Skip to main content

I Hate Being Stigmatized, It’s Awesome

Samarth Menon

Kanye West has been one of the most prominent figures in pop culture in the 21st century, with his antics quite well known and well covered by the media. His erratic actions made him the center of media attention for quite a while, with his mental health being a topic of speculation for years. Earlier this year, Kanye finally spoke publicly about his mental health issues, talking about being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Since then, representation of bipolar disorder and mental health in general by the media and the reception by audiences culturally has come under the scanner.

Since his publicized diagnosis, Kanye has been looked at as a figurehead for bipolar disorder. For his last album, he had the words “I hate being bipolar, It’s awesome” written on the cover as part of the artwork. Kanye’s actions have then become highly scrutinized, with his comments about racism and his political views often becoming the battleground for conversations centering around his mental health disorder. While many associated his comments with his disorder, many people with bipolar disavowed his behavior as standing in for the larger community; all in all, it has forced many to have an uncomfortable conversation about representation of real-life figures suffering from mental health disorders in the media.

It is well known that representation matters when it comes to normalizing these disorders. There has been a big push in TV, movies, music, and art to help humanize and understand mental health for the general population. However, for real-life figures like Kanye, or Kurt Cobain in the past, the pressures of representation are even more important. Kanye was often represented in the media as ‘crazy’ or a ‘lunatic,’ terms which have subsequently led to stigma around such disorders. His political comments after his diagnosis added to this association, clearly leading to even more pointed stigma as his personal behavior became even more tied to bipolar disorder. For many, Kanye’s behavior is now being perceived as the archetype for bipolar disorder. This is something which bipolar people have pushed back against, fighting back against the narrative that bipolar people are ‘racist’ because of their condition or prone to having problematic points of view.

Media representation can be important for people suffering from mental illnesses because it often helps them seek help and form support systems. Negative media attention can lead to people not being able to seek help, and further discrimination as well. Kanye himself spoke out about mental health concerns in the US, and how hard it can be to go through the entire process. This conversation about mental health can be seen as largely positive because coming from a public pop-culture icon, it helps reduce stigma. With the push for this conversation, Kanye has certainly helped many people reevaluate how they look at individuals with disorders, and how they let these diagnoses completely define the identity of the person.

Another complication which he has brought with this public diagnosis is whether or not an individual suffering from a disorder should be burdened with the pressure of being an ideal figurehead for all individuals with the condition. Mental health is a highly personal subject for many people. Should a person like Kanye be forced to stick to a particular image just to make sure he doesn’t bring a bad reputation to the larger bipolar image? It is difficult enough to deal with bipolar disorder, let alone being forced to consider these pressures as well. The media representing these individuals as representatives of the disorder do a disservice to all bipolar people by scrutinizing their every action through the lens of their illness. In a way, they dehumanize these individuals by reducing their entire identity to just the disorder.

Thus, the peculiar case of Kanye has forced many to rethink how representation should work in the media. How can one reduce stigma when representatives of mental illnesses for the media don’t always follow ideal behaviors which the general population should be comfortable with? Projecting Kanye as crazy seems like an easy way out for many, while actually treating him like the complicated figurehead he is seems like exactly the conversation which mental health specialists need to have now. 

References

Stuart, H. (n.d.). Media portrayal of mental illness and its treatments: What effect does it have on people with mental illness? Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16478286

Mental Health Representation Matters. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-real-superheroes/201809/mental-health-representation-matters

Iasimone, A. (2018, June 03). Kanye West Opens Up About Making 'Ye,' Being Diagnosed With a 'Mental Condition'. Retrieved from https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8459006/kanye-west-mental-health-ye-album-interview

Fitzgerald, K. (2018, October 19). I'm Bipolar, and I'm Finally Done With Kanye West. Retrieved from https://www.complex.com/music/2018/10/im-bipolar-im-finally-done-with-kanye-west
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PTSD and its portrayal in Peaky Blinders

AARYAN SANWAL The award-winning TV series, Peaky Blinders is set in Birmingham, England at the end of the First World War and gives an account of the Peaky Blinders that is headed by the Shelby family. Thomas Shelby was a tunneller in World War I and for his actions, received two medals of honour after the war.   This blog post shall look at the representation of war trauma, its accuracy in depictions and its effects on the lives of the characters. The two main characters that this blog post will be focusing on are Thomas Shelby and Daniel Owen (a.k.a. Danny Whiz-Bang). The two of them were tunnellers in the War and were going through a routine tunnel expedition when the Germans broke through the end of their tunnel and attacked the men in the tunnel and brutally injured Thomas and Daniel. They were able to kill the enemies and leave the tunnels, alive but severely injured. During various instances throughout the show, Thomas Shelby has recurring nightmares of his time i...
Post a Comment
Read more

PTSD and its relationship with defense mechanisms and empathy: Character analysis of Levi Ackerman (SnK)

|Indira Bulhan Blog post: 1 “Manga is for kids” (My ignorant friend, 2018). Manga is often treated by people as something which is not so serious. However, it holds within itself some dark aspects of humanity. One such example is Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan). In it, the character of Levi Ackerman has been through a series of events which sets him apart from the people around him. Through this blog post, I will look upon the nature of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its relationship with defense mechanisms and empathy.     Levi’s past is filled with events which can act as strong stressors for the development of trauma: the death of his mother at an early age, abandonment by father, raised by his uncle in the underworld in a highly unhygienic and malnourished state (who later abandons him again), death of his two closest friends and lover. Post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD can be defined as a mental disorder which can happen to peopl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Patrick Bateman: A Successful Psychopath

Abigail D'Souza Personality disorders are psychological disorders characterised by rigid and pervasive patterns of behaviour that persist over time. These must be maladaptive, or cause clinically significant distress to the individual, and are typically recognizable by late adolescence, or early adulthood. The most commonly known personality disorder is Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD), or rather Psychopathy, since people often assume the two are synonymous. They aren’t.   ASPD belongs to the Cluster B group of personality disorders, along with Histrionic, Narcissistic, and Borderline personality disorders. Individuals with these tend to be dramatic, emotional, and erratic (Hooley et al., 2021). ASPD is characterised by a lack of moral or ethical development; inability to follow approved models of behaviour; deceitfulness; manipulation of others; history of conduct problems as a child, etc. (Hooley et al., 2021). Psychopathy however, is more a set of traits, like superfi...
Post a Comment
Read more