In the middle of all the excitement and preparation for Denver Pride, we’re taking a brief trip into the Void—yes, that Void from Deadpool & Wolverine. In the latest installment of our Mental Health & Pop Culture series, Dr. Eric Bender explores how Deadpool’s humor can be more than entertainment. Humor can be used as a coping skill to help navigate stress, grief, trauma, and more. We hope this latest column offers a thoughtful perspective on how pop culture can help us better understand mental health and ourselves.
In Deadpool & Wolverine, we often see Deadpool using humor as a coping mechanism. His constant sarcasm acts as armor while watching people die around him. Laughter for deadpool isn’t always denial; it’s a defense mechanism he used for a world that keeps taking, leaving him to wrestle with grief in the quiet spaces between the punchlines. The film highlights themes of depression specifically when he is in the Void.
The void in Deadpool & Wolverine is an amazing metaphor for depression. It’s this place where people feel like they’re banished. Often the way people feel isolated with depression. They feel like there’s no connection to other people. The versions of the people that are there, they don’t feel like the best versions. I know that was a big joke in the movie, that you have Electra played by Jennifer Garner, and you had these old versions or even Gambit, and he hadn’t had a movie made. There are all these versions that aren’t quite right. And that’s how people can experience depression. What’s around them doesn’t feel quite right.
There’s that scene where Cassandra reaches into Deadpool’s mind. Depression can often feel like something’s just taken over. He even starts thinking about negative or depressing experiences. Cassandra’s creating that, but it brings up the time Vanessa, his girlfriend, was telling him, “You need to snap out of this. You weren’t considered a serious superhero; you didn’t make it, but I want to get up with you. I want to be there with you.” Suddenly Cassandra turns it and twists it into something even more negative, and Vanessa then says, “You don’t matter.” It’s really negative.
That’s the way depression can really grab a hold of somebody. Suddenly everything’s negative. You don’t matter. You don’t have any value. You don’t mean anything. You have a feeling of worthlessness, feeling like you’re not happy and having a low mood, not getting pleasure from things. This is all in the Void. When Deadpool kind of gets his head out of Cassandra’s hand, if you will, he says, “I tasted your hand; it tasted like hate.”
Sometimes in depression, people really can hate themselves. They can feel worthless. That is one of the criteria for a depression diagnosis. At the end of that scene, Elias comes chasing after Deadpool, and that’s another thing people feel in depression. It feels like it just keeps coming after them and coming after them; they can’t escape it. That’s a really great metaphor for being in a depressive state.
Can humor be used as a coping strategy?
Absolutely. Humor can be used as a coping strategy. Deadpool does that well. There are times when you might cross into, OK, this is not so much coping anymore. If it’s at the expense of other people, or if it gets in the way of you actually getting help, if it’s damaging, if it hurts relationships. On the other hand, it can be really positive. It can be a way of kind of getting a different perspective and snapping you out of something that might feel so overwhelming, but making a funny comment or hearing someone use humor can kind of bring you back to, OK, what are we doing here? What do I need to do? It can also be something that helps you not feel so overwhelmed and crushed by what is happening in front of you so that you can move forward.
There are a lot of ways that humor can be mature. A lot of Deadpool’s humor is immature, but that also makes people laugh, and then they can go ahead and deal with whatever serious thing is that they need to. I always say Deadpool’s not going to die. We’ve seen him regenerate his lower half. We’ve seen him do all kinds of things. That’s incredibly sad when you think about it. Everybody in his life will pass away. Wolverine will be there, so that’s kind of an interesting pairing. They’ll continue to go off into the sunset together. But Deadpool’s an interesting character for that reason. There’s this balance of humor and then incredible sadness.
How do we know when it becomes an unhealthy coping mechanism?
Is it interfering with the process of getting help and moving on? Is it aggressive? Is it self-deprecating? People sometimes will make jokes (like), I’m so terrible at this. But that inner monologue we have with ourselves can really affect us. So self-deprecating humor can get to a point where you really are reiterating this narrative that you’re not good at something. I think that can also be a time when maybe it’s not super helpful. These are the kinds of things you can look at in therapy.
Please note we’re not diagnosing but using familiar stories to talk about real mental health experiences. There is help available if you need. Check out our list of trusted partners for non emergent mental health support.
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Check out Dr Eric Bender’s work here.
