All a Girl with Cancer Needs is Love

Over the years there have been many different storyline trends in films. To name some, there is the vampire trend, the popular girls trend, the bad boy gone good trend, and the cancer girl trend. Really, each storyline trend seems to be pretty timeless. Pretty much every decade has their own particular film that falls into each of these. I grew up watching movies from each of these different trends, vampires being my obsession, but recently I came across a new tv show that falls into the cancer girl trend. It is called Life Sentence. Life Sentence is similar to all those other cancer girl stories, but there is one huge difference. In Life Sentence, our cancer girl is cured! She gets to live! While I was watching Life Sentence I thought about all of the cancer girl films I have seen before, including The Fault in Our Stars, My Sister’s Keeper, and A Walk to Remember. When I thought of all the cancer girl films I have seen, I came to the realization that while all of these films do have completely different storylines, they each have a few similarities within them, as well. I decided to watch one more film to make sure I had enough to go off of, so I watched Irreplaceable You. After watching or re-watching this list of cancer girl films, I noted one specific thing they all have in common. No matter what the cancer girl’s story is, no matter how sick she is, how busy she is with treatment, how tired she may be, each cancer girl always falls in love.

Life Sentence

Life Sentence is on it’s first season right now, so I have only seen about 5 or 6 episodes. Of course, however, the love story in this cancer girl TV show was introduced in the very first episode! In the very first episode the main character, Stella, is introduced. Viewers learn that Stella, now in her mid-20’s, has been sick since she was a teenager. Stella decides to live life to the fullest, because she does not know when she will lose her life, but she knows it is coming. So, she takes a trip to Paris. Stella travels to Paris by herself but returns with another person: the man she marries while she is there. One day in Paris, Stella and Wes just bump into each other, and almost instantly they fall in love. He tells her he will love her for the rest of her life and proposes. In the TV show, this is all told in flashback style. The show is set 6 months after their marriage.

So, what is the problem here? First of all, Stella thinks she is dying. Is it really realistic for her to be in Paris all by her lonesome? No. Second of all, Stella and Wes instantly falling in love is not realistic either. However, over all else, viewers ought to question why it is he asks her to marry him. It seems a little odd that he asks her to marry him after they have only known one another for days or weeks. Does he do it out of pity? Does he do it to have a better experience getting into the U.S.? The situation is just a bit odd and should not be viewed without questioning.

Another thing to note, that is a bit odd, is that this show does not she Stella during her struggle. Where is the truth behind her illness? If this is a story about a girl who had cancer, why are not there any scenes where her struggle is presented? This makes the TV show feel sugarcoated.

The Fault in Our Stars

In contrast to Life Sentence, The Fault in Our Stars does offer viewers a look into what it is like for the main character, Hazel Grace, as she struggles with her illness. Viewers are offered a sense of truth, that Hazel really is sick and struggling. However, there is still that love story that just has to happen, no matter what.

Hazel’s love story is a little different. Hazel falls in love with a new friend she meets at her new support group. Of course, they have cancer in common. I decided to call this the “cancer friend” trope. This is something I found in 2 of the other cancer girl films I watched. Cancer friends are friends to the main character who offer the idea that this is fate. In other words, if it they had not had cancer, they never would have met. Not all cancer friends fall in love, but in Hazel’s case they do. Hazel falls in love with Augustus.

Augustus inspires Hazel to enjoy life, to be spontaneous. He even takes her to Amsterdam to meet her favorite author. In Amsterdam they make love, and then they come home and he dies. Ouch. There is not much left to the movie once Augustus dies, but the film ends with Hazel accepting that he is gone. This leads me to wonder, was Augustus just a character that was created for Hazel to have a chance to be spontaneous and get her love story, and even more so, for Hazel to learn to accept death, knowing that she probably will die, too?

My Sister’s Keeper

My Sister’s Keeper is a bit different from all of the other films because the main topic of the film revolves around the sister of the cancer girl, but the cancer girl, Kate, still plays an incredibly huge role in the film because it is about the things her family has struggled with throughout the years of her illness.

In My Sister’s Keeper, Kate has had cancer since she was a child, and in the present time of the film she is a teenager. Out of all the films I watched, I would say that My Sister’s Keeper was the most honest when it comes to Kate’s illness and her struggles with it, as well as how it has affected her entire family.

However, there is still that love story, yet again. This time, it is with a cancer friend. My Sister’s Keeper was actually the film I was watching when I came up with the idea of a cancer friend and what it meant. Kate meets her cancer friend, Taylor, in the hospital while they are both getting treatment. Taylor suggests the hang out sometimes and Kate gives him her number. The film sort of exaggerates their relationship, as Taylor really is not in many scenes of this film, but his effect on Kate is incredible and the film makes it seem as though they were together for a very long time, when in reality he is not in the film very long.

Kate and Taylor hang out a few times, that viewers get to see. Viewers see them eating in a diner together, kissing on Kate’s front porch, and lastly: going to a ball at the hospital, like a prom for the kids in the hospital. After a dance at the ball, Kate and Taylor sneak to a room in the hospital where they make love. Afterwards, Kate mentions something along the line of how if it were not for cancer they would not have met. After the dance, Kate does not hear from Taylor for days. Kate thinks it is because they had sex, but she eventually finds out he is dead.

Once again, the cancer friend dies after making love with the cancer girl. This in and of itself is a sort of trope, but I have struggled trying to figure out what to call it and how to define it. Death by sex? The cancer girl gets to have sex, and like that is all that matters, like that is all their story was about, her love interest can die peacefully once she has gotten to experience that.

A Walk to Remember

If I had to choose, out of all of these films, the one that is the most problematic, I would choose A Walk to Remember. In A Walk to Remember, bad boy, Landon, falls for the preacher’s innocent daughter, Jamie. Jamie is incredibly smart, kind hearted, and she even has a bucket list that she actually works to fulfill! At first, Jamie is hesitant when it comes to being close with Landon, but eventually she lets her walls down. However, she warns him not to fall in love with her. So, of course, he falls in love with her. At one point, Landon asks Jamie what number 1 on her bucket list is, but she tells him if she tells him she would have to kill him, but she later tells him that number 1 is to get married in the church where her mother went to when she was a child.

Throughout the film, Landon and Jamie grow closer and closer, as Jamie helps Landon with his lines for the play. During the play, Landon actually improvises, and kisses Jamie. Shortly after, as it is already past half-way through the film, Landon tells Jamie he loves her and Jamie reminds him of her warning not to fall in love with her. In this moment she tells him she is sick, and that she is going to die.

Once Landon learns Jamie is dying, he is determined to help her finish out her bucket list. He builds her a telescope so she can see the comet she wants to see and even proposes to her, and what do you know, Jamie makes it to the wedding, and then she dies.

In this film, viewers never really get to see into Jamie’s struggles. Throughout most of A Walk to Remember no one even knows that Jamie is sick. This film is an exact example of an ill character being created just for the sake of the love story, which is basically romanticizing the illness.

Irreplaceable You

Irreplaceable You is the newest film among this list of cancer girl films, other than Life Sentence. In Irreplaceable You the cancer girl, Abbie, and her life long boyfriend and now fiancé, Sam, believe that Abbie is pregnant. However, come to find out, Abbie actually has a few cancerous tumors.

When Abbie learns that she has cancer she decided to join a support group. In this support group, Abbie meets her cancer friend, Myron, who is an older man. At one point, Myron mentions his wife’s future without him and how he wants her to fall in love again after he is gone. This gives Abbie a wild idea.

Abbie decides that she is going to find the perfect woman for Sam to love after she is gone. She meets up with a few different women, but none of them seem to be the fit. However, the artistic barista in the coffee shop where Abbie meets all these women is totally down for Sam to go to her art show later that week, where he can meet women himself.

Through all of this, Myron disagrees with what Abbie is doing. He tells Abbie that this is something called “anticipatory grieving.” Anticipatory grieving is basically trying to plan everything out before someone dies in hopes that it will not hurt so much, but in reality, it is kind of a waste of time to do that and also unhealthy, because there is no way of predicting how someone will cope with the loss.

In the end, Abbie knows she is going to die soon and she and Sam want to marry before she dies, so they plan a wedding and wedding reception that both will take place inside their little apartment. However, Abbie does not make it to the wedding. In fact, she dies on the morning of their wedding. Sam still follows through with the party, though, because they spent all that money on cake, and he knew Abbie would want everyone to be together.

Finally, what are we to make of these films, that all fall under the trend of the cancer girl films? Each of these films have completely different storylines, yet they are still similar in even the simplest ways.

The cancer friend trope is not necessarily a negative type of trope. The idea of the main character having someone there beside them who understands what she is struggling with at least a little bit is comforting, but it is also important to consider that that is not always what it is like in real life. It is important, as well, to remember that these relationships should not be romanticized, which in a way the ones that have spoken of are all romanticized. Especially in the case of Hazel and Agustus in The Fault in Our Stars and Kate and Taylor in My Sister’s Keeper.

The fact that in most of these films, the character’s illness I not that prominent also is not too much of a problem, as a person’s illness does not define them. However, in this case it can also be seen as a bit arbitrary. In the case of A Walk to Remember, Jamie is literally so sick she is about to die throughout the entire film, yet no one even knows.

The fact that each of these films has a love story, however, is a slight problem. Each of these films having a romance story between the cancer girl and another character gives the idea that these stories were created simply for the romance. This also gives the idea that romance is what every girl struggling with cancer longs for. However, that does not seem very realistic and it also gives these girls no credit at all. These films give a false idea that through illness one will find love, when in reality often times illness can be a very lonely experience, a very busy experience leaving no time for romance, and a very tiring experience leaving no energy to romance.

I want to end this discussion by asking a few questions. First, how would these stories be different with out the romance presented in them? What if there was a cancer girl film where she simply makes a friend, perhaps even a female friend, who she does not fall in love with. What if there was a cancer girl film where she already has friends? What if there was just a downright honest cancer girl film without romance? These questions are important to ask because they allow us to consider the fact that unlike in these films, where everyone receives the same thing, being romance, in real life everyone’s experiences are different.