When we started watching The Three Faces of Eve, I could help but be reminded of the first season of the television show Heroes and the character Niki Sanders who has DID. On the show, Niki experiences black outs when she gets mad or upset, much like Eve goes through in the film. Also like Eve, she cannot remember what happens during those time periods and often comes back to herself with changed clothes and surroundings and no idea how they got to be that way. Niki has a husband and a son who are also confused by what is happening to her, and they are sometimes frightened by her actions, like Bonnie and Ralph are scared of Eve's changes.
Niki's other personality is her sister Jessica. Jessica is bitter, aggressive, and spontaneous where Niki is more meek, hesitant, and nurturing. The contrast between the two personalities is very similar to Eve White and Eve Black. In the film, Eve Black is a party girl. She doesn't care about her responsibilities or the future, an almost complete opposite to Eve White who is timid and family-oriented. Jessica is violent and rarely thinks about the consequences of her actions in her search for revenge, sometimes hurting Niki's family with her plans. Niki on the other hand, cares deeply for her family and cares above all else about protecting them, although she is indecisive sometimes about which course of action to take to do that.
Niki and Eve both experienced traumatic events that sparked the beginning of their DID. Niki was molested by her father and then watched him kill her Jessica when she tried to protect her. Jessica had always been the stronger sister and could stand up to their father when Niki couldn't. Through her DID, Niki is able to gain her sister's strength (not just emotionally, she has the super power of strength that only appears when Jessica takes over) and use it to protect herself and her family. Many times, Niki returns after a black out to find that she has attacked people or has a gun, things that Niki herself would never do. Eve also has her other personality as a way to cope with things that she cannot deal with herself.
One major difference between how DID is portrayed on Heroes and in The Three Faces of Eve is the way the personalities of the patients interact. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black experiences what Eve White does, but not the other way around; Eve White is unaware of Eve Black until a doctor informs her that she has another personality. Similarly, Jane is aware of both Eve White and Eve Black, but they are not aware of her. Also, none of the personalities communicate with each other throughout the film in anyway besides feelings of their death or energy. Niki and Jessica on the other hand do communicate. When Niki looks in a mirror, she can speak to Jessica and often struggles with her for control of their body.
Both Niki and Eve seek treatment for their illness. They understand that with unpredictable changes in personality they are not safe to those around them, especially their children. They check themselves into mental facilities and undergo much observation and treatment in order to figure out more about their disorder and how a stable, normal lifestyle can be maintained. For Eve, normalcy is gained through two of her three personalities disappearing after time and treatment, until only Jane remains. Niki eventually learns to use her super strength without Jessica, but suffers from a third personality in later seasons of the show before she finally dies the process of rescuing a friend of her son. -Eliza Forman
I do not watch Heroes, so I cannot directly comment on what you said. Anyways, I would like to compare the Three Faces of Eve with Fight Club. In Fight Club, the narrator gets to meet his alter ego, Tyler Durden, without awareness that Tyler is an alter ego. In Eve, Eve White and Black Eve can never directly communicate, but Eve Black gets to see and hear everything Eve White does. Furthermore, the two movies differ in how the identity disorder disappears. In Fight Club, the narrator almost commits suicide to kill his ego; but in Eve, a third personality emerges and becomes victorious passively. Also, the ways the egos control their hosts differ. Although both alter egos see and hear what the original personality does, Tyler Durden can only control the narrator, when the narrator is asleep or knocked unconscious; but in the Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black can come out whenever she wants. Lastly, the origins of their respective split personalities differ. In Fight Club, Tyler Durden emerges to help the narrator complete his process of maturity by going against social norms, in order to shatter his false world. Eve Black first emerged as a way to deal with the pain Eve White felt as she was coerced into kissing her dead grandmother. To bring this comparison full circle, both characters made a wall of conflict, in which an alter ego was introduced, in order to push through and experience life. Overall, I believe Fight Club is a fantastic adaptation of split personality. -Todd Kirkland
I think that Eliza’s comments on the character that has a personality that is supposedly her sister is interesting. I have never heard of a character who has DID have an identity that is related to them. I have not see Fight Club yet but Todd makes an interesting statement by saying that the character in the movie commits suicide in order to kill his alter ego. I would think that this might happen in real life, unlike how Eve White magically gets better. It seems as if DID patients always end up going down a deadly path that almost never leads to them getting well again. Anyways, for my work of fiction I chose the ER episode “Jigsaw”. The main character in this episode is a patient who enters the hospital asking for antibiotics in a raging attitude. The doctors at first just believe he is an aggressive person. He leaves the ER in a fit and returns as a trauma patient. However, when he returns he is a nicer person who is unlike the earlier person he was. Like Eve Black, the first ego whose name is Clyde is radical and nothing like the “host” person. His alter ego or different personality is Willis, supposedly the host, who is kind, gentle and cooperates completely with the doctors’ orders. When Clyde returns once again, one of the nurses yells at him in order to possibly bring Willis back so that she can talk to him about the medical procedure that will save his life. When the nurse yelled at him, it reminded me of how when Eve Black was at the bar with the man who wanted to take her home. When he started yelling and arguing with her, her personalities switched and she became yet another person. I thought it was interesting to see how different types of television shows and motion pictures use techniques to change the egos from one to another. Has anyone else seen a movie or tv show where the alter egos change when someone is yelling at them? At the end of the episode, the ego Clyde changes once again for his third alter ego who is called Andre. Andre is extremely similar to the last ego of Eve White’s who is extremely pleasant and kind.
I agree with Sandhya, I also find it interesting that Niki and Jessica are supposedly sisters. Right now, it seems everyone is comparing the “true story” of Eve to a T.V. series. So I thought I would do the same, sorry Todd. I normally do not watch American Dad, but I saw this episode that a character exhibited DID. This episode was called “The One That Got Away.” I haven’t seen many past episodes so it was a little confusing. So Roger, I think is an Alien, but lives with the Smiths. Then apparently in this episode, Roger develops an alter ego named Sidney, who is pleasant. As most of us know from the movie we watched in class, Eve’s traumatic experience triggered her DID. In Roger’s case, he wanted a pair of black gloves, but did not have the money. So he notes that all he has to do is get close to the sales lady so he can steal the keys to the glove case. For that reason, Roger disguises himself to be a good man. Once Roger gets the gloves, but sees the sales lady in trouble for “losing” the keys, Roger becomes his alter ego Sidney. Roger’s alter ego in comparison to Eve White is similar in attitude. Both are caring. Roger and Eve Black nevertheless, they seem to be compatible. In the beginning Roger does not know Sidney is really him and tries his best to ruin Sidney’s life. Similar to what Even Black does to Eve White, Roger damages Sidney’s reputation. Todd, I haven’t seen Fight Club, but I was thinking about how you said “the narrator almost commits suicide to kill his ego.” In comparison to the work of fiction I watched, Sidney hires a hitman to get Roger. (Also Todd, I am not sure, but doesn’t Eve White try to cut her wrist in the bath room to kill her alter ego?) One other major difference between Eve and Roger is the ending. In Eve, both Eves and Jane could not communicate with each other, but Jane survives. In American Dad, Roger and Sidney at the end of the show get to communicate with each other through a mirror, but Roger betrays Sidney and stabs him. Ultimately, Roger survives. Eliza I just noticed something. Both of the characters we are taking about with DID can communicate with their alter ego through a mirror!
Since I am not much of a T.V. show fanatic I decided to compare the Faces of Eve with the movie Me, Myself and Irene. This movie is about a man named Charlie (played by Jim Carrey) who has an alter ego named Hank. Charlie is a very mild-mannered, passive man, who is often made fun of. However, complications with D.I.D. seem to arise when his wife leaves him. Charlie is left to support his three kids on his own. Much like Eve, the onset of Charlie’s D.I.D seemed to have been caused by a traumatic event. In Eve’s case it was kissing her dying grandmother and in Charlie’s case it was his wife leaving him as well as letting others get the best of him. In addition, there were a lot of similarities between the personalities of Eve white and Charlie, and Eve black and Hank. Both Eve White and Charlie seemed to have soft-spoken, kind personalities; whereas Eve Black and Hank were much more blunt and outrageous. When comparing Eve Black to Hank, I noticed they both made inappropriate, yet funny, sexual gestures toward others.
Although there were many similarities between the two movies I did, however, notice a difference between the two. In the movie Faces of Eve, Eve changes from one personality to the other sporadically and even sometimes consciously. However Charlie only switches to his alter ego, Hank, when something makes him angry or upset. In addition, Eve could communicate with her alter-ego whereas Charlie could not.
I am also not a T.V. show fanatic so I decided to compare Regina's Song by David Eddings to the Faces of Eve. Regina's Song is a novel about identical twins that look exactly alike. Their names are Regina and Renata - the ‘dominant’ twin is Regina. These twins are in fact so identical that when their footprint records are lost no one knows which twin is which even their own parents. They live all together in a family and life goes on but one day one of the twins gets raped and killed, the authorities simply assume that it was the 'dominant' one: Regina. Years go by and Regina, the one who survived, after going through years of psychotherapy finally attends to college and tries leading a normal life. She goes to the same college with a guy named Mark, who was a family friend and someone who was always looking after Regina. Well after keeping an eye on her series of petty criminals are found murdered in the area and after some time he and his friends realize that it was her who was doing all that. She was trying to find the murderer of her sister. She accomplishes her goal but when she does she has a complete psychological breakdown and forgets where she is and her name. Afterwards they take her to the abbey for the rest of her life. The scene where she loses all of her memories about her personality shows a perfect example of D.I.D. I find this movie to be similar with the Faces of Eve since for both of the characters D.I.D. originated based on traumatic events. For Eve it was kissing her dead grandmother in the coffin when she was a little child and for Regina it was the death of her sister and the actualization of her guilt for killing so many people. I also found some things to be different. One of them was that Faces of Eva was more of a romantic movie and Regina's Song was more of an action movie. One thing that I can say for sure is that the exemplification of D.I.D. in both movies was excellent and I enjoyed them both.
The only movie on that list which I watched was Fight Club. Sorry I would comment on the movie Me, Myself and Irene but I have no idea what it’s about. In comparing Fight Club with the movie The Three Faces of Eve, I noticed how dissociative identity disorder disappears in different ways. As Todd already said both egos are presented in a different way. In fight Club Edward Norton has his alternate ego Tyler Durden without knowing that he does. On the other side in the movie The Three Faces of Eve, each one of them knows what is happening when the other is speaking. In each of the movies the alternate person comes out in different ways. In The Three Eve’s each one of the three can come out whenever they please to. But in Fight Club Tyler Durden can only “take over” Edward Norton when he sleeps at night or is down during a fight. We can clearly see the difference between both movies how the split personality is revealed. Both of the movies also differ in how they get rid of their other personalities. In The Three Faces of Eve, eve black and eve white clashed bringing out and alternate ego, Jane which took over. In Fight Club Edward Norton gets rid of his ego by shooting himself in the mouth, and essentially this eliminates his alternate ego. The only similarity between both movies was that each of the different egos tried to help out each person mentally, and solve whatever issue they had deep down inside. For Edward Norton it was to break down his fake world. In the end I have to say both movies display split personality very well, but Fight Club still wins because it’s awesome. -Sascha Turnheim
For this assignment, I watched Me, Myself and Irene. The movie itself is a goofy, fast-pace, comedic interpretation of DID. However, the main ideas remain the same. The main character, Charlie Baileygates developed a split personality after he experienced a traumatic event. Charlie, a kind and optimistic gentleman who bottles up all this trouble has come to his limit when his wife has an affair, marries to another guy and leaves him with three kids of another father. After such disappointment, Charlie seems to become a completely different person who resembles his appearance every time he is thrown of the edge by incredible annoyance or knocked down to the ground. Charlie’s “evil twin” calls himself Hank Evans, who like Eve Black and Eve White, the complete polar opposite to Charlie. Unlike the reality, the movie portrays the process of switching between personalities in a more unpredictable way. In Three Faces of Eve, the doctor could easily control the emergence of each personality simply by saying the right name. However, in the movie, something that would cause Charlie physical harm or emotional disturbance has to occur before Hank could come out. It is interesting because you would think it would be harder in real life and easier in the movie, but it is the opposite. I have also seen Fight Club before, although I vaguely recall what happened in the movie, I remember that like Me, Myself and Irene, the main character has the be knocked unconscious before the hidden personality can come out. In Fight Club, the main character did not come to realize that the cool, humble and respectable guy was himself until the very end of the movie. It is interesting how in all these three movies the “host” did not notice the presence of his/her other personality until he/she was told by others. I’m not sure how the mirror would help a person communicate to his/her other “self” like Eliza and Bonnie mentioned about their films, but I feel that the mirror symbolizes the reflection of self well. The patient cannot see or learn about his/her self unless he/she looks at a mirror or is described by others.
I am going to have to agree with Sascha that Fight Club is AWESOME. The story line begins with a narrator referred to as Jack, (Edward Norton) explaining to us how exactly he came to know Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) . We come to find out only at the very end of the movie, that Tyler is in fact Jack’s alter-ego. The "two of them" create a men-only underground boxing club and as Tyler Durden progresses closer to becoming the dominant personality in the relationship, Fight Club evolves into Project Mayhem, a secret society of oppressed men who, led by Tyler Durden, basically just retaliate against society. The narrator and Tyler hold conversations as if Tyler was really a person and the narrator tends to refer to his current emotional state with phrases such as "I am Jack's sense of rejection." We also come to know Marla Singer, who the narrator met while touring support groups, as the femme fatal that Tyler was sleeping with and the antagonist to Jack's relationship with Tyler blowing up. She knew him as Tyler because it was he who related to her. Through the whole process, Marla Singer's role in the narrator's life eventually causes him to realize that he is the elusive Tyler Durden and he was merely projecting an alternate personality. Unlike in the movie he Three Faces of eve, the main character of Fight club is completely unaware of his other identity being a part of him. Eve White, Eve Black and Jane are very aware of each other, and can even control when they “come out”. Also, Eve’s three personalities, are aware of everything that is going on at all times. Jack, although always “with” Tyler, does not realize that it is actually himself who is traveling the world to start an underground revolution. The two movies are similar, however, in the fact that each of the personalities for each character are on very different ends of the spectrum. They all have different motives and ways of going about things. Both Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve portray DID very well, however I think that since TTFOE was a true life story it was much more realistic, whereas Fight Club is more for the thrill and suspense, but again I agree that it wins, because it rocks.
Like Cherelle, I’m not too much of a T.V. fanatic, so I chose to compare “The Three Faces of Eve” to the movie “X-Men: The Last Stand.” In this movie, there are people with certain abilities that classify them as “mutants” in the world, and a specific mutant, Jean Gray, was a character with psychic abilities that had died in the previous movie. She returns to life in the form of her alter-ego, Phoenix, who develops further and further as the movie goes along. Phoenix came about as Professor X began placing psychic barriers in Jean Gray’s mind to help prevent her powers from growing out of her control. The “creature” as Phoenix was called, represented all of her primal urges that would take control as barriers get placed on her. She despised all forms of control and would lash out violently to oppose them. Jean Gray would often switch between these two identities but gradually Phoenix became more and more dominant. She joined the rebel mutant group known as the Brotherhood that was fighting against the regular human attempts at taking away their powers, and ultimately, it would lead to the death of both identities. Like in the movie “The Three Faces of Eve,” Jean Gray was aware of her alternate ego, however, in contrast to Eve, she did not demonstrate the ability to control the way she would switch between her egos. On the contrary, for Jean it was a fight to not let it happen. And like Rachel said, Eve’s three personalities would always be aware of what is going on at all times, as well as in X-men. Phoenix would always seem to know what has happened with Jean as well as with her, and vice versa. Phoenix would even use that kind of information to her advantage, and impersonate Jean when trying to get something out of someone close to her. Again, like Rachel said, the identities of Eve would cover large distances in a spectrum, and this is also true for Jean Gray and Phoenix. Their own personal motives would differ completely and would have very different ways of doing things. I enjoyed this movie but I do think Eve’s story is much more realistic in portraying DID, as well as just being more of a believable story than X-men. Although you have to admit, it would be pretty cool.
I loved X-Men: The Last Stand and I do enjoy Heroes. But I think the most interesting case of DID in the entertainment I have read or seen is in Psycho. Norman Bates, one of my favorite movie villains from a top 5 movie of mine has one of the more troubling split identities because he is taking the identity of his dead mother. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black is a party (like Eliza mentioned) and she does not really care what happens to her other self: Eve White.
Eve White does not understand her other personality until she is told about it. In Psycho, Norman Bates actually doesn’t have two personalities to begin with and they interact frequently when his mother’s personality gains power. After he shockingly murders his mother and her lover, he feels lost without her and tries to emulate her voice and style to make it so he could talk to his mother again.
This is different from Eve Black and White because she develops a third personality to deal with things she couldn’t accomplish herself. Jane then becomes the whole of the three personalities and becomes normal again.
In Psycho, the therapist at the end says that at times Norman could be all his mother, but he could never be all Norman. It’s sad in this case because in the end, the acquired personality is so dominant that Norman ceases to exist and she is now the only one. His mother’s personality is the one that lashes out and kills every character murdered in the film, coming out primarily to hurt those Norman has desires for. Eve Black is the fun-loving party girl Eve White wishes to be; Mrs. Bates is the strong figure Norman wishes to be.
Psycho is a different version of DID mainly because Norman wanted to have his mother with him. He developed this personality so he could carry conversations with her, so he could have his mother again, where has in The Three Faces of Eve, the Eves cannot communicate with Jane and their interactions are never reached. Norman would dress-up like his mother to give him the illusion that she was there with him. Eve would just shift personality. Psycho is the more impressive movie visually and emotionally because Mrs. Bates didn’t give Norman a happy ending, and many people are left dead in the process.
The media possesses a certain way of extracting interesting plots and conflicts out of topics that would not be thought to hold such Hollywood enchantment. The “true story” of Eve in The Three Faces of Eve provides a media-esque view of dissociative identity disorder, a subject that that doesn’t just “end” in a real person’s life as it would in a movie. Nonetheless, it is interesting to compare how DID is portrayed in movies, such as Eve White in The Three Faces of Eve to Sybil Dorsett in the 1976 film Sybil, and how the two different movies depict the disease.
One thing that I noticed many students have been writing about is the awareness between identities, and I believe that this is one important theme, in addition to topics such as differences in emergence (as Paul mentions) or origin of the condition (as Cherelle mentions). Comparing The Three Faces of Eve with Fight Club Sascha comments that, “Unlike in the movie he Three Faces of eve, the main character of Fight club is completely unaware of his other identity being a part of him.” In addition, Hussein and Rachel discuss the subject of awareness: “Jean Gray was aware of her alternate ego, however, in contrast to Eve, she did not demonstrate the ability to control the way she would switch between her egos…And like Rachel said, Eve’s three personalities would always be aware of what is going on at all times, as well as in X-men.”
So, in juxtaposing awareness between The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil, I found a major similarity; that is, that one personality is the most confident and aggressive, and that this identity in turn is the one that is aware of all the others. In Eve, the personality that fits this description is Jane, who is aware of both Eve White and Eve Black, where Eve White possesses the least awareness and Eve Black has the second most. In Sybil, the character who has the most awareness is Vicki, a confident, relaxed, and assertive woman. Also, some of the personalities in Sybil possess different levels of awareness of other identities. However, one major difference between the two movies is that in Sybil, the personalities accept each other to a certain extent and coexist despite their awareness, whereas Eve White’s personalities do not. For example, in one scene of Sybil, two of Sybil’s sixteen personalities, Marsha and Vanessa, compliment one another on each other’s paintings. It was interesting that in that scene, Sybil easily painted with both hands due to there being two different personalities, or “people,” painting.
I also watched Fight Club and I agree that the portrayal of DID in that movie compared to The Three Faces of Eve is completely different. Fight Club took DID from a completely different perspective than Eve although both movies had relatively the same idea. The differences that some people mentioned were the facts that Eve was aware of her multiple personalities while Edward Norton was not. Also the fact that Eve one day was just magically healed from counseling while Edward Norton had to go through extensive mental changes to even realize that Tyler was himself and that he had a disorder. The perspectives from the movies themeselves were actually the most different I feel because throughout the entire movie of The Three Faces of Eve you, as the viewer are aware that the movie is based around DID and that the main character has a problem, while during Fight Club you were not aware that Edward Norton had a disorder at all, until you realized it when he started to at the end of the movie. The perspective that Fight Club took I think gives a better idea to the viewer because you have to actually go back and think about the entire movie and how it changes everything. I personally had to watch the movie again and analyze the entire thing knowing that Brad Pitt was a counterpart of Edward Norton. While I think that The Three Faces of Eve was still an accurate portrayal of DID, I think that the end where her personalities are all fused together in a single therapy visit is slightly unrealistic. In every movie I've seen or book I have read involving DID the patient isnt just healed once they realize the basis of their problems, they still have to go through extensive psychotherapy to complete the process and finally be normal. So I think that the Eve movie gave an unaccurate idea to people about how hard it really is to be cured from DID.
Throughout all of these posts the common theme is that DID connects two opposites and makes them one person. Also, in many of the portrayals of DID, the opposing identities have no idea that they have another identity. It is no exception in the Captain Underpants series. Principal Krupp is hypnotized by his two students and it creates an alternate personality within the principal. Neither the principal nor Captain Underpants realize that the other exists. Also, they are completely different with Mr. Krupp being a grumpy, mean principal and Captain Underpants being a fun, goofy, strange superhero with crazy powers. Eve White and Eve Black portray DID as one personality having the control over the other. Similarly, Mr. Krupp’s students have control over his ability to control Captain Underpants by using hypnotism. Another obvious difference is that principal Krupp and Captain Underpants are forced to switch because of hypnotism. Eve White changes into Eve Black and Jane because she has a mental disorder. Also, when asked to switch between people, Eve White, Eve Black and Jane have that ability. Captain Underpants and Principal Krupp certainly do not. Another difference between the two stories is that Eve White seeks medical attention because she knows something is wrong when she gets headaches and has blackout spells. Principal Krupp doesn’t seek attention because he doesn’t have the slightest idea that he has a problem. Even if he did seek help there would be no remedy for his problem because his alternate personality doesn’t control his life. Matt W.
I, like Cherelle, watched Me, Myself, and Irene. I will not resummarize the plot, however, I will add some additional details. Charlie begins to get angry, which is not characteristic of him, when his wife leads him. The inner anger ends up splitting into a separate personality. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black can decide when she wants to come out, whereas in Me, Myself, and Irene, Hank can only come out when Charlie becomes enraged. Hank knows what Charlie does, but Charlie has no recollection of the things Hank does, just like Eve Black knows all about Eve White, while Eve White only experiences blackouts. Eve finds out about Eve Black when her husband expresses his concern and they visit a doctor. Her doctor puts her under hypnonsis to try to find the source of her DID. He eventually links it to her childhood experience with her dead grandmother. Upon retrieving this memory, Eve’s third, more balanced personality begins to take over. Charlie also goes to see a doctor, who prescribes him medication to suppress his alternate personality. The source of his DID is clear, so it does not need to be uncovered. His problems only return when he loses his medication. Both movies show how DID can affect significant others or those close to the patient. Eve’s husband is frightened and frustrated by Eve Black. Although the doctor explains the situation, he does not fully understand or accept that the switches are not in her control. Both Hank and Charlie fall for Irene. Like in The Three Faces of Eve, Charlie is interested in a companionate relationship with Irene, while Hank is more promiscuous and is attracted to Irene in a more physical way.
Like Rachel, Sascha, and Jazmin, I watched the movie: Fight Club. Until learning about DID, I always thought that Edward Norton’s character was schizophrenic, since he hears voices and sees his other personality, Brad Pitt, as a tangible person in front of him. For example, when Brad Pitt is first introduced to the audience, he is sitting next to Edward Norton on a plane, and they go on to engage in conversation and shake hands. However by the end of the movie, the audience learns that Brad Pitt is not a separate character, but instead, he is Edward Norton’s other personality.
Unlike Eve White/Black, Edward Norton’s character switches back and forth between personalities without the other’s around him really seeing a clear difference. The movie continues and he is the only one aware of Brad Pitt’s existence. No one really questions him ever about him acting drastically different sometimes. The only one who really mentions Brad Pitt’s existence is Bob who just says to Edward Norton that the creator of fight club, whom he believes is Brad Pitt, is a great man, despite the fact the Edward Norton is the same persona s Brad Pitt and therefore the creator.
One thing I found very interesting is that Eve Black claims that one day she will “come out and Stay out” and that progression of the take over of one personality is very visible in Fight Club. Edward Norton goes from being himself, a quiet rule-abiding man, to becoming Brad Pitt, a rule-breaking non-conformist who lives in an abandoned house making soap. In Edward Norton’s case his other personality truly does take over his life and change his identity without him even being aware that the transformation is even going on. I wonder if he would have believed he did in fact have DID if he had a psychiatrist like Eve to tell him so.
I, like many of the other people who have posted, watched Fight Club to examine the portrayal of dissociative identity disorder in fiction. The movie follows one man (the narrator, played by Edward Norton) as he meets Tyler Durden. Norton’s character eventually discovers that he is, in fact, Tyler Durden – that Tyler is another part of his own personality.
The biggest difference between Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve is that in Fight Club the narrator actually interacts with Tyler, seeing him as a physical manifestation. The two have ongoing conversations and the narrator even perceives Tyler’s actions while he is out of the room. The narrator thinks of Tyler as another entire person and, until the end of the movie, has no doubts that what he sees from Tyler was actually another person. In The Three Faces of Eve, although Eve’s three personalities are aware of each other and of what the other personalities do, they do not directly interact. Eve White and Eve Black never have a conversation, even though Eve Black says that she’s conscious of everything that Eve White does while she’s doing it.
One thing that these two films have in common is the idea that the main characters’ different personalities are built off of entirely different characteristics. Both the narrator from Fight Club and Eve White are somewhat mild-mannered when their stories begin. Both are, though not entirely happy with their lives, content enough. Their alternate personalities are completely different – almost polar opposites. In both cases as well the alternate personalities are trying to get them to change something about their lives.
As Rebecca mentioned, the theme of how and when a patient discovers his or her other personalities is prevalent in many movies and TV shows. This is certainly the case in The Three Faces of Eve, where the story of how each of her personalities discovers the other is almost as significant as the interactions between said personalities. Eve White was first diagnosed with DID, and then in recurring therapy sessions her doctor discovered other personalities. Eve did not seek help because she was experiencing multiple personalities but because she was experiencing black-outs, and because her husband noticed inconsistencies in her behavior. Contrastingly in the episode of Psych, Who Ya Gonna Call?, the person afflicted with DID seeks help because he feels that he is being haunted. The episode explores the diagnosis, and the connection with a murder, rather than the experience of the patient, but the case still highlights many interesting aspects of DID. Robert is aware of the woman following and haunting him because she, Regina one of his personalities, is trying to leave him hints about her existence. She will cook dinner or move furniture in hopes that he will realize that she exists. Eve Black, Eve White and Jane are all the same sex, but Robert, Regina, and the third personality Martin Brody, are not. This brings up an interesting conflict when Regina seeks out sex-change surgery. If a person has multiple personalities, it does not seem absurd for each personality to have a unique sexual orientation. Another predominant theme seems to be that seems to be included in many movies is that existence of a “good” personality and an “evil” or “malicious” personality. This is not readily apparent in The Three Faces of Eve as all three personalities seem to be inherently good, but it is visible in the episode of Psych. At the end it is revealed that Martin Brody is generally the “evil” personality and responsible for the death of the doctor at the beginning of the episode. However the situation is not so easily discernable as the doctor was scheduled to perform a sex change operation on Robert/ Regina/ Martin Brody, per request of Regina, but unbeknownst to either Robert or Martin Brody. Unlike many other movies, including The Three Faces of Eve, the viewer is never informed which personality dominates and which become more secondary. The episode ends when the viewer learns that Robert was admitted to a psychiatric hospital to receive treatment.
I just recently watched the movie “Me, Myself and Irene”, and it did in fact display DID and its issues in a way that really reached out to viewers. In both “Me, Myself and Irene” and “The faces if Eve”, the characters use their alternate personalities to cope with stress and certain difficult situations. In “Me, Myself and Irene,” Charlie uses his other identity, Hank, to fight bad guys, act tough, and what one could try to call flirting with women. He doesn’t purposely call on his other half to help him, but it naturally occurs in these moments of internal tension. It is a similar case with Eve White in “The faces of Eve.” Eve’s grandmother died when she was very young and Eve was immensely traumatized by this event. When Eve’s mother tried to make Eve kiss her grandmother’s dead body in the casket, Eve freaked out and this was where one of her other personalities was created; to help protect herself against things that scared her.
Another strange thing I noticed was that Eve was not able to contact her other personalities, whereas Charlie had conversations with his other half and in one scene even began fighting with him. I understand that it is a comedy and they create the scenes purely for he sake of laughter, but it does seem plausible that one personality would literally punch the other.
The last thing that confuses me about DID was that Eve had the power to switch between all three personalities, while Charlie had no control over it. I would like to study the cause further and see if it is truly possible for people suffering from DID to actually switch between personalities.
The movie I chose to compare The Three Faces of Eve to was Me, Myself, and Irene. This movie is about a man who basically has let everybody walk all over him his entire life until one day, after his wife leaves him, he simply cracks and an aggressive alternate personality breaks out, which he has no control over. Although the movie is a comedy and exaggerates the situations the main character gets himself into, it still portrays DID fairly accurately to how it is in real life. Me, Myself and Irene is similar to The Three Faces of Eve in its portrayal of DID in that both movies portray the alternate personalities as drastically different from the original personalities. However in Three Faces of Eve, a third personality emerges in Eve that is almost in between her other two drastic personalities, whereas in Me, Myself, and Irene, the main character only has two drastically different personalities. Also, in The Three Faces of Eve, each one of her personalities was able to access the other two on command but in Me, Myself, and Irene, the main character had no control over the emergence of his aggressive and impulsive alternate personality. Another difference between the two movies is that in The Three Faces of Eve, the three personalities had about the same amount of “exposure time”, whereas in Me, Myself, and Irene, his alternate personality was out much less than the original personality and it was portrayed as the “evil” personality that had to be diminished. In conclusion, although both movies did portray DID in some similar ways, there were way more differences in the portrayal of DID in each movie.
I watched the movie X-Men The Last Stand and to me this was not the D.I.D. we saw in the Three Faces Of Eve. Jean Grey does seem to have two personalities but it felt like it connected more with the Freudian theory of Id Superego and Ego. because Jean’s alternate personality is selfish and more instinctual as the other characters in the movie state. I thought the Phoenix personality was an example of a weaker Superego or a stronger Id. Also it connects to the frontal lobe functioning. Good judgments are not made by Phoenix because there might be developmental error there. Still there is a struggle for control so D.I.D is also a part of it. There are some similarities to the Three Faces of Eve. Eve White and Eve Black can be compared to Jean Grey and Phoenix. Eve White is the normal self-conscious Jean Grey and Eve Black is a self-centered person acting on simple impulses. On both stories they get help to control their impulsive personality. The awareness of the alternate personality is not brought up in a bring matter in x-men like it is expected to know that there is an alternate personality if there is one. So it more of a action movie with conflicts that attract attention than a documentary. But still I would say that the case in x-men is a D.I.D case and it is a little bit similar to the movie three faces of eve but as I said before I thought more about the Freudian theory and the frontal lobe than did when I watched the movie. Rasendra Poudyal
Lately on television, “Me, Myself and Irene” has played on several occasions. In this movie, the main character Charlie, is taken as a joke by everybody. Everybody walks all over him, his wife even cheats on him and eventually leaves him. After his wife leaves and citizens do not treat him like a police offer should, his other personality Hank comes out. Hank deals with all of the stress Charlie has built up by picking fights with close to everybody. The same way Hank deals with all of Charlie’s frustrations, Eve Black does the same for Eve White in the “The Three Faces of Eve”. The one thing I did not agree with was the labeling of Charlie’s illness in the movie. They said he had a made up form of schizophrenia when he had DID. I thought that it was pretty funny that Eve Black would go out and party all night and then let have Eve White deal with the hangover. This also happened in “Me, Myself, and Irene” when Hank drank the night before, had sex with Irene, and then left Charlie with the hangover and swollen prostate in the morning.
22 comments:
When we started watching The Three Faces of Eve, I could help but be reminded of the first season of the television show Heroes and the character Niki Sanders who has DID. On the show, Niki experiences black outs when she gets mad or upset, much like Eve goes through in the film. Also like Eve, she cannot remember what happens during those time periods and often comes back to herself with changed clothes and surroundings and no idea how they got to be that way. Niki has a husband and a son who are also confused by what is happening to her, and they are sometimes frightened by her actions, like Bonnie and Ralph are scared of Eve's changes.
Niki's other personality is her sister Jessica. Jessica is bitter, aggressive, and spontaneous where Niki is more meek, hesitant, and nurturing. The contrast between the two personalities is very similar to Eve White and Eve Black. In the film, Eve Black is a party girl. She doesn't care about her responsibilities or the future, an almost complete opposite to Eve White who is timid and family-oriented. Jessica is violent and rarely thinks about the consequences of her actions in her search for revenge, sometimes hurting Niki's family with her plans. Niki on the other hand, cares deeply for her family and cares above all else about protecting them, although she is indecisive sometimes about which course of action to take to do that.
Niki and Eve both experienced traumatic events that sparked the beginning of their DID. Niki was molested by her father and then watched him kill her Jessica when she tried to protect her. Jessica had always been the stronger sister and could stand up to their father when Niki couldn't. Through her DID, Niki is able to gain her sister's strength (not just emotionally, she has the super power of strength that only appears when Jessica takes over) and use it to protect herself and her family. Many times, Niki returns after a black out to find that she has attacked people or has a gun, things that Niki herself would never do. Eve also has her other personality as a way to cope with things that she cannot deal with herself.
One major difference between how DID is portrayed on Heroes and in The Three Faces of Eve is the way the personalities of the patients interact. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black experiences what Eve White does, but not the other way around; Eve White is unaware of Eve Black until a doctor informs her that she has another personality. Similarly, Jane is aware of both Eve White and Eve Black, but they are not aware of her. Also, none of the personalities communicate with each other throughout the film in anyway besides feelings of their death or energy. Niki and Jessica on the other hand do communicate. When Niki looks in a mirror, she can speak to Jessica and often struggles with her for control of their body.
Both Niki and Eve seek treatment for their illness. They understand that with unpredictable changes in personality they are not safe to those around them, especially their children. They check themselves into mental facilities and undergo much observation and treatment in order to figure out more about their disorder and how a stable, normal lifestyle can be maintained. For Eve, normalcy is gained through two of her three personalities disappearing after time and treatment, until only Jane remains. Niki eventually learns to use her super strength without Jessica, but suffers from a third personality in later seasons of the show before she finally dies the process of rescuing a friend of her son.
-Eliza Forman
I do not watch Heroes, so I cannot directly comment on what you said. Anyways, I would like to compare the Three Faces of Eve with Fight Club. In Fight Club, the narrator gets to meet his alter ego, Tyler Durden, without awareness that Tyler is an alter ego. In Eve, Eve White and Black Eve can never directly communicate, but Eve Black gets to see and hear everything Eve White does. Furthermore, the two movies differ in how the identity disorder disappears. In Fight Club, the narrator almost commits suicide to kill his ego; but in Eve, a third personality emerges and becomes victorious passively. Also, the ways the egos control their hosts differ. Although both alter egos see and hear what the original personality does, Tyler Durden can only control the narrator, when the narrator is asleep or knocked unconscious; but in the Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black can come out whenever she wants. Lastly, the origins of their respective split personalities differ. In Fight Club, Tyler Durden emerges to help the narrator complete his process of maturity by going against social norms, in order to shatter his false world. Eve Black first emerged as a way to deal with the pain Eve White felt as she was coerced into kissing her dead grandmother. To bring this comparison full circle, both characters made a wall of conflict, in which an alter ego was introduced, in order to push through and experience life. Overall, I believe Fight Club is a fantastic adaptation of split personality.
-Todd Kirkland
I think that Eliza’s comments on the character that has a personality that is supposedly her sister is interesting. I have never heard of a character who has DID have an identity that is related to them.
I have not see Fight Club yet but Todd makes an interesting statement by saying that the character in the movie commits suicide in order to kill his alter ego. I would think that this might happen in real life, unlike how Eve White magically gets better. It seems as if DID patients always end up going down a deadly path that almost never leads to them getting well again.
Anyways, for my work of fiction I chose the ER episode “Jigsaw”. The main character in this episode is a patient who enters the hospital asking for antibiotics in a raging attitude. The doctors at first just believe he is an aggressive person. He leaves the ER in a fit and returns as a trauma patient. However, when he returns he is a nicer person who is unlike the earlier person he was. Like Eve Black, the first ego whose name is Clyde is radical and nothing like the “host” person. His alter ego or different personality is Willis, supposedly the host, who is kind, gentle and cooperates completely with the doctors’ orders. When Clyde returns once again, one of the nurses yells at him in order to possibly bring Willis back so that she can talk to him about the medical procedure that will save his life. When the nurse yelled at him, it reminded me of how when Eve Black was at the bar with the man who wanted to take her home. When he started yelling and arguing with her, her personalities switched and she became yet another person. I thought it was interesting to see how different types of television shows and motion pictures use techniques to change the egos from one to another. Has anyone else seen a movie or tv show where the alter egos change when someone is yelling at them?
At the end of the episode, the ego Clyde changes once again for his third alter ego who is called Andre. Andre is extremely similar to the last ego of Eve White’s who is extremely pleasant and kind.
-Sandhya
I agree with Sandhya, I also find it interesting that Niki and Jessica are supposedly sisters. Right now, it seems everyone is comparing the “true story” of Eve to a T.V. series. So I thought I would do the same, sorry Todd. I normally do not watch American Dad, but I saw this episode that a character exhibited DID. This episode was called “The One That Got Away.” I haven’t seen many past episodes so it was a little confusing. So Roger, I think is an Alien, but lives with the Smiths. Then apparently in this episode, Roger develops an alter ego named Sidney, who is pleasant. As most of us know from the movie we watched in class, Eve’s traumatic experience triggered her DID. In Roger’s case, he wanted a pair of black gloves, but did not have the money. So he notes that all he has to do is get close to the sales lady so he can steal the keys to the glove case. For that reason, Roger disguises himself to be a good man. Once Roger gets the gloves, but sees the sales lady in trouble for “losing” the keys, Roger becomes his alter ego Sidney. Roger’s alter ego in comparison to Eve White is similar in attitude. Both are caring. Roger and Eve Black nevertheless, they seem to be compatible. In the beginning Roger does not know Sidney is really him and tries his best to ruin Sidney’s life. Similar to what Even Black does to Eve White, Roger damages Sidney’s reputation. Todd, I haven’t seen Fight Club, but I was thinking about how you said “the narrator almost commits suicide to kill his ego.” In comparison to the work of fiction I watched, Sidney hires a hitman to get Roger. (Also Todd, I am not sure, but doesn’t Eve White try to cut her wrist in the bath room to kill her alter ego?) One other major difference between Eve and Roger is the ending. In Eve, both Eves and Jane could not communicate with each other, but Jane survives. In American Dad, Roger and Sidney at the end of the show get to communicate with each other through a mirror, but Roger betrays Sidney and stabs him. Ultimately, Roger survives. Eliza I just noticed something. Both of the characters we are taking about with DID can communicate with their alter ego through a mirror!
-Bonnie Leung
Since I am not much of a T.V. show fanatic I decided to compare the Faces of Eve with the movie Me, Myself and Irene. This movie is about a man named Charlie (played by Jim Carrey) who has an alter ego named Hank. Charlie is a very mild-mannered, passive man, who is often made fun of. However, complications with D.I.D. seem to arise when his wife leaves him. Charlie is left to support his three kids on his own. Much like Eve, the onset of Charlie’s D.I.D seemed to have been caused by a traumatic event. In Eve’s case it was kissing her dying grandmother and in Charlie’s case it was his wife leaving him as well as letting others get the best of him. In addition, there were a lot of similarities between the personalities of Eve white and Charlie, and Eve black and Hank. Both Eve White and Charlie seemed to have soft-spoken, kind personalities; whereas Eve Black and Hank were much more blunt and outrageous. When comparing Eve Black to Hank, I noticed they both made inappropriate, yet funny, sexual gestures toward others.
Although there were many similarities between the two movies I did, however, notice a difference between the two. In the movie Faces of Eve, Eve changes from one personality to the other sporadically and even sometimes consciously. However Charlie only switches to his alter ego, Hank, when something makes him angry or upset. In addition, Eve could communicate with her alter-ego whereas Charlie could not.
-Cherelle
I am also not a T.V. show fanatic so I decided to compare Regina's Song by David Eddings to the Faces of Eve. Regina's Song is a novel about identical twins that look exactly alike. Their names are Regina and Renata - the ‘dominant’ twin is Regina. These twins are in fact so identical that when their footprint records are lost no one knows which twin is which even their own parents.
They live all together in a family and life goes on but one day one of the twins gets raped and killed, the authorities simply assume that it was the 'dominant' one: Regina.
Years go by and Regina, the one who survived, after going through years of psychotherapy finally attends to college and tries leading a normal life. She goes to the same college with a guy named Mark, who was a family friend and someone who was always looking after Regina. Well after keeping an eye on her series of petty criminals are found murdered in the area and after some time he and his friends realize that it was her who was doing all that. She was trying to find the murderer of her sister. She accomplishes her goal but when she does she has a complete psychological breakdown and forgets where she is and her name. Afterwards they take her to the abbey for the rest of her life. The scene where she loses all of her memories about her personality shows a perfect example of D.I.D. I find this movie to be similar with the Faces of Eve since for both of the characters D.I.D. originated based on traumatic events. For Eve it was kissing her dead grandmother in the coffin when she was a little child and for Regina it was the death of her sister and the actualization of her guilt for killing so many people.
I also found some things to be different. One of them was that Faces of Eva was more of a romantic movie and Regina's Song was more of an action movie.
One thing that I can say for sure is that the exemplification of D.I.D. in both movies was excellent and I enjoyed them both.
- Avetis G.
The only movie on that list which I watched was Fight Club. Sorry I would comment on the movie Me, Myself and Irene but I have no idea what it’s about. In comparing Fight Club with the movie The Three Faces of Eve, I noticed how dissociative identity disorder disappears in different ways. As Todd already said both egos are presented in a different way. In fight Club Edward Norton has his alternate ego Tyler Durden without knowing that he does. On the other side in the movie The Three Faces of Eve, each one of them knows what is happening when the other is speaking. In each of the movies the alternate person comes out in different ways. In The Three Eve’s each one of the three can come out whenever they please to. But in Fight Club Tyler Durden can only “take over” Edward Norton when he sleeps at night or is down during a fight. We can clearly see the difference between both movies how the split personality is revealed. Both of the movies also differ in how they get rid of their other personalities. In The Three Faces of Eve, eve black and eve white clashed bringing out and alternate ego, Jane which took over. In Fight Club Edward Norton gets rid of his ego by shooting himself in the mouth, and essentially this eliminates his alternate ego. The only similarity between both movies was that each of the different egos tried to help out each person mentally, and solve whatever issue they had deep down inside. For Edward Norton it was to break down his fake world. In the end I have to say both movies display split personality very well, but Fight Club still wins because it’s awesome.
-Sascha Turnheim
For this assignment, I watched Me, Myself and Irene. The movie itself is a goofy, fast-pace, comedic interpretation of DID. However, the main ideas remain the same. The main character, Charlie Baileygates developed a split personality after he experienced a traumatic event. Charlie, a kind and optimistic gentleman who bottles up all this trouble has come to his limit when his wife has an affair, marries to another guy and leaves him with three kids of another father. After such disappointment, Charlie seems to become a completely different person who resembles his appearance every time he is thrown of the edge by incredible annoyance or knocked down to the ground. Charlie’s “evil twin” calls himself Hank Evans, who like Eve Black and Eve White, the complete polar opposite to Charlie. Unlike the reality, the movie portrays the process of switching between personalities in a more unpredictable way. In Three Faces of Eve, the doctor could easily control the emergence of each personality simply by saying the right name. However, in the movie, something that would cause Charlie physical harm or emotional disturbance has to occur before Hank could come out. It is interesting because you would think it would be harder in real life and easier in the movie, but it is the opposite.
I have also seen Fight Club before, although I vaguely recall what happened in the movie, I remember that like Me, Myself and Irene, the main character has the be knocked unconscious before the hidden personality can come out. In Fight Club, the main character did not come to realize that the cool, humble and respectable guy was himself until the very end of the movie. It is interesting how in all these three movies the “host” did not notice the presence of his/her other personality until he/she was told by others. I’m not sure how the mirror would help a person communicate to his/her other “self” like Eliza and Bonnie mentioned about their films, but I feel that the mirror symbolizes the reflection of self well. The patient cannot see or learn about his/her self unless he/she looks at a mirror or is described by others.
Paul S.
I am going to have to agree with Sascha that Fight Club is AWESOME. The story line begins with a narrator referred to as Jack, (Edward Norton) explaining to us how exactly he came to know Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) . We come to find out only at the very end of the movie, that Tyler is in fact Jack’s alter-ego. The "two of them" create a men-only underground boxing club and as Tyler Durden progresses closer to becoming the dominant personality in the relationship, Fight Club evolves into Project Mayhem, a secret society of oppressed men who, led by Tyler Durden, basically just retaliate against society. The narrator and Tyler hold conversations as if Tyler was really a person and the narrator tends to refer to his current emotional state with phrases such as "I am Jack's sense of rejection." We also come to know Marla Singer, who the narrator met while touring support groups, as the femme fatal that Tyler was sleeping with and the antagonist to Jack's relationship with Tyler blowing up. She knew him as Tyler because it was he who related to her. Through the whole process, Marla Singer's role in the narrator's life eventually causes him to realize that he is the elusive Tyler Durden and he was merely projecting an alternate personality. Unlike in the movie he Three Faces of eve, the main character of Fight club is completely unaware of his other identity being a part of him. Eve White, Eve Black and Jane are very aware of each other, and can even control when they “come out”. Also, Eve’s three personalities, are aware of everything that is going on at all times. Jack, although always “with” Tyler, does not realize that it is actually himself who is traveling the world to start an underground revolution. The two movies are similar, however, in the fact that each of the personalities for each character are on very different ends of the spectrum. They all have different motives and ways of going about things. Both Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve portray DID very well, however I think that since TTFOE was a true life story it was much more realistic, whereas Fight Club is more for the thrill and suspense, but again I agree that it wins, because it rocks.
-Rachel Hoag
Like Cherelle, I’m not too much of a T.V. fanatic, so I chose to compare “The Three Faces of Eve” to the movie “X-Men: The Last Stand.” In this movie, there are people with certain abilities that classify them as “mutants” in the world, and a specific mutant, Jean Gray, was a character with psychic abilities that had died in the previous movie. She returns to life in the form of her alter-ego, Phoenix, who develops further and further as the movie goes along. Phoenix came about as Professor X began placing psychic barriers in Jean Gray’s mind to help prevent her powers from growing out of her control. The “creature” as Phoenix was called, represented all of her primal urges that would take control as barriers get placed on her. She despised all forms of control and would lash out violently to oppose them. Jean Gray would often switch between these two identities but gradually Phoenix became more and more dominant. She joined the rebel mutant group known as the Brotherhood that was fighting against the regular human attempts at taking away their powers, and ultimately, it would lead to the death of both identities. Like in the movie “The Three Faces of Eve,” Jean Gray was aware of her alternate ego, however, in contrast to Eve, she did not demonstrate the ability to control the way she would switch between her egos. On the contrary, for Jean it was a fight to not let it happen. And like Rachel said, Eve’s three personalities would always be aware of what is going on at all times, as well as in X-men. Phoenix would always seem to know what has happened with Jean as well as with her, and vice versa. Phoenix would even use that kind of information to her advantage, and impersonate Jean when trying to get something out of someone close to her. Again, like Rachel said, the identities of Eve would cover large distances in a spectrum, and this is also true for Jean Gray and Phoenix. Their own personal motives would differ completely and would have very different ways of doing things. I enjoyed this movie but I do think Eve’s story is much more realistic in portraying DID, as well as just being more of a believable story than X-men. Although you have to admit, it would be pretty cool.
- Hussein Kheireddine
I loved X-Men: The Last Stand and I do enjoy Heroes. But I think the most interesting case of DID in the entertainment I have read or seen is in Psycho. Norman Bates, one of my favorite movie villains from a top 5 movie of mine has one of the more troubling split identities because he is taking the identity of his dead mother. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black is a party (like Eliza mentioned) and she does not really care what happens to her other self: Eve White.
Eve White does not understand her other personality until she is told about it. In Psycho, Norman Bates actually doesn’t have two personalities to begin with and they interact frequently when his mother’s personality gains power. After he shockingly murders his mother and her lover, he feels lost without her and tries to emulate her voice and style to make it so he could talk to his mother again.
This is different from Eve Black and White because she develops a third personality to deal with things she couldn’t accomplish herself. Jane then becomes the whole of the three personalities and becomes normal again.
In Psycho, the therapist at the end says that at times Norman could be all his mother, but he could never be all Norman. It’s sad in this case because in the end, the acquired personality is so dominant that Norman ceases to exist and she is now the only one. His mother’s personality is the one that lashes out and kills every character murdered in the film, coming out primarily to hurt those Norman has desires for. Eve Black is the fun-loving party girl Eve White wishes to be; Mrs. Bates is the strong figure Norman wishes to be.
Psycho is a different version of DID mainly because Norman wanted to have his mother with him. He developed this personality so he could carry conversations with her, so he could have his mother again, where has in The Three Faces of Eve, the Eves cannot communicate with Jane and their interactions are never reached. Norman would dress-up like his mother to give him the illusion that she was there with him. Eve would just shift personality. Psycho is the more impressive movie visually and emotionally because Mrs. Bates didn’t give Norman a happy ending, and many people are left dead in the process.
- Conor O'Riordan
The media possesses a certain way of extracting interesting plots and conflicts out of topics that would not be thought to hold such Hollywood enchantment. The “true story” of Eve in The Three Faces of Eve provides a media-esque view of dissociative identity disorder, a subject that that doesn’t just “end” in a real person’s life as it would in a movie. Nonetheless, it is interesting to compare how DID is portrayed in movies, such as Eve White in The Three Faces of Eve to Sybil Dorsett in the 1976 film Sybil, and how the two different movies depict the disease.
One thing that I noticed many students have been writing about is the awareness between identities, and I believe that this is one important theme, in addition to topics such as differences in emergence (as Paul mentions) or origin of the condition (as Cherelle mentions). Comparing The Three Faces of Eve with Fight Club Sascha comments that, “Unlike in the movie he Three Faces of eve, the main character of Fight club is completely unaware of his other identity being a part of him.” In addition, Hussein and Rachel discuss the subject of awareness: “Jean Gray was aware of her alternate ego, however, in contrast to Eve, she did not demonstrate the ability to control the way she would switch between her egos…And like Rachel said, Eve’s three personalities would always be aware of what is going on at all times, as well as in X-men.”
So, in juxtaposing awareness between The Three Faces of Eve and Sybil, I found a major similarity; that is, that one personality is the most confident and aggressive, and that this identity in turn is the one that is aware of all the others. In Eve, the personality that fits this description is Jane, who is aware of both Eve White and Eve Black, where Eve White possesses the least awareness and Eve Black has the second most. In Sybil, the character who has the most awareness is Vicki, a confident, relaxed, and assertive woman. Also, some of the personalities in Sybil possess different levels of awareness of other identities. However, one major difference between the two movies is that in Sybil, the personalities accept each other to a certain extent and coexist despite their awareness, whereas Eve White’s personalities do not. For example, in one scene of Sybil, two of Sybil’s sixteen personalities, Marsha and Vanessa, compliment one another on each other’s paintings. It was interesting that in that scene, Sybil easily painted with both hands due to there being two different personalities, or “people,” painting.
~Rebecca Montana
I also watched Fight Club and I agree that the portrayal of DID in that movie compared to The Three Faces of Eve is completely different. Fight Club took DID from a completely different perspective than Eve although both movies had relatively the same idea. The differences that some people mentioned were the facts that Eve was aware of her multiple personalities while Edward Norton was not. Also the fact that Eve one day was just magically healed from counseling while Edward Norton had to go through extensive mental changes to even realize that Tyler was himself and that he had a disorder. The perspectives from the movies themeselves were actually the most different I feel because throughout the entire movie of The Three Faces of Eve you, as the viewer are aware that the movie is based around DID and that the main character has a problem, while during Fight Club you were not aware that Edward Norton had a disorder at all, until you realized it when he started to at the end of the movie. The perspective that Fight Club took I think gives a better idea to the viewer because you have to actually go back and think about the entire movie and how it changes everything. I personally had to watch the movie again and analyze the entire thing knowing that Brad Pitt was a counterpart of Edward Norton.
While I think that The Three Faces of Eve was still an accurate portrayal of DID, I think that the end where her personalities are all fused together in a single therapy visit is slightly unrealistic. In every movie I've seen or book I have read involving DID the patient isnt just healed once they realize the basis of their problems, they still have to go through extensive psychotherapy to complete the process and finally be normal. So I think that the Eve movie gave an unaccurate idea to people about how hard it really is to be cured from DID.
-Jazmin
Throughout all of these posts the common theme is that DID connects two opposites and makes them one person. Also, in many of the portrayals of DID, the opposing identities have no idea that they have another identity. It is no exception in the Captain Underpants series. Principal Krupp is hypnotized by his two students and it creates an alternate personality within the principal. Neither the principal nor Captain Underpants realize that the other exists. Also, they are completely different with Mr. Krupp being a grumpy, mean principal and Captain Underpants being a fun, goofy, strange superhero with crazy powers.
Eve White and Eve Black portray DID as one personality having the control over the other. Similarly, Mr. Krupp’s students have control over his ability to control Captain Underpants by using hypnotism.
Another obvious difference is that principal Krupp and Captain Underpants are forced to switch because of hypnotism. Eve White changes into Eve Black and Jane because she has a mental disorder. Also, when asked to switch between people, Eve White, Eve Black and Jane have that ability. Captain Underpants and Principal Krupp certainly do not.
Another difference between the two stories is that Eve White seeks medical attention because she knows something is wrong when she gets headaches and has blackout spells. Principal Krupp doesn’t seek attention because he doesn’t have the slightest idea that he has a problem. Even if he did seek help there would be no remedy for his problem because his alternate personality doesn’t control his life.
Matt W.
I, like Cherelle, watched Me, Myself, and Irene. I will not resummarize the plot, however, I will add some additional details. Charlie begins to get angry, which is not characteristic of him, when his wife leads him. The inner anger ends up splitting into a separate personality. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black can decide when she wants to come out, whereas in Me, Myself, and Irene, Hank can only come out when Charlie becomes enraged. Hank knows what Charlie does, but Charlie has no recollection of the things Hank does, just like Eve Black knows all about Eve White, while Eve White only experiences blackouts. Eve finds out about Eve Black when her husband expresses his concern and they visit a doctor. Her doctor puts her under hypnonsis to try to find the source of her DID. He eventually links it to her childhood experience with her dead grandmother. Upon retrieving this memory, Eve’s third, more balanced personality begins to take over. Charlie also goes to see a doctor, who prescribes him medication to suppress his alternate personality. The source of his DID is clear, so it does not need to be uncovered. His problems only return when he loses his medication. Both movies show how DID can affect significant others or those close to the patient. Eve’s husband is frightened and frustrated by Eve Black. Although the doctor explains the situation, he does not fully understand or accept that the switches are not in her control. Both Hank and Charlie fall for Irene. Like in The Three Faces of Eve, Charlie is interested in a companionate relationship with Irene, while Hank is more promiscuous and is attracted to Irene in a more physical way.
Like Rachel, Sascha, and Jazmin, I watched the movie: Fight Club. Until learning about DID, I always thought that Edward Norton’s character was schizophrenic, since he hears voices and sees his other personality, Brad Pitt, as a tangible person in front of him. For example, when Brad Pitt is first introduced to the audience, he is sitting next to Edward Norton on a plane, and they go on to engage in conversation and shake hands. However by the end of the movie, the audience learns that Brad Pitt is not a separate character, but instead, he is Edward Norton’s other personality.
Unlike Eve White/Black, Edward Norton’s character switches back and forth between personalities without the other’s around him really seeing a clear difference. The movie continues and he is the only one aware of Brad Pitt’s existence. No one really questions him ever about him acting drastically different sometimes. The only one who really mentions Brad Pitt’s existence is Bob who just says to Edward Norton that the creator of fight club, whom he believes is Brad Pitt, is a great man, despite the fact the Edward Norton is the same persona s Brad Pitt and therefore the creator.
One thing I found very interesting is that Eve Black claims that one day she will “come out and Stay out” and that progression of the take over of one personality is very visible in Fight Club. Edward Norton goes from being himself, a quiet rule-abiding man, to becoming Brad Pitt, a rule-breaking non-conformist who lives in an abandoned house making soap. In Edward Norton’s case his other personality truly does take over his life and change his identity without him even being aware that the transformation is even going on. I wonder if he would have believed he did in fact have DID if he had a psychiatrist like Eve to tell him so.
-Pat H
I, like many of the other people who have posted, watched Fight Club to examine the portrayal of dissociative identity disorder in fiction. The movie follows one man (the narrator, played by Edward Norton) as he meets Tyler Durden. Norton’s character eventually discovers that he is, in fact, Tyler Durden – that Tyler is another part of his own personality.
The biggest difference between Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve is that in Fight Club the narrator actually interacts with Tyler, seeing him as a physical manifestation. The two have ongoing conversations and the narrator even perceives Tyler’s actions while he is out of the room. The narrator thinks of Tyler as another entire person and, until the end of the movie, has no doubts that what he sees from Tyler was actually another person. In The Three Faces of Eve, although Eve’s three personalities are aware of each other and of what the other personalities do, they do not directly interact. Eve White and Eve Black never have a conversation, even though Eve Black says that she’s conscious of everything that Eve White does while she’s doing it.
One thing that these two films have in common is the idea that the main characters’ different personalities are built off of entirely different characteristics. Both the narrator from Fight Club and Eve White are somewhat mild-mannered when their stories begin. Both are, though not entirely happy with their lives, content enough. Their alternate personalities are completely different – almost polar opposites. In both cases as well the alternate personalities are trying to get them to change something about their lives.
As Rebecca mentioned, the theme of how and when a patient discovers his or her other personalities is prevalent in many movies and TV shows. This is certainly the case in The Three Faces of Eve, where the story of how each of her personalities discovers the other is almost as significant as the interactions between said personalities. Eve White was first diagnosed with DID, and then in recurring therapy sessions her doctor discovered other personalities. Eve did not seek help because she was experiencing multiple personalities but because she was experiencing black-outs, and because her husband noticed inconsistencies in her behavior. Contrastingly in the episode of Psych, Who Ya Gonna Call?, the person afflicted with DID seeks help because he feels that he is being haunted. The episode explores the diagnosis, and the connection with a murder, rather than the experience of the patient, but the case still highlights many interesting aspects of DID.
Robert is aware of the woman following and haunting him because she, Regina one of his personalities, is trying to leave him hints about her existence. She will cook dinner or move furniture in hopes that he will realize that she exists. Eve Black, Eve White and Jane are all the same sex, but Robert, Regina, and the third personality Martin Brody, are not. This brings up an interesting conflict when Regina seeks out sex-change surgery. If a person has multiple personalities, it does not seem absurd for each personality to have a unique sexual orientation.
Another predominant theme seems to be that seems to be included in many movies is that existence of a “good” personality and an “evil” or “malicious” personality. This is not readily apparent in The Three Faces of Eve as all three personalities seem to be inherently good, but it is visible in the episode of Psych. At the end it is revealed that Martin Brody is generally the “evil” personality and responsible for the death of the doctor at the beginning of the episode. However the situation is not so easily discernable as the doctor was scheduled to perform a sex change operation on Robert/ Regina/ Martin Brody, per request of Regina, but unbeknownst to either Robert or Martin Brody.
Unlike many other movies, including The Three Faces of Eve, the viewer is never informed which personality dominates and which become more secondary. The episode ends when the viewer learns that Robert was admitted to a psychiatric hospital to receive treatment.
I just recently watched the movie “Me, Myself and Irene”, and it did in fact display DID and its issues in a way that really reached out to viewers. In both “Me, Myself and Irene” and “The faces if Eve”, the characters use their alternate personalities to cope with stress and certain difficult situations. In “Me, Myself and Irene,” Charlie uses his other identity, Hank, to fight bad guys, act tough, and what one could try to call flirting with women. He doesn’t purposely call on his other half to help him, but it naturally occurs in these moments of internal tension. It is a similar case with Eve White in “The faces of Eve.” Eve’s grandmother died when she was very young and Eve was immensely traumatized by this event. When Eve’s mother tried to make Eve kiss her grandmother’s dead body in the casket, Eve freaked out and this was where one of her other personalities was created; to help protect herself against things that scared her.
Another strange thing I noticed was that Eve was not able to contact her other personalities, whereas Charlie had conversations with his other half and in one scene even began fighting with him. I understand that it is a comedy and they create the scenes purely for he sake of laughter, but it does seem plausible that one personality would literally punch the other.
The last thing that confuses me about DID was that Eve had the power to switch between all three personalities, while Charlie had no control over it. I would like to study the cause further and see if it is truly possible for people suffering from DID to actually switch between personalities.
CMMC
The movie I chose to compare The Three Faces of Eve to was Me, Myself, and Irene. This movie is about a man who basically has let everybody walk all over him his entire life until one day, after his wife leaves him, he simply cracks and an aggressive alternate personality breaks out, which he has no control over. Although the movie is a comedy and exaggerates the situations the main character gets himself into, it still portrays DID fairly accurately to how it is in real life. Me, Myself and Irene is similar to The Three Faces of Eve in its portrayal of DID in that both movies portray the alternate personalities as drastically different from the original personalities. However in Three Faces of Eve, a third personality emerges in Eve that is almost in between her other two drastic personalities, whereas in Me, Myself, and Irene, the main character only has two drastically different personalities. Also, in The Three Faces of Eve, each one of her personalities was able to access the other two on command but in Me, Myself, and Irene, the main character had no control over the emergence of his aggressive and impulsive alternate personality. Another difference between the two movies is that in The Three Faces of Eve, the three personalities had about the same amount of “exposure time”, whereas in Me, Myself, and Irene, his alternate personality was out much less than the original personality and it was portrayed as the “evil” personality that had to be diminished. In conclusion, although both movies did portray DID in some similar ways, there were way more differences in the portrayal of DID in each movie.
-Dan F
I watched the movie X-Men The Last Stand and to me this was not the D.I.D. we saw in the Three Faces Of Eve. Jean Grey does seem to have two personalities but it felt like it connected more with the Freudian theory of Id Superego and Ego. because Jean’s alternate personality is selfish and more instinctual as the other characters in the movie state. I thought the Phoenix personality was an example of a weaker Superego or a stronger Id. Also it connects to the frontal lobe functioning. Good judgments are not made by Phoenix because there might be developmental error there. Still there is a struggle for control so D.I.D is also a part of it. There are some similarities to the Three Faces of Eve. Eve White and Eve Black can be compared to Jean Grey and Phoenix. Eve White is the normal self-conscious Jean Grey and Eve Black is a self-centered person acting on simple impulses. On both stories they get help to control their impulsive personality. The awareness of the alternate personality is not brought up in a bring matter in x-men like it is expected to know that there is an alternate personality if there is one. So it more of a action movie with conflicts that attract attention than a documentary. But still I would say that the case in x-men is a D.I.D case and it is a little bit similar to the movie three faces of eve but as I said before I thought more about the Freudian theory and the frontal lobe than did when I watched the movie.
Rasendra Poudyal
Lately on television, “Me, Myself and Irene” has played on several occasions. In this movie, the main character Charlie, is taken as a joke by everybody. Everybody walks all over him, his wife even cheats on him and eventually leaves him. After his wife leaves and citizens do not treat him like a police offer should, his other personality Hank comes out. Hank deals with all of the stress Charlie has built up by picking fights with close to everybody. The same way Hank deals with all of Charlie’s frustrations, Eve Black does the same for Eve White in the “The Three Faces of Eve”. The one thing I did not agree with was the labeling of Charlie’s illness in the movie. They said he had a made up form of schizophrenia when he had DID.
I thought that it was pretty funny that Eve Black would go out and party all night and then let have Eve White deal with the hangover. This also happened in “Me, Myself, and Irene” when Hank drank the night before, had sex with Irene, and then left Charlie with the hangover and swollen prostate in the morning.
-Max Hill
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