How do you show a ‘person having trauma' on screen ? It is so difficult to picturized someone’s mental health or depression in realistic way.
To show someone mental health in a movie you have to remember that ‘Trauma can not be verbalized it.’ It would be unrealistic then. And this thing is explained by Wandavision episode 08 in a very splendid way.
It was not so perfect (as to show someone’s mental health in movie is a difficult task) but they did it in a great way. We heard about Wanda’s childhood trauma for multiple times in Marvel’s movies but didn’t see it in any movie. We didn’t experience many aspects of her life till Wandavision’s episode 08. There are many beautiful moments of her life in that episode but the most noticeable part of her life comes after 10 minutes of the episode.
She literally re-live traumatic aspects of her life. She is living in her past and present simultaneously where anything can trigger her fractured mind. Any feeling, sound, memory or even any happy moment can bring her back where she felt herself week, helpless and alone. And best example of trigger in the episode was where Tyler Hayward says “He is not yours.” Wanda couldn’t control her emotions and gets support from Chaos. Although vision was not alive but she was hoping that she could feel him. But in the end she have nothing but helplessness. And that was the strongest moment of the episode. Because her unseen constant struggle with herself inside and her internal overpower threat breaking her apart from inside out.
This thing needs not to have by fictional superhuman only but we normal people also have these problems in our real life. And the best example is shown by Joaquin Phoenix in a movie called “You were never really here”. We will talk about that some other day. I suggest you to watch this movie.
Coming back to the topic. Wanda is hopeless now. She has nothing inside her to feel. Her emotions wanted to come out whom she controlled for a long time but at that moment where she opens a letter from vision: read “to grow old with, V” broke her apart. She has no one. Every person she loved is now dead.
Her emotions started coming out. As she is a superhuman so we assume that her emotions turned into her crippled reality’s creation. Her perfect Utopia. Her perfect dream world where she would never be helpless again. But when she know the truth at the end of episode she looks surprised of her own creation. She don’t want to admit this is wrong or she needs help.
She used her Chaos to hide her emotions. By doing so she feels powerful for a while but in the long run she is falling apart.
And this is the best way to show a Trauma without verbalizing it.
Wanda as living in her present still intimidated by her past. The bad thing about a Trauma is it lies inside you whole life. Literally any moment can trigger you.
So be thankful to yourself that are not facing any trauma because in real life no person can define or accept that he is facing any type of trauma. He just have bad memories which troubles him always.
Hope you know it now that how Wandavision defined Wanda’s trauma. I know this was not the perfect way to show someone’s trauma on screen as scenario varies from one person to another. It could be better. Her crippled emotions are her creation but this is not a strong valid point because in her past (movie: Avengers age of ultron) her traumatic emotions brought Chaos not creation.
What do you think about Wanda’s Trauma ? Let me know in the comments below.
