This one may not be fresh and recent, but it’s worth another look. It’s kind of an “oldie but goodie,” if you will. And it’s also about damn time someone said it: Even though living with a chronic disease like Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) challenges people who have it, Hollywood needs to stop making inspiration porn!
Oh, don’t give me that look, you know what I mean. I’m not talking about actual porn, which is just…well, porn. I’m talking about all those different sub-genres of entertainment that thrive on the voyeuristic thrill of eavesdropping on other people’s suffering.
Back in fall 2014, Fox premiered Red Band Society, a “drama” about a group of teenaged patients in a pediatric ward fighting a host of various life-threatening illnesses. Here at Patient Worthy, we stumbled on a review of the show from Lillie Lainoff, then a sophomore at Yale University. More than any TV critic, Lillie was uniquely qualified to write about a teen’s experience moving in and out of hospitals: At age 14, Lillie was diagnosed with POTS.
The diagnosis turned her life upside down, and she spent the next several years logging some serious hours in hospitals with her peers. That first-hand experience showed her what all of us have long suspected about the way Hollywood portrays chronically or critically ill children: It’s a load of crap.
As Lillie points out, the way sick characters are portrayed—either as peaceful martyrs or perfectly normal people living perfectly normal lives—do not correlate to any reality she’s seen. Which isn’t to say Lillie advocates being miserable: Far from it! But her approach is honest and refreshing, and demands that we rethink the way illness is portrayed in media.
And maybe she’s onto something—after all, here we are over a year later and Red Band Society is long gone from our televisions and virtually no one remembers it. But Lillie’s words are worth remembering for a long, long time.
Check out Lillie’s opinion piece in the Washington Post And join the conversation by letting us know what you think of the way chronic illness is portrayed in books, film, and TV.
