“You Are the Only Real Superpower I Ever Had” The Humanity in the Representation of Superpowered Characters with Dissociative Identity Disorder in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split and Disney’s Moon Knight
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2023-08-15
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en
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This bachelor thesis analyses how M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (2016) and Disney’s adaptation of Marvel’s Moon Knight (2022) represent Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) – formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. The theoretical framework establishes how illness narratives – and DID and other mental illness representations – have a history of negativity due to their incapability to represent people with illness with humanity. From then on, this paper analyses the level of humanness in Split and Moon Knight through their depictions of their systems as well as their use of superpowers and violence. The analysis shows that Split continues the tradition of representing DID with little humanness, causing fear and dehumanisation of the disorder, while Moon Knight gives its DID characters a lot of humanness, thus humanising them by portraying the mental condition with sympathy and understanding.
Key words: Dissociative Identity Disorder – illness narratives – Split – Moon Knight – humanity – focalisation – representation
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