me on tv?!
Last night, my boyfriend and I grabbed a glass of wine and put on the movie Greenland. His mom had recommended it as an easy-to-watch, somewhat predictable apocalypse movie. I love those kinds of movies and we both wanted something brainless, so we clicked it on without a second thought.
The movie starts by setting us up for the apocalypse -- Gerard Butler’s son is learning about a comet called “Clarke” that is set to pass by Earth in the coming days. We obviously know where this is going... Clarke will hit Earth and destroy all of humanity as we know it.
I was half watching, half scrolling Instagram, when a line from Butler stopped me in my tracks: “Are you liking your pump better than the shots?” he asks his son while tucking him into bed. I dropped my phone and pointed at the screen. The camera panned to Butler’s son, a 7 year old, who was wearing an insulin pump attached to his stomach.
“He’s a Type 1 Diabetic!” I yelled to myself, my boyfriend, and my dog, who jumped up startled and moved to the other end of the couch. I’m sure you have figured out where this is going, but if you haven’t... I’m also a Type 1 Diabetic. I was diagnosed with Type 1 when I was 14 years old and I wore an insulin pump for many years until recently switching to injections. If you aren’t totally sure, Type 1 is a chronic illness where the pancreas randomly stops working, halting all insulin production. It has nothing to do with diet or lifestyle. For reasons scientists still don’t quite understand, a Type 1 Diabetic’s defense system decides that their pancreas is a foreign body and destroys it, resulting in this autoimmune disease. Type 1 Diabetics are dependent on insulin from that moment on in order to control their blood sugar levels, something a normal pancreas does automatically, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Unlike Type 2 Diabetes, there is currently no cure for Type 1.
Safe to say, I watched the rest of the movie with rapt attention, having never EVER seen a portrayal of Type 1 Diabetes in film or TV, let alone an accurate one. And this movie’s portrayal of the illness was almost entirely accurate. “Someone who worked on this film is either a Type 1 or has a Type 1 in their family,” I said to my boyfriend, so excited to see someone like me on the screen. I looked it up and yep, the director’s wife, Kerri Sparling, is a Type 1 Diabetic.
You might be thinking, Geez, Maggie must never watch TV because I see Diabetes mentioned all the time. Yes, but the characters you are picturing are almost always Type 2 Diabetics and they are often portrayed in extremely stereotypical and wildly inaccurate ways. Type 1 and Type 2 are very different, and because of pharmaceutical commercials and shows like Grey’s Anatomy that only mention “Diabetes” without distinguishing between the types, most people don’t even know that Type 1 exists.
There are a few moments in the film where I questioned the characters’ decisions surrounding their son’s condition, but I realized that for the majority of viewers who have never “met” a Type 1 Diabetic before, some things needed to be simplified in order to be understood. And that’s ok. I was just happy to see someone like me represented in film as a main character.
Representation matters. We know this. It took Disney 86 years before they produced The Princess and the Frog in 2009 with Tiana as the first Black Disney princess. It took the United States 244 years until its first female and biracial Vice President, Kamala Harris, was elected to office. It wasn’t until 2017 that mainstream shows like The Good Doctor and Atypical released their first seasons, featuring main characters on the Autism spectrum. Representation in film and media matters, and though it still needs work, we’re getting there.
