Even I'm Not Sure Why Kids Think This Is Romantic: The Fault In Our Stars, and Media Romanticism
Since it's author has a tumblr, and because of it's appeal to the kind of lost-and-alone teen too often found glued to their tech on tumblr.com, The Fault In our Stars has been filling up dash space for months now. Unfourtunately, all too much is made out of stories about teens suffering from ilnesses both mental and physical, and while I'm not going to bother musing on the sad relaities that might lie behind the populrity of this kind of story - if you want the figures, you're welcome to look them up - I am disturned that in the main this film has appeal for healthy, able bodied kids who have been told they should want to be in love "like this" for far too long. But going into this film, not having read the book (because even when the author reccomends it, having read the source material should not be a requirement to see or enjoy a film,) I could only wonder at what lay ahead of me. If I'm honest, I do have a little bit of a soft spot for romance and drama movies, they are fun - and in some way exist in most other genres, even when they shouldn't. Overall, The Fault In Our Stars was an entertaining, if morose, journey. The lead and narrator, Hazel Grace, is perhaps a little too fatalistic and mature for her age, even despite her immeasurably difficult life, but the realism she provides is a clean contrast to the pretentious sunniness of Augustus Waters. For me, the only really likeable character was the wonderfully played, quirky, and real Issac. Wonderful in calling out Augustus on his quip about his disability - a thing not to be made fun of, thanks very much - and charasmatic on the screen. Cinematically, The Fault In Our Stars is only a little above average. It utilises lighting and colour to build impact, but like most romantic movies, has no overwritten style or tone. Still, it is visually satisfying and attractive. Despite all of this enjoyment, though, with my friends in a half-full cinema surrounded by teenagers so young they will never know the struggle of dial-up slower than my Granmother trying to climb stairs, I was both reminded of the constant march of my twenties (Hey, most of my friends have kids, man,) and the strange romanticism that the media places on such doomed couples. Much in the same way that a majority of people seem keen to misinterpret the message which underlies Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," the modern media seems keen to complely ignore the messages which it popularies for young people. At the core of the story is the undenyable fact that even though we are doomed, we can seek happiness in our lives. Because, in the end, we're all going to die - some just a little sooner than others. the fact of the matter is that this is a story about two people who are dying and are quite simply just going about the business of living, however they can. Yet the chorus of ooh-and-ahh-ing at every little thing Augustus did or said for the duration of the film made it clear that most of the kids in that screen were there to slake thair primal, hormone-driven, media-stoked thirst. Call me shrewed and cinical if you really want, but I fail to see the romantic appeal in watching two young people who have been delt the worst hands possible by the universe go about the buiness of living as fully as possible, with one another. it's not cute, it's heartbreaking. And the blindness of all those young people in that screen on saturday to the tregedy of cancer and all it's horrors is not thair fault. It's the fault of the media outlets who have for so long fed the youth tragedy and horror dressed up as normality. I'd hate to throw around the idea that The Fault in Our Stars had a little too much of the "Twilight" treatment, but maybe it really did. Wait for the DVD. Or do one better than me and read the book.
