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Hollywood is making us sick I've been hauling out the Kleenex and making up the guest room bed for surprise visitors with some regularity over the past 10 days. Everyone seems to be breaking down over one damn thing or another, caught inextricably in the grip of their various demons. Thank heavens, it's not me, I think, as I shove the tissue box into grateful hands, awkwardly pat shoulders, and draw baths -- but what the hell is wrong with everyone? It's not, apparently, confined to my particular tribe. General malaise, or dysthymia is a worldwide epidemic, First World, that is, or more precisely, prosperous First World. Ninety million Americans claim to have a chronic illness of one kind or another, including half of those under 25. In Britain, one in five young people identify themselves as chronically ill. The National Health Service is overwhelmed. Although these illnesses include epilepsy and chronic asthma, most are headaches, backache, insomnia, indigestion and, of course, depression. As many as one in three First World women have IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, a nervous illness which can make life a misery. And stress? The malaise grows apace. The chief medical officer of a large British insurance company finds a 51% increase in stress-related illnesses since 1995. I blame Hollywood. In fact, let's track that out and indict the entire entertainment industry, including the arts. Dystopia is us. From high culture to low, there is almost no venue wherein you can go to relax and recreate, or where in some fashion or another, our entire way of life is not shown to be profoundly troubled, corrupt, or on the verge of utter collapse. Last week I endured, by my count, more than six hours of insanely violent battles in two of the season's top movies, walking away from both shaken, revolted and thoroughly traumatized. But The Last Samurai and Lord of the Rings are both massively successful, the latter sure to win Best Picture. I went to the Rings with my brother, a sometime set sculptor who had just got off the latest Vin Diesel movie. "Every thing is lit dark and the characters are highlighted in a ghastly way from within," he commented about his recent job. "And the set is constantly rocked as if the entire world was being thrown about a-rhythmically by a malignant infantile giant." Television, for the most part is just as bad. The lighting for most shows that take themselves seriously is dark and obscure, showing us to dwell on some lower level of hell. The West Wing highlights its liberal thieves as if they were on Mount Rushmore, while they busily set to rights the evil deeds of the Bush administration. I can't even see Joan of Arcadia, it's so dark, and all the other so-called dramas are adrenaline-fuelled, and so violent and prurient, you want to take a bath all over again. I haven't read a work of literary fiction in five years that didn't depress me. Why is that? I remember reading as the highest of pleasures, now it feels as if I'm on an obstacle course of bad emotions triggered by cheap street drugs. Cold Mountain, based on a so-called brilliant literary novel of a few seasons ago, and set during the American Civil War, is an unrelieved dirge about the grisly, devilish things people do to one another. Yet, during the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of white men went to war to free black people, ruining their families in the process. It was replete with nobility and honour. Is there one scrap of that valour in Cold Mountain? No there is not. The hero dies senselessly at the end. The only good people in the film still alive are women. And let's not even get into the music business. Except that how can anyone not admit that the Jacksons are disgusting, and they are just the most visible of the most depraved bunch of rich people the world has ever seen? This is the grim and destructive end result of 1960s utopianism. The '60s generation, finally in the driver's seat, is bent on effecting the cultural revolution they couldn't pull off in 1968. In order to do that, they must prove that the world is corrupt and evil, that suburbia preys on the innocent and helpless poor, that we are all victims of a cruel and exploitative world order, that we are powerless and must have more righteous government and control. In the process, they have brought us all to the verge of nervous collapse. Most medical observers think almost all current chronic illness is triggered by emotion. Frank Furedi, author of Therapy Culture, Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, and Martin Seligman, the father of the positive psychology movement in the States, assert that we all now believe we are victims, helpless to effect improvement in our lives. Furedi argues that therapists are largely to blame. Prof. Nick Read, author of the upcoming Sick and Tired, Why Modern Life is Making Us Ill, says we have lost old-fashioned ways of coping, like friendship and taking time to integrate change. Yes, fine, all true. But the real real truth is that things are getting better. We have a full hour more free time a day since 1965. Personal disposable income has tripled in the past 50 years. The top 1% of earners pay 34% of the taxes. Cancer death rates are declining. The Third World is getting richer and even the most oppressed are living longer than they did even 50 years ago. Optimism may not sell stupid Hollywood product, but it's reality- based. I'm billing Susan Sarandon for my Kleenex budget.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.