Feeling Too Bipolar

Abstract

I will be creating a short comic entitled “Feeling Too Bipolar” that tells the story of various entertainment media being interrogated about a suspect who has committed a crime, with the suspect coming to terms with her own bipolar disorder (BD) diagnosis. Traditionally, entertainment media displays people with BD as violent and crazy, and I hope to subvert those tropes through the lens of an investigative comic that reveals the “true nature” of the disorder. Most of the time, the writers who create these characters have little understanding of the disorder itself, causing them to create dramatized versions based on their prior knowledge. This is compounded by how many viewers don’t understand the nature of BD, meaning they take the interpretation they have been given at face value. The intended outcome of this comic is to not only inform the audience of dedicated entertainment fans about what BD really is, but also to make them more aware of the stigmatizations that are common when it comes to the territory of BD. When they recognize that the obtuseness of the interrogees represents their false representations of BD, they’ll feel empathetic and more understanding towards those with the disorder.