns, sensations, emotions.

I don't think I have to tell you that this last year has been a rough one for a lot of people. The Jewish people, in particular, faced one of, possibly the most deadly attack since the Shoah on October 7th. Israel's government decided the best course of action, a "reasonable" and "proportional" response would be the carpet bombing, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza. I'm sure you witnessed the horrific images of maimed and broken and dead children of Gaza on our social media feeds just as I have. My heart weeps for them.

This reality is worse than anything I could have imagined when my Rabbi told us of the October 7th attack during our Shabbat morning minyan. I told myself that this would be another assault like in 2021 and 2014 (and countless others) where Israel would bomb Gaza for self defense, the Internet would get mad about it for a few weeks and then, as so often happens, get bored and move onto something else. Then it was November, then February, then June, and now it's October and nothing has changed. That's not exactly true. Gaza is decimated; tens of thousands of Palestinians (probably more but it seems like those tallying the dead gave up at 40,000), most of the hostages are still captive, and now Israel has launched a ground invasion of Lebanon, all in the name of Jewish safety.

There is so much that I could say about this, about how angry I am that my theoretical safety is being wielded as an excuse; that the word/accusation of antisemitism seems to have lost all meaning (while actual antisemitism has reached its highest point in almost a century); that Jews are so divided it's hard to talk to one another; that goyim have taken a longstanding intracommunity debate and turned it into a cudgel to silence debate and disagreement (a beloved Jewish pastime); that the Israeli prime minister is so laser focused on wiping out all threats (real or imaginary) in the region that he has further contributed to the suffering of his people he so loudly claims to care about; I could go on. This overwhelm and cacophony of competing priorities created a sense of being paralyzed, one that prevented me from being able to work through my thoughts and feelings.

I'm not here to speak for all Jews, just myself. And the largest emotion I feel is not anger, or fear, or elation, or sympathy, or smugness. It's disappointment.

I am disappointed in those who do not see the humanity in the Palestinians.

I am disappointed in those who do not see the humanity in the Israelis.

I am disappointed in those who have used this conflict to their own gain (by selling weapons, spreading hate, or winning Internet points).

I am disappointed in our leaders for being hard of heart and not listening to (or ignoring) the cries of their people (for ceasefire, for bringing the hostages home, for the end of the genocide, for the wanton destruction of life).

I am disappointed by the bad faith assumptions (that all Jews are Zionists or wholeheartedly and uncritically support Israel and their government; that all those who support the Palestinian people are antisemetic and want every Jew eradicated; that students couldn't possibly know what they're doing; that Jews are bloodthirsty monsters).

I am disappointed that it's been a year with no end in sight.

I mourn for all the lives lost, Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese. I mourn for the friends I have lost because of this conflict.

I pray for the release of the Israeli hostages and the Palestinian political prisoners. I pray that we (the world) wake up and listen to our better natures and stop this wanton violence. I pray that all those who are responsible for the destruction and loss of life are held responsible and face justice. I pray for peace and equity for all who call the Levant home. And I pray that we stop fighting and can stand together as humans and advocate for belonging, Gemeinschaftsgefühl (social interest), equality, wholeness, because everything can always be different.

#star stuff #i'm really nervous to post this #but it's the truth #it's my truth #and that has to be enough

12 notes · View notes

misscammiedawn · 5 months ago

Text

Intentional, Accidental and Allegorical representation in media

CW: Suicide, stigmatizing language, homophobia/transphobia mentions.

Spoiler warnings: Mr. Robot, Deadly Premonition 1 & 2, The Missing: JJ Macfield & The Island of Memories, Star Trek DS9, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

So... today's essay is going to focus on less ideal bits of media representation. Some of the discussed media may have insensitive depictions of vulnerable groups. Please read with care.

One of the things I've focused on since starting Media, Myself and I was finding overt pieces of representation that I felt did a good job of taking issues of chronic dissociative disorders and putting them to screen or page.

I've covered memoirs, I've covered stories written by former social workers about generational trauma, I've covered games that explain the concept of derealization and characters diagnosed with DID.

Every entry so far has been clear and overt in their presentation of mental illness and in telling I've tried to explain the ups and downs of how the material was presented and what they got right vs wrong.

Our latest entry in the series was a memoir, written by a person diagnosed with DID. Though I cannot speak to the personal lives of the authors for Night in the Woods, The Incredible Hulk, Mr. Robot and Umineko; it is not apparent that they experience the conditions that they write about.

And that's okay. Not all fiction must be written from a personal perspective of lived experience.

The issue comes in when even well meaning creatives want to write overt representation without the proper level of experience and sensitivity reading.

As I covered in my Mr. Robot write-up, Sam Esmail wrote Elliot's DID to fit the split personality trope (in way of copying Fight Club) and needed to apply the real world condition to the plot. For the most part it is successful and deserves praise for being that rare piece of mainstream media that overtly explains part roles with the correct terms "protector" and "persecutor" and how these functions relate to the system's origins.

Then it finishes with the discussion of "The Real Elliot" and includes a heartbreaking scene where the Elliot we have known the entire show tells his sister "I love you" and that sister, Darlene, wanting her 'real' brother back, leaves the room without a word.

Many people, myself included, felt hurt and alienated by this complete misrepresentation of our condition and did not appreciate a hurtful piece of stigma being launched into the public psyche for further misunderstandings. If you hate the show because of this mishandling of the topic then I would not blame you.

On a recent rewatch, though, I saw this moment from the final episode of season 1:

When I first saw this scene I felt a deep well of comfort in seeing something true to my experience displayed in a way no fiction had ever attempted to display before. Every part is equal. We are all part of the same system. There's no part more valid than the rest. One part acting against the system will breed dysregulation.

The child part of Elliot even says that Rami Malek's character is "hurting the family" by forcing the rest of them away and denying them.

It is clear now that the show is over that this was not intended to be a piece of representation but instead a way of obfuscating the final episode twist that the Elliot we follow is actually an alter and not 'the real Elliot'. He was "hurting the family" by sealing away 'the real Elliot' not by rejecting the system.

It hurt to see a moment that resonated so strongly be overturned at a later point.

It is presently believed, though study is always ongoing, that children who experience CPTSD in their formative years do not develop the stability to create an integrated sense of self. This truth is relevant in the formation of chronic dissociative disorders and personality disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The root of all of these symptoms being tied up in CPTSD. There is debate in the psychological field on if personality disorders are worth diagnosing as they tend to lead to stigmatization and self-pathologizing in ways that distract from treating the root trauma, but that is a topic beyond the scope of this essay.

Without a stable sense of self the child grows up with an "disintegrated core" that shifts and changes to help gain the needs for safety and comfort based on what will work in any given environment. In DID there is a layer of shielding from PTSD triggers involved that makes it so ego/personality states can form dissociative barriers between one another which leads to the parts forming. With Borderline these fluctuations tend to be less stable and lead to Identity Disturbance, where a person feels alienated from their own identity.

BPD and DID have a lot in common and it leads to debate in the psychological field that they may be different presentations of the same condition. In my experience labels are only as effective as they serve the person who holds them and anything that can forge connection and understanding should be cherished.

But going back to the original point, Mr. Robot had accidentally provided me solid representation that I latched onto. It was not intended to be a representation of what the creators understood DID to be but it did hit something which matches the lived experience of at least one person watching.

It can be powerful when you see a piece of media reflect parts of your experience back at you. Even if it was never meant to in the first place.

Before we continue with this essay I wish to state firmly that everyone is entitled to every single message and emotion that they have ever gleaned from fiction. No one should be told that their sense of comfort and warmth is wrong to have just because it was not authorial intent. I never want my words to ever strip something that is a positive from anyone's lives. I hope that never happens.

But that's the topic of this essay. Accidental representation and Intentional representation and what the benefits and detriments are.

As we see above, intentional representation that is made by creators who does not have lived experience can lead to misinformation, misunderstanding and harm. Even the most well meaning creatives are prone to this.

In way of example, let's talk about a creator who clearly means well and has included topics of gender and sexuality in the heavy majority of his works.

SWERY 65 (Hidetaka Suehiro) is the creator of Deadly Premonition and head of White Owls studios. In 2018 SWERY's team developed The Missing: J.J Macfield and the Island of Memories. It's a short game that displays the following message each time it is booted up:

The game starts with a pair of women, JJ and Emily, on a camping trip on an island and Emily attempts to engage intimacy with JJ before being rejected. The next morning Emily is missing and JJ must find their childhood best friend and potential love interest while memories from their past appear in the way of text messages. Towards the climax of the game we understand that Emily had left clothes in JJ's room and her mother had found them and had sent her to conversion therapy. The game is fairly vague about the circumstances and it's easy to read this as JJ's mother finding out that JJ is a lesbian.

In the final chapter of the story we find out that JJ is transgender. That the entire game is a dream sequence after she attempted to take her own life during a university lecture. The game makes it clear that the JJ we play as is who she wishes she were and that in reality she has not yet begun transitioning. In the reality section of the game she speaks with her developmental voice and is not wearing a wig. We still identify her as JJ and the game even includes a New Game + mode where you can play as the JJ from the reality segment complete with every voice line read in her developmental voice.

It is a fairly good piece of representation particularly as the game and the development are Japanese and Hidetaka Suehiro does not apparently have lived experience with transition. Albeit it heavily fetishizes the suffering inherent to transition with the body mutilation gameplay mechanic feeding into the nature of the subtext.

Unfortunately, like the Mr. Robot example above, it can be easy to focus on the negative aspects of the representation and feel hurt/betrayed by the good that The Missing does when compared with other projects by the same creator.

In 2020 the same creative team released Deadly Premonition 2, a sequel to the cult classic game that itself had some slightly problematic depictions of gender and sexuality. Both games the culprit is explicitly LGBT and their motives are rooted in the abuse they received for living as their chosen identity. A topic included in The Missing also.

It's makes it difficult to accept the good representation experienced when the very next game involves a sequence that had to be patched out of the game with an apology from the creator for insensitivity.

It's up to a member of the audience to take what they like and leave what they don't but it's a good example of how overt representation can lead to missteps by even the most well meaning creator.

But let's step into accidental representation because the Deadly Premonition games can easily be read as representing CDD, even if it is not intentional. The main character of the game is Francis York Morgan. Throughout the game he seeks guidance from "Zach" who he speaks to constantly both when he is alone and when around other characters, though when people ask he informs them that it is a private matter which he does not discuss.

It is easy for those playing the game to think of Zach as the player themselves. Especially as York entrusts Zach to handle all of the combat segments of the game and we are prompted to answer questions when York asks for Zach's opinions on the investigation. It's also easy to ignore all of the comments the NPCs make about Francis Morgan's huge scar. York has a scar on his face and an odd patch of missing hair after all.

The final chapter of the game reveals that when he was young Zach witnessed the horrific death of his parents and was so traumatized that he was sheltered by an inhabitant of an extra-dimensional plane of existence who protects him from all the dangers in the world. Which sounds a lot like the formation of a protector alter to me. York fronts pretty much all of the time but keeps in constant communication with Zach and does his best to live their shared life in a way that will one day let Zach take control, which happens at the end and we get to see the protagonist as all of the NPCs saw him up until that point.

(York on left, Zach on right)

The epilogue sequence for Deadly Prem 2 even gives a heartwarming depiction of plurality in having literal IM messages from York appearing on Zach's desktop during a video call.

It's arguable over whether or not this is accidental representation or not. The circumstances of Zach and York's partnership do meet the typical standards of overt CDD depictions but there is no pathology involved in the depiction whatsoever.

Which is a big difference between Overt Representation and less overt kinds.

When Mr. Robot discusses dissociative identity disorder or Night in the Woods discusses derealization the story needs to take time to have characters explain the concepts to characters within the fiction and the audience. At the heart of all things, this form of representation is aimed at people who are not in the know about these conditions.

When it vibes with our experiences and makes us feel seen it is doing that as a side effect of presenting the experience to an audience. Generally the expectation would be that the majority of the audience do not happen to share these experiences and need help in being able to relate, particularly when the creators do not experience the condition for themselves.

In intentional representation cases where the creative team do have lived experience then the art of making an emotional connection with the audience is a matter of someone trying to convey that which they feel and experience, which makes those who resonate to have a higher chance of being and feeling seen.

Even that doesn't always seem to work out as expected though.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a musical romantic comedy TV Show which holds the interesting record of managing to complete its full TV run of 4 seasons despite being consistently drawing abysmally low ratings. It is arguably one of the best intentional representations of BPD in all of media, even sitting higher than works adapted from biographies such as Girl, Interrupted.

Well... part of the argument is that it was never intended to be.

The main character, Rebecca Bunch, is a Jewish woman with a highly religious family who makes rash and impulsive decisions that lead her to live in LA County restarting a highly successful law degree so she can chase an ex-boyfriend. She is played by the show's creator, Rachel Bloom, who is a Jewish woman with a highly religious family (her cousin, a rabbi, peformed the ceremony for her wedding). She was born and raised in LA County and she has an outspoken history with mental illness including OCD, Anxiety and Depression.

Rebecca Bunch is not Rachel Bloom even if they share many elements and initials. Rachel Bloom once said she is 80% autobiographical

(2 examples that showed up when I searched the topic, top from TheWrap and bottom from Chubstr)

But Rachel Bloom does not have BPD. Rebecca Bunch didn't until Season 3. But... she always had BPD. It just... wasn't intentional.

When starting work on season 3 the creative team spoke with therapists to determine the direction of the show and it was decided that Rebecca's diagnosis based on her actions in the show and her behaviors would best fit BPD and the final 2 seasons of the show were tailored around this to show effective therapy can help benefit a person in need. It leads to a positive ending for the show.

But even when Bloom was autobiographically placing her own symptoms on the page, enough that the story about Harvey Guillen having to play a person based on himself, the narrative and drama of the story required the character take actions that lead to a depiction of BPD rather than OCD/Anxiety.

Even though the intention did not kick in to the 3rd season, which only exists via miracles and CW refusing to give up on the show, Bunch is often listed as one of the best fictional depictions of BPD in TV/Movies, alongside Anakin Skywalker, Catra and Clementine Kruczynski. None of whom are diagnosed with BPD or seen to be struggling with mental illness. But they all fit the bill remarkably well. Enough that should a therapist be introduced into the plot of Star Wars, She-Ra or Eternal Sunshine they could easily take their existing characters and make the diagnosis intentional by giving it the label.

The same can even happen with gender and sexuality. Whether it is asexual representation from Jughead and Todd Sanchez from Archie Comics and Bojack Horseman respectively; Morph being genderfluid and using they/them pronouns in X-Men '97 or Halo/Violet in Young Justice coming out non-binary having a discussion about their preferred pronouns; or Korra and Asami's bisexuality in the Avatar universe.

All of these were not part of the blueprint when the character was brought to the stage, they just seemed a natural evolution of the character as the story progressed or, with situations like Umbrella Academy's 3rd season adapting Elliot Page's real life transition into the plot, it was necessary for the fiction to meet reality.

And this is of course ignoring the more important factor.

We live in a day and an age where we can have Viktor Hargreeves as a leading man in an ensemble superhero show. We can dedicate storylines to people discovering and exploring their non-binary identities and preferred pronouns.

That wasn't always the case. Which brings us to our final type of representation.

Allegorical.

When I say "this wasn't always the case", I do not intend to imply that allegorical representation has gone anywhere. It still remains with us and is as effective today as it ever was. But in the past, particularly the 90s, it was necessary.

Where intentional representation (and accidental that becomes intentional) has the luxury of using the correct language and educating an audience, allegorical representation speaks directly to the group in question without regard for the mainstream audience.

This can also happen in intentional and accidental forms. The quintessential example for trans people is The Matrix, a story where people who reject the reality that we are sold by the dominant culture and seek to find community of those who exist outside of that system and to wake up to their true reality and their chosen names after taking a pill. To those who know the feelings that Trinity and Neo discuss in the first 20 minutes of the movie, who see the forms of intimacy displayed in their romance and acknowledge the villain deadnaming as an insult; there is no question that it is superb representation of a lived reality. To a cis individual who has never had to ask those questions and do not know the violence of being denied a name, they would not even approach the questions the movie constantly asks to anyone who can listen.

But there are numerous examples of allegorical representation that are there to allow the content to exist in spite of censors and editors.

Garnet from Steven Universe is intended to be a wlw couple but their romance could not be overtly displayed in a children's show. Famously the show creator had to trade in all of their good will and bargaining power for the show they created in order to depict the wedding of Sapphire and Ruby on the show. Until then the concept of Fusion was introduced to show soulmates intertwined and working in unison. Itself a little bit of accidental plurality representation.

Of course, symbiosis appears to be a common point for such depictions.

Anyone who lived through the 90s would know it was the wild west for representation where the allegories could be paper thin but could never be confirmed. We were simultaneously accepting as a culture and absolutely terrified to commit to the retaliation that would come from actually using the words and being positive. The 90s was a time of cowardice and cruelty. Punching down was always allowed. Friends, the most popular show of the era, included a main character whose ex-wife left for another woman as a show long punchline and they included more transphobic jokes in some episodes than BIPOC characters in the entire run of the show.

We could laugh at the gays in Will & Grace but we couldn't celebrate them by allowing Xena and Gabrielle to be overtly gay. Just heavily implied.

And transphobia was the worst at the time.

Star Trek Deep Space 9 stepped around the stigma when they introduced Jadzia Dax. Dax may not actually be trans.

But she is a trans allegory.

Dax is a trill, a symbiotic entity that needs to bond with a host to live. Up until the events of the show it had been bonded with a male host, Curzon, who was Cisco, the main character's, mentor. The show often depicts the familiarity Cisco has with Dax despite Jadzia Dax (and Ezri Dax) being different incarnations of the same entity. As shown above, Jadzia is her name now.

The people of the era certainly were aware of the allegory at play and starved of any positive depictions in media they firmly latched on. Here's a 1997 magazine with Dax on the cover, celebrating Gene Roddenbury's show going "where no trans had gone before"

Allegorical representation is important. Especially as many pieces of media are shared globally and overt representation is often banned from territories where people are still starving to see themselves reflected in media.

So... with that said. Let me sum up my beliefs on the topic.

Intentional Representation often is in dialogue with the whole audience. It often intends to speak directly to those who are not part of the populations being represented, assuming a lack of familiarity. This is not always the case but is the assumed.

Accidental Representation begins a dialogue with the populations being represented and typically do not become aware of the fact that this dialogue has begun but can come to take it and make it part of the fiction's DNA.

Allegorical Representation is in constant and meaningful discussion with the populations represented and those sympathetic to them. It knows exactly what it is doing and does not need to conform to the expectations or understandings of the broader audience.

It's why I love allegories so damned much.

For more essays like this please check out our Media, Myself and I tag, we typically focus on dissociative disorders there.

#camden posting #media myself and i #domo arigato mr alderson #mr robot #bpd #did #watch me post my trauma in public #media essays #star stuff #crisp spring morning

19 notes · View notes