The Expanse is a brilliant TV series, at least from the seasons I’ve watched so far. It’s full of intricate plotlines, impressive visuals as well as a bunch of compelling characters. It sits between Firefly and the remake of Battlestar Galactica, in that its narratives are grimmer than the former while not diving quite as deep into dark depths of the latter. One of my favourite characters is a woman called Anna Volovodov. She’s a Reverend, a mother and a wife who provides consolation and empathy to just about everyone around her, no matter what planet they come from (the overarching narrative centres on the threat of war between Earth, Mars and a middle world known as The Belt).
One of the only times her sympathy wanes comes when she confronts the imprisoned Clarissa Mao, oldest daughter of one of the series’ big bads, Jules-Pierre Mao. Before her incarceration, Clarissa has murdered numerous people, crushing the skull of one of her unfortunate victims and hiding his broken body in her quest to kill The Expanse’s central protagonist James Holden. She takes out most of her targets with an endocrine enhancement implant, a fancy device that provides her with the super strength to take out problematic people in gruesome fashion. The conversation between Clarissa and Anna starts like this:
Anna Volovodov: When Amos offered to kill you, I wanted to let him.
Clarissa Mao: Why didn’t you?
Anna Volovodov: I keep looking for a way to care about you. I think, “Her father was a terrible person.” But a lot of people have terrible parents, and…I think, “Well, she’s clearly a damaged person,” but then… “Who isn’t?” So, I’m down to, “Maybe she has a brain tumor.” Do you have a brain tumor?’
I timed out a bit when I heard the last two lines. Anna is a character who has displayed moral integrity and worth throughout her screen time, whether that involved exposing corrupt political figures or instilling faith in the faithless. These last two lines don’t feel like Anna at all. They feel like a lazy, offbeat and downright useless bit of writing from the individuals who normally provide top quality dialogue. How did these lines make it through the top brass?
To clarify, brain tumours don’t cause people to go on murderous rampages. Yes, depending on where the tumour is located in the brain, this can cause irregularities in a person’s mood. The Brain Tumour Charity, a UK-based organisation, explains that patients can behave differently ‘due to the tumour pressing on their brain or the emotional effects of diagnosis and treatment’. Having been diagnosed with a brain tumour as a child, I can confirm that these side effects are true. A form of steroid that I had to take early on to stop my tumour swelling came with several adverse side effects, one of them being mood swings. I wasn’t aware of this at the time, of course, but after conversations with family post-treatment I learnt that I had frequent moments of frustration and moodiness. What I didn’t have were feelings of mass murder. It’s embarrassing and shameful that shows and films can get away with such insulting portrayals of this particular cancer, but it’s also understandable why. In the UK, according to the NHS, around 12,000 people get diagnosed with them every year. When it comes to children, brain tumours have the largest cancer mortality rate, with the number of diagnoses decreasing to a mere 400. Cases are so rare that writers can get away with poorly researched depictions of a serious illness.
Unfortunately, the use of brain tumours to explain away psychotic or murderous tendencies isn’t exactly a new concept in the world of television and film. Let’s take a look at Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. There’s a scene where The White Queen converses with Alice after cooking an eccentric concoction of worm fat, horsefly urine and a buttered finger. Shortly after dropping these eccentric ingredients into a pot, she askes Alice about the health of her sister, The Mad Queen. The conversation follows:
White Queen: How did she seem to you?
Alice: Perfectly horrid.
White Queen: And her… [holds hands up] …head?
Alice: Bulbous.
White Queen: I think…she may have some kind of growth in there, something pressing on her brain?
The exchange then trails off as The White Queen encourages Alice to slay the Jabberwocky, but the point has been made pretty clear. The specific details of this particular lump ‘pressing’ against the brain lets us know that we’re dealing with our same brain tumour = madness schtick that was on display in The Expanse. It’s also odd that, like the sci-fi series, this comment is made by a particularly kind, well-meaning character. And it’s a notably cynical choice to insert something like this into a children’s movie. I honestly didn’t get the reference initially, watching the film after the year of my treatment and not yet in secondary school; it was my mum who had got irritated and explained the detail to me. Most children aren’t going to get that reference, and the screenwriters know it. Adults probably won’t pick up on it for a bit too, and likely won’t be too offended by it unless they themselves or a family member has been diagnosed with one. Which isn’t likely, because the disease is so rare. The filmmakers have shown us a villain with an abnormally large head who orders executions at a whim, and whose own name embodies her apparently unhinged frame of mind. And all of this…because of a brain tumour? Funnily enough, as with The Expanse example, brain tumours don’t produce murderous impulses in real life. They also don’t make your head become unusually large, either. But that’s all in good fun, because it’s just a children’s movie, and the little tykes will never pick up on that, will they?
Generally, the brain tumour = madness trope seems to exist within the echelons of the 18-rated joint, whether that’s in TV or film. Maybe because it’s an easier idea to get away with in a more mature setting, but then Alice in Wonderland is a prime example that the cliché can find its way into a children’s film too. Perhaps brain tumours can be more ‘edgy’ once they’re involved in the adult arena. The rationale still perplexes me. Here’s an example from Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal television series, which centres on the relationship between Will Graham and the titular cannibal. While exploring a motel room during a new case with detective partner Jack Crawford, they find a murdered couple whose corpses have been decorated in a particularly aesthetic fashion. I won’t go into explicit details, but it’s full on. But then Graham starts using his super cool psychic skills to see what’s been going on here. This whole supernatural shindig really pushed me outside any kind of realistic crime drama story at this point, but I don’t think realism was always Fuller’s intention, at least from the frequent shots of decoratively designed, decidedly human culinary appetisers across the series. When the lab discovers several medications at the scene, they find a series of medications used to treat cancer. Oh, I wonder what specific type of cancer these medications might be designed to treat?
Wow, it turns out they treat brain tumours. Fancy that. I’ve never heard of any at-home medications that can be taken to magically treat brain tumours, but heck, what do I know? I’m sure the writers put a lot of time and energy into researching the medical realities on this one. From all this, psychic whiz Graham concludes that the killer is displaying his victims in such a stylised fashion because he wants them to act as symbolic protectors while the killer sleeps. The plot essentially asks you to believe that a man has committed a series of gruesome murders because of the lump in his head, again trying to link brain tumours with psychotic, murderous behaviour. This is hollow, insulting and downright lazy writing. The brain tumour becomes a last resort plot device when there’s supposedly no other compelling motivation for the killer’s actions.
In terms of linking brain tumours with particularly gruesome narratives, you don’t need to look much further than the Saw franchise. While I’m not versed in these films (an odd friend from primary school described the details of the first film in graphic detail, so I guess I know what happens in that one), the central plot revolves around John Kramer, a man with a terminal brain tumour who wants to show a group of nasty individuals the importance of life by…encouraging them to make a charitable donation? Recommending that they take part in a sponsored run? No, by forcing them to take part in an elaborate game that they can supposedly escape from. Oh, but if they don’t escape from said game in a specified amount of time, then they’ll be left seriously maimed at best, or seriously dead at worst. The recent tenth edition to the series focuses on Kramer searching for a miracle cure for the tumour, which he apparently finds in an experimental clinic. But then it turns out the clinic was a scam, so que revenge via another series of gruesome traps for his victims to try and solve. I suppose there’s an argument that could be made here for a kind of cancer revenge plot, the idea that these guys are getting their just desserts for starting such a cruel scheme. But for the most part, it’s usually just one guy throwing out gruesome punishments that are almost impossible to survive for the sake of handing the audience some gnarly gross-out moments. The brain tumour isn’t an effective storytelling device when there’s no heart or reason behind the narrative.
Brain tumours made another ungracious, wholly scientifically inaccurate appearance in last year’s Gen V, the spin off from superhero satire The Boys, For starters, it’s hardly surprising to find something like this in a TV show whose main series is notorious for, shall we say, ‘unconventional’ moments. A prime example can be found in the third series of The Boys, which answered MCU fans’ eagerly awaited question of what might have happened if Ant Man had just minimised, ran into Thanos’ hind quarters and then…resized (hint: it ain’t pretty. But it would’ve done the job, I guess. Just not in the 12A way that the Russo brothers intended).
Gen V included an irritating character called Tek Knight. There are plenty of irritating characters on display, but this guy’s definitely one of em’. His superpower essentially involves being able to read people’s minds based on their body language. If you remember those vaguely tiresome scenes In Sherlock where Benedict Cumberbatch says something and then the camera zooms in on the object he’s talking about to visually confirm what he’s saying, then it’s a bit like that. He annoys a few of the other characters too, including Indira Shetty, a dean at the superhero university. In one episode, Tek Knight meets up with Indira for a quick tete-a-tete, where Indira lets Tek Knight know that she’s aware of his recent brain tumour diagnosis. Then conversation leads into this disappointing, yet not unexpected, sequence of dialogue:
Indira: ‘I hazard you also know it’s the cause of your…shall we say unusual proclivity?
Tek Knight: I don’t know what you mean.
Indira: Ah. [Shows Tek Knight a tablet]. Combination of your latest hits.
[Tablet shows clips of Tek Knight inserting his lower department into a series of unconventional circular objects]
We’ve had brain tumours used as a justification for murder, and now they’re being used as a reason for…perverse sexual activities. Again, it’s not exactly surprising to see this from the sister show of The Boys, but it’s nonetheless embarrassing to see brain tumours being used as justification for odd sexual fetishes.In case you were in any doubt, brain tumours don’t cause these kind of behaviours. They don’t cause murderous inclinations, either. Yet writers in television and film have nonetheless managed to carve out an odd niche where they can easily get away with these lazy, half-assed tropes in which this specific form of cancer is used as a device for drama, horror and comedy. Get your head on, guys. This shite’s backwards and insulting, and it needs to be neutralised, pronto.
One Reply to “The ‘Brain Tumour = Madness’ Trope in Film and TV”