Imagine you are twelve years-old again. Except this time, instead of suffering through middle school or having to wait years for Adventure Time to debut, you’re diagnosed with cancer. Now going back to school means distantly becoming “the kid with cancer,” and you may not even live to see all the awesome TV shows you know are coming down the pipe, never mind Adventure Time. Your disease now defines you in the minds of others, and often in your own, and this stigma will, in some ways, follow you even more aggressively than the cancer. How does a twelve year-old even begin to fight it?
Like this: “Hey, did you see Deadpool? It’s like that. Now let’s get some chimi-fuckin-changas.”
[Note: Spoilers for Deadpool below.]
The wacky and appealingly meta Deadpool has a ready appeal to adolescents and teens; readers who are typically discovering new ways to reinvent their world on a minute-by-minute basis. This aspect of his personality by itself makes him an alluring role model for young comic readers, and as our nostalgic culture (and the existence of this very website) proves, we carry our pop culture loves with us for a long, long time.
Deadpool’s chaotic allure isn’t the only appealing thing about the character, though. Ryan Reynolds, the man who has pushed Deadpool firmly into mainstream culture as of this past box office-shattering weekend, has something he’d like to share with us.
Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls. This is my friend, Connor McGrath. He’s quite possibly the biggest #Deadpool fan on earth. He was also the first person ever to see the Deadpool film. Like Wade Wilson, Connor’s trying to put cancer in his rearview mirror.
About 6 weeks ago, I traveled to Edmonton Alberta to show Connor the movie at his hospital. Of course, the Deadpool was right up his alley because Connor’s the funniest, potty-mouthed Canadian mercenary I’ve ever met.
He’s my friend. I know lots of celebrities jump up and down touting a cause — and maybe I’m no different. But holy frozen shit-slivers, I love this kid. He’s the GREATEST. And he needs your help to get well. I’ve donated to help Connor and I hope you will too.*
Posted by Ryan Reynolds on Friday, February 12, 2016
*Note: You can donate to help pay for Connor’s treatments here. As of the publication of this article (Feb. 18), the fundraising portal is currently closed, as Connor isn’t currently healthy enough to withstand further treatment.
As Reynolds points out, celebs playing superheroes then making hospital visits isn’t a new thing, and my intention isn’t to celebrate Reynold’s actions by highlighting them here. Instead, I’d like to point out one important line from his update:
Of course, the Deadpool was right up his alley because Connor’s the funniest, potty-mouthed Canadian mercenary I’ve ever met.
There. That is the real gift. For a couple hours, Connor got to just be a foul-mouthed kid hanging out with his equally foul-mouthed friend Deadpool, both of them dealing with their cancer through a bit of cartoon violence and some merciless teasing of Blind Al’s cocaine addiction.
In addition to just being straightforwardly fun, the success of the Deadpool movie now means that Connor and kids like him don’t have to face going to school and being “the kid with cancer.” Instead, they can now shorthand the explanation of their disease by bringing up something popular and hilarious. The movie, in fact, repeatedly encourages using Deadpool’s character as a tool for explaining cancer. One of the funniest scenes in the movie, where Deadpool and his bartender friend joke about his appearance, can be used almost literally to describe how cancer treatments make a person feel internally. The movie also provides an example of how life continues after a cancer diagnosis. We don’t see Wade being sick, we just see him living his life normally: drinking, visiting his friends, and pointing out the inconsistency inherent in the premise for Taken 3. Deadpool, a movie about a man with cancer, is refreshingly devoid of pity for those afflicted with cancer, and it encourages that same attitude in its viewers.
And it goes even deeper than that. Deadpool offers tools for describing cancer sickness and treatment, but it also uses its humor to assert Wade’s identity as Deadpool over Wade’s identity as a man suffering from cancer. This struggle over identity and perception is the most frustrating aspect of the social stigma promoted by cancer. A disease you have suddenly becomes the only way people see you, and the struggle to overturn that stigma is constant.
The depiction of Wade’s treatment aggressively tackles this struggle. Just before the treatment begins, Ajax tells Wade that his sense of humor “won’t survive this process.”We can see why, obviously, but what Ajax doesn’t know is that Wade’s sense of humor is an enormous part of his identity. Ajax is essentially saying that cancer will replace this central aspect of Wade’s identity. That the stigma will “win,” that it always wins, and that there’s no point in fighting it.
For a moment, the stigma does win. Wade’s treatment turns him into an angry pile of pizza cheese, stuck in a burning warehouse with a metal pole through his chest. But Wade rallies, he fights, and while fighting he heals. Wade is taken down a few hundred pegs, but he lives to see another day with his humor intact, and in doing so he triumphs over the social stigma of cancer.
And yes, I am fully aware that this means I am re-classifying that brief snippet of him masturbating to a plush unicorn as a triumph of identity.
By the end of the film, Deadpool comes to terms with who he has become post-cancer and post-treatment. He’s still superficially different, but he’s finally able to let that go in favor of just being who he naturally is: the merc with the mouth. He wins the day, he gets the girl, and he has a new friend by the name of Negasonic Teenage Warhead. For a twelve year-old diagnosed with cancer, Deadpool isn’t just a guide for how to deal with social stigma, it illustrates the awesome life you can have by fighting that stigma. And how amazing is that? Imagine going into a movie just wanting to hear some dick jokes and coming out with a whole new toolkit for talking to your friends and family. For a kid, someone only just learning how to conceptualize the world, this kind of assistance is priceless.
Of course…I’ve just realized that this makes Deadpool a socially responsible movie. How the fuck…?!?
Chris Lough writes about superheroes and fantasy and things on Tor.com. He’s spouty on Twitter and has websites sometimes.
Since the movie is R rated and no competent parent would take his young child, I really don’t see the point of this.
There are also plenty of other books and movies that deal with cancer that are much more suitable.
#1 R-rating doesn’t mean kids and teens won’t see it. It just means they won’t be causing a ruckus in the theater in case they get thrown out. A vast improvement from the bear pit that is PG-13, where the kids have no incentive to be quiet and leave everyone else to watch the movie in peace. You never snuck into an “R” movie when you were young? I know I did, of course there are so few R rated features in the last ten years or so to allow that vital right-of-passage.
#2. The rating system didn’t exist when I was growing up. Film makers either censored themselves or used the Production//Hays Code. But I wouldn’t have snuck into an R movie, if it had existed, because it’s not the kind of person I am.
I almost never watch R movies, these days either, because the language, violence, and over-the-top sex usually means that the rest of the content like plot and characterization are so thin the movie’s not worth my time.
I am not the optimum audience for movies like DEADPOOL although I am extremely fond of most of the other Marvel/DC franchise movies.
@MByerly
To quote the MPAA, “R – Restricted : Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. Contains some adult material. Parents are urged to learn more about the film before taking their young children with them.” This by no means suggests that no competent parent will take their child to see a movie. It very much depends on what content drives the rating and the individual child in question, and the parenting philosophy of the people raising the child. (And considering facing dying from cancer is probably a lot more difficult to handle for a 12-year-old kid than the inappropriate content of Deadpool would be, I can see parents deciding it’s worth it even with extremely inappropriate content.)
As far as content goes, I find as much blandness and lack of content in G and R rated films but I would far rather watch some well-choreographed fights and creative cursing than something as emotionally scarring as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (which I will never forgive my mom for making me watch because “they just don’t make movies like they used to”). Or another Gidget movie, for that matter. I’m glad there’s a variety of content for different audiences.
@5 If I took my younger nephews to this film, my brother would never speak to me again, and I wouldn’t blame him. It is so not suitable for kids and proud of it.
@MByerly,
And that’s absolutely the prerogative of your brother to make that decision as a parent. And any parent should consider whether a movie is okay for their kid to watch, whether it revels in its inappropriate content and R rating or is Bambi.
In my case, I might have ended up seeing it with my dad as a young teen (still well under the unaccompanied age limit), because my mom didn’t like Action or Sci-Fi movies very much, so as soon as I showed interest I ended up my dad’s movie watching partner for those genres. (And then we would have had a “discussion” about the movie we’d just seen and the “messages” it carried going far beyond inappropriate content that would likely last twice the runtime of the movie.)
Mom and I watched a George Carlin HBO special together when I was like 10 or 11. I tried really hard not to laugh at all the sex jokes and thus let on that I knew more than I probably should but she knew. I think she found that funnier than the show.
And I’m taking mom to see Deadpool this weekend. It sounds like exactly the kind of movie she would love.
I took my fourteen year old daughter to see Deadpool this weekend. And my mother would love it.
TMS also has an article, talking about Deadpool’s approach to coping with trauma.
There were plenty of 9 and 10 year olds at my screening. All visibly enjoying the film, all laughing and cheering.
The problem isn’t the sex or the innuendo. I handled that just fine when I was a kid. What can cause trauma is the violence. Plain and simple (I still have nightmares because of T2’s nuclear blast; saw it at age 9). Thankfully, Deadpool frames a lot of that violence through humor.
I saw my first R rated movie (Stripes) on my tenth birthday. My parents took me, my best friend (who passed away about a year later from leukemia), and my younger brothers, all because my mother’s best friend had promised her there was nothing really inappropriate in the movie. (She “forgot” about Bill Murray’s topless girlfriend in the first scene, much to my mom’s displeasure.) I’ve seen many since that time, but Stripes will always have a special place in my memory.
Ratings exist as guidelines for parents, not hard and fast rules to be obeyed. I think every parent has to consider what their child is ready for and what is off limits. In situations like the one above, I think the benefits vastly outweigh any exposure to inappropriate content. Attitude and hope aren’t sufficient to beat cancer, but they do matter a lot. Survival first. Then sweat the small stuff.
Just to weigh in on the ratings debate, here in NZ the rating for Deadpool is R16, which means restricted to people over the age of 16 only (and ID is often required). Here, it is less a case of parents making the call – its actually illegal for under 16s to view it. So I can’t agree that its a good film for children to deal with cancer.
I had no problems with my teens seeing it. It has a lot of bad language and jokes about sex (as well as some scenes of people having sex), but didn’t depict any gross attitudes towards other people. It felt less sexist that Antman, and definitely better than the Fantastic Four, both of which had PG ratings of some sort. If I eavesdrop on the boys when they are with their peers, the language is about the same, and the relationships in Antman were much more problematic than anything in DP. There never was any doubt that Deadpool respected his girlfriend.
I’d be a little careful of using it as a “how to handle your cancer” model, since Deadpool runs away from his girlfriend so she doesn’t see him being all gross and weak with cancer, and then finds the side-effects of the cure so horrible that he can’t handle returning to her. He’s shown to be stupidly wrong about both these things, but he spends most of the movie firmly believing them. I