Representation of PTSD in Modern Entertainment
By: Daniel D Baumer
Tags: True Detective 3, Avengers Endgame, Army, Game of Thrones, PTSD

In recent years, I am happy to see more realistic representations of how earlier traumas can affect our current day personalities. With the recent release and popularity of these three movies and shows in particular, a few of the characters stand out regarding how their ghosts move forward with them.

In Avengers: Endgame, Thor carries the weight of what he feels is his failure in his choice of how/where to strike our main villain, Thanos. In the immediate aftermath of ‘The Snap’, we see him at turns sullen or angry but as we move another five years into the future we see …, well, we see Fat Thor.

Yes, this character is played for laughs and those that complain about “fat shaming” may have cause to be offended but we’ll skip that aspect for the moment. We see a Thor that has chosen to brush over his pain with alcohol, a tightknit crew of friends, and the dopamine rush of video games. While his community around him is doing what they can to move on, Thor has chosen to keep his priorities and challenges simple. These minor comforts and victories keep thoughts of his bigger shame at bay.

Thor has a right to heal in his own way but during his absence from the wider world, the need for this Avenger and his skills have been badly needed on Earth and beyond. He’s handicapped by his self-imposed trauma and unable to be of use to anyone, or so he may feel. A self-imposed trauma is just as damaging as an externally-forced, physical one and as someone with a mix of both, I can understand his desire to shelter and cocoon.

Throughout the film, his current condition is used for comedya few times but I’m not so defined by PTSD that I took offense. I thought it was handled well. I was equally pleased to see that he didn’t have a redemption scene. He did become an important member of the heroes again but I like that he just soldiered on without craving the “one thing” that would make him worthy again. He regained his self-worth simply by being there.

Well done, Russo Brothers.

True Detective, Season 3 gave us Detective Wayne Hays (played by Mahershala Ali), a Vietnam Veteran and an Arkansas State Trooper investigating the abduction of children. Though the series time hops between three different eras in his life, his experiences as a soldier don’t directly come into play. Where his trauma effects him is in the persona that he has created for himself after the war. We don’t know anything about his childhood or upbringing so we’re left to infer how combat and its horrors effected him.

Hays isn’t a stereotypical alcoholic brooding cop. He drinks, yes, but it doesn’t define him. He’s quiet but out of self-control and self-defense. His failure in communication and expression with his wife and children is the biggest hurdle in his personal life and we see this play out in all three time periods.

He starts a relationship with his future wife by relying more on the moods of the moment than with establishing lines of trust and communication. Though not a fatal flaw, that beginning causes trouble throughout the marriage.

At the end of the series, we are given the only flashback of his time in the Army and the scene is handled quite beautifully. In the parts of the show that covers the current time period, we see Hays in his 70s still trying to unravel a case as his mind floats in and out of dementia. The final image of the show is him in a much younger form, in the jungles of Southeast Asia. He walks slowly, stops to take a look around, and heads off into the dark mist of the jungle. Gone.

Our last image of Wayne Hays is of him slipping back into the world in which he last felt safe. Not his family or friends or work but the jungle and the combat that formed him into what he was the remainder of his life. I can share a long list of my Veteran friends that are more comfortable “in the shit” than working with a bureaucratic system, for a retail empire, or struggling to exist in the gig economy.

Game of Thrones is coming to an end soon and we still have CleganeBowl ahead of us. In this case, we may have redemption of The Hound’s trauma arc because it's his older brother, The Mountain, that induced the damage as a child.

Sandor Clegane had his faced burned and scarred as a young child by his older brother and the physical and emotional scars have trailed him since then. We don’t see a young Hound but when we’re introduced to him, he’s quite the asshole. A fierce fighter to be sure but he instigates many of those battles simply by being brusk and rude.

Even as a warrior, he has an aversion to fire and we see this affect him at several points in the show; Battle of Blackwater, Beyond the Wall, and most recently during the Battle of Winterfell. When the flames begin, he cannot tolerate it. It makes him flee or freeze. Several times he has to be defended by others while in this fright mode and we have yet to see him “snap out of it” on his own.

I like that this massive figure is hobbled by fire, a thing that can be dangerous but has yet to be an actual threat to him. In these scenes, the actual threat is close and valid but the mere presence of flames triggers him and makes him lose focus on the actual danger. He becomes a child again with a freshly burned face.

While the results of this trigger are a big overt on the screen, that’s precisely how they can feel when they strike. Whatever you may be doing at the moment instantly becomes less important than the flood of sensations swirling in the brain.