CANCER PORN

Windy, but not very dishy.

For many years, I was an avid collector (downloader, to be more precise) of a

genre of 1960s music called "sunshine pop". It was exactly what its name implies: catchy three-minute Top 40 tunes with sunny dispositions, happy vocals, and usually featuring "ba-ba-ba" or "la-la-la" in the chorus. A good example -- perhaps the first -- was "Windy" by the Association. 

As my collection of sunshine pop grew, certain themes recurred. These included the innate wisdom of children, the wonder of the nature, and, of course, sunshine itself. A band called The Ballroom went one step further with their single "Spinning, Spinning, Spinning." Accompanied by a jangly lead guitar, composer/producer/lead vocalist Curt Boettcher sings:

A cripple taught me how to dance

A blind man taught me how to see

A fallen angel taught me how to fly

And a prisoner taught me to be free.

You get the idea; you could probably finish the lyrics yourself. But it's the first two lines that make one stand up and take notice (or groan, depending on your tolerance for homespun axioms and the word "cripple"). It's the romanization of physical incapacitation or fatal illness, a sub-genre in contemporary "young adult" fiction. 

One blogger refers to it as "sick lit". One of the most famous examples was The Fault in Our Stars John Green. What this book, like others, do is arouse the kind of heartfelt, cry-in-your-hankie doomed love that teen females wallow in: adolescent girl falls in love adolescent boy dying with cancer. Or vice-versa. Or they both have cancer, making it twice as romantic.

Next time you're in L.A., tell me if you spot any
hookers or johns who look like this.

I watched a piece on the news about The Fault in Our Stars, astonished by the dewy-eyed girls at an autograph signing with the author. It reminded me of the number of young women who, upon seeing the Julia Robert romcom Pretty Woman, probably took the first bus to Los Angeles in order to meet the millionaire of their dreams by becoming a streetwalker. Ask a real hooker how those things work out. 

Not that girls want to be diagnosed with cancer while in high school. But falling in love with a boy with cancer... who can teach her what living is all about... and evoke that first giddy feelings of love... as they curl up together on the hospital bed, their hearts beating in unison? That's real love. And even better, he's too weak to feel you up!

"Go on, skip ahead. You know how it's going to
end."

This cancer has now spread to anime, in the Netflix movie In Waves, where a young man

gets the courage to surf thanks to lessons taught by a young woman afflicted with you-know-what. A sick girl taught me how to hang ten...

Having lost three family members along with at least one good friend to various kinds of cancer, I can tell you there's nothing romantic or instructive about it. It is ugly. Roger Ebert made that quite clear in his scathing review of The Bucket List almost 20 years ago when he had cancer. 

Now, truthful art about illnesses have been created. I actually wrote a memoir about my bout with renal cancer, with the genius title One Kidney To Go, but realized nobody would read it. There was no physically devastating chemotherapy or radiation, no losing of hair, no dropping of weight to skeletal condition. Just surgery.

Worse, I lived. And if there's anything consumers of cancer porn hate, it's a happy ending. Death and heartbreak are soooooo much more romantic than survival. Just ask the 23 million people who bought The Fault in Our Stars.  

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