Page TwoNot too tired to beg. . .While patients with other incapacitating conditions were often lauded for accomplishing difficult tasks, CFIDS patients were subjected to a suspicious public and disbelieving medical establishment. Because of this, they were often seen as malingerers when they were able to perform daily tasks, even when they might have paid dearly with excruciating symptoms or a further decline in health. This comic strip, one in a series of Doug Marlette's nationally-syndicated "Kudzu" poking fun at CFIDS, demonstrates the effects of this Blame Game. CFIDS patients, as the comic strip shows, were even seen as suspect for their small uprisings and minor political activism, even though writing a letter of protest was extremely difficult for many whose cognitive problems, pain, and fatigue rarely allowed such luxuries. 
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Enter the Hysterians
Elaine Showalter's 1997 book, Hystories:Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media, was one of several books by a group of academics who called themselves the New Hysterians. Calling Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, along with alien abduction and multiple personality disorder, a hysterical epidemic, Showalter claimed that people manifested symptoms after reading about the ailment in popular media venues. She became a media hound after the publication of her book, appearing on numerous talk shows and in popular magazines. Showalter also used magazines such as McCall's and Life as research about CFIDS, ignoring the numerous medical journals with research outlining the profound physical debilitation of patients. |
A Day At the Movies
It didn't take long for the cinema to realize that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome could be used as a cultural metaphor. The movie Mumford, about a man pretending to be a therapist in a small town, included a woman struggling with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome named Sophie. Despite some good and accurate images of the list of CFIDS symptoms, Sophie was still portrayed as someone who could be cured with the will of a compassionate therapist. Weighed down by a life too complicated, Sophie was the perfect hysteric, a woman who completely recovered after Dr. Mumford prescribed a walking routine that involved talk therapy and good old catharsis, leaving most CFIDS patients wishing that life could be as easy as the movies. Order Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from The Haworth Press to learn more about these issues.    Post a Message
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