Hollywood Portrayal of Cancer Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Hollywood Portrayal of Cancer - Essay ExampleSweet November and descent in New York are some(prenominal) love stories that are centered on the appreciation of the ravisher of life. In exploring this theme, the movies placed the main characters in a situation where ace of them is terminally ill. Sweet November is a love story that revolves slightly Nelson Moss (played by Keanu Reeves) and Sara Deever (Charlize Theron). Deever took it as a mission to help Moss overcome his obsession with work and success, and thereby allowing him to appreciate and enjoy life. This mission would be achieved in just one month. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that Deever is afflicted with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a type of cancer that is the main reason for Deevers decision to lead an preposterous lifestyle of curing men of their misbehaviors towards women. The story ends tragically, with Deever ending her relationship with Moss and facing the consequences of her illness alone..Autumn in New Yor k is a love story between a womanizing older man and a young, vivacious woman. Early on the story, Charlotte Fielding (Winona Ryder) and Will Keane (Richard Gere) fell in love, and as Keane was ending the relationship in the alike manner as he had ended his past relationships, Fielding agreed to the fact that they would stomach no future together because she was sick. The story ended in tragedy as Fielding dies of a rare disease after the last-resort surgical operation failed to save her life. There are many correspondentities in the two movies in the manner that cancer was portrayed. First, the illness was equated to the certainty of death. The drama in both films revolves around the fact that the women have little time left. Both protagonists also dealt with the disease in a similar manner - they gave up on medical treatments. In Autumn of New York, Charlotte Fielding even write a directive that no surgery will be made on her. In one of their conversations, Fielding told Kean e, I dont want to give hope, when there is none (Chen, 2000). The same attitude was somewhat intercommunicate by Sara Deever in Sweet November. She dogged to take on a different course in life, away from the regular treatments usually provided by hospitals to cancer patients. Both films in a way conclude that there were no other options for the two cancer-afflicted characters, and that subjecting themselves to medical treatments and procedures would yield the same result, that is, eventual death. The character in Autumn in New York died at the end of the film, while in Sweet November, the character decided to come home and perhaps yield to medical cure for her illness, although the last scene seemed to indicate that she would be spending the rest of her life wilting away and succumbing to death. She left the viewers thinking that she would die, in the same way that her lover agreed to letting her go and face death.Both stories depict the dying characters, both of which were white women, still in flawless appearance. This would fall under what Comedienne Carol Burnett referred to as the Movie track Disease (as cited in Lallanilla, 2005), where the ill character,