It's Happening Again... Multiple Personality and Dissociation on Film
TW: reference to child abuse, no details Spoilers: many films featuring DID and trans characters. To list them here would be a spoiler in itself… Film and TV have long been fascinated by all things psychiatric, especially multiple personality and split identities. You only have to look at the catalogue of thrillers, horror and crime drama which utilize the Jekyll-and-Hyde sublimation of one version of ourselves by another. The reveal that Norman Bates and his mother are the same person or Ed Norton’s wry-smiling altar boy in Primal Fear are chillingly memorable moments on screen. Films such as Fight Club , Identity , Split, Shelter, Raising Cain, Session 9, Peacock, Sucker Punch, Secret Window, The Ward, Three Faces of Eve and Sybil present different takes on the idea that a person can contain a multitude of wants, needs and drives which manifest as distinctly separate individuals. Superhero narratives often explore the idea of ‘alter-egos’, to varying degrees of literal o...