When you think about Comic-Con, images of superheroes, fantasy film series and video games tend to come to mind. And while that is certainly what sits at the heart of the event, there’s actually a lot more depth to it than you might assume.
New York’s 2019 Comic-Con has held a number of panels discussing social issues and how the industry treats them within popular productions. One such topic is mental health and the manner in which it’s depicted within the world of sci-fi and fantasy (SFF).
For the panel ‘Putting It All Out There: SFF and Mental Health’, writers Shaun Hamill, Lauren Shippen and Stephen Graham Jones spoke with Assistant Editor of The Mary Sue, Princess Weekes, about the treatment of mental health within the genre. In the process, they highlighted an important point.
“The depictions of women with mental illness to me is always interesting because there’s this element of hyper-sexualisation with it,” Weekes started.
“…thinking of like, Basic Instinct, and thinking of even the idea that you have to ‘save a woman by killing her’ – rest in peace Daenerys Targaryen…
“how to you think that, or what would you think that gender plays into depictions of mental illness?”
The panel went on to discuss the all too common conflation of beauty or sex with mental illness for female characters, and the (fairly obvious) problems with that as a trend. If you look at examples like the Bunny Boiler, Harley Quinn (holding out for Birds of Prey) and Nina of Black Swan, they’re each connected with a prominent sexual theme. And the story doesn’t end too well for many of them…
Cases like Daenerys Targaryen and Dr Jean Grey (X-Men The Last Stand) differ slightly, but they remain beautiful women whose mental health stories are linked to their romantic interests. Both of these characters lose control, forcing the men they love to ‘save’ them from themselves.
Comparatively, men are more likely to be shown to be dark, tormented souls like, say, the Joker. He is not an alluring puzzle to be figured out… just a violent monster. Depictions of mental illness being synonymous with violence have traditionally been another problematic reoccurrence in the SFF world, I should point out. But that’s another discussion.
While this isn’t every film, and there are exceptions in Hollywood’s illustration of mental illness, it is clear that historically, certain tropes regularly pop up.
Responding to Weekes’ comments at Comic-Con, Hamill added:
“I have seen the irresponsible depiction, Harley Quinn of course being the most iconic one for most of us in this room, probably. And you still see it – the Manic Pixie Dream Girl; I feel like that trope is tied up in there, as well.”
“…I don’t know if anybody remembers the TV show Six Feet Under, where there’s the brother and sister. …They’re both mentally ill but Brenda is this incredible sex pot and Billy is allowed to be this play for laughs… or joke, walking around the house in this Christmas sweater crying. Really ugly crying. And she doesn’t really get to do that. When she starts to break it’s sexy; she starts giving hand jobs to clients, or whatever… hopefully we’re moving away from that.”
He pointed out that truthful writing is the best way forward from here:
“Let it be ugly, let it be drab. Let it really feel like what it feels like. Let it weigh.”
Graham Jones added that he’d “be interested in a statistical analysis of whether men or women writers do this more often of rendering women with mental health issues…”.
“If it is more men, which I suspect is the case… then I guess it’s one of two things,” he continued.
“…the Pygmalion thing where, ‘this woman is clay, I can mould her into something useful.’ Or how do I make this woman interesting? They know that they shouldn’t have her raped, which is like, the go-to thing in fiction. And so, they give her a mental health issue. ”
In any case, while Hollywood’s relationship with mental health is far from perfect, it is improving. And discussions like this one at Comic-Con’s mental health panel are a great way to push forward.
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