If we know that one in 5 people has cancer and that cancer touches every family, and that most Americans watch more than 20 hours of TV a week--how come we don't see much cancer on TV?
Doesn't it seem that there should be cancer references and cancer experiences represented on regular TV? Yes, we have the fabulous ShowTime "The Big C" with Laura Linney but what about cancer in Modern Family and South Park and How I Met Your Mother and The Family Guy?
At any moment each of us knows someone with cancer--family member, extended family member, co-worker, in a friend's family etc. Someone has a diagnosis or is going thru treatment. Someone is dying or surviving. So where is that in our TV lives? Shouldn't there at least be a minor character with cancer? a mention of taking a casserole (yes, lasagna) to someone's home? Someone bald or in a chemo-scarf?
Cancer is in our lives, so how about our TV lives?
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The Big C
We are watching the first season of the TV series “The Big C” starring Laura Linney. (Last seen as a family caregiver in “The Savages” with Philip Seymour Hoffman”). The Big C is wonderful, witty and thought provoking. And it hits every stereotype about cancer: the smarmy platitudes, the saccharine support group, the “cancer is a gift” message and the “your anger caused your cancer” craziness. Linney just explores and pushes back in the most wholly human and imperfect ways.
The premise of the show is great: What would you do if you were diagnosed with a late stage cancer and you knew and your doctor knew but there was some delay—weeks? months?--before anyone else knew. In that cocoon of time and spiritual space who would you become? What would that secret knowledge let you try out before the expectations of “cancer patient” surround you?
The premise of the show is great: What would you do if you were diagnosed with a late stage cancer and you knew and your doctor knew but there was some delay—weeks? months?--before anyone else knew. In that cocoon of time and spiritual space who would you become? What would that secret knowledge let you try out before the expectations of “cancer patient” surround you?
Sunday, May 30, 2010
The C Word
Well, yes, there is that C-Word. The one that is awful and horrible and grounds for divorce—(unless it is said in bed in the absolutely right moment of passion, heat and disinhibition.)
And then there is the other C-Word: Cancer. The one we talk about here.
There is a new Showtime TV series premièring August 16th referring cleverly to both of those words.
“The C Word” will star Laura Linney (John Adams, The Truman Show) as a suburban Mom with Metastatic Melanoma.
“If someone told you that you had two years to live, how would you change your life?” is what “C Word” producer Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City)-- herself a cancer survivor—wants to ask viewers of this comedy series to consider.
And then there is the other C-Word: Cancer. The one we talk about here.
There is a new Showtime TV series premièring August 16th referring cleverly to both of those words.
“The C Word” will star Laura Linney (John Adams, The Truman Show) as a suburban Mom with Metastatic Melanoma.
“If someone told you that you had two years to live, how would you change your life?” is what “C Word” producer Jenny Bicks (Sex and the City)-- herself a cancer survivor—wants to ask viewers of this comedy series to consider.
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