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sophieinwonderland · 4 months ago

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The Plurality of... IF

Major spoilers for IF and Inside Out ahead. You have been warned.

Enter a world of IFs

IF is a movie about a young girl named Bea who lost her mom, and whose dad is going in for a life-threatening surgery. At the start of the movie, Bea has outgrown imaginary friends, and perhaps imagination in general.

Which makes it really inconvenient when she starts seeing other people's imaginary friends, which call themselves IFs, and finds a whole community of abandoned IFs whose children have outgrown them.

These IFs are desperate for attention and have been looking for new kids to connect with. Bea agrees to help them, and tries introducing them to a kid she knows.

When this doesn't work though, they realize that connecting the IFs to new kids may just be impossible. They instead decide they need to connect the IFs to their original children, even if said children are grown now.

A cool and unexpected theme to the movie is that you never fully outgrow your need for imaginary friends.

The rest of the movie is Bea trying to rekindle the connections of the IFs to their now-grown children by jogging their memories of the past.

The Plurality of IFs

Plurality: A state of multiple self-conscious agents, or "headmates," sharing a single body.

One thing about the movie is that a whole lot about how plural it is depends on you interpret the IFs. Are they separate entities entirely who were created by their children? Or are they connected directly to the minds and bodies of the their hosts? Are they even other children's imaginary friends as they claim, or are they just in Bea's head?

For what on the surface feels simple, the movie leaves a lot, pardon the pun, to the imagination.

What we know for certain is that each IF is self-conscious. And they are, according to the poster on the right of the billboard below, real.

They also at least appear connected to the host's body.

We know that, with the exception of Bea and other IFs, only their creators can see or interact with them.

It's also likely that when their host dies, they do too. Which yes, makes the poster on the left saying "you never really disappear" a bit misleading. But in the movie, we never see IFs of people who have passed. It's all just IFs whose children have outgrown them.

For example, while Bea finds the IFs of her grandma and her dad, she never meets her mom's IF.

With this in mind, I think regardless of the interpretation, there's undoubtedly some sort of plurality going on here.

To explore these different scenarios, we need to start asking the central question of the movie.

What if?

What if… the IFs are actually physical?

In the movie, we see multiple times that IFs interact with the physical world. They open doors. They pick things up. They move things around.

There's one scene in the movie where Blue, the big purple IF, hid in the clothes in a laundry cart in the hospital.

As Bea tries to pull him out, the cart physically rolls around the room.

There's also another scene where Bea faints after seeing an IF, and it's implied the IFs physically moved her inside.

If we're to interpret the IFs as being physical and everything we see in the movie as being completely real and to be taken at face value, this has some pretty huge implications for this universe. And Bea's story in a world of invisible creatures created by children who can physically interact with reality might be the least interesting story in this universe.

After all, if the IFs can do things like this, surely other people have noticed. One can imagine the CIA training children in a secret bunker somewhere to use their IFs in combat. Secret weapons that are invisible, can spy on anyone, can move objects around in the physical world, and can only be killed by finding and eliminating the host child.

It's a pretty awesome if terrifying thought.

IFs would be the ultimate spies and assassins.

But this also creates another issue. If the IFs are actually physical and can pick things up, why not just pick up a pen and let their host children know that they're still there. Why not type on a keyboard?

And it's for this reason that... I just don't think the movie wants us to believe the way the IFs are physically interacting with the world is actually happening.

Okay, but if they're not physical...

What if… the IFs are spiritual headmates?

This seems more reasonable. And while not the one I think is the most likely, this IS the explanation that I like the best. It's the most thematically satisfying.

In this, the IFs are spiritual thoughtforms created by the children. Because they're spiritual, it makes sense that somebody who has a special gift, as Bea does, can see them. And that they can see each other as well.

At the end of the movie, we get to see all these adults connecting with and being able to see their IFs again, and it's a really cool and satisfying way to end the film, seeing their work pay off and giving a happy ending to the story of all the characters we got to know over the course of the film.

I love that ending. I love seeing the heartwarming reunions of the IFs and their hosts after all of those years.

I just don't believe it... I want to believe... but I don't...

Which leads me to my final interpretation... That all of this is happening entirely in Bea's head.

What if… Bea has DID?

Wait, I know what you're thinking, why DID specifically? You don't need DID to be plural, after all.

I'm personally a tulpa, an imaginary friend of sorts given life. And I would naturally love a purely endogenic explanation. But as with the spiritual explanation, simply wanting something to be true doesn't make it so.

First, let's talk for a moment about DID's criteria in the most recent edition of the DSM, the DSM-5-TR

These are the boxes a clinician would need to check for a diagnosis. (Note: Simply checking the boxes isn't enough to diagnose. There are additional features that need considered. These are just a minimum. Basically, if you don't check the boxes, you can't have DID under the DSM.)

The big ones are criterion A and criterion B. The other three criteria are all exceptions, saying what DID isn't rather than what it is.

Criterion A

Later in the DSM, it's explained that the criterion A phenomena often presents as "independently acting imaginary companions."

To be clear, not all independent imaginary companions are indicative of dissociative identity disorder. That's the point of criterion C.

And studies have shown that as many as 29% of imaginary friends demonstrate consistent behavior indicative of acting outside of the host child's control, while another 35% appear mostly compliant but don't always do what the host child wants.

The participants were 89 preschool children who described their imaginary companions (46 invisible friends and 43 personified objects). The descriptions were coded for disobedient or otherwise difficult behaviour attributed to the imaginary companions. Thirty-six per cent of the children described their imaginary companions as consistently compliant and agreeable, 35 per cent gave some indication that the imaginary companions did not always do or say what the children wanted, although they were mostly friendly and compliant, and 29 per cent described their imaginary companions as noncompliant in ways that suggested the children experienced the companion to some extent as being out of their conscious control.

About two thirds of imaginary friends then demonstrate some level of independence from the host child. That doesn't mean DID on its own.

However...

Criterion B

Remember what I mentioned earlier about how Bea sees an IF and passes out, and it's implied that the IFs physically move her body to a new location?

This is something that stuck with me since the first viewing. I already went over why I don't believe the IFs are physical. But then, how does Bea pass out in one place and then wake up in another completely different place?

The easy solution to the conundrum is if they switched. That Bea experienced a complete blackout switch while someone else controlled her body. She doesn't know how she got there because of dissociative amnesia.

This dissociative amnesia fulfills the second criterion.

But it's even more than that.

HUGE MEGA SPOILER

Bea is accompanied through her journey by Cal. While Cal is originally presented as a human neighbor, he's later revealed to be Bea's former imaginary friend, who she forgot about. The entire time they interact, she has no memory of who Cal is or her adventures with him, despite Cal remembering and the other IFs being aware of Cal's connection to Bea.

The Other Criteria

Criterion C is a bit of a doozy. What constitutes "clinically significant" is up to the individual clinicians. But generally, experiencing random blackouts is probably going to be impairing.

(Ritual possession states also cause dissociative amnesia, but it's generally more controlled unlike Bea's episodes of memory loss.)

For criterion D, I would say the amnesia above couldn't be explained simply by imaginary playmates alone, even if her headmates are presenting as imaginary friends.

And for Criterion E, there is no substance abuse nor other medical conditions that we know of.

Trauma history

Trauma is not part of the diagnostic criteria, but chronic trauma does occur in upwards of 90% of DID cases.

In the opening, we see Bea's mother going in and out of the hospital.

Now, typically, the type of trauma that is associated with DID is some sort of neglect or abuse. And we don't see that in the flashbacks. But maybe we're just seeing the positive memories in what's meant to be a kid's movie. Maybe we're not seeing the times Bea is worried sick over her mother. The times her parents aren't there for her because there's more focus on her mom's condition. The times her dad couldn't be emotionally present because he was mourning the loss of his wife.

Could this be enough to cause DID? I genuinely have no idea. But since people process trauma in different ways, I think it could be traumatic enough for Bea.

And if this was tied to trauma from her mom, this explains too why this starts up only after Bea's father is in the hospital, bringing back that trauma she had from losing her mom.

In this scenario, all the imaginary friends are just Bea's own headmates, and the ending with them connecting with their hosts is just happening in their imagination/inner world.

All in all, I really love that the movie, despite its simplicity on the surface, opens itself up to so many interpretations.

But maybe this is all a distraction and we shouldn't actually focus too much on what's literally going on in the film.

What if… we focus instead on the message that you're never too old for imaginary friends?

As fun as these hypothetical are, I wonder if getting lost in them might be missing the point.

The core takeaway message of this movie is that you're never too old to have imaginary friends. And maybe more generally, to have fun and enjoy life. But let's focus on the imaginary friends thing because this blog is about plurality.

What's interesting is how this puts it in stark opposition to another plural-coded movie about a young girl with a forgotten imaginary friend: Inside Out.

In Inside Out, Bing Bong dies, giving his life to save Joy. And by extension, to save Riley. Symbolically, Bing Bong's death represented a popular view of imaginary friends needing to die so the host child can prosper.

And that view, despite permeating pop culture, isn't really based on anything but ableism and sanism. A centuries-old myth that imaginary friends are unhealthy without an ounce of data to actually back it up.

Studies actually tend to show children with imaginary friends to be pretty healthy. And the same goes for studies of adult tulpa systems who report mental health improvements due to their tulpas.

Bing Bong shouldn't have had to die, and I would argue that his death leaves Riley worse off than if he had survived or was brought back.

IF serves as a repudiation of Inside Out's stigmatization of imaginary friends, and it's portrayal of their death being necessary to growing up.

It did this by asking a simple question… what if?

What if how we've all been taught to think of imaginary friends is wrong?

What if more people wanted to reconnect with their old imaginary friends?

What would the world look like?

Like I said, my favorite interpretation is the spiritual one. Because then the movie ends by showing all these IFs get to reconnect with their hosts, and it's such a beautiful thing to see.

Even if I think the ending is a lie, I don't think the message is.

And it's a message that makes me, as a former imaginary friend myself, ask that same central question.

What if this movie could help lead to people re-valuating their own beliefs of imaginary friends and wanting to connect with their own from the past? How cool would that be?

If anyone out there is thinking back on their childhood imaginary friends and want to try to reconnect, my advice is to just do it. Because as the poster on the billboard says, I don't think imaginary friends ever truly disappear. They're somewhere inside as long as their memory remains.

For anyone out there who has imaginary friends right now that they think might be sentient like the ones in IF, you can check out my guide on how to know if your imaginary friend is sentient below:

And for anyone who never had a sentient IF of their own but wants one now, here is a huge collection of tulpamancy guides to get you started.

And as always, thank you all for reading! 💖

For more discussions about plurality in media, check out the Plurality of... Avatar The Last Airbender.