The Relentless Pursuit of Common Sense

This skit pokes fun at advice columnists. The text from Thurmond_Drang (a play on Sturm und Drang, the 18th century German movement in literature and music) to Mummy Mummy essentially sums up the problem advice columnists present to us here at CoBaD: they make snap diagnoses based on a single brief letter (essentially making judgements based on one side of an argument), have no prior knowledge of the individual (so they can at least ascertain his or her credibility), make no effort to make first hand observations of the problem (to determine its accuracy), and rarely, if ever, follow up to see if the advice they gave was followed through or actually worked. Mummy Mummy takes it a step further by consistently contradicting the rules she lays out to her listeners (e.g., telling her listeners to feel free to ask questions only so she can give them dumb looks and tell them that they are either overthinking or not thinking at all, which only intimidates her listeners from asking further questions so she can turn around and rail at them for not asking questions) and giving one size fits all advice in the form of tired, worn out idioms (and as can be seen in the skit, idioms often contradict another). And yet advice columnists are constantly sought out for advice because they are considered to be the very definition of common sense. Maybe common sense isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“Who’s for trifle?” is a reference to Basil Fawlty’s famous line at the end of the “Fawlty Towers” episode, “Gourmet Night.”

Tommy’s question regarding his father choking was inspired by a question posed in an advice column for those seeking pharmacological assistance. In the article, the woman said that her husband used bleach in warm water to treat toenail fungus. Now her husband’s feet are red and painful, so she wrote the advice columnist to see if he should see a podiatrist or dermatologist. It’s hard to tell who is stupider, the husband for soaking his feet in bleach or the wife who wrote to an advice columnist and waited for a response before acting on her husband’s painful condition.

“Anna O,” also known as Bertha Pappenheim (1859-1936), was the most famous patient of physician Josef Breuer (1842-1925). Dr. Breuer’s protégé, Sigmund Freud (1859-1936) wrote about the case.

Anal’s text message is a spoof of a book called “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green (2012). The parody title, “The Fault in Our Champagne” was inspired by a section in chapter 11 when the waiter at the restaurant where Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters ate told a story about Dom Pérignon, the creator of champagne, who allegedly said to his fellow monks upon creating champagne, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars.” That particular chapter seems to run contrary to the title of the book, because Hazel and Augustus seemed to find no fault in these particular “stars;” having two rounds of stars with their complimentary dinner in Amsterdam, and another round of stars on the plane ride on the way home (Chapter 14).

The setup to the dinner scene appears to show a total lack of responsibility on the mother’s part: a mother lets her 16 year old daughter, dependent on a BPAP device to breathe, and her 17 year old boyfriend, with a prosthetic leg, go out by themselves (without adult or medical supervision) in a foreign city which none of them has visited before, and take two trams across town to have dinner at a strange restaurant which has been paid for by a man they have never met. The “without medical supervision” element in particular was rather disturbing. In Chapter 7, just before Hazel was to travel to Amsterdam with her Mom and Augustus, she had a deoxygenation emergency and had to spend six days in the hospital. Shortly after being released, Hazel’s doctors agreed to let Hazel go to Amsterdam on the condition that someone traveled with her that was intimately familiar with her case (Chapter 8), which would mean either Dr. Maria (Hazel’s doctor), or Hazel’s Mom would have to travel with Hazel. The fact that Hazel spent several hours away from her Mom either on trams or having dinner could have been disastrous. Even Hazel herself pondered the possibility of having a fatal episode of deoxygenation in Amsterdam (Chapter 8).

It may sound like a harsh thing to say given the nature of “The Fault in Our Stars” (a story about cancer patients in love), but in CoBaD’s opinion, “The Fault in Our Stars” is yet another “book” in what we call the “Wizard of Oz series.” The analogy is referring to the scene in L. Frank Baum’s book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” where the Wizard of Oz, who for most of the book comes across as great and powerful to all, is exposed when Toto happens to knock over a screen in the corner of the throne room, revealing the “Wizard” to be an ordinary old and powerless man, shouting through a megaphone, pulling levers and turning cranks. Similarly, “The Fault in Our Stars” has blinded critics and readers alike with its alleged awesomeness. But when one “pulls aside the curtain,” or in this case, the backdrop (cancer); that is to say, when one factors cancer out of the story, one reveals a tepid love story between a pretentious girl and a very talkative boy, characters lacking depth (many of whom are quite tiresome and unlikeable) and very banal dialogue.

“The Fault in Our Stars” seems to be cut from the same cloth as stories such as Earnest Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” (set in World War I) and the 1997 movie “Titanic” (set on the doomed ship of the same name). Yet when Mr. Green’s story premiered in 2012, critics and readers, like with “A Farewell to Arms” and “Titanic,” were once again blinded by the backdrop, and, paying little attention to anything else in the book (including the lead character Hazel’s pervasive ego-centrism, cynicism, selfishness and ungratefulness), gave the book rave reviews.

The artistic world can do better this. It can do better than presenting underwhelming stories against overwhelming backdrops. A story should not have to depend upon a backdrop to win over an audience; rather, a story should be a good story regardless of its setting. CoBaD believes that content is king. The content is the substance. The rest is trifle.