Darkness and Light

It's raining, bitches, it's raining!

Oh my G-d... This is such a big moment for me.  There are so many people I'd like to thank.

I'd like to thank my husband, for putting up with my whining and restraining himself to only the occasional eye roll.

I'd like to thank my air conditioning for sticking with a chubby girl with an attitude problem, and for responding to my flicking it's face when it didn't serve me fast enough.

I'd like to thank Zeus for finally paying attention to the rain dances in my backyard, and my neighbors for not calling the cops when I started performing them nude.

I'd like to acknowledge the other brilliant weather systems in my category - snow, you may not have won since the 50s but I have faith in you.  Earthquakes, even when my husband has doubted you and therefor eaten all the chef-boyardees out of our earthquake kit, I believed.  Sunshine.. you're a spotlight hogging little bitch and I think we can all say we've had enough.

My dark-hearted rainy soul is so happy.

Anyhoo.

I signed in with thoughts of mentioning this, and wouldn't you know it - Jen over here was thinking the same thing.

On the sad, growing-like-a-tumor list of things I used to enjoy but now do not (or at least enjoy less) because of infertility, we can add "Modern Family".

I love Modern Family.  Honestly if you're one of those people that knows it gets a lot of attention but has yet to watch it - do yourself a favor and get the first season on netflix or something.  It is genuinely funny, and I'm a funny snob.

Oddly enough, the only couple on television that really reminds me of Bub & I is the lovely gay couple on Modern Family, Cam and Mitchell (me being the crazy Cam, and Bub being Mitchell, equally crazy but on a more even keel).

But sadly - spoiler alert - on last season's finale, one of the characters got accidentally knocked up, and so this will be a season full of pregnancy hijinks.

::Le sigh::

I love this show so much that thus far sticking with it.. Although honestly, after watching last night I turned to Bub afterwards and said "I dunno if I can watch this anymore... fuck."

Not to mention last night, one of the couple's was contemplating a vasectomy, and mentioned in a hush-hush tone their neighbors who weren't able to have kids (the joke being 'and we are so jealous').

But seriously... is there no safe television show anymore?  I'm starting to feel like a member of some seriously under-represented group that is just never going to see ourselves on television.  Like albinos.  Or road kill photographers.  Or people who hate ice cream.

Which is totally fucking bonkers because statistically... we're all over the place.  Not including us is more akin to when television used to pretend (and still sometimes does) that black people don't exist.  Or when movies used to pretend (and still sometimes do) that gay people don't exist.  We're here, we're infertile, get used to it.

And I would like to state very clearly for the record, that I don't think including someone going through infertility somewhere on television has to be depressing.  As you may have gathered simply from my blog, from my point of view a lot of what we go through is totally ludicrous, and often hilarious.  Just because something has the element of sadness in it doesn't mean it has to be an endless bummer.

For example, if someone told me to add someone in their 80s to a script, my mind wouldn't automatically go "oh, well, now I have to write someone who has dementia and is slowly but surely approaching death".  Shit, The Big C is a hilarious show that is constructed entirely around a woman who has cancer.

As a writer, reader, tv-watcher, movie-lover - I'm sick to death of writing choices that involve lumping sad things with sad things and happy things with happy things, and ne'er the two shall meet.

I will argue to the death that the most interesting movies/tv shows, shit the most interesting anything, are the ones that make light of dark.

So many examples, but to keep this from turning into a novel, I give you my all time favorite movie, American Beauty.

(I don't know if I have ever mentioned this before, but Alan Ball - who Bub got me in a room with once and I almost died a Beatlemania like death - is my screenwriting hero).

There's a movie that asserts in the first few minutes that the main character is going to die.  There's an affair, a kid that's being abused by his parents, love lost between a married couple, and death.  If you'd never seen it before and I gave you that description, you'd probably think this is a horribly depressing movie that I love.

It's not.

It's the perfect mix of darkness and light (perfect, I tell you).  There's no dancing around the dark and pretending it doesn't exist, and there's no wallowing in it with no humor until your fingers are all pruney.  It's accepting that darkness exists, and finding the light in it.

So why, oh why, can't there be anything on TV or in film that does this for us?

Whenever we're mentioned, it's in passing - or it's considered such a touchy subject that they flit past it so quickly that it's ludicrous.

The examples I can think of off hand are both in "Friends" (which I love - could seriously quote you every episode).

1. Monica and Chandler think they're fertile.  They both get one test, on the same day, have a 30 second conversation with their doctor finding out they both have problems.  They hug, apologize to one another, and within a few days (no discussion of treatment) immediately go to adoption.
2. This is sillier - but Phoebe is a surrogate for her brother.  Without any drugs or what not, she gets IVF, goes home the same day, takes a positive pregnancy test a few hours later.  (My brain hurts).

I've only ever seen one thing - just one - where it had to do with infertility, I watched it and went "yesss... this is so dead on".

It's movie starring Mr. Gene Wilder called "Funny About Love".  It's a good movie - they should require you to view it before they hand you your first round of Clomid pills. Seriously - get ahold of it.  It sprinkles in funny (it's Gene Wilder, after all) but it's pretty dead on.

Other than that - where the fuck is our movie?  Our television show?

Someone needs to break down the wall and freaking acknowledge us because it's getting goofy.  (And yes indeed, if I can figure out some brilliant plot I'm going to take a crack at it).

There is absolutely no surviving this life with any joy in it if you don't acknowledge the dark and the light.  There is absolutely no surviving infertility without accepting the dark and searching like hell to find the light in it.  There is absolutely no art, film, literature, that is truly brilliant without both elements.  There is no life that is brilliant without both elements.  Therefor, there is no artistic representation of life that is any good or worth a hill of beans without both in it.

There is a ton of silly within horrible, and I am sick to death of waiting for someone to try to tackle us in art.  Any art that lasts is when an artist tries to tackle the difficult - otherwise museums would be full of velvet paintings of puppies, and television would be nothing but orange-tinged New Jersey women getting drunk and getting in fights (instead of just... mostly).

I'm going to try to get inspired, here.  I am.

I'm curious, my little kumquats - what have you watched that you thought 'got it'?  What were the most laughable attempts?