by Noel Shafi
June 2018
Yesterday morning, I watched the movie Deadpool 2 (2018) directed by David Leitch. In this action-packed fantasy film based on the Marvel comic book story, death and dying is portrayed as a laughable experience. I think that the Hollywood movie industry is so saturated with violence and death, that the director of this film tried to take a new spin on the subject. At the beginning of the movie, Wade Wilson, the protagonist and movie character who plays Deadpool, witnesses the shooting death of his girlfriend, Vanessa. He cries over her body, visibly in tears. He loses his composure and kneels over her. He displayed strong emotional reactions characteristic of grief, and in this case, the death of his significant other, which occurred violently, suddenly, and unexpectedly. Based on our readings, the way that she died would further increase his risk for experiencing complicated grief. He then appears to be overcome with anger and sadness and runs and jumps through a nearby window, shattering the glass and falling several stories down in a clear attempt at suicide. He survived his suicide attempt. But he did not get over his girlfriend for quite some time. But instead of continuing to grieve, he channeled his energy toward training to be part of the X-Men, a superhero group of mutant human with superpower abilities, and helping troubled mutant teens.
Toward the end of the movie, Deadpool was laying on his back, and dying, after being viciously beat by one of his rivals. He went in and out of consciousness on multiple occasions for dramatic and humorous effect. The people around him in the film reacted differently. Some appeared to be emotional. Others appeared to be baffled by him being able to suddenly speak after apparently dying or slipping out of consciousness. And yet other characters were relatively detached from the experience, perhaps because of their ambivalent feelings toward Deadpool and maybe as a defense mechanism that would shield them from feeling grief. This movie showed that taboos around death, the dignity of dying, and the sadness often associated with our demise can all be flipped upside down for entertainment. Perhaps their death approach was a little too sadistic for some of us. But I think that the Deadpool perspective is that death has been overdone. It’s old and tiring. At least in the action-comedy film genre, and perhaps in a real world sense, death is no longer as scary or heart wrenching; it’s awkward, strange, boring, and even strangely funny: this is the impression I get from the current media and film culture. Maybe we have become desensitized to death, at least until it hits us or the people around us unexpectedly.