What Does Hollywood Get Wrong About Trauma

Hollywood and filmmakers often portray a person suffering from trauma inaccurately. Often, they show trauma as something that is easily put behind the protagonist and forgotten. Or as something that only affected them in the past and doesn’t stay with them and inform their reactions in the present. As we know, past traumas can trigger a person to have flashbacks and be thrown back into the traumatic event.

In real life, we experience traumas that create a pattern of avoidance that limits our lives. We can live our day-to-day lives with danger lurking around every corner that deadens our joy and spontaneity.

In the movie, “Whale Rider” the young protagonist suffers from rejection and experiences emotional hurts that affect her sense of self and self-worth. Hollywood misses the fact that traumas can also be a variety of experiences, not just physical and sexual violation but experiences that affect that person’s development as they grow. She is rejected by her grandfather who is looking for the future chief of their people and cannot conceive that a female could be that needed leader.

In the movie “AI”, by Steven Spielberg, the protagonist is a robot designed to look and act like a real boy. He is purchased by a couple that cannot have their own biological children. Over the course of the film the robot, named David, is adopted by the couple but is ultimately driven out to a remote area and abandoned on the side of the road by his mother. David is unneeded now that the biological son they conceived after adopting him has come out of a coma. He wanders in the woods and eventually finds other robots who have become obsolete and unwanted. These events show us his experience of being abandoned and rejected by those that are supposed to love him.

Later in the movie he has a robotic teddy bear who, unbeknownst to him, had sniped a lock of his mother’s hair. The DNA taken from the strand is used to create a short-lived replica of his mother.  He encounters a mythic character called The Blue Fairy who grants him one day to spend with this recreation. This time she is loving and attentive. We see them having a birthday party, playing together and being close. He is celebrated and cared for, so he knows he is loved and worthwhile. The film ends with him cuddled in bed with the longed-for mother holding him tight and singing to him. He gets to receive the healing experience he needs to address his trauma of abandonment. It is a fanciful use of imagination and symbolism that helps the viewer connect to the parts of themselves that have felt the pain of abandonment and hopefully feel a cathartic connection to David’s emotions.

Hollywood is a dream factory. And sometimes the dreams they portray are inaccurate to what people experience with trauma. It lacks a deeper look at how trauma affects a person’s life and the long-term impact on their sense of safety and well-being.

They can also tell stories about how we develop as humans. Then show how the traumas that occur  prevent us from developing the life skills and experiences needed to help us become the people we were meant to be. Films like AI can show us the way forward. They can give us a way to identify our own woundings and find ways to make sense of our own lives.

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