What's The Point...of Romanticizing Illness in Movies?
Once a fan of Rom-com movies, I now prefer straight-up horror.
The reason? Rom-coms generally follow the same tropes. From enemies to lovers or lovers to enemies to lovers. Nothing distinctive, nothing new, and predictable endings. If the actors have chemistry on screen then you are rooting for them to get together. If not, you’re screaming at the screen like a grumpy relative, telling the characters to get back together with their exes instead. Besides, rom-coms are nothing like they used to be. They aren’t witty anymore and most of them border on vulgarity.
Romance Drama is far worse and has literally only one plot point that you will come across in every movie: The lead character dying from an incurable disease. And it is usually cancer.
To make it worse, these movies hardly show realism when it comes to cancer.
The characters in movies hardly have a healthy color on their skin and are full of life. They are never in pain, never feeling weak, and have lustrous hair. In fact, they have more vitality than the other “healthy” characters in the movie.
Instead of making us feel sympathy, or empathy for real people who actually have to battle this disease, these movies end up making light of the illness.
Two characters meet, fall in love. One of them does not know how to live their life to the fullest. The advice comes from someone who is dying but doesn’t tell their partner yet. Not until their partner is completely in love and cannot imagine living a life without them. That’s when they casually tell them that they are dying and must leave them so that the other doesn’t have to watch them suffer and die. Of course their partner doesn’t abandon them and we get a lot of tearjerker moments.
Seeing this from another angle: the character has just emotionally exploited another person to go through the immense pain of losing someone they love. How is that romantic?
Can filmmakers stop using cancer as a plot device? A lot of people go through it and it is nice when there are friends and family members standing by their side as they try to fight it. But to bring a complete stranger into your life, charm them, and then traumatize them forever is in no way romantic.
At this point, I want to avoid any movie that uses this trope.
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