My Breast (1994) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

My Breast is a made-for-TV movie about a single, fortyish journalist who discovers a lump in her breast. It basically serves the function of presenting the necessary medical facts to its female audience, while simultaneously presenting an examination of how the diagnosis and treatment affect the patient's concept of herself, as well as her relationships with those around her.

The cut-and-dried information about medical procedures is interwoven with a story about the impact of the diagnosis upon her relationship with her significant other. Her potentially fatal encounter with cancer casts an intense light on their affair, and this magnification process ultimately changes her perception of the balance between his flaws and his strengths. His tendency toward insensitivity seemed more insignificant in less stressful circumstances, when her own neediness caused her to overlook his flaws, but the same insensitivity in the face of a life-threatening crisis finally pushes her to move on romantically.

The usual Lifetime Movie, although it actually aired on CBS, and the bare breast was highly controversial at the time.

It's a true story. The subject of the story is Joyce Wadler, who is probably the closest thing the New York Times ever had to a gossip columnist. Here's a recent Salon article about her column. This movie is based upon her own autobiographical account of that crisis in her life, which began as a 1992 article in New York Magazine and was later expanded to a full-length book. Wadler herself adapted the book into a screenplay for this movie.

The reviews of the book say that it is filled with a sardonic sense of humor, but I guess Wadler set that aside to deliver a product targeted at her Lifetime audience. She made the screenplay treatment clinical and chose to portray herself as a bland person. It's a shame because,   from what little I know of her, she is quite different from the straight-arrow portrayed here. She is apparently a colorful eccentric in dress and style. She once worked at Screw Magazine, for heaven's sake! According to a recent New York Observer article, she sashays around town with a leopard print umbrella and used the royalties from the printed version of My Breast to buy herself an expensive fur and flaunt it in politically-correct circles.

If My Breast had been made about the colorful Edith Prickly character profiled in the Observer and if it were really filled with the sardonic humor mentioned in the book's reviews, it might actually be worth watching as a complex drama. As it is, it's a soap opera which could also be used as a teaching aid to enrich high school health classes.