Why Faulting A Fault in Our Stars for Conforming to the YA Genre is Not Productive: A Response to The Guardian Review that called the Film Manipulative and Crass

I set out this morning to write a very personal response to my recent viewing of the adaptation of John Green’s best-selling novel, The Fault in Our Stars… but that will have to wait until the end of this piece because I just stumbled upon a review of the movie that I found so ill-thought out and irksome that I must first respond to it. 

In a review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw aggressively mocked the film, arguing that its teen-centered melodramatic love story about two kids with cancer was manipulative and crass.  Bradshaw then compiled a laundry of list of things that irritated him in the film, especially dwelling on scenes which he felt revealed the movie’s overall “phoney-baloniness.”  Because I had been prepared to praise the film for some of the ways in which I think it authentically portrays the ways in which adolescents and their families struggle with terminal illnesses I was taken aback by his critique.  However, I was mostly disheartened that he seemed to be primarily criticizing the film for conforming to the larger genre conventions of young adult literature and Hollywood melodrama, which does not seem all that productive.

For those unfamiliar with the plot of the film/book (spoiler alert), it focuses on sixteen-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster (Shailene Woodley), who almost died at age 13 when her thyroid cancer metastasized to her lungs.  Although she recovered miraculously due to an experimental drug treatment, her illness has left her bound to her portable oxygen tank, feeling depressed and unable to experience adolescence as a typical teenage girl should.  The narrative starts when she meets Augustus (Gus) Waters (Ansel Elgort) after being forced by her mother to attend a local support group for teenage cancer patients.   The two physically collide on the way to the group session (reminiscent of a typical “meet cute” in the romantic comedy film genre) and soon after they engage in fast-witted verbal banter as the charismatic and confident Gus spouts his optimistic life outlook which contrasts greatly with Hazel’s own more skeptical perceptions.  And, as would be expected of any romance-centered drama (let alone a young adult one), the courtship blooms into an epic love story.

As is the case with all of Green’s fictional teenage characters, they have an intellect and maturity that doesn’t quite represent the normal teenager.  Bradshaw references their “quirky, smart, back-talking” as, perhaps, one more instance of the film’s phoniness, instead of noting it as a typical feature of Green’s oeuvre.   Sure, the two love-struck teens can seem a bit pretentious with their extensive vocabularies and deep philosophical debates.  And, when Gus explains his act of continuously placing an unlit cigarette in his mouth – what Bradshaw dubs his act of “existential defiance” – saying “it’s a metaphor, see:  you put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing,” it is hard to imagine an average 18-year-old boy having this exchange.  (Most of the high school boys I taught only used the word metaphor when forced to do so in the answer to an essay question).  However, this practice of portraying teens as fast-talking, witty, and mature-beyond-their years is not limited to Green’s popular novels.  I spent my young adult years eagerly consuming the verbal banter of the deep, soul-searching teen characters of Dawson’s Creek.  And a cursory viewing of any given CW show on the air today will likely find at least one such character similarly demonstrating this phenomenon.

The majority of Bradshaw’s criticisms are launched at the over-the-top romantic arch of the plot.  Hazel is obsessed with a book about a girl who dies of cancer leaving her family and loved ones behind – a text that embodies her very own fears.  This novel, An Imperial Affliction, ends abruptly (mid-sentence) and she has always longed to know what happened to the characters who live on after the death of the main character, Anna.  In the typical “big romantic gesture” that is common for the genre, Gus uses his cancer wish (that he had saved) to take Hazel and her mother to Amsterdam to speak to this author, a reclusive man who has refused to publish any further work or correspond with fans.  And while it’s true that not most teens struggling with terminal illnesses get such extravagant trips around the world and dramatic encounters with their personal heroes, isn’t this the staple of the romantic genre:  a larger-than-life romantic experience that we can all vicariously live through?   (Just watch read any Nicholas Sparks novel or watch any of adaptation of such and you find comparable moments.)  So chalk this up to another criticism that should be directed our entertainment genres and not this particular film.

Bradshaw was particularly critical of the film’s quintessential first kiss scene (and the scene which followed shortly after where the two end their virginal statuses together).  And, this may be the only point where I can understand his concern.  This was the one moment in the film where I was jarred out of the movie experience and sat momentarily wearing my media critic hat.   In the film, Hazel and Gus visit the Anne Frank house and, despite the physical strain it causes, Hazel forces herself to climb (oxygen tank and all) up the various steep steps and daunting ladder to the attic that hid the Frank family.  It is here that the two share their first kiss, which is followed by a round of applause from the international tourists who surround them.  The public, crow-approved first kiss is another staple of the romantic genre, so that in and of itself is not a surprising inclusion.  It is the setting that, for me, caused a momentary moment of discomfort (just as would any kiss, first or otherwise, taking place at a public memorial).  Leading up to this kiss, viewers see Hazel looking at the pictures of Anne’s family and of the horror that was Auschwitz.  And while I don’t think that Hazel was necessarily equating her own star-crossed love affair with Gus as equal to the experience that Anne and Peter shared in that space, I can see why Bradshaw would worry that “now there will be a nonstop traffic jam of sad snogging teens in Anne Frank's bedroom.”  (And, please, let that not be the case.)  What I think the scene was intended to do was show that, in that moment, Hazel, whose life outlook was always a bit more pessimistic than Gus’s, realized that some tragedies are greater than struggling through a disease even as horrific as cancer.  That said, the narrative practice of pairing traumatic experiences in this way has been critiqued by many before.  For example, in an article for Modern Fiction Studies, Ilka Saal, analyzed this problematic practice of what she calls “trauma transfer” in Jonanthan Foer Safran’s equally popular, best-seller-turned-blockbuster-film, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close where the events of 9/11 are strategically paired with narrative recollections of the Dresden bombing and, to a lesser extent, the Hiroshima bombing and Holocaust.  Such practices, Saal argues, creates a false parallel between events, often serving to raise one trauma (e.g. 9/11) to the level of another (e.g. the Holocaust).  But this isn’t a new practice and it’s extremely common especially when it comes to the Holocaust.  I’ve watched multiple films where characters come to some personal revelation about how their own personal tragedies are that great after reading The Diary of Anne Frank or walking through a Holocaust museum (e.g. The Freedom Writers). So, again, while there likely is something to criticize in regard to Green’s choice concerning the location of Hazel and Gus’s first kiss, he’s far from alone when it comes to this narrative misstep.

Bradshaw’s review continues on to criticize other random factors of the film.  For example, he is especially critical of the fact that both teens seem to come from comfortable middle class families (as if cancer can’t strike the rich as easily as the poor?).  Basing his criticism largely off of the “starter man-cave” that is Gus’s extravagant basement bedroom, Bradshaw ignores the moment when Hazel’s mother (whose sole mission in life seems to do anything that will make her daughter happy) looks crestfallen after she tells her daughter that they cannot afford a trip to Europe to meet her dream author.  And even if, despite that scene, other elements of the plot and setting indicate a level of financial stability or affluence for both key families, this is pretty common for film (and television for that matter).  Narrative settings are skewed predominantly in the favor of white, upper-middle class suburbs.  Now had Bradshaw’s point been that what this film doesn’t allow for is any commentary on how their financial stability actually played a huge role in how the families were able to deal with their children’s battles with cancer, I might have agreed.  Having lived in a lower-middle class family – headed by a single mother – that had to deal with an adolescent’s diagnosis and recovery from cancer, I fully realize that the situation presented in this film is an ideal.  Hazel’s mother does not work and is able to spend every waking moment with her child from age thirteen to sixteen.  She has a husband who is there to support her through every health relapse and emotional trauma that their daughter goes through.  While Bradshaw calls the parents in this film “too-good-to-be-true,” I simply think they just don’t represent the means and support systems that all families – especially those from lower socio-economic brackets – have during such times. 

But besides for this element of class – which is not the point of the film really – I actually really enjoyed the scenes devoted to Hazel’s family, and particularly those focused on her relationship with her mother.  It is this relationship – not the love story – that originally inspired me to write this review, so I will spend the remainder of this piece responding to what I felt was the moment in Bradshaw’s review where he missed the point almost completely.  He writes: 

Hazel's mom appears to have whispered something extraordinary to Hazel, when she was in a grave situation in hospital years previously. It is something that Hazel has not forgotten and that should theoretically deepen and complicate their relationship profoundly. But the pair just hug it out. It's like it never happened.

When I read this I wondered if he had seen a different version of the film than I.  Bradshaw is referencing the flashback scenes in the film – the most emotionally difficult scenes in my opinion – in which an extremely young looking, frail, bald thirteen-year-old Hazel is dying in a hospital bed unable to breathe as her lungs fill up with liquid.  The first time we are presented with this scene it ends with Hazel’s mother trying to comfort her, telling her that it’s okay to let go, and then collapsing into her husband’s arms crying.  However, the second time we see this scene it continues on a minute longer as we hear the next line of dialogue that has haunted Hazel for years.  Her mother, in between sobs, says to her husband in a pained voice:  “I won’t be a mom anymore.”  This comment is the origin for Hazel’s many concerns about how her inevitable death will affect those who love her.  It’s the concern that accounts, in part, for her fixation with the aforementioned novel.  Bradshaw argues that the remark should have complicated their relationship profoundly.  And I think that it did.  While it’s true that the remark goes unaddressed for years, it certainly does impact Hazel and her dealings with her parents (as she notes in the film that everything she does was to make them happy). And Bradshaw ignores the powerful scene in which Hazel finally confronts her mother about the comment.  As the film nears its close, Hazel repeats the comment and shares with her parents her fear that they will completely unravel when she is gone (especially her mother who has devoted the past few years completely to her care).  Her mother apologizes, saying that, she was wrong to say that and that even after Hazel is gone, she will always be her mother.  Hazel’s mother expresses how difficult it will be to move past losing her when the time comes, but shares that she does, in fact, have a plan for life in the after:  she hopes to be a social worker helping families who are faced with similar situations.

Although these were the more dramatic mother-daughter scenes in the film, there were others that were equally emotional although more subtly delivered.  I felt that Green did a terrific job of accurately representing the unspeakably difficult role a parent is placed in when a child is struggling with a potentially terminal illness.  The many scenes in which her mother ran frantically into Hazel’s bedroom expecting a health catastrophe after Hazel called out in excitement (which was misinterpreted as pain) demonstrate that tense feeling of always fearfully waiting for the other shoe to drop.  The scenes in which Hazel would grow frustrated with her mother’s ceaseless optimism (e.g. when she naively suggests that even though they didn’t get to see all the sites in Amsterdam on this trip maybe they could all come back one day), display the emotional tightrope dance that such a parents will go through to try to raise their children’s spirits, to foster (and cling to) hope. 

It was while watching these scenes in the theater that I felt like I had two simultaneous movies running through my mind:  the fictional one on the screen and a real one comprised of memories from my family’s past.  My younger sister was diagnosed with leukemia at the turn of her eighteenth birthday.  Like Hazel, she made a miraculous recovery, despite having only been given a 10 percent chance of survival.  Her battle with cancer, although no less horrific and grueling, was shorter and ended on a happier note than this fictional tale as she will soon celebrate her twelfth year in remission.  She will turn thirty as a married woman with three beautiful kids (something she was also told would likely not be possible after the extensive rounds of chemotherapy she underwent). 

Since the teen characters in The Fault in Our Stars were a bit larger-than-life, I didn’t always see my sister in them even though they were close in age and circumstance.  But, at times, I did.  What rang true the most was the moments when Hazel and Gus (and Isaac) showed that, cancer aside, they were still teenagers focused on teenage things (e.g. like the devastation of break-ups).  It reminded me of how it was my sister’s then boyfriend who was able to convince her to go through with the first blood transfusion she needed when the rest of us could not get her to overcome this fear.  The scenes of the characters hanging out in Gus’s basement playing video games or driving around egging cars reminded me of how in those long days in the hospital it was my sister’s friends who could more readily draw out the easy smiles and laughs as they talked and acted like normal teen friends, hanging out and munching on fast food, ignoring the medical backdrop.  And it was the scenes that showcased Hazel’s longing to just lead a normal teenage life that made me remember how frustrating it was for my sister to abide by the many restrictions placed upon her after first being released from the hospital (e.g. avoiding public places, wearing face masks).

But it was not her alone who I saw within this fictional story.  It was also my mother.  The scenes of young Hazel almost dying as her mother watched on were difficult for me on one level because I am now a mother of two young daughters and it is my greatest fear (perhaps because of my sister’s history) that I will outlive either of them.  Like many mothers, I cry easily at any narrative involving a sick or dying child.  But this is not the only reason these scenes were so painful for me to watch.  Becoming a mother has also provided me with that type of clarity we only get in retrospect – that ability later in life to fully empathize with our parents’ experiences only after we have become parents ourselves.  Every scene with Hazel’s mother conjured up thoughts of my own and made me realize just how unaware I was at 22 years of age of what my mother was going through as she watched her child teeter at the edge of death.  I don’t think I thought for a second that my sister would die.  I don’t think I knew how grim the statistics were and – knowing that my peculiar response to personal tragedies is to go numb, and that even in less dire circumstances I have been known to play the role of the ostrich in the sand – I likely didn’t ask.  But even if I had known every medical fact, I still wouldn’t have understood the sense of fear and the anger that arises when you contemplate the unfair possibility of burying your own child.   That Hazel’s mother would put her life on pause to be there every moment for her daughter rang completely true to me as my own mother spent every day of my sister’s hospital stay alongside of her – only running home for a shower and change of clothes when relieved by another visitor or for a weekend night when I could take her place while she slept, I imagine, fitfully, in her own bed.  When I cried during these scenes I realize that I was crying as much for my mother as I was Hazel’s – and that I was crying for myself as well, and for how incredibly guilty I felt for not being able to see then what I see now:  what an incredibly lonely time in my mother’s life that must have been… what an incredibly lonely time it would be for any parent facing such a situation.

So for me this film, despite the extra layers of spectacle that come from being marketed as a young adult romance, does a good job of revealing some of the very difficult, sad realities that families are faced with when children battle cancer.  While we could – and perhaps should – continue criticizing some of the genre trends discussed above, that seems like a task separate from critiquing this particular storyline.  So I’ll just end by saying that any critique of this film that rests primarily on the ways in which it conforms to such genre conventions is never going to be overly convincing (or useful) to me.