Talk:Gollum

Gollum has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
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This article has been mentioned by a media organization:

Siobhán O'Grady (December 2, 2015). "Erdogan on Gollum Meme: 'We Hates It. We Hates It Forever.'". Foreign Policy.

Removal of "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" category?[edit]

Is there a reason Gollum was removed from the "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" category back in 2020? It's pretty clear he's meant to have a fictionalized version of dissociative identity disorder, at least in the films. 2001:569:F875:3D00:C169:4138:E9D0:C29B (talk) 23:52, 17 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Without going into the archaeology, the article today has the more precise category "Fictional characters with schizoid personality disorder", which is directly supported by a citation to a reliable source, so I think we have that base pretty well covered. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:13, 18 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not seeing any reason why he can't be included in both categories. There's a citation that points out that the Peter Jackson movies emphasize the differences between his Gollum and Sméagol personalities, and the article that's cited for the schizoid personality disorder diagnosis even points out that Gollum is often regarded as having "multiple personality disorder" - but states that doesn't work going by the real-life diagnostic category for dissociative identity disorder. If Gollum is removed on the basis that the article says his portrayal of dissociative identity disorder is unrealistic, then most of the characters in the "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" category should be removed as well. For example, Sam Raimi's version of the Green Goblin is just as unrealistic in his portrayal of dissociative identity disorder as Gollum is - and for the same reasons the article says Gollum can't have dissociative identity disorder. However, the category page for "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" states that fictional depictions of DID don't need to be completely realistic (i.e. the alters being unaware of and unable to directly interact with each other) or meet all the real-life diagnostic criteria, and that the only qualifying feature is for the character in question to have two or more distinct personalities -- which the article that's cited for the schizoid personality disorder diagnosis outright admits that Gollum does have. 2001:569:F875:3D00:85F2:1BD:759B:7BFF (talk) 07:17, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is never anything but a bad reason. We agree that the character can't be both; what is wrong is the definition of the removed category, which you can feel free to go and fix over there. After that you can go right ahead and remove the bad categorisations that you correctly identify. This one, however, is correct as it stands. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:16, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's not what I was saying. The article that's cited for the schizoid personality disorder diagnosis outright says that Gollum is commonly interpreted as having "multiple personality disorder" and has two distinct personalities that interact with each other (which is a common mistake in fictional portrayals of dissociative identity disorder), and the category for "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" says that the only real qualifying feature is that the characters have more than one distinct personality and that the examples don't have to be realistic portrayals of dissociative identity disorder or meet all the real-life diagnostic criteria (because it's fiction and fiction almost never gets things like this right) - which is the main reason the article says that Gollum doesn't have dissociative identity disorder. To quote "This category is for fictional characters in literature, film, television, comic books and video games diagnosed with or showing signs of dissociative identity disorder; i.e those who exhibit two or more separate personalities/identity states/alters. These characters may not be accurate representations of and/or meet all the criteria for having DID, as they are fictional characters and rarely feature realistic portrayals of the disorder." (emphasis mine) TLDR: the characters on the "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" don't need to have realistic portrayals of dissociative identity disorder or meet all the diagnostic criteria, just have multiple personalities, and Gollum meets that qualification regardless of what the cited article says his IRL diagnosis would be. 2001:569:F875:3D00:85F2:1BD:759B:7BFF (talk) 15:57, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Er, please don't shout. What I said applies to what you have just said again at great length. The category you're proposing is malformed, and the category we have here is both well-formed and, given the citation, correct. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:02, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't my intent to "shout", just place emphasis on the parts of the quote that support my point, but I'll tone it down to italics. To be honest, I'm confused as to why the two categories are being treated as mutually exclusive when Gollum qualifies for both of them. "Malformed" or not, as it's currently written the "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" category stresses that the characters therein don't need to be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder to qualify, just have multiple personalities; and the cited article acknowledges that Gollum's multiple personalities are one of his defining character traits while giving a best-fit diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder. If you're suggesting that the "Fictional characters with multiple personalities" category be reworked into a "Fictional characters with dissociative identity disorder" category and that only realistic portrayals be allowed, that's going to make for a very short list. As the page for dissociative identity disorder points out, fictional portrayals of dissociative identity disorder almost never get it right, and most - as with Gollum - have the different personalities interact with each other (the cited article's only reason for rejecting the diagnosis) for comedy and/or dramatic purposes while still calling it "multiple personality disorder". 2001:569:F875:3D00:85F2:1BD:759B:7BFF (talk) 16:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Certain image issues[edit]

@Chiswick Chap: Since you restored the images, I would ask what the rationale for their inclusion is? The two I removed had no actual commentary in the article about them; they just have the standard rationale of identifying how the character looks, but for commercial media, there needs to be a more solid rationale to use these images. For example, if there was substantive commentary about how different the Deitch film is from other incarnations, that would be a good justification; however, as the article is written now, the image rationale is WP:OR, as calling this appearance unique is based on editors' POVs and not necessarily reliable sources. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 10:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for asking. Each of the images does however have a rationale for inclusion, namely that they are each discussed ("commentary") in the text and in their image captions, as reliably cited, with the citations repeated in the image captions for clarity. I'll revisit the NFURs which were written long ago and bring them up to today's standards if need be. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:19, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated both NFURs for you. I've replaced the word "unique" as meaning no more than "specific" to the film in question, i.e. the appearance of the character in that particular film, it's certainly not a POV or ORish statement in any way. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:49, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Very late reply - I am aware that they all have rationales, my issue is that the rationales are not sufficient for the number of images and their uses. "File:Gollum in Deitch 1967 Hobbit film.jpg" for example, the rationale merely says "shows what he looks like." This is a rationale suitable if the image was used in the lead, but as a secondary image, it appears to me to be giving this depiction undue weight, as there is no commentary on this design whatsoever. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 23:32, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure you're reading the current article text, or the current rationale? I've made both say clearly that the visual appearance reveals the director's choice, which is to reduce the role to just sitting in a boat doing nothing (except looking vaguely goblinesque, but we can't say that). In other words, the image reveals and indeed represents the thought. I don't know what else a visual representation could be expected to do, actually, as that's its job: and Deitch's massively-reduced Gollum is sharply made clear by the image shown here. The charge of OR is just nonsense, as both the main text and the captions are fully-cited. I'd say that this picture fulfils its "worth a thousand words" splendidly, but if you have further suggestions for what we can say about it, I'm all ears. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:21, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]