Emotion v. Accuracy: A Happy Medium

                    

 

The purpose I am writing this post is extremely specific, and I don’t want anyone to misunderstand why I am making the choices I am. After conducting a private interview with a classmate, who will remain anonymous out of respect, I have fully come to terms with the way I will represent my character and his episodes. Below is the interview, which was conducted verbally and which I took notes on supervised by the subject. In order to make my notes decipherable, the answers he provided will be paraphrased (the subject approves all information in it).

1) How would you characterize you disorder? How did you develop the disorder (physical experience or emotional)?

It was a culmination of two experiences, one physical and one predominantly emotional. Growing up, he was severely bullied during school and endured both physical and emotional abuse almost every day. He described it as truly horrific for any person, let alone a child in elementary and middle school. He would come home with black eyes, and the emotional trauma proved to be even worse. Recently, he experienced a traumatic car accident, and which added to his already developed and diagnosed Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

2) What triggers your episodes?

            Contrary to popular belief, these episodes usually occur with no outside stimulus. Imagine a mundane, ordinary day, even complete silence, and being left alone to your thoughts. It is primarily thoughts and memories that trigger episodes; being left to your own personal and traumatized psyche is the primary trigger. Seeing images and people associated with the event also have an effect, and can trigger episodes, but the second primary trigger that he revealed to me was seeing others in similar situations. There is an overwhelming sense of empathy that stems from relatability.

3) How long do your episodes last?

            The way in which he personally experiences them varies. In reality, an episode lasts a couple of seconds, but in his mind it can feel like hours as if he were reliving the experience. A good analogy would be the structure of a dream, how scientifically dreams are meant to last seconds at a time but when they are experienced that can seem over the course of the entire night. However, there is also the type of episode that occurs in flashes. Regardless of the length, he stressed how his episodes were unprecedentedly sensorial. The episodes were exactly like the reality he experienced.

4) How would you describe your physical responses when you go through this?

            Personally, he described his physical mannerisms as being noticeably tense and anxious. He scrunches up his face, particularly his upper eye region, tensing his eyelids. He exhibits the typical anxious mannerisms, such as touching his neck and his hands, and he stressed how he took deep breaths as if he had difficulty breathing. These are three different types of physical responses that consistently occur for him simultaneously.

5) Does it happen most often when you’re awake or asleep?

            He explains that he is usually awake when he has his episodes. He used to experience nightmares years ago but they stopped after he attended therapy. He felt very strongly about therapy, claiming that the sessions helped him and expressing that he feels everyone should have a therapist in the sense that they are completely free to let go. He stressed though that there are numerous different kinds of treatments and that it has to be catered to the individual to be effective.

6) What do you see and hear and feel during a specific episode?

When describing his episodes he has had regarding the car accident, he describes that they come in the form of either watching from above looking down on the scene or reliving it first personal. He has never experienced an episode where he was outside of the scene or witnessing it as a third person. The sounds were described as highly realistic as well, and the subject described them as stings, in media studies terms.

He also explained that originally, he could not remember many of the aspects of the event, as if he had repressed parts of it or as if it were a blur, but that the more he dealt with the issue the more of the event he recalled.

Overall, the interviewee seemed comfortable and content with his state after all of his progress learning to deal with these disorders, but he stressed how frightening each experience is and how traumatic it is to continue to relive such an experience over and over again.

     With this interview resonating in all of 

our minds, I want to clarify something vital 

to the critical analysis of my film and its representation: I am not attempting to portray 

the reality of an actual episode. I am using 

the art of film-making and expression to portray 

how someone with this disorder feels during 

episodes and how it makes them feel in the wake. 

My formalism is about emotion, not plot; the 

purpose of the formalism is to evoke emotion 

from the audience through the tone of the piece not the mood of the character! The formalist scene that you will be seeing is highly symbolic; and after filming I will provide a full breakdown of every symbol I used and why. A similar representation of events is in Tim O’Brian’s The Things They Carried. If you feel any confusion about what I am attempting to express please read this analysis of the novel and related works by the author! It will be extremely beneficial. 

           

     Konkle, M. (n.d.). The Things They Carries (Tim O'Brian, 1990). Retrieved March 27, 2016, from http://www.ransomfellowship.org/articledetail.asp?AID=187&B=Marsena Konkle&TID=5