Is the theme park industry hostile to mental health concerns?

This week, the Cedar Fair company closed a virtual reality experience at its theme parks' Halloween events, following accusations that the attraction was insensitive to the mentally ill

FearVR, originally titled FearVR 5150, depicted a girl in a mental health facility. The title change is significant, as "5150" was a reference to "a section of the California Welfare and Institutions Code, which authorizes a peace officer or clinician to involuntarily confine a person suspected of having a mental disorder that makes them a danger to themselves or others," as the Orange County Register reported. That reference makes clear that mental health was a core device within the attraction, which is something that should trouble anyone who cares about the way society treats mental health.

A disclaimer, first: The person leading the PR campaign against Knott's and Cedar Fair is a publicity hound who has been associated with many hateful causes in the past. So I don't fault anyone who sees his name attached to this story and immediately dismisses his concerns. Heck, that was my first reaction, too. But there is a valid concern here, and people working in the theme park industry would do well by listening to it, instead of glibly dismissing it.

I haven't seen the attraction (and I'll explain more about why I didn't see it in a bit), so I can't comment on it, specifically. But I do want to talk about the broader issue of referencing mental health treatment in entertainment.

The horror genre has a long history of using mental health as a device — the mental hospital as a chamber of horrors and mental patient or caregivers as villains. But that history does not justify the continued, unexamined use of those devices in the future — no more than comedians could justify continuing to use blackface, blonde jokes or other ethnic stereotyping for cheap laughs, just because their predecessors long had done so.

The whole point of the horror genre is to reference and confront our fears. The lazy use of mental health devices within the genre can promote the idea that mental health care is something fearful, and that anyone who gets or gives mental health care is someone to be feared.

Do we really want to be telling people who feel atypical that they should be afraid of reaching out for help? Do we really want to tell people that they should shun their friends, neighbors and family members who get mental health care? But that's what the entertainment industry risks doing when it falls back on mental health devices as horror stereotypes.

Words and images matter. As an industry, we can't crow about the power of narrative storytelling when pitching a new attraction or museum exhibit, then fall back on "it's just a joke - it's just a device - it doesn't really matter" when we are called out on using words and images in ways that hurt people. We can't have it both ways. Either words or images matter, or they don't.

They matter.

Look, atypical mental function drives a countless numbers of characters in entertainment, from Jack Torrance in The Shining to Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. That's not going to change, nor should it. But in addressing atypical mental function, writers and creators need to be careful about the unspoken messages they send regarding mental health care.

One of the well-established devices in horror is the supernatural — specifically, the way that a person confronted with the supernatural begins to question whether they are mentally atypical. They don't know that it's not "just in their head" — that supernatural forces really are at play. Because the mental health of the protagonist is in question, it's natural that people and places associated with mental health care will figure into these narratives.

In a two-hour movie or on-going television series, writers and creators have plenty of time to deal with mental health responsibly. Look at Stranger Things. Mild spoiler here: Initially, the neighborhood kids dismiss the atypical new kid they meet as "mental" and wonder if she's escape from a local facility. But soon, they get to know her and become her friends and fierce allies. Any question of mental health illness is dismissed and forgotten.

But in a three-to-five minute theme park attraction, no one has the time to develop a complex examination of mental health issues. If something associated with mental health is included in an attraction, it is most likely done as a stereotype — a lazy device that sends that awful message that mental health care is something to be feared.

As you might have inferred, this issue is personal for me. One my first jobs was working in the medical records department of a state mental health hospital, and some people who are very close to me are atypical. I'm not a fan of the horror genre, in part due to its history of demeaning mental health care. (That's why I tend to send other people to cover horror events for Theme Park Insider, which is why I didn't experience Knott's VR attraction.) But the issue of mental health care shouldn't have to be personal for someone to care about it.

Creators needs to stop using mental health as a horror stereotype, just as they stopped using blackface and ethnic jokes as humor stereotypes, homosexuality as a criminal stereotype, and Judaism as a stereotype for cheapness and greed. It's lazy. It's insensitive, and more than than, it's abusive.

And don't give me this political correctness crap. Sensitivity to and consideration for others are not weakness — they are what makes a civilization possible.

Again, I can't speak to whether FearVR 5150 specifically referenced enough mental health stereotypes to be pulled. From what I've heard, it sounds as though it did, and I am disappointed in Matt Ouimet and his team at Cedar Fair for allowing it to be green-lit in the first place.

But I more disappointed in the reaction of a few theme park industry creative professionals to the news. I've seen many social media posts attacking Cedar Fair for pulling the attraction and dismissing concerns that it might have been offensive to those who care about mental health. It's one thing if fans lash out, but industry professionals ought to know better.

The fact that some well-established people in this industry think it's okay to joke about and dismiss concerns over horror's troubling history with mental health care tells me that, yes, the theme park industry does have a problem here.

So let's fix it. Let's start by listening to these concerns about the horror genre... and not dismissing them.

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