"Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place." Thus begins Illness as Metaphor, Sontag's 1978 work, in which she seeks to demythologise illness, in order to see it for what it is - not a metaphor available for political (often fanatical) discourse, but rather that which comes to us all. She urges linguistic specificity; "Any disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious" (6).
It is a thoughtful work, short but comprehensive in it's range of argument and example. Focusing on the metaphors used to describe cancer (and this from thirty years ago), both by the medical profession and in public life, Sontag suggests "our views about cancer, and the metaphors we have imposed on it, are so much a vehicle for the large insufficiencies of this culture..." (87) and goes about demonstrating how personal and political anxieties are enmeshed in the language games concerning illness.
It was perhaps with this in mind that I watched Wit, Mike Nichols' 2001 film based on the play by Margaret Edson. The film version is faithful to Wit's theatrical roots and, through the soliloquys made to camera, watching becomes a very engaging experience. Though flawed in places (the make-up distracted me at times), this is the most meditative and well-crafted film about cancer I have seen. As her character endures the often dehumanising experience of being hospitalized for an intense, experimental course of chemotherapy, Emma Thompson gives a performance full of perspicacity, grace and wit.
