Last night I went to see Identity Thief starring Melissa McCarthy. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, so many laughs and great moments.
I have been a fan of Melissa McCarthy since her days on Gilmore Girls. She is a strong, voluptuous woman who shows that us plus sized gals can have fun and be desirable too.
In Identity Thief, her character Diana (who goes by many names over the course of the movie) is a thief, liar, and schemer. Diana cheats the system wherever she can, including fake use of a disability parking pass. (Shocking or funny?) She tricks Jason Bateman's character Sandy into rear ending her and tries to bypass insurance by demanding they make an under the table settlement. She whines about her aches and pains, her myalgia, to get his sympathy and ramp up her scheme. Later on, when she tries to distract a security guard, she again claims to have fibromyalgia. She lies on the ground, moaning and aching, asking the security guard to massage her legs.
To many in the audience, they won't even know what fibromyalgia is. To some, those are funny moments. I'll admit, I was laughing at first, but on later reflection last night it really started to bother me. This character who cheats the system at every pass further reinforces the notions of many in society that people with fibromyalgia or chronic pain are people who "work the system" - that their aches and pains are not real, that they are slackers seeking insurance or disability when they are fully capable of working and earning a paycheque.
Having been in three real car accidents (I swear I have a sign on my car that says "hit me please") - the first of which brought on my fibromyalgia, I am disturbed that this very popular movie (having grossed $36.6million in its opening weekend) is just perpetuating the negative stereotypes that severely impact the chronic pain community. We are not people who "work the system", we are people who have to fight against the system everyday. We battle insurance companies after car accidents - endless streams of specialists for hire who deny there is anything wrong with us. We fight our own lawyers who challenge our cases. We assault our employers for accommodations or disability. We dispute doctors, who even though there is medical evidence of the existence of fibromyalgia and chronic pain continue to deny its existence. We deal with people who say that it is all in our head, that we are malingerers, lazy, good-for-nothings who seek the sympathy and unwarranted assistance of others. Sometimes these people are even our friends and family.
We work so hard to fight against this detrimental view of our condition; those of us who have the energy. For every step forward, we end up taking many steps backward when something as public and popular as Identity Thief uses our condition as humourous fodder for the masses at the hands of an immoral, blight-on-society individual like Diana.
Suddenly, I'm not laughing so hard anymore.
