Now, I have given up my dream of becoming a comedian, instead becoming a teacher (which is not too different from stand-up in some ways), but I do still have the deepest, most profound respect for good comedy, and good comedy writing in particular. That is why it felt like God, or at least the execs at NBC and Hulu, had granted me the greatest gift imaginable when the entire "Saturday Night Live" collection was made available to stream online. If I felt so inclined, I could watch all 37 seasons without getting out of bed. Luckily my schedule prevents me from doing just that, but I do put on a classic episode now and again when a have an hour to spare.
This morning I put on an episode from 1990, hosted by a dashing Dennis Quaid. Twenty-two years later, I still remembered at least three-quarters of Dana Carvey's George H.W. Bush cold open, including one of my all-time favorite Carvey lines [regarding the gulf war]: "We learned well the valuable lesson of Vietnam. Stay. Out. of Viet. Nam." I guess you had to be there...
Either way, the cold open was followed by a familiar monologue (delivered of course by Quaid) and then the opening theme for a Sally Jesse Raphael skit. As soon as I saw Jan Hooks in her big glasses and blond wig, I couldn't help but murmur, "Oh no..." The skit was called "Narcoleptic Hunks" and in this case the title says it all. I remembered immediately.
(I can't find the clip by itself, but the full episode is streaming at: http://www.hulu.com/watch/198095/saturday-night-live-dennis-quaid)
At any rate, Sally Jesse interviews Dennis Quaid, Phil Hartman, and Mike Meyers about how their sleep disorder affects their love lives and professional lives, which are my two biggest concerns when it comes to my narcolepsy. A thoughtful and sensitive line of questioning thought up by the brilliant writing staff once again. What bothers me though is the description of the disorder that Sally Jesse reads to her audience in the sketch:
"We all know what a 'hunk' is, or at least we all have our own definition of such. But do we know what narcolepsy is? Well, for your information, [reading from an index card] narcolepsy is a syndrome in which one is subject to recurrent, brief attacks of involuntary sleep."
Granted, a lot of advances and discoveries have been made about narcolepsy in the past twenty years, know what came up when I plugged this definition into google? Nothing. No hits. This was never the definition of the disorder, nor is it an accurate depiction of what most narcoleptics go through. "Involuntary" sleep occurs only as result of people fighting the extreme day-time fatigue that is present for all narcoleptics, the same way you might fall asleep involuntarily after pulling an all-nighter. That is very different than what we see on screen here. In fact, what they depict on SNL is much closer to something you would see in sleep apnea patients, but that one's not funny enough to break into TV just yet. For the sake of comedy, this definition of narcolepsy is the only one with any value.
Tired people?
Not funny.
People who fall asleep uncontrollably in inappropriate situations? Comedy gold.
So on the one hand, I get it. Even I have to laugh at narcolepsy sometimes, particularly now that my cataplexy symptoms have increased. And isn't it better to bring attention to such an under diagnosed disorder, even if the attention is a bit misleading?
The problem with this is obvious. If people know nothing about narcolepsy, which isn't flashy or well understood even by doctors, they have no reason to be skeptical about a sketch like "Narcoleptic Hunks." For some reason, the fact that Hooks reads the definition off an index card makes it sound like it's from a textbook though. That damn 3x5 card makes her appear like a legitimate authority.
SNL cannot take all the heat for this either. Perhaps the worst misrepresentation of narcolepsy I've ever seen was in that cinematic gem, "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo."
In this case, not only do they exaggerate the symptoms of this woman's narcolepsy, but having her list the things she CAN'T do has two effects: for one, it makes narcolepsy seem like a handicap or a disability of some kind. More troubling, it makes it look like a psychological condition as opposed to a neurological disorder. This woman is depicted as crazy, almost dangerous even, as she giggled that she isn't allowed to fly a plane or go to the gun range. And the loony she-John can't even do a simple thing like drive a car. What a disaster.
Oddly enough, the most realistic and least overtly offensive narcoleptic comic relief that I could find was in "Arrested Development." In an episode revolving around a bachelor party, the bumbling Bluthe brothers end up hiring a narcoleptic stripper to jump out a cake. Hilarity ensues... (http://www.hulu.com/watch/1135/arrested-development-narcoleptic-stripper). What's realistic about this? The fact that if I was told, "Go sit in a dark cake for an hour," I would definitely fall asleep too. That doesn't mean I'd skip out on work or neglect my responsibilities or have some kind of mental illness. It just means that doing things that make normal people tired make me a little more tired.
Last week I was teaching my students about the Holocaust in preparation for a unit on The Diart of Anne Frank (and don't worry, I am BY NO MEANS going to compare making fun of sleep disorders to anything Holocaust-related) and we talked a lot about the use of humor. When groups of kids want to bump someone out of their clique, they make fun of that person until (s)he's lost the respect of the group and the confidence to stand up for herself. Lately there's been a lot of press about the degrading effects of ironic hipster racism, which similarly is meant to be funny, but become just as divisive as a real thing. The fact of the matter is that there is nothing more powerful than comedy in some situations. When you can make people laugh, you can make them listen, and in a time when people have infinite entertainment options, those who can maintain a viewer's attention are the ones who can make their messages known. There is a reason I remember such an insane number of SNL skits by heart. When you make people laugh, you make people listen. Even as a kid (too young to be watching SNL in the first place), I laughed, I listened, and I remembered what I had heard.
As I mentioned, narcolepsy is horribly under-diagnosed world-wide, and frequently mis-diagnosed as depression, schizophrenia, attention disorder, or plain laziness. Doctors aren't entirely to blame for that under-diagnosis, because patients are often sure that whatever is wrong with them is not narcolepsy. Since they don't fall asleep randomly like Mrs. Deuce Bigalow, it can't be narcolepsy. They don't go from feeling fine to collapsing mid-sentence. So it can't be narcolepsy. So those people drink more coffee, sleep later on the weekend, and they suck it up. Many of them go on anti-depressants or mood stabilizers unnecessarily. The lucky ones get a mis-diagnosis of ADD and at least get prescribed some stimulants, but the stimulants given for ADD are not the best option for narcolepsy sufferers.
My point is that it is one thing to exaggerate something like chicken pox or head lice in the name of comedy. We have conquered those, and no one will ever be denied a job for carrying the varicella-zoster herpes virus (also known as "chicken pox"), and more importantly, no one needs to know whether or not you carry that particular form of herpes. Narcolepsy, on the other hand, because of movies like Deuce Bigalow and skits like "Narcoleptic Hunks," is thought to make people less effective, less efficient. and less capable. And honestly, in some small ways there may be truth to that. But I get up at 5:00 am each day, I work until 4:00 pm, I go to graduate school in the evenings, and I do a damn good job at all of it. But the extent to which these shows alter the definition of the disorder and exaggerate the effects of narcolepsy scares me. When you make people laugh, you make people listen, and I'm afraid of what people think of me if they love SNL the same way I do, and they remember seeing Jan Hooks with her big red Sally Jesse glasses, her voice filled with pity, laughing at what America thinks narcolepsy looks like.
