The Others and other disorders
- Brandi Bradley
- Nov 6
- 6 min read
(I feel like I need to make it clear that I am not in any way an expert on any disorder. I am a literature PhD, not a medical professional of any sort. My insight is only based on what I have learned by reading about things. If you need resources please refer to this list of services through the CDC.)
Perhaps sometimes I spend too much time in my true crime space. I realize this. I can’t watch any romantic films anymore because I have consumed far too many stories about stalkers and domestic violence trauma. So I have ruined myself for most light and gentle content with the exception of Frasier and The Golden Girls.
So when Halloween came around this year and I saw where The Others was available for streaming on the Criterion Channel, I took a pause on my usual streaming of crime shows and documentaries to revising this classic ghost story. However, the whole time I was watching it, all I kept thinking about was Factitious Disorder.
Factitious Disorder – as defined by the Mayo Clinic – is a serious mental health condition in which people deceive others by pretending to be sick. Most people know it as Munchausen. When it is the product of a person inflicting it on a child, it’s known as Munchausen by proxy.
For me, the most notable true crime case of Munchausen by Proxy is Dee Blanchard, who manipulated a medical system, multiple charities, and the American Cancer Association, to have her daughter Gypsy Rose Blanchard diagnosed with childhood cancers that resulted in a number of unnecessary surgeries. The case came to the public not because the medical systems caught on to her schemes, but because Gypsy Rose, with the help of her internet boyfriend, killed Dee one night in her sleep. Gypsy Rose has now been released from prison and many media outlets have interviewed her asking the question of how she is going to live now.
Fiction writers – particularly fiction writers of medical dramas – often write Factitious Disorder (Munchausen) into one of their storylines. There’s one on House, Grey’s Anatomy (if any of you remember Cristina’s breakdown after identifying it in a different patient and then shouting “I was right!” and then “Somebody sedate me!”), and the series Sharp Objects on HBO. I understand why writers are drawn to a storyline of someone going to the most ultimate extremes in crafting lies for medical professionals. It’s fertile ground because it deals with deception and also the markers of these cases when it comes to children seem to be what gothic nightmares are made of – isolation, tension, secrets, a foreboding ghost of the truth hovering around where everyone knows what is happening but no one will talk about it.
Again, I am not a psychiatrist. I did not get my degree in psychology in any way. I am not an expert in anything. But I am like everyone else who wonders why a parent would hurt a child. Like what’s happening there? Especially when it is cloaked in this guise of protection.
The Others is an eerie mystery about an English post-war estate run by Nicole Kidman’s character Grace and begins when she hires a whole new staff of servants. The other servants have “disappeared” and she has very strict rules about the home because both of her children suffer a genetic disorder where they are photo-sensitive and cannot be in sunlight without their skin burning.
The children play at night and sleep during the day. The house is covered with heavy curtains and when the children move from room to room, the staff is alerted to ensure that the curtains and doors are closed to keep out the light.
However, the problem is “someone” is letting in the light.
If you have not seen this film, I recommend it for it’s eerie atmosphere and excellent storytelling. I want to avoid explaining too much about it, but it is a film that is over 20 years old.
From a literary criticism viewpoint, the “light” is the “light of truth”. Which is why I am so tempted to give this story a read from the point of view of the deception that is happening, as opposed to the haunting.
This time when I started watching The Others, I started to notice some of the dynamics of how the characters lived which is of it’s time period, but also similar traits to families under the rule of someone with Factitious Disorder.
The mother does all the talking. Grace is the one who manages the home while the father is still at war, which means she carries the keys and often locks the doors behind her. This could show a parent who is guarding their control over the house, but it could also be a symptom of the time and space where the story is being told.
The children are isolated. These children are primarily socialized only with the people in the home. Grace handles their education, which is mostly religious in nature. This could be due to the location of the home in an isolated community which does not have many neighbors or a school system. However, there isn’t much discussion about outside family, neighbors, or any other interactions beyond the staff and the ghosts.
All information comes through the mother. In addition to handling their education, she is also the one who informs the children about the location of their father. All that’s really said is he is “fighting” or he is “at war”. Only once does one of the staff risk telling the children that they believe that ghosts are a possibility, and is careful to phrase it in a way which will provide the child comfort.
Every room of the house is filled with subtext. There is something that is not being discussed in the story and it hangs over the house. The children are shut down or punished when they try to discuss what they are seeing. The staff are so fearful of Grace’s authority that they are careful to reveal that they have working in that house before, and how fond they are of the home. And when the husband returns for a brief appearance, he and Grace have a tense argument about what happened before he went to war and how angry she was that he left them in the first place.
Grace is the ultimate martyr. While Grace is in complete command of the house and all it’s surroundings, she also spends a good amount of time playing the victim. Her anger – about being left alone with the children, toward the staff who “disappeared”, and toward the war – is evident. Everything is happening to her as opposed to it being something they must survive. She sacrifices all her “happiness” to keep her children “safe”.
And the most important point of all is the children are suffering from a disorder which allows all of the things above to be plausible. The children cannot go to school because that happens in the daytime. The children cannot socialize because that happens in the daytime. Grace must keep the doors locked so the children will not accidentally run into a room full of light. When the children move from room to room, the action must be coordinated by the mother, to make sure there is no light as they move from room to room.
Is this enough for a diagnosis. No. Not all all. This is just a concept to consider, especially while new information emerges about Factitious Disorder and Factitious Disorder by Proxy is revealed.
The story concludes in a way that is different from most haunted house stories, and that twist surprised me on the first viewing. It was often one of the reasons I recommended it for being so good. But on rewatch, I could see the undercurrent of a different story being presented under the surface, which makes it so rewatchable.
If you are interested in stories about Factitious Disorder, check out my previous post on Sherri Papini and my other post about what I learned from listening to podcasts about medical fraud.
XOXO,
B.
Also, if you have made it this far in the post, I want to thank you for making it to the end. Before you go, be sure to take a peek at the brandibradley.com shop.