Fun House Mirrors: Popular Culture's Distorted View of Girl/Womanhood

(A sneak peek at the introduction to the new book that Sarah Burcon and I are just wrapping up – From Toddlers-in-Tiaras to Cougars:  How Pop Culture Shapes the Stages of a Woman’s Life)

Introduction

            Popular culture as of late has painted a blissful and utopic image of gender equality in the United States.  If you believe everything you read in books and see on the screen, then we are living in a wonderland full of female success.  It’s the age of girl power – of Frozen, Girls, The Hunger Games, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hermione Granger, Olivia Pope, Lady Gaga, and Michelle Obama.  The past decade has seen our first female speaker of the house and presidential elections that found women perpetually in the spotlight as nominees for presidential and vice presidential candidates.  Today, we’re being told that if women want to succeed in the work force, they just have to “lean in.”[1]  And perhaps they don’t even have to lean in all that far because, according to media proclamations, we’ve supposedly arrived at “the end of men.”[2]  However – surprise, surprise – this simply is not the case.   

            Beyond the façade of gender equality lie several uncomfortable truths about the status of women, not only in the United States but around the world.  Women are still earning only 77% of what men in comparable jobs earn,[3] and the earning gap is even more glaring when it comes to women of color.[4] As far as job prospects go, the landscape pop culture paints as rich with female CEOs, government officials, surgeons, and lawyers grossly misrepresents the frequency of such high-positioned success among women.  Even in the 21^st century, less than 20% of Congress has been female[5] and the number of female CEOs has been miniscule.  As of 2011, there were only 26 women acting as CEOs for Fortune 500 companies, which accounts to a mere 6.4% of such globally influential leadership roles.[6]  Although law schools are now graduating more women than ever before, at rates almost equal to male graduates, women make up only 17 percent of the partners at major American law firms.[7] And while women fare slightly better in other prestigious professions – for example, in 2012 women made up 25 to 32 percent of judges in the country (depending on the court) – they still are greatly outnumbered by their male colleagues.[8] 

            While it is true that women now make up 75% of the job force,[9] most are not working in the positions fictionalized in primetime lineups.  The majority of women still work in the same gendered service jobs that have traditionally been available to them for decades (e.g. secretaries, daycare workers).[10]  And despite gaining ground in various professions, women are still more likely than men to carry the burden of most domestic tasks,[11] they continue to be held to outdated double standards, and the world they are living in is not growing safer psychologically or physically.  For example, there is a 30% chance that women will end up with an eating disorder at some point in their lives,[12] a 35% chance that they will experience domestic violence or a sexual assault,[13] and the statistics for both depression and suicide rates among girls have increased throughout the 21^st century at alarmingly steady rates.[14]

                We’re not claiming that the media never offers up evidence that points toward these cultural conditions.  Titles like The New Soft War on Women:  How the Myth of Female Ascendance is Hurting Women, Men – and Our Economy[15] flew to the bookshelves to contradict the messages concerning female success in the workforce found within Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and Hanna Rosen’s The End of Men:  And the Rise of Women.  And the media frenzy surrounding the “Opt Out Revolution” – the sensational reports that exaggerated the rates at which women were flocking from their professional careers to return to lives as stay-at-home moms – further supports the fact that cultural standards are rarely the same for men and women.[16]  For example, when Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker of the house in 2006, the only magazine to feature her on the cover was Ms. Magazine – a point they made sure to highlight in 2011 by featuring her again with the byline “The Woman TIME and Newsweek Won’t Put on their Covers” shortly after the other publications ran issues with the newly appointed Jon Boehner featured on the front of their magazines.  Similarly, the media commentary concerning presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin during the 2008 election was extremely problematic and points to the ways in which men and women are treated differently in public professional careers.  (This discourse continues to date.   For example, recently pundits posed questions about how being a new grandmother will impact Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election prospects.)[17]  Popular fiction and Hollywood film make the second-shift phenomenon that women face into fodder for comedic punch lines (e.g. I Don’t Know How She Does It) and ultimately support the practice by reinforcing the outdated idea that women are simply more natural and competent parents (e.g. What to Expect When You’re Expecting).  And if we were confused about whether young girls continue to face unreachable beauty standards and overt sexual objectification we need only flip through any sampling of reality television shows (e.g. Toddlers in Tiaras, Teen Mom, The Bachelorette) or watch Miley Cyrus twerking – or dancing with a foam finger or sailing through the air on a wrecking ball – to realize that this continues to be an epidemic. 

            Feminist media critics have long spent time analyzing such problematic imagery. However, some have turned toward studying the ways in which the imagery of the uber-successful women might be equally problematic. In Enlightened Sexism:  The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done, Susan Douglas argues that the depictions of strong, accomplished women in popular culture mask numerous societal problems still plaguing the United States, and the world at large. Her study proves that in the 1950s and 60s the media offered us narratives packed full of bathing beach beauties and stay-at-home moms, which didn’t reflect the reality of many women – women who were joining the Peace Corps, embarking on various professional careers, and engaging in politics. But the media of today offers us the opposite problem.  Decades ago the media illusion was that such ambitious women simply didn’t exist.  Today the media illusion is that equality for all girls and women has been accomplished when, of course, it hasn’t been.[18] As a result, today’s contradictory messages lead to a variety of misconceptions concerning the prospects of contemporary women. 

For example, a recent poll found that 60 percent of men and 50 percent of women believed women no longer face barriers in terms of advancement in the workplace.[19] Arguably, the endless stream of success narratives dominating popular culture – images of successful female doctors (e.g. Grey’s Anatomy), lawyers (e.g. The Good Wife), politicians (e.g. Scandal), CIA agents (e.g. Homeland), and more – has contributed to this erroneous thought. And, by far, the biggest “loser” of this new mindset is the women’s movement, which is all too often framed as antiquated, outdated, successfully completed, and no longer necessary.  Moreover, feminism has arisen as the other bad “F” word, causing women to try to distance themselves from the movement even as they are inundated by images of successful women who are, arguably, products of its work.  In Bad Feminist, media critic Roxane Gay discusses how the caricature of feminists as “angry sex-hating, man-hating” victims has been fostered “by the people who fear feminism the most, the same people who have the most to lose when feminism succeeds.”[20]   That women are buying into this notion that feminism is a cultural evil is not new and the evidence of this in popular culture dates back decades before the onset of the 21^st century.

            This book notes the cyclical nature of this feminist backlash, particularly in the United States, analyzing American pop culture’s depictions of women and questioning what effect they have on the women who eagerly (or reluctantly) consume them.  Although the chapters within this book focus primarily on the contemporary moment, we realize it is impossible to study these cultural depictions as if they exist in a bubble.  We live in a historical echo chamber:  the narratives we get today concerning gender are often reincarnations of earlier epochs; the images we see today are all too often not incredibly different from those witnessed by the generations before us.  Analyzing why this is the case and how and why the 21^st century alters these recurrent narratives is important because it is only when we understand what purposes these narratives serve that we can start to fully critique them.  So while we do provide historical context for these female representations, we primarily focus on how the immediate present (the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the social technology explosion, the self-help movement, etc.) has contributed to them. 

            Ultimately we argue that this current moment is a bit scarier than previous ones because the messages integrated into television shows, films, and popular literature are becoming increasingly didactic (either overtly or covertly).  In the midst of a moment that has trained us that we’re all selves in need of help, now it’s not just medical experts and pseudo psychiatrists who aim to show us the way to salvation – fixing our relationship woes and other problems one paperback purchase at a time.  Popular culture now subtly promises answers to all that ails us:  how to win the man, how to raise the kid, how to keep our sex appeal as we age.  We only need look as far as the latest Hollywood film or reality television show to discover the magical solution and prescriptive steps to getting the life we want.  Throughout this book we consider how this indoctrination into the self-help movement has impacted popular culture and its reception.  This idea that we’re selves in need of rescue is further reinforced by the culture created in the wake of 9/11. Therefore we also discuss how these portrayals of women that have existed historically are different in this 21^st century culture that witnessed the revival of the manly man image and resurrection of the damsel in distress motif.[21]

Ultimately, this book shows that contemporary popular culture has created a slew of stereotypical roles for girls and women to (willingly or not) play throughout their lives: The Princess, the Nymphette, the Diva, the Single Girl, the Tiger Mother, the M.I.L.F, the Cougar, and more.  We study the impact that popular culture products marketed toward girls and women have on their development through various ages and “stages” of life. These essays investigate the role of cultural texts in gender socialization at specific moments in a woman’s life:  as a young girl, an adolescent, a single/dating woman, a bride, a wife, a pregnant woman, a mother, a middle-aged sexual woman, and a menopausal/maturing woman.   By studying a variety of products from childhood toys and fairytales to popular television shows, Hollywood films, and self-help books, we argue that popular culture exists as a type of funhouse mirror constantly distorting the real world conditions that exist for women and girls and magnifying the gendered expectations they face.  Such warped depictions of women’s experiences are further complicated by the fact that the vast majority of products marketed toward girls and women ignore class, race, and sexual orientation – equating female experiences, in most cases, to that of a uniform middle-to-upper-middle class, white, heterosexual experience.[22]  Ultimately, we ask this: if women are perpetually trapped within this funhouse mirror, through the constant barrage of media they are exposed to, how can they ever see beyond its blurry view of reality? 

            What becomes clear by dividing the vast array of gendered imagery into these prescriptive “stages” of a woman’s life is that the instruction women receive at one stage of life carries over and influences her behavior during the next (e.g. messages about girlhood during youth impact narratives concerning female dating behavior during young adulthood; motifs found within cultural depictions of brides carry over into those focused on pregnant women and new mothers; and so forth).   So it’s not just that popular culture is providing these depictions ad nauseam at every stage of a girl’s and woman’s life (providing problematic depictions ranging from toddlers-in-tiaras to cougars-on-the-prowl); it’s the spiral effect of this cultural training that needs to be noted.  The little girl who overdoses on princess culture grows up to easily buy into the cultural mindset that all women should long to be princesses for a day; therefore she is easily manipulated into the consumerist trappings of wedding culture.  The woman who is fed prescriptive fear-mongering self-help books while pregnant turns easily years later to books about how to be the perfect helicopter parent by reading up on how to play “the heavy” or become a “tiger mother.”[23]  With the help of popular culture, our little Bratz become grown-up Bridezillas and our young Nymphettes become middle-aged Cougars.  And is this really any surprise?  Ultimately we argue that the effect of these cultural narratives compounds over time like layers of scar tissue unless such cultural narratives are engaged with critically.

            In the end we suggest that all is not lost and these scars can fade.  The ways in which people can, and do, counter these narratives are plentiful and spelled out in this text.  We discuss top down efforts, such as media literacy programs being launched in schools and attempts in the business world to create advertising campaigns that foster higher self-esteem in girls.  We discuss more grassroots efforts, such as the ways in which consumers are taking advantage of web 2.0 technology to influence television programming or to curve consumption trends by posting critical product reviews.   And we discuss the idiosyncratic ways that individual women are fighting against this barrage of imagery, oftentimes reappropriating and refunctioning these female stereotypes in powerful ways.  Finally, we join the voices of other feminist media scholars who came before us, reassuring our readers that even the smallest efforts can greatly diffuse the effects that pop culture’s gendered lessons have on us.  By talking back to these narratives, laughing at their imagery, we can learn to see through the distorted depictions of women and exit the funhouse once and for all.

---

[1] Sandberg, Sheryl.  Lean In:  Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.  NY:  Knopf, 2013.

[2] Rosin, Hanna.  The End of Men:  And the Rise of Women.  NY:  Riverhead, 2012.

[3]  Figures provided by the 2012 Census Bureau Report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance:  http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb13-165.html

[4] See Needleman, Sarah E. “Pay Gap Between Men and Women Remains a Reality in Work Force.” Career Journal.com.  24 April 2007.  For additional studies on the pay gap among women, see Chang, Mariko Lin.  Shortchanged: Why Women Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done About It.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010.

[5] Mroz, Jacqueline. “Female Police Chiefs, a Novelty No More.” The New York Times Online.  6 April 2008.

[6] “Women CEOs and Heads of the Financial Post 500.” Catalyst.org. March 2011.

[7] O’Brien, Timothy L. “Why Do so Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms?”  The New York Times Online.  19 March 2006.

[8] “2012 Representation of United States State Court Women Judges.” National Association of Women Judges.  24 March 2013. 

[9] According to a 2013 article in Forbes Magazine, “The U.S. Gets Left Behind when it Comes to Working Women,” most developed countries are averaging closer to 80% and the U.S. currently only ranks 17^th globally in this regard.

[10] Douglas, Susan J. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done.  NY:  Times Books, 2010, pg. 279.    

[11] A 2012 study by The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that across the developed world, women do far more of the unpaid domestic work that keeps households running.  In The United States specifically, women spend an average of 4 hours per day on childcare and household tasks compared to men’s 2.7 hours.

[12] The National Eating Disorder Association reports that 20 million women suffer from eating disorders throughout their lifetime.  A 2008 report by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reports that 65% of American Women admit to having disordered eating practices. 

[13] According to The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 35.6% of women report have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

[14]  Orenstein, Peggy.  Cinderella Ate My Daughter:  Dispatches From the Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.  NY:  Harper Collins, 2011, pg. 6, 18.

[15]  Rivers, Caryl, and Rosalind C. Barnett.  The New Soft War on Women:  How the Myth of Female Ascendance is Hurting Women, Men – and Our Economy.  NY:  Penguin, 2013.

[16] Lisa Belkin’s 2003 article in The New York Times began the launch of articles related to the status of stay-at-home mothers.  The wave continues a decade later with articles like Judith Warner’s 2013 “The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In.” 

[17]  For more on this controversy, see Liz Kreutz’s article “Will Clinton Baby Affect 2016, And is it Sexist to Ask”:  http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/04/will-clinton-baby-affect-2016-and-is-it-sexist-to-ask/

[18] Douglas, Susan.  Enlightened Sexism:  The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done. NY: Times Books, 2010, pg. 4.

[19] Gibbs, Nancy Gibbs. “What Women Want Now.” Time (26 October 2009): 31.

[20] Gay, Roxane.  Bad Feminist.  NY: Harper Perennial, 2014, pgs. ix-x.

[21] Susan Faludi in The Terror Dream:  Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (NY:  Metropolitan, 2007) discusses how the events of 9/11 helped to revitalize these stereotypical gendered depictions through the media’s frenzied attention to heroic (male) first responders and emotional (female) widows.

[22] Although at points throughout this book we do use specific examples of texts marketed primarily to women of color to show the ways in which they vary from other mainstream texts aiming to portray the same “stage” of life, we do not have the space to fully critique the impact these homogenous portrayals of women’s experience has for women whose identity constructs do not align with those of the fictional portrayals thrust upon them.   Whenever possible, however, we do direct readers to research that more fully delves into these issues.

[23]  Two of the most widely debated parenting books of the 21^st century include Dara-Lynn Weiss’s The Heavy:  A Mother, a Daughter, a Diet – A Memoir (NY: Ballantine Books, 2013) and Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mother (NY:  Random House, 2011).   

Soap Operas, Comic Relief, and the Female Gaze: How General Hospital Merges Sexual Entertainment with Social Awareness

As a longtime fan of ABC’s General Hospital every year as a teenager and young adult I looked forward to the week in May devoted to the show’s fictional fundraiser, The Nurses Ball.  The soap opera started incorporating the gala into its annual programming in 1994 as part of its dedication to raising awareness about HIV and AIDS. Within the narrative of the show, this black tie event, which features performances by a large cross-section of the ensemble cast, raises money for HIV/AIDS research.  Along with this sweeps week spectacular, GH has included realistic storylines about a character who have died from AIDS (Stone Cates) and another who has lived her life fighting her HIV with drug protocols (Robin Scorpio Drake).  In the early 2000s, before soap operas began their quick demise, the show even capitalized on the merchandise appeal of the program and sold Nurses Ball T-Shirts on ABC’s website, with the proceeds going toward medical research.  (I own two of these that are so battered that they’re really not even appropriate to wear anymore).

I was disappointed when General Hospital stopped including this annual event into its narrative after 2001 but was thrilled in 2013 when they decided to revive it as a tribute to one of the character’s noted above.  (The event was held in part to honor the memory of Robin, who – in typical soap opera style – was mistakenly believed to be dead). 

Comic relief has always been a part of this event.  For example, the regular host throughout the years, Lucy Coe, is known for costume malfunctions that result in her ending up on stage in her undergarments.   However, during its recent reprise the show has blended comic relief with a bit of sexual exploitation, featuring a popular performance by “Magic Milo and the Magic Wands.”  (Yes, magic wands – I can’t make this stuff up!)  Capitalizing on the popularity of the 2012 film, Magic Mike, and the female fan following thereafter of its star, Channing Tatum, GH launched a storyline about a mob king’s bodyguard, Milo, who liked to moonlight as a male stripper. 

With various impromptu performances of Milo’s talent, it was no surprise when he landed a space on the stage for the annual ball alongside other male characters who were apparently not against “taking it all off” for a good cause.  (Click here for the 2013 performance and herefor the 2014 performance).

                                   

Mostly this is just an amusing, silly spectacle with, admittedly, some good eye candy.  However, there were some uncomfortable moments for me as a viewer.  For example the inclusion of a character who had just completed a multi-year storyline as the victim of male-on-male rape (Michael Corinthos Quartermaine) as a back-up dancer/stripper in the routine struck me as somewhat inappropriate.  And this year the dance number included a teenager (T.J. Ashford) and when his high school girlfriend screamed “take it all off” (in front of both their mothers), I likewise cringed.  (Although this was slightly in line with its social awareness storyline concerning teen sexual activity, as the two had recently attempted to have safe, protected sex for the first time only weeks earlier on the show).

When I view these performances by Magic Milo and company as a scholar instead of fan, I also find myself drifting back to my dissertation days when I liked to claim the soap opera genre was progressive in many ways.  The genre, as mentioned above, has traditionally been very involved in raising social awareness – specifically related to women’s issues.  But it also has been a type of programming that scholars have argued is aligned with both the rhythm of women’s days and desires.  (The serial format, use of sound cues, and oft repeated dialogue, for example, was originally in place to work well with the schedule and distracted viewing practices of homemakers).   Concerning the latter, soaps, and the primetime soaps that followed them (e.g. Sex in the City), have purposely attempted to cater to female sexuality.  If mainstream cinema and television can be accused of having a “male gaze” (often portraying women as sexual objects to be looked upon by men), this type of female programming has oftentimes purposefully flipped that, creating a “female gaze.”    Anyone who has ever watched a soap for any extended period knows that they are full of gratuitous shots of shirtless men.  Need to answer a knock at a door?  Wearing only a towel is perfectly okay in soapland. 

While I like to make fun of all of this in part, I also feel that it’s nice that this space exists for this type of alternate, playful televisual norms.  I wouldn’t normally add “loss of female gaze or eye candy” to my list of reasons why it will be a shame when soap operas finally go off the air, but I have to admit, I think that it will be sad to see an outlet dedicated to (albeit heterosexual) female desire disappear.

So while it’s there, I guess I’ll try to stop rolling my eyes and sit back and enjoy the show because it’s not every day that you can see “magic wands” dancing across your television screen.

The Bachelor Franchise Takes Voyeurism to New Level this Season

Few, if any, regular viewers of reality television are under any mistaken belief that what we receive when we tune into our favorite show is in any way “reality.”  But still, even after over a decade of popularity, the genre thrives because, despite knowledge of how such shows operate, season after season, reality television successfully sells the promise of delivering viewers a fleeting glimpse at “the real” hidden beneath the expertly edited, perfectly packaged dramatic narrative.  We watch because these shows allow us to play the role of the “Peeping Tom” without (much) guilt, witnessing the bad behavior of celebrities, the behind-the-scenes action of up-and-coming stars trying to make it in the world, or the most personal moment of everyday individuals on the quest for love:  awkward first dates, poorly timed first kisses, emotional breakups, and more.  One of the most successful reality television franchises, ABC’s The Bachelor/Bachelorette, provides all of the latter against exotic backdrops, allowing viewers to live vicariously through the (often staged) onscreen romantic moments of the contestants as they have dates that include helicopter rides over volcanoes, make out sessions beneath waterfalls, picnics over the Hollywood sign, playful mountain top snowball fights, candlelight dinners in ancient castles, and private firework displays.  It’s a successful formula:  wish fulfillment + voyeurism = viewer appeal.  This year, however, The Bachelorette took its personal brand of voyeurism to a new level and I imagine I was not alone in finding myself uncomfortable at many points throughout this season as the show capitalized on events ranging from personal tragedy and racial conflict to private medical procedures and family celebration. 

The opening episode of this past season included a somber dedication to a contestant, Eric Hill, who had died just weeks after exiting the show.  Ever ready to dangle even the most inappropriate carrot to get viewers to tune in, the program was careful to not reveal how or when the contestant died so that viewers were forced to watch all scenes with this young man – some of his last moments alive – awaiting the episode when he would be voted off and his death would be more fully explained.   Eric, a contestant depicted as an adventurous world explorer, was a potential frontrunner in the early episodes.  His last moments on the show unfortunately played into the program’s ability to further sensationalize his death.  The bachelorette, Andi Dorfman, kicked Eric off the show (before a rose ceremony) after a conversation where he accused her of putting up emotional walls and a façade; he suggested that she was acting instead of being real.  In an overreaction – he obviously touched a nerve (the lady doth protest too much methinks) – Andi asked Eric to leave and his time on the program was over.  The episode ended abruptly, omitting the rose ceremony where other contestants were voted off, in order to include a talkback session between Andi and the host, Chris Harrison, where they discussed learning about Eric’s death and how it impacted the show.  Both stressed how this incident made them realize how “real” the program really is in that it deals with real people who could face tragedy at any point.  And maybe as those of us watching at home agreed. Maybe we had finally gotten that glimpse into the real that we hunger for in reality television shows, no matter how sad that fleeting moment of real was.  But the show didn’t end with this tête-à-tête. 

The show more flagrantly capitalized on Eric’s death episodes later during Home Town Week when Harrison – on air – announced to Andi and the remaining four contestants that Eric had died in a paragliding accident.   Per usual, with cameras rolling, the producers captured the tear streaked faces of the cast and their whispered exchanges – this time of mourning.  And while I’m sure there was some reality captured in this sad scene – particularly as Andi cried in regret over the last angry words she said to Eric – the show undid this sense of reality and its ability to claim it wasn’t trying to sensationalize this young man’s death in the last few minutes of the episode.  In these moments the camera crew, producers, and other staff came onto the set and were seen embracing the cast and one another.  In and of itself this is a perfectly fine gesture.  It’s probably what should have been done.  But quite obviously the cameras were left rolling for an exploitive purpose so that these emotional exchanges could be played out in front of viewers weeks later.  Reality undone.  Tragedy exploited.

The Bachelorette hyped up another horrific moment that occurred in the season:  a racial slur that was (allegedly) made by a contestant.  While racial conflict is not unheard of on reality television and the show would not be the first to sensationalize it (as viewers of MTV’s Real World would remember), the inclusion was surprising for a franchise often criticized for its lack of racial diversity and cultural sensitivity.  The incident came to the forefront when fan favorite, Marquel Martin, learned from a housemate that a contestant had allegedly referred to him and another African American contestant, Ron Worrell, as “blackies” during the season opener.  The situation was further heightened because the contestant in question, Andrew Poole, had already been portrayed as one of the season’s villains due to other accusations (e.g. that he had obtained and bragged about getting a woman’s phone number while the season was underway). 

For a show that has historically (and problematically) ignored race, it did a decent job of addressing this issue on some levels.  Although, to be clear, most of the credit should go to Martin who, in all situations (reflecting about the incident in personal interviews, discussing it with housemates, and confronting Poole on the show both during the competition and during the “Men Tell All” episode months later), calmly (but passionately) spoke out against ignorance and racism.  However, the show quite obviously was trying to revive and heighten this conflict during last Monday’s “Men Tell All” episode.  After the men discussed this event again – reaffirming accusations and denials – Harrison announced that they had footage of the moment where Poole had supposedly made the remark during the first rose ceremony and after a prolonged pause and some precursory shots of the wide-eyed audience, the clip was shown.  Although the audio was unavailable, the video footage did clearly show Poole making an unidentifiable comment during the scene.   Regardless of the exploitive nature of the show, many were actually hoping that this incident, or more accurately the popularity of Martin, would lead to the franchise’s first bachelor of color.   (The franchise tried to position itself as slightly more diverse after having selected Juan Pablo, American-born Venezuelan former soccer star, as the last bachelor).  But, alas, that did not happen.  The “Men Tell All” episode revealed that Martin instead was placed on the most recent formulation of the franchise’s more raunchy spinoff, The Bachelor Pad – The Bachelor in Paradise.   And moments later the hopes that even more diversity among white leading men might be possible was shattered when another fan favorite, Chris Soules, a farmer from Iowa, was also announced to have been placed on the spin-off.  For as much as the television show is grounded in voyeurism, it looks like we won’t be seeing anything new in terms of casting choices for a while.

The final voyeuristic moment The Bachelorette gave viewers this season involved bringing back a former bachelorette couple, Ashley Herbert and JP Rosenbaum.  Within seconds of the couple walking to the stage it was evident that they were expecting a child.  After chatting with the couple for a few moments, Harrison promised “a Bachelor first” and announced that Ashley would be having a live ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby.  And, indeed, this occurred as an awed crowd, full of smiles and tears, watched on as the two discovered they were having a boy. 

For some reason this staged event unsettled me.  As a feminist media scholar who is all for normalizing female experiences that are considered taboo, I would normally applaud a reality television show that unabashedly discussed gynecological issues or, say, showcased a woman openly breastfeeding.  But in a decade which has increasingly seen the dissolution of rights concerning women’s bodies, privacy, and reproductive rights, this projection of Ashley and JP’s fetus seemed invasive.  As Bachelor wedding events – the public broadcasting of the nuptials of those contestants who actually make it to the alter – have become increasingly prevalent, I’ve often joked to fellow fans that the stars of the program must sign blood oaths that all parts of their lives are fair game forevermore and that it seems like the equivalent of signing over the rights to a first born child.  Now that joke seems to hit too close to home.  As a woman who has had the joyous experience of discovering my firstborn’s sex through a private ultrasound, I find it hard to imagine that learning that news alongside of millions of viewers (and a live studio audience) is as intimate.  But, then again, gender reveal parties are all the rage right now so maybe I’m alone in my desire to have such moments be a family affair. 

Maybe this moment on the show disturbed me because, like the show in general, it seemed so normative.  JP and Ashley seemed like gender caricatures of expecting parents with JP complaining that Ashley was buying too many baby clothes and trumping his name selections.   Just as the program clearly endorses heteronormativity, it also seems to endorse parenthood, suggesting that having a baby should be the natural outcome for all married couples.  I suppose maybe I just had higher hopes for this season.  After all, this was the season of the bachelorette who left The Bachelor on her own terms after a disastrous fantasy suite date.  The season focused on the woman who gained fame for calling the bachelor a chauvinistic, narcissistic jerk – providing one of the first open critiques of a bachelor in the show’s history.  But, then again, this was also the season that starred a successful prosecutor who left her job as an attorney to find love on a reality show because her life wasn’t complete without it.  It was the season that found the star happily calling her suitors real men every time the aggressively pulled her aside and planted rough kisses on her.  So, am I really surprised? 

This season of The Bachelorette definitely allowed viewers to see things they had never before:  the death of a contestant, real conversations about race, and a live medical procedure, but all of this voyeurism left me feeling dirty. (And that’s saying a lot since I don’t necessarily often end a season of the show feeling morally clean!)  If this is the price I have to pay for getting a glimpse at some “real” in the midst of all  the spectacle, I think I may pass next time around.

Does Television Still Need Jack Bauer?: Thoughts on Fox’s 24: Live Another Day

Fox’s 24 (2001-2010), along with other hit series like ABC’s Lost (2004-2010), changed viewers’ expectations for network dramas.   In the case of 24, the series provided viewers with a different viewing experience with its filmic, action-packed sequencing and “real time” format.  The narrative for each single season follows a single day in the life of its protagonist, Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland), as he struggles to save the world.  This show was the first of its kind to attempt real time delivery – breaking each episode into one hour in the adventures of him and his colleagues at CTU (Los Angeles’ Counter Terrorist Unit). Having one “day” as the center of a season’s focus allows for various time manipulations and a different viewing experience.  The one-day-a-season format allows for plot compression – action, events, and conflict must unfold at rates beyond that of a normal day and viewers are asked not only to suspend their disbelief but to take this day as an exception that could happen somewhere behind the backdrops of the real government in existence to protect them.  But while compressing plot development – speeding up action or packing thrills into a more concise segment – the show actually stretches out a fictional time (one day in this case) in ways that viewers are not used to – while the action is sped up, the time itself is retarded to fit in all of the events.

The design of the show assists in making this venture successful.  Every angle foregrounds this focus on time, and the fear of running out of it.  The show’s logo is the ominous glowing digits of the number 24, each episode begins with the tagline:  “the events in this episode take place between…” (showcasing fictional start and end times for the specific episode), and all important scene breaks find themselves ending against the background sound of the foreboding tick-tock – the show’s marker and thematic sound effect. 

Of course in all actuality the program does not show its viewers a complete day in the life of Bauer or any other character for that matter.  The narrative threads change frequently, usually focusing on a minimum of four different storylines.  So while the audience can tag along on Bauer’s adventures usually for half of the time, the other half is divided between his enemies, the plotting terrorist organizations, sneak peeks behind the scenes of the White House administration, the intelligence gathering work of his colleagues at the command center or in the field, and, depending on the season, the perils of his own family members or friends.  The quick cuts between various intersecting plots allow viewers to be privy to some information before the show’s heroes, to try and unscramble the sinister plans before CTU does, and it allows the audience to be in an interestingly voyeuristic position – seeing things that should not be seen from many different perspectives.  Each episode ends in a way that highlights this multiple storyline focus and the fact that we never really know which plot point is going to develop into the most important one.  A few minutes before an episode’s end the screen is split and filled with four different shots of action unfolding at different locales and then one event is selected to finish off the show – the infamous cliffhanger.  Often this is a shot of someone dying, a bomb beginning to countdown, or a mystery uncovered, but – as intended – it is usually intriguing enough to allow viewers to eagerly await the next hour… although it will take 167 of their own until it arrives.  The temporal discord is important to note.  The show, operating under the guise of real time narrative delivery, perpetuates the myth of temporal continuity while jarring viewers with a rather profound gap between the time they experience in their own lives as they watch the show and the time that they will continue to experience during the hiatuses that exists between weekly segments and season breaks.  The promise of real time is delivered (in mutated, commercial-filled form) for approximately 45 minutes each week, but in all actuality this practice of the temporal tease is actually delivering the opposite of what a show like 24 promises – it slows down time.  Jack Bauer’s day is actually retarded and stretched out in order to fulfill the necessary requirements of program sequencing and network delivery.  And, in multiple seasons, viewers are forced (again despite the promise of real time continuity and temporal parallelism) to experience the reverse and watch time be sped up as a new season of 24 will often find itself starting up in the fictional world months and/or years from where the viewers left the imaginary scene the season before.  However this temporal discord is played out, the device is apparently quite enjoyable and has inspired many shows in its aftermath to attempt such a temporal structure (e.g. Prison Break, Lost, Mixology). 

            

24 also helped to disrupt televisual rules, such as “thou shall not kill off main characters.”  As is expected, Jack is always successful in saving the world from peril.  However, the first season schooled viewers early that such heroism would not always come without a cost.  The final episode ended in a scene reminiscent of the final moments of the film Seven, where Jack (who had successfully prevented an assassination attempt and rescued both his pregnant wife and teenage daughter from captivity) walks into a holding room at his own work place to find that his wife’s throat had been slit by his traitorous, double agent partner.  The happy ending – the saved day – is undone within the last 30 seconds of the episode.  Other shows have followed in step, making bold moves to unexpectedly kill off main characters (e.g. Lost was known for this practice early in its run as well, and kept viewers unnerved by eventually even killing off the character whose flashbacks grounded the individual episode that was showing). 

In its early years, 24 was also at the forefront of programming that provided timely post-9/11 political critiques – merging real news headlines concerning terrorism, torture, homeland security, and foreign policy into its narrative.   Since 24 went off the air in 2010, other shows have surfaced to do similar narrative work:  Showtime’s Homeland (2011-present), ABC’s Scandal (2012-present), and Netflix’s House of Cards (2013-present).  With so many shows giving viewers a fix of what 24 once did (an action film in a televisual format; temporal play; narrative complexity; political commentary), I was curious to see how Fox’s recent miniseries, 24: Live Another Day, would be received and what this limited run reboot would do the narrative legacy it left behind four years ago. 

The ratings would deem this added season (although they are not calling it such) a success.  And, as I expected, the potential of another miniseries or a movie offshoot is not off the table.  As a fan of the original series, I found myself once again enjoying the narrative pacing, the ability to binge multiple “hours” at a time through delayed viewing, and the ways in which contemporary concerns (foreign relations with the Middle East, China, and Russia; military defense debates concerning drone programs; campaigns for information transparency, and so forth) played out (hyperbolically) in the fictional world.  But mostly I was interested in seeing how this new run would pick up on old plots and relationships and in that way I was not disappointed.  [Spoiler Alert]  Live Another Day brought Jack into contact with his former love interest, Audrey Heller, and his old nemesis, Cheng Zhi.  Like the shocking first season, this series ended with Audrey’s death (at Cheng’s extended hand) which (although not at all shocking now that the show’s formulas are so well established) gave the series the feeling of having gone full circle back to the beginning.  Her death during the last fifteen minutes of the episode pretty much solidified the fact that Jack himself would not die, although viewers might have been led to believe otherwise.  The pained look on Jack’s face in this scene reminded me of that of Dexter’s in that series’ finale after Deb died.  It did not surprise me to discover that the writers had toyed with killing off Jack because, like with Dexter, it is hard to imagine that the series will ever end in a traditional happy ending for a character who has perpetually played the suffering soul and crossed so many moral lines.  The tightrope dance Jack does in terms of morality was displayed beautifully by the juxtaposition of his last two scenes this season.  In the first he decapitates Cheng after providing the proof the Chinese government needed that he was alive (hence stopping a war). And in the second he sacrifices himself to save his only friend, Chloe, by surrendering himself to the Russians who have been hunting him for four years.  This scene where Jack is whisked away on a helicopter was almost exactly the same as the end of season five where Jack was carted away on a freight headed to China – another moment of déjà vu.  But it was fitting that his last heroic action was to save his friend – arguably one of the best characters on the show – as their relationship has always been the one constant the strung the various seasons together.

If I was a betting media critic, I’d say that we haven’t seen the last of Jack.  I’m not sure that we still need Jack Bauer in 2014, and I’m not sure that any additional runs of 24 will provide us with anything we haven’t seen before, but there is comfort in the familiar, in the nostalgia, and the escapism of believing the world will always saved by a little rouge vigilante justice, so I’ll watch the next round when it comes out. 

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.