Hollywood doesn't romanticize illnesses, it brings awareness to them

Generally, when films are criticized by an audience, it is after the movie has been released, watched and sometimes even rewatched; but the new romance release, “Five Feet Apart,” had begun garnering denunciation weeks prior to it’s release. The movie focuses on two 17-year-olds, played by Cole Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson, struggling with cystic-fibrosis, mostly living within the confines of a hospital. They meet and, as luck would have it, begin to fall in love, despite the mental and physical boundaries presented by their illness. Just watching the two minute trailer has sent wild bloggers on a frenzy debating whether a deadly disease as the central focus of yet another romance drama is acceptable, inevitably accusing Hollywood of romanticizing the illness. But is the very premise of these movies hurtful (and if it is, who is it hurting), or can judgement be reserved for a case by case basis, like it is for most other films dealing with sensitive topics?  Opponents of the creation of these films argue misrepresentation of the realities of the illnesses are what makes these movies problematic. I am going to discount minute “inaccuracies” such as a ventilation machine not being plugged into a wall or characters roaming around without masks on at times as irrelevant, because films on every subject make these kinds of mistakes. However, there are also the larger misrepresentations of what life is like with the illnesses in question. In “The Fault in our Stars,” for example, real cancer patients deemed the physical appearance of the characters as inconsistent with how bodies morph due to the amount of drugs and steroids patients take. The overall healthy appearance of Gus (the male protagonist played by Ansel Elgort) throughout the movie despite his path to death was specifically criticized because it projected a less-than realistic, more positive experience with cancer.  “Real dying is too truthful for even a professional Hollywood film to depict, so it doesn’t even try,” Lauren Sczudlo, a cancer survivor, said in a “Washington Post” article referring to “The Fault in our Stars.” There is a limit to how much medical information and morbid details a hollywood romance movie can include in it before turning into a documentary, and much of that skipped over material is in reality what makes the diseases horrific. The omission of this material is what gives the story the opportunity to be romantic. If these movies were expected to depict all the horrifying details of the diseases, the movies would never be made in the first place, and the illnesses would lose massive opportunities for raising awareness. There is nothing wrong with documentaries, but mainstream genres draw more publicity and viewership, as well as reach a different audience. Some real patients complain that they do not have the opportunities that film characters do, therefore the films are problematic. However, does anyone really have the romantic opportunities that movies portray? Personally, I don’t know too many people who in the middle of a school’s homecoming game have been called down to the field on the loudspeakers by the crush they’ve had since middle school, and as their feet touch the grass all the football players kneel as the couple starts spinning and kissing in the middle of the field just as it begins to rain just enough to be romantic but not disrupting. That is not a common experience even though this trope is portrayed in dozens of movies.  No matter what, as much effort as possible should be put into portraying the innate struggles of illnesses - in fact this is the very direction the production of these movies is heading in, with “Five Feet Apart” recruiting Claire Wineland alongside several other members of the Cystic-Fibrosis (CF) community to help with the creation of the movie. However the overwhelming and valuable awareness that these films bring to diseases makes the creation of them worth it. “At the end of the day, accuracy isn’t even my biggest hope. Rather, I hope for CF awareness unlike any known before. I hope for massive funds raised to help us. I hope for people to get a glimpse of the alienation and isolation of CF life. I hope that people care. Of all the forces of the world, who’s better at gaining positive attention than Hollywood? Our invisible disease will be visible for the first time… No matter what, more people will know the words ‘cystic fibrosis,’” Dell said.