What if I told you imaginary friends are real? And when their kids grow up, they're forgotten.
That’s the opening line by Ryan Reynolds, the real selling point of the 2024 hit Deadpool IF.
An IF is an imaginary friend, and when this little girl meets these magical characters you want to meet them as well…
That’s John Krasinski, writer and director of IF.
The movie is about a little girl named Bea, going through an experience in her life that is troubling—and as a coping mechanism she starts to see every single person's imaginary friend, all the ones that have been left behind by the kids who have created them and grown up, and what does she do with that superpower.
Also, (purely for the sake of imaginary reasons,) it has a dragon too.
Many films and TV shows are exploring the concept of imaginary friends this year. With the fight for attention heating up every year, a single trope emerging on the screens, both big and small, begs the question of whether it is by chance. Or is there an external agent at play here?
That’s not the only imaginary friends flick we got. In the same month of pride, we see Eric, an 8-episode mini-series starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the main character(s)—both human and imaginary. This one hits much closer to reality. The story follows the desperate search of a father when his nine-year-old son disappears one morning on the way to school. In a dark premise, lined with drugs and duplicity, the show unapologetically draws eerie parallels from the real world, underlining the origin of the imaginary friend from a psychotic split under guilt. According to the showrunner:
Eric isn't based on any one specific event but rather is meant to evoke a time and a place, including the "stranger danger" panic of the 1980s.
Inside Out 2 also dropped in June. The much-awaited sequel to the film revolves around the manifestation of emotions and the worth of memories, feelings, and fears—the foundation of imaginary friendships. That one sequence in the original is still considered the most original portrayal of lost imaginary friends on the big screens. It was a heart-wrenching experience for kids and adults alike. At the time of writing, it is not confirmed whether the sequel has any jaw-dropping or tear-jerking moments involving the ifs.
That’s not it on the animated front. Netflix is also releasing the highly acclaimed adaptation of the Bestselling Book “The Imaginary” by A.F. Harrold and Emily Gravett the same name in July—a mature take on the life span of imaginary friends.
Riding on the same wind, Cartoon Network Studios announced a new show based on the classic “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends”. The popular kids’ show ruled the TV screens of the 2000s in the West, winning a bagful of recognitions. Now it is getting a spinoff!
In the birdseye view, the widely popular and overused concept of ifs seems relatable for kids’ media. Unaware of the real world, children can easily create imaginations for virtual companionship. The innocence of childhood allows the brain to be creative at times. Straight from infancy, babies are conversed and lulled through inanimate objects, foods, etc. with variable sounds and actions. At that age, the complexities of danger, change, loneliness, and other high-level emotions are still raw. The gradual development of the basic senses of sight, smell, and feel translates to the unmediated aesthetics of these monster-like friends, inspired directly by the surroundings, drawn on an open canvas without a brush.
Conventional toys like plastic figures, stuffed teddy bears, wooden horses, rubber ducks, etc. follow the same sentiment and work on the principle of bringing artificial life to the inanimate object. For a child, that’s nothing short of real magic. That’s probably why 65 percent of children have interacted with personified objects or invisible friends by the time they are 7. And some of these friends are retained much longer.
The adult comedy, Ricky Stanicky, released in early 2024, presents us with a fully grown humane imaginary friend made by three friends in their childhood. However, in this case, the if is a cooked-up lie to cover their secret activities. A shady, but very realistic take on the imaginary part. But that’s not the most frequent one.
On the other side of Sesame Street, way past the Barbieland, we enter a real-world alley littered with the horrors of having anything imagination.
According to Paige Davis, an expert on ifs, creating invisible and personified companions involves creating, and interacting with another mind. Personality in objects or thin air would be ominous to any listener, reader, or viewer.
The horror setting is often the go-to for this theme. Here, we start calling the ifs imaginary companions—a more accurate real-world term, cited by psychologists and authors of science. The reason for using the alternative is because they are not always friends.
There is even a whole Wikipedia list. It is sub-categorized under Films about mental states. The lists on Google are much longer. The most notable are Donnie Darko, Fight Club, The Shining, Imaginary, etc. The last one was released in 2024.
Of course, there have been monumental achievements to shed light on the warm creativity, and the links to the soul associated with imaginary beings. In the fantasy novel His Dark Materials by Philip Pulman, we see a world of Daemons—a permanent companion for every human, manifested in an animal. But, in the end, it is just a fairy tale.
While on the R-rated side, we get an assassin who was left horrifically disfigured, rendering him with the same mental age as a 7-year-old child. This damage to his brain also caused him to experience constant delusions of the cartoons, whom he imagines as his best friends. Perfect. An arc steeped in reality, based on many serial killers and psychopaths.
The horror genre has been riding on the back of make-believe for decades as the preferred way to use the metaphor of psychological illnesses. More often than not, the antagonistic ways show the blunt side of crazy, incorporating tools of possession/manifestation in minds to commit grotesque evil. The roots of literature run deep into the fantasy horrors of H.P. Lovecraft; similar conventions can be seen in the 1960s Hitchcock film Psycho.
In a very logically twisted way, all horror movies can assumed to be in the single light of imaginary phenomena. It connects two very different premises, say Hide and Seek and Smile, by a ubiquitous bond. (The latter is also getting a sequel in 2024.)
Unfortunately, for the majority of the earth's population, this is, without a doubt, a repulsive/horrifying idea to exist outside black mirrors. For every direct contradiction to one’s belief system, there is a neurological or psychological disorder in the mainstream arsenal. For instance, Psychosis—a collection of symptoms that affect the mind, where there has been some loss of contact with reality. During an episode of psychosis, a person's thoughts and perceptions are disrupted and they may have difficulty recognizing what is real and what is not. It is easy to label people sick, especially if it keeps them away. That’s a general overview but not a definitive one. Sadly, we are seeing the rise of self-proclaimed experts, using fresh awareness (with a dash of prejudice,) and lessons from horror movies to render judgments of behavioral dynamics.
Marjorie Taylor, the author of Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them, says the author Agatha Christie and the choreographer Paul Taylor have talked about having unseen companions who were a source of support and inspiration throughout their lives. In a study conducted by a psychologist cum YA writer, Jennifer Barnes, among a group of her readers, more people said they would be sad over the death of a fictional character than a real person they know!
The prevalence of imaginary companions in adults can only exist in theory. The data is not only unfeasible but also unreliable. The general perception of grown-ups having such an experience varies by stature and demographics. For a playwright like Pheobe Waller-Bridge, there is an abundance of people with ifs. But for a trader working for a grocery shop? Oh, he might have been sick for a long time. Even a few centuries ago, for a scholar like Rumi, meeting Sams (a mystic) was a divination. He became one of the world’s most celebrated poets, while pagan followers of nature were staked in the background heritage.
Recent years have registered a drastic deflation in the general value of individual life. However, efforts to improve the quality of life we can save have skyrocketed. The surge in educational themes in popular media suggests the same but often misses the intended mark on the global audience.
My Secret Country is an indie documentary by Marlo McKenzie that aims to make real children’s imaginary friends come to life through animation. She came up with this idea while working at a homeless youth shelter where many children with backgrounds of abuse weren’t able to imagine a world where they were loved.
In Mckenzie’s words, “Imagination is way more important than we realize.”
A New York Times Article by Erik Piepenburg inspires this post.