My favorite holiday is Halloween. I love watching horror movies, picking out my Halloween costume with my friends, decorating the house, and watching all of the Halloween-themed television specials.
A few years ago, I was watching "Modern Family" for the first time, and a Halloween episode came on. In preparation for a neighborhood contest, the family decorates their house to look like a "Haunted Insane Asylum." Claire, the mother, has her son Luke wear a straitjacket and has her daughter Alex chained to a hospital gurney, holding a pan of candy. Haley, the oldest of Claire's children, emerges from the house dressed as a patient but with her gown on backward to look "cuter," about which she comments, "Sexy people go crazy too, you know!"
Her comment didn't sit right with me. After all, a psychiatric hospital is just that: a hospital, where people can receive the treatment they need to feel better. It is offensive and detrimental to portray patients as "scary" and "crazy" simply because their brain chemistry may be different.
While watching, I remember getting excited because the episode offered hope of being redeemable in the scene when the family's neighbors came over to the yard. One of them tears up at the sight of the decorations, calling it rude and cruel, and running off. Her husband, in order to explain her behavior, tells the family, "She spent six months in a cuckoo farm in Nevada. Sorry, she gets mad when I say that. It was in Utah."
This joke is problematic on multiple levels. First of all, her husband's mannerisms and wording imply that he needs to apologize for his wife getting offended by an act that is offensive. Further, the term "cuckoo farm" is consistent with the offensive stereotype that people suffering from mental illness are crazy. Although the show's writers had the perfect chance to demonstrate why the haunted asylum idea was offensive by having some characters be personally offended by the theme, they ruined it by using demeaning language and turning mental illness into a joke.
Since I saw that episode for the first time (you can watch the clip of the episode here), I've become increasingly aware of inaccurate portrayals of mental illnesses, especially around Halloween time. There are countless horror movies where the main antagonist is someone suffering from schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, or another mental illness, and is considered "psycho" and portrayed as extremely violent and evil.
Dressing up as those suffering from mental health issues doesn't stop with "Modern Family," either. In fact, the other day, while looking back at photos from elementary school Halloween parades, I counted several children dressed as hospital patients in straitjackets with wild makeup and hair. Although children are often too young to realize the harm in this costume, the costumes reinforce the stigma surrounding mental illness from a very young age.
This Halloween, strive to be an ally for anybody struggling with mental illness. Think twice before supporting anybody dressing in a costume that reinforces the stereotypes that already harms so many people.
Halloween can be just as fun and scary without demonizing and degrading an entire group of human beings.
