Moon Knight Takes on Portrayal of DID
Marvel re-entered the television game in January of 2021 with their hit series WandaVision. Since then, their new shows that premiere on Disney+ have gained a huge fan base and have greatly influenced popular culture. They have since completed four shows, including The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, and Hawkeye. These TV shows have made a lot of progress in increasing the diversity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s no secret that many Marvel heroes experience traumatic events and exist with mental health issues. No series has explored this struggle with mental health as deeply as the new series Moon Knight which premiered on March 20, 2022 with Oscar Isaac playing character Steven Grant.
In the series, the main character Steven Grant suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). According to the Mayo Clinic, DID is a “disorder characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states.”
The viewer sees Isaac sometimes portraying Steven Grant and other times portraying his other personality, Marc Spector. Only a few episodes have been released; it is not completely clear how this disorder will affect the storyline or the characters.
However, we do know that we desperately need more representation of mental health in the media. The portrayal of mental illness in this show will help make mental illness more recognisable and less foreign to the general public.
There is always the possibility that the show fails to portray DID in an accurate way, which could leave the viewer with an untrue portrayal of it. Disney and Marvel productions are synonymous with pop culture today and they heavily influence what the public is both passively and actively exposed to. By allowing a character with DID to exist, we might be able to increase public awareness of the disorder.
At this point in time, the representation in Moon Knight may help normalize DID. The directors and writers of the series need to continue to study mental illness and consult with professionals in order to portray Steven Grant and Marc Spector in a respectful and competent way.
