Sybil Movie
Oct. 25th, 2006 04:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
mysticeden.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
multiplicity_archivesI finally saw Sybil this weekend with my room mate who is also a multiple. I had read the book but never seen the film. I thought her acting was amazing! Me and my room mate both looked at each other in shock. If we hadn't known it was an actress I might have believed her. I was surprised since she's a singlet (as far as I know).
Besides from that the movie was good, although I don't understand why they made all the alters into children. That was very weird especially since a lot of them were either the same age as Sybil or older. In all reality I cant judge the movie alone because all the holes in the story I knew about since I read the book.
One question though, who was the guy? does anyone know? I knew of a few different guys in the book, but the love interest in the movie seemed like a combination of them and her best friend (who did not appear in the movie anyway).
Well this is just me ranting but I'd like to hear your opinions on this movie or the book.
Besides from that the movie was good, although I don't understand why they made all the alters into children. That was very weird especially since a lot of them were either the same age as Sybil or older. In all reality I cant judge the movie alone because all the holes in the story I knew about since I read the book.
One question though, who was the guy? does anyone know? I knew of a few different guys in the book, but the love interest in the movie seemed like a combination of them and her best friend (who did not appear in the movie anyway).
Well this is just me ranting but I'd like to hear your opinions on this movie or the book.
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Date: 2006-10-26 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 01:16 am (UTC)*runs to imdb*
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Date: 2006-10-26 02:21 am (UTC)Us
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Date: 2006-10-26 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 02:18 am (UTC)Guess the strong dislike comes from that it's one of the only movies out there, and it portrays "textbook multiplicity" and people use that movie as a way to just say "all people with multiplicity are this way".
Guess speaking of movies,I liked "Identity", simply for the fact of how it showed switching from inside to outside, and how the inside is a completely different world.
Any other "multiple movies" out there?
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Date: 2006-10-26 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 02:36 am (UTC)It's on our list of movies to rent eventually.
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Date: 2006-10-26 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 06:06 am (UTC)Recently... well its one peice of crap after another. Such as "Multiplicity is genetic? oh! It is!!!" and "Tess meet Jess"...
Tess: hi
Jess: hi
blah blah share memories.... meeerge!! Yeah it took about an hour or two and now life is perfect.
-_-0
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Date: 2006-10-26 10:05 am (UTC)This is good... how?
bwuh.
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Date: 2006-10-26 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 03:31 am (UTC)anbd yeah Tess isn't evil but everyone says she is...9_9
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Date: 2006-10-27 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 05:42 am (UTC)Not? hum... *mentally checks off stuff* nope... oh wait! Paranoia Agent! There is an ep about a multiple. they dont integrate and the series ends with them still being different people. I found one! BTW that and anime. Besides for that no, not really. No integration is baaaaad *rolls eyes*
I dont understand that code either =S
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Date: 2006-10-27 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-29 10:56 am (UTC)Julie
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Date: 2006-10-29 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 03:34 am (UTC)Same here thats why my comment.
Exactly. the whole killer thing just yeah... Not the fact that the kid was but the body was considered insane.
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Date: 2006-10-26 04:45 am (UTC)The fact that it comes off as a "horror" film isn't a coincidence. It came out just a few years after The Exorcist, when possession themes were hugely popular. Even the book kind of got segued into that-- "the dramatic story of a woman possessed by 16 separate personalities," etc. So it was played up to look like multiplicity is all spinning your head and spitting pea soup. (Sally Field didn't even look much like the real Shirley Mason-- you can see a picture of her on Astraea's controversies page.)
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Date: 2006-10-26 06:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 09:23 am (UTC)The love interest was completely fake as was most of the film, and the book.
Sally Field played Sybil as a dowdy, unkempt, almost bag lady type. The bizarre behavior, the child alters, etc., were all contrived to fulfill audience expectations of a "mental patient". Little to nothing is known of the real Shirley Mason. We have received letters from people who knew her who confirm that her mother was very controlling and allowed her no freedom, but the more extreme incidents in book and film apparently did not happen. There is no evidence backing up the assertion that Shirley was too scarred inside to have children. What we did hear from one source was that Shirley, like Dr. Wilbur, was gay.
Another source told us that Shirley remained multiple all her life despite Wilbur's attempts to integrate her; in fact she said she was lonely and depressed without the others, whom she came to regard as a family.
Psychological historian Peter Swales is doing research on what really happened with Shirley Mason. The last we heard of him, he had actually put that on hold because he was also working on a project about Marilyn Monroe and some new information was uncovered about her recently.
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Date: 2006-10-26 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-26 08:42 pm (UTC)Oh, so you do that too?
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Date: 2006-10-26 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 04:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 12:17 pm (UTC)http://www.freedomscientific.com
Now, if we're lucky...Grin. But if this link doesn't work at all, do the Google thing and it'll come up as a sponsored link.
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Date: 2006-10-26 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 07:40 am (UTC)Judging from the voluminous correspondence we've received over the last eleven years, I seriously suspect that the latter is frequently the case. Sybil, by virtue of the fact that there was almost no other literature on multiple personalities at the time, set the standard for both mental health professionals and their clients on what constituted proper behavior for a multiple. Even Truddi Chase& fit the profile, in their own way. It has become a meme, in the true sense of the word.
One reason we wrote the articles that formed the basis for our website was to conceive of and hopefully provide alternative examples.
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Date: 2006-10-27 08:31 am (UTC)Maybe, for some yes, but not for everyone. I don't think she should be the standard because everyone is different and any standard there is too static; it wont work. I also think this is more aimed at people who are multiples because of abuse not those who are born that way.
Yes its fine to provide alternative examples but these shouldn't be the standard or norm either. I dont think its a good idea to go with only one way of thinking.
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Date: 2006-10-26 02:46 pm (UTC)Prior to 1900, possession was the most frequent "diagnosis" for cases that might very well have been cases of multiplicity. Psychologically, we've only thought about personality and identity in those terms very recently (last 100 years or so) and before that everything was given supernatural reasons for occurring. If you read up on some stories of possession, particularly case studies of some witch burnings in the 16th and 17th centuries, you'll realize that all of the "symptoms" sounds a hell of a lot like multiplicity.
Some of us even have demons or inhuman soul-bonds and the like. Technically, that kind of multiplicity fits the very definition of possession.
Luc, et al
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Date: 2006-10-27 03:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-27 07:08 pm (UTC)I can't really be objective about it, because, totally independently of how many systems there actually are who are like the way Sally was portrayed, the awareness always sticks in the back of my head that, for years, and still to a certain extent, that movie was It, as far as what the public saw plurality as being. That and "Three Faces of Eve"-- people often just have to hear "based on a true story" and they believe everything in it is well researched.
This holds true for movies and fiction about anything seen as a mental disorder or a disability, actually-- particularly if the 'victim' is portrayed as sympathetic, and the story played up a story of recovery or courage or triumphing over one's problems (even if most of the problems were caused by the attitudes of others and not by the fact that what you were was intrinsically bad), people will, actually, often take that fiction as The Truth, or as an accurate depiction of what 'that type of person' (plural, autistic, otherwise 'insane,' retarded, disabled, etc, fill in the blank) are really like. (Because they're all exactly alike, of course.) To the point where they'll argue vehemently that You Are Lying, or You're A Fake, when you try to talk about your own experiences, because they saw this movie and that person in the movie is what it's really like. They want the fiction over the reality, to not only keep it at a safe distance from themselves, but to avoid seeing any similarities between them and you.
So, yeah, there are a lot of people out there who think that film is a reference. There are many people, ourselves among us, who have been accused of lying because they didn't act like Sybil in the movie, and the people who said it seemed to believe this quite sincerely. Some *doctors* even seemed to believe it was a reference too, possibly because Dr. Wilbur was portrayed in such a glowing light (she was nothing like they depicted her either) and they wanted to think of themselves as 'rescuing' the patients also, whether they did or not.