A lot of people are ill-equipped for the inevitable failure of their body, never fully prepared for the moment they go from mogwai to gremlin. I don’t want to say aging/decaying is easy for those of us born gremlins, but I certainly think it’s easier. This is more a societal malfunction than a personal one, but it’s still a problem.
I think the most telling symptom is the way we look for reasons when something goes wrong. They’re easy enough to find—I didn’t exercise enough, ate the wrong foods, stayed up too late, ate the wrong foods after midnight, etc—but often the reason your body fails is the same reason it occasionally thrives: you were born. Hidden deep in the code that makes you “you” are hundreds if not thousands of self destruct mechanisms that can be accidentally activated or will trip themselves in time. It’s part of the game. That doesn’t mean it’s a fun game. It’s more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book that can only end poorly and that’s if someone doesn’t take the book from you first.
As with a lot of our mass perceptions, a lot of it comes down to what we’re being sold. Look at the truly impressive American canon of prescription drug ads. They’re full of shiny people living shiny lives while simple line drawings and animations carry the heavy burden of disease.
Here’s a random ad I pulled for a lung cancer treatment called Opdivo. I have no personal connection to this drug and this is not a judgement on it’s effectiveness; it’s merely an easily accessible example. Sweeping vistas, slow motion reunions, a waterfall that cures cancer and the actual slogan of “Who Wouldn’t Want a Chance to Live Longer”, followed by a fast-as-legally-allowed speed read of impressive side effects that may end up being reasons you don’t want a chance to live longer. But that’s not the point.
The point is the popular treatment of the banal horrors that fill our lives never makes eye contact with realistic and walks right past clinical as a slow motion drone shot captures it’s loving embrace with irresponsibly sanitized. Ironically, these squeaky clean conditions probably helped set the stage for COVID to run absolutely wild. Why take precautions when your body is clearly incapable of complete collapse? Unfortunately, one’s current state of survival does not crown them as one of the fittest.
My body is mostly defined by good looks and abject failure, but even the things marketed to me try to be coy.
In my life, I’ve owned more than one vibrating vest designed to shake my lungs so that mucus comes out. The first of these came with a very funny training video where a girl is talking on the phone with her friends while The VestTM lightly shakes her bronchial tree. Talking on the phone while using that vest was definitely possible if you were okay with sounding like the wildest motherfucker at the helicopter derby, but it’s not advisable. You know what the video never mentioned? Mucus. Never shown, never heard. The actual recommended way to use the vest was to shake for a few minutes, try to cough some shit up, then get back to the shaking. But that video would have you think you’ll be playing Dream Date and making Jiffy Pop.
I can’t speak for every disease, but cystic fibrosis is often horrifying and/or disgusting. There’s not a lot of money in talking about that—I’ve got the traffic numbers to prove it—but the only thing we gain in the denial of the human body is anxiety and the ability for companies to get fat by selling us a dream they’ve made us think is the baseline: freedom from your shitty body. Unspoken and unseen. I understand why commercials don’t look like they’re in the Hellraiser extended universe, but I don’t have to be happy about it.
Even the stuff that does highlight the more human side of existence tends to take a very “them, not you” approach to things, like we cleaned up the freak show and made it palatable for modern audiences. How many people are watching Dr. Pimple Popper as a cautionary tale? How many people believe cysts are a thing that could never happen to them?
Seriously, by keeping the worst unsaid, I think it isolates people in their suffering. The failure of our bodies should bring us together. We should fight them when they suck, thank them when they work and prepare for the day when we are not what we used to be.
That Doesn’t Work for Me, Brother
Hulk Hogan is one of the most consequential figures of our time, being both patient zero for the affliction known as Hulkamania and knocking over the dominos of our media landscape by sleeping with his friend’s wife. And while he’s definitely said some stuff that you shouldn’t repeat, if you’re not familiar with wrestling, you may have missed one of the most beautiful sentences ever uttered:
That doesn’t work for me, brother.
To be fair, as far as I can tell there are no recorded instances of him saying it, it’s all first or second hand accounts. What we know is that when he wrestled for World Championship Wrestling in the 90s, he had full creative control of his character. So when he was given something to do that he didn’t like, he didn’t actually have to do it. Did he actually have to utter those magic words? I choose to live in a world where he did.
I have a somewhat prickly reputation. Part of that is health related and part of that is because I’m an asshole. But when I was younger, I was at war with that piece of myself and I ended up in a few situations that I could have avoided by being less agreeable, say being in a car with someone who smokes or going to the beach. COVID and age changed things for me. I’m less willing to take risks and make concessions on certain things, because that doesn’t work for me, brother. It’s beautiful. Gentle, yet forceful. Playful, but firm.
And if they won’t take that for answer, hit the leg drop for the 1,2,3.
Things I Like
I liked the Barbie movie a lot more than I thought I would and maybe a little more than I think I should.
I can’t pretend to be high minded in my entertainment: I grew up in Reagan’s America, so most of the beloved shows of my youth were de-regulated toy commercials. Still, these tastes are unpredictable: I like The Lego Movie—though not enough to have seen the sequel—and I’ve seen every live action film with Batman in it, but I’m cold on both G.I. Joe and Transformers. I’m conflicted about commerce as art, even if I often find myself rolling around in it. It’s the American way after all.
The first few minutes of the Barbie movie weren’t hitting me right, but as it catches steam, it started to click. I found it tremendously entertaining, such that even days later my brain hasn’t really picked at it to get to the heart of it. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that, but I may even watch it again to find out.
However, I do think it’s funny on a meta-level that Ryan Gosling comes dangerously close to stealing the entire movie.