The portrayal of plurality

This'll be my first post but whatever, wasnt expecting my first post to be a plurality essay but it's what I feel like writing.

I'll say what many have said before; plurals, especially those with DID, don't get very good portrayal in the media. Take movies such as Split, for example. It shows systems as dangerous. Evil. Once in a class of ours last year, we had to watch the beginners theatre classes collection of humorous scenes. A section of one stuck out to us; a man was going on a date, and when the girl arrived, she warned him that she hadn't taken her pills. She then, throughout the awkward 5 minutes that carried out for this, proceeded to 'switch between personalities' with all of them being wild things, such as, at one point, a gorilla. We didn't say anything of course, as a closeted system who would rather not have an entire class know, but it did hurt a bit. I wasn't here for this, but I discussed it with Max and Popee, who both were there for it.

There's quite a few movies centered around DID, one that comes to mind immediately is Perfect Blue, the 1997 Satoshi Kon anime film. It's based on a book, Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis, by Yoshikazu Takeuchi. Spoilers ahead for Perfect Blue, of course. Anyway, DID is not the main theme of this movie, and doesn't really come up until around the end, but it is still a pretty large plotpoint. It's revealed at the end that one of the main antagonists, Rumi, has DID and her one alter is meant to be the main character, Mima. This alter believes she is the real Mima, and sees Mima as an impostor who must be killed. In the finale of the movie, she chases Mima, attempting to kill her, before being stabbed by Mima and nearly being run over. After this, there is a time skip to Mima visiting Rumi in a mental institution. A background character during this scene says "she does return to her Rumi personality sometimes."

Now, it was 1997, so I'm not too suprised by the fact that DID is misrepresented here. However, it still hurts to see so much media insisting that alters are evil. We are not evil, we do not want to hurt you, kill you, kidnap you, etc. We are just normal people trying to live. I won't deny the existence of persecutors, or 'harmful' alters, because they can exist. Yes, they can sometimes have intentions of harming people. But that is not all of them, and that is certainly not all alters.

I'm not really sure what direction this post was going in. It was kind of just a random idea I had, to be honest. But I think you get the point. Alters get a bad wrap in the media. It's unfair. I'd do anything for some good representation of a DID system. Of any plurality at all. I'd kill for that- or, at least, that's what Hollywood believes.


-Tighnari