Like it or not, not all art wants to be liked.
Sometimes the aim is different. The prize is not praise but agitation, discomfort, even outrage. Some art doesn’t want to be the soft pillow behind your drowsy head; it wants to be the pebble in your shoe.
Without question, “Me, Myself and Irene” wants to be liked. Its goal is to get laughs and sell tickets. Nothing wrong with that. But its protagonist, played by Jim Carrey, is described by other characters as schizophrenic. The movie’s cavalier representation of serious mental illness has earned the enmity of mental health advocacy groups — and reminds us of an ancient debate: What’s a fit subject for art? Is anything off limits?
While “Me, Myself and Irene” packs ’em in, a new play by Chicago playwright Susan Nussbaum has attracted disappointingly small audiences. “No One As Nasty,” which concludes its run at Victory Gardens Theater Saturday, is about a disabled woman and her caregivers.
Both movie and play employ an unpleasant topic as a plot point: In the case of “Me, Myself and Irene,” it is mental illness; in “No One As Nasty,” it is physical disability.
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In 1995, critic Arlene Croce published a now-infamous essay in The New Yorker called “Discussing the Undiscussable.” Croce refused to review a dance production because, she wrote, the presence of HIV-positive dancers rendered it inappropriate for critique and indefensible as art. Croce went on to decry virtually all artistic representations of inarguably horrendous topics, including the film “Schindler’s List.”
There was no shortage of commentators at the time to tell Croce she was wrong. Yet at least she had the courage to say out loud what many people believe but keep to themselves: Don’t make painful realities too graphic. If you must deal with those subjects, do it with style and aesthetic flourish or with lots of humor.
Nussbaum, who has been in a wheelchair for 22 years after being struck by a car when she was 24, understands that attitude. Her play, she believes, may frighten people with its meticulous details about an encumbered life. (Nussbaum, by the way, wasn’t griping about audience size; I asked her about it.)
Meanwhile, protests mount against “Me, Myself and Irene.” Representatives for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the American Psychiatric Association complain that Carrey’s character is referred to as a “schizo,” thus perpetuating the common error that schizophrenia is manifested by a split personality.
I sympathize with the advocacy groups and their quest for compassion and accuracy in depicting mental illnesses. I also think, however, that this silly trifle of a movie may be an offshoot of the attitude articulated in Croce’s essay, and of an increasing superficiality in the treatment of uncomfortable topics by entertainment media, from “American Beauty” and its insufferably smug pseudo-critique of contemporary life to TV movie-of-the-week treatments of social ills.
Making art out of pain is as natural and unstoppable a process for us as photosynthesis is for plants.
Nussbaum speaks of the “terrible urgency” of her work. There is no urgency to “Me, Myself and Irene.” The filmmakers didn’t care about the reality of mental illness. It was a cheap gimmick; it could have been leprosy or kleptomania.
Unless we’re willing to embrace more complicated renderings of painful truths on a regular basis, we may increasingly be stuck with Carrey & Co. If we don’t support the works of Nussbaum and others, then we may get a movie lineup top-heavy with the likes of “Me, Myself and Irene” — which is fine for some, but fails to satisfy the deeper hunger of others.
Instead of nuance, we’ll get nonsense; in lieu of artistry, obnoxiousness.