Watch the Video Trailer here to get a good sense of the movie if you’ve never seen it!

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ8K4_RrbJo

Hide and Seek is a movie that was released in 2205 starring Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning. It is about a girl who seemingly does dark things with the help of her imaginary friend Charlie. It is not made clear till the end of the movie however, that Robert De Niro is Charlie, a man suffering from Split personality disorder. A very common misconception, one that I had as well, was that the little girl was the one with the illness. Maybe it is because the plot is vague up until the last few minutes, or that a respected man with a good job couldn’t possibly have a mental illness. A young girl whose mother just died is a far more likely caniadate. being more familiar with stigmas than I was when I first saw the movie, I am able to catch all the underlying stigmas in the movie. De Niro’s other personality, Charlie is a polar opposite: muderer, deviant, violent, malicious man. This is often the assumption of the disorder. Another underlying stigma I realized is the misconception between Schizophrenia and Split personality disorder. Many people with Schizophrenia are thought to have a split personality. Whenever I hear this movie brought up in conversation, it is always something along the lines of “Oh, is that the movie where Robert De Niro has Schizophrenia or something.” Unconciously or not, people stigmatize Schizophrenia as a split personality disorder.

This movie further helps stigmatizing of metal illnesses to be a social norm. That is not to say this movie is bad or promotes stigmatizing. But De Niro’s character is given a extreme and stereotypical version of someone with split personality disorder, which is often confused as Schizophrenia. Therefore, it exists as another media example some people may see and adapt the views from it into their lives.