Introduction
I would like to examine two postmodern horror narratives that engage with young women struggling with mental illness—specifically, schizophrenia—and how their status as both female and schizophrenic is depicted through their respective narratives. Furthermore, I want to consider how their digital agency—and how that digital agency is figured—compounds and contradicts the narrative’s status as a horror narrative. That is to say, what are these horror narratives saying about preteen girls with schizophrenia? How does digital media facilitate violence in the narrative? The two horror narratives I will look at are HBO’s documentary Beware the Slenderman, and Paul Tremblay’s novel A Head Full of Ghosts.
HBO’s trailer for Beware the Slenderman.
Beware the Slenderman
In June of 2014, two twelve-year-old girls stabbed their classmate and friend 19 times, leaving her for dead in the woods. The victim, named Payton (but confusingly nicknamed Bella by her friends), survives after being discovered by a cyclist. Regardless, Morgan and Anissa, the two girls who stabbed her, were charged as adults with attempted homicide.[1] Their motivation for the stabbing? A popular internet-generated horror meme called Slenderman. Earlier this year, HBO released a documentary about this story, called Beware the Slenderman.
Andrew Peck, a folklore scholar who is the go-to expert on Slenderman, had already published his studies on Slenderman, sometimes stylized as Slender Man, by the time of the murders. According to Peck, Slenderman is “A faceless, tall, eerily long-limbed humanoid clad in a black suit [that] emerged in an online forum as a pair of photoshops and a half-dozen lines of text.”[2] It originated on June 8, 2009 when SomethingAwful.com forum member “Gerogerigegege” created a discussion thread called “create Paranormal images,” inviting other users to create and share mundane images that had been manipulated to appear paranormal. Users began writing stories to accompany these images and suggested that the images were real by linking them to personal experience.[3] According to Peck, “Locating authenticity in ‘reality’ reflects one of the earliest shared expectations that emerged around Slender Man legend performances.”[4] In other words, the best Slenderman narratives were those that took place in our world, but held on to the sense of ill-intentioned mystery.
A digital version of a presentation Andrew Peck gave on Tall, Dark, and Loathsome.
According to legend scholar Bill Ellis, “Legend performances typically place events in the group’s [the “Something Awful” forum where Slenderman was conceived] conception of the real world while also challenging the boundaries of that world.”[5] When it comes to the case of Morgan Geyser, these boundaries were challenged to begin with: Morgan was beginning to show the signs of schizophrenia at the time of the murders. None of the subsequent news coverage, nor the first hour and twenty minutes of HBO’s documentary on the matter, bridge the topic of Morgan’s mental illness. The narrative structure of Beware the Slenderman is problematic because our discovery of Morgan’s schizophrenia operates as the narrative sucker-punch, co-opted into the twist at the end of the documentary as opposed to a sustainable explanation for her behavior throughout the film. Indeed, in one courtroom clip, the psychiatrist on the stand explains that “Believing that Slenderman is real is a delusion [symptomatic of childhood schizophrenia.]” He goes on to say, “What’s unique about Morgan’s case is that a severe course is so predictable.”[6] Morgan’s father also has a severe kind of schizophrenia, and even still her parents had neglected to keep an eye out for problematic behavior, or even to inform Morgan that her father also had schizophrenia. This information was unloaded upon Morgan at the hospital after the stabbing.[7] The majority of the narrative, however, would have you believe there is no such scientific explanation for Morgan’s actions.
The draw of Beware the Slenderman has its basis in Creed’s theory that “Possession becomes the excuse for legitimizing a display of aberrant feminine behavior which is depicted as depraved, monstrous, abject—and perversely appealing.”[8] Though Anissa and Morgan were not “possessed,” as it were, they were motivated by a demonic, mysterious figure all the same—or so the narrative of Beware the Slenderman would have you believe, seeing as the narrative of mental illness is largely absent. Creed writes that “Central to [possession films] was a strong sense of the vulnerability of the body and its susceptibility to possession.”[9] HBO’s official description of the documentary plays into this idea of vulnerability:
It was a local story that horrified the nation: two 12-year-old girls lured a friend into the Waukesha woods, where they proceeded to stab her 19 times in an effort to appease a faceless mythical entity known online as ‘Slenderman.’ This sobering documentary delves deep into the story and examines how an Internet urban myth could take root in impressionable young minds.[10]
Their “impressionable young minds,” (female minds) are the nexus of this vulnerability, the place where the seed of Slenderman could grow until it became too much to bear. These 12-year-old girls in the suburban Midwest commit unthinkable evil, inspired by digitally mediated horror narratives, and represent the intersection of “the major boundaries […] between innocence and corruption, purity and impurity.”[11] Ostensibly, this evil is a product of the internet.
Throughout the documentary, the internet and its digital mediations, specifically iPads, are demonized, especially by Anissa’s father. Morgan is depicted as the mastermind, and Anissa the friendless sidekick, willing to do anything. Indeed, much of the film is spent describing Anissa’s lonely, outcast status and how relieved her parents were when she found Morgan as a friend. He blames the iPad for his daughter’s “corruption,” as it were. Anissa’s independence in the digital world facilitates her penchant for violence—Anissa’s disturbing YouTube history is revealed in Beware the Slenderman, and the montage is among the most harrowing moments of the film.[12] As Peck explains it:
Of all the details of this gruesome story, the involvement of the Slender man resonated most in subsequent news coverage. The relative obscurity of the character and its de-contextualized association with the stabbing served to kindle a classic moral panic narrative. Headlines and sound bites focused on the dangers of unsupervised tween media use and the corrupting allure of the dark corners of the internet.[13]
A former FBI investigator, who happens to be female, described the case of the Slenderman stabbings as “very unusual — not just because is involves young females, but the brutality of it.”[14] Think of Creed and the monstrous woman—indeed, girl—and how “Horror emerges from the fact that woman has broken with her proper feminine roll—she has ‘made a spectacle of herself.’”[15]
To what extent can the internet be blamed for Morgan and Anissa’s actions? A recent study conducted by John A. Oyewole found that “at an average of 53.0% for males, and 53.3% for females across all ages, at least half of audiences who get exposed to violent media contents will develop a tendency to imitate such media contents.”[16] In fact, Oyewole mentions the Slenderman stabbing by name as an example of this statistic.[17] This statistic fits into the documentary’s message, which I believe prioritizes the demonization of the internet over a narrative of mental illness awareness.
A Head Full of Ghosts
Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts approaches the issue of schizophrenia in a less opaque way than it is presented to us in Beware the Slenderman. Indeed, the back jacket of the book intones, “The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie’s bizarre outbursts and subsequent descent into madness.”[18] Marjorie’s “descent into madness,” then, is at the forefront of Tremblay’s presentation of the narrative. The ambiguity of Marjorie’s schizophrenia relies on its “off-screen” (literally) nature—the drama having to do with her diagnosis and institutionalization does not take place in the house, nor does it operate as a plot factor in the reality TV show being filmed.
There are many moments when technology both mediates and facilitates the performance of Marjorie’s possession, which she claims is for the benefit of her father, who is really the sick one.[19] If you read the novel with the assumption that Marjorie is not actually possessed (which is certainly a possibility), Marjorie’s digital agency is crucial to her performance of possession: she gleans the knowledge she needs to fool the clergymen and viewers of the TV show from the internet. During the exorcism, the following exchange takes place:
Marjorie: I’m looking shit up on the Internet, looking up the same stuff over and over, and I memorize it because I’m wicked smart, because I have to fill my head with something other than the ghosts.
Father Wanderly: I suggest that you no longer allow her access to the laptop until after the rite has been performed successfully.[20]
This exchange demonstrates two things: one, that Wanderly’s belief in her demonic possession is too deep to accept this rational answer to her struggle with the “ghosts” (her schizophrenic delusions, perhaps); and his unwillingness to acknowledge Marjorie—the “you” here is her parents. Afterwards, when the adults are discussing Marjorie’s knowledge, one of the producers defends the internet standpoint: “She could’ve made the connection on her own. Or maybe she Googled my T-shirt, found Lovecraft and Yidhara on Wikipedia. Not a huge leap, there, I don’t think—“[21] Merry, writing as her blog persona, compounds the idea that the internet is the logical source of her knowledge, explaining that “John Barrett duly informs us that Marjorie claims she never heard of the Internet or the library [sic] doesn’t know where she heard the stories or the song […] but swears she hadn’t learned of them or heard them from outside sources.”[22] Her sarcastic strikethrough reads clearly: digital agency in the form of internet access facilitates Marjorie’s convincing performance of possession, as the adults around her refuse to believe she could pull such a thing off—consider this frenzied exchange after her performance:
“—even if she had looked it up on the computer—“
“—no way she could’ve memorized it all—“
“—a girl like her can’t speak as eloquently as she did—“
“—a girl wouldn’t ask the questions she asked—“[23]
Merry’s persona explains this phenomena well: “…Marjorie’s knowledge of the rite is again [sic] presented to us as proof positive of her possession. This is one of the most misogynistic aspects of the show: not only is it impossible for a silly girl [sic] to know what the patriarchy knows[…]we’re supposed to actively fear that she has acquired that knowledge.”[24]
Paul Tremblay is aware of the figuration of mental illness is his novel. Goodreads user Shiv Eloise asked of Treblay, “Where you at all considering what harm you might cause by linking schizophrenia and possession?” Tremblay responded curtly:
Harm? No. If anything, I wanted some readers to realize that religious figures have used and conflated the symptoms of various mental illnesses as (bogus) signs of possession for hundreds of years. On the other side of it, I certainly wasn’t intending to vilify people who suffer from schizophrenia. That’s not in the book either.[25]
The thread discussion continues regarding the debate between the merits of each side: religious “fanatics” mis-assigning possession to mental illness, and the potentially negative figuration of schizophrenia as the product of the devil’s spirit. Tremblay’s dismissive line, “That’s not in the book either,” makes me wonder to what extent Tremblay had considered the reception of his book—and if, as an author, he should even be asked to consider that. Regardless, the link between schizophrenia and possession in the book is obviously very strong—it drives its entire sense of ambiguous malaise. Furthermore, Marjorie’s digital agency mitigates her isolation even as it also operates as a mechanism for her to convince the adults she is really possessed: “Marjorie kept texting, fingers crawling over the phone’s keyboard screen while she talked at the same time.”[26] Marjorie navigates her schizophrenia by manipulating digital media to her advantage; it enables her to trick the bumbling adults around her that she is truly possessed.
Synthesis
We can pinpoint digital agency as the catalyst in each of these schizophrenia horror narratives. In Beware the Slenderman, Anissa and Morgan are motivated by the internet-made Slenderman, whose ambiguous digital presence is a perfect storm when combined with Morgan’s childhood schizophrenia. Indeed, Anissa’s father would rather blame technology than his daughter’s own troubles, and Morgan’s parents did not pay enough attention to their daughter’s slow disappearance into a virtual obsession with Slenderman. In A Head Full of Ghosts, internet access enables Marjorie to perform her possession in the face of her schizophrenia. On the structural level of each of these narratives, schizophrenia is figured problematically. Beware the Slenderman saves the reveal of Morgan’s mental illness for the end of the film, problematically placing her condition and her parents’ treatment of it as a plot twist. When it comes A Head Full of Ghosts, the author is ultimately unconcerned with thoroughly explaining the link he provides between mental illness and possession. We should think further about how the representation of schizophrenia, especially in young women, motivates and operates postmodern horror narratives, and what both the construction and reception of these narratives says about mental illness in the digital age.
[1] “12-year-old Wisconsin girl stabbed 19 times; friends arrested,” last modified June 4 2014, www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/justice/wisconsin-girl-stabbed
[2] Andrew Peck, “Tall, Dark, and Loathsome: The Emergence of a Legend Cycle in the Digital Age,” Journal of American Folklore 128.590 (2015): 333.
[3] Peck, “Tall, Dark, and Loathsome: The Emergence of a Legend Cycle in the Digital Age,” 337
[4] Ibid., 343.
[5] Ibid., 335.
[6] Beware the Slenderman, directed by Irene Taylor Brodsky, 2016, Home Box Office, 1:23:15.
[7] Beware the Slenderman, 1:24:00.
[8] Barbara Creed, “Woman as Possessed Monster: The Exorcist,” in The Monstrous-Feminine (New York: Routledge, 1993) 31.
[9] Creed, “Woman as Possessed Monster: The Exorcist,” 31.
[10] Beware the Slenderman.
[11] Creed, “Woman as Possessed Monster: The Exorcist,” 32.
[12] Beware the Slenderman, 43:00.
[13] “Tall, Dark, and Loathsome: The Emergence of a Legend Cycle in the Digital Age,” 346.
[14] CNN, www.cnn.com/2014/06/03/justice/wisconsin-girl-stabbed
[15] Creed, “Woman as Possessed Monster: The Exorcist,” 42.
[16] John Ayodele Oyewole, “Gory Attractions in the Threshold of the Contemporary Media: The Level of Influence on Young People,” in International Journal of Arts & Sciences 9.3 (2016): 334.
[17] Oyewole “Gory Attractions in the Threshold of the Contemporary Media: The Level of Influence on Young People,” 334.
[18] Paul Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts (New York: HarperCollins, 2013).
[19] Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts, 270.
[20] Ibid., 171.
[21] Ibid., 179.
[22] Ibid., 99.
[23] Ibid., 179.
[24] Ibid., 243.
[25] Goodreads, “Were you at all considering what harm you might cause by linking schizophrenia and possession?” Last modified December 29, 2016, www.goodreads.com/questions/528468-were-you-at-all-considering-what-harm-you
[26] Tremblay, A Head Full of Ghosts, 66.