• by Les Luchter , March 19, 2025

Lily Tomlin in "80 for Brady," as a cancer survivor -- not the typical representation of the disease, according to Lilly study.

Having taken on the misrepresentation of obesity in advertising with its “Shame” campaign and in media imagery with a bias-free photo/video gallery, Eli Lilly has now set its sights on fictional film and TV.

Lilly has released results of a study on the presence and portrayal -- or lack thereof -- of obesity, cancer, dementia, diabetes and eczema in movies and TV shows. The company says it is working with such content creators as Imagine Entertainment and Macro to help “reshape how diseases are portrayed in TV and film,” per a statement from Jennifer Oleksiw, Lilly’s global chief customer officer.

Moderating a panel about the study at last week’s SXSW conference, Lilly Chief Corporate Brand Officer Lina Polimeni pointed out that the depiction of health issues in entertainment and among celebrities  can impact consumer behavior: “Katie Couric’s live colonoscopy in 2000 led to a 21% increase in the procedure; Angelina Jolie’s sharing her breast cancer [diagnosis] resulted in 64% rise in genetic testing; and after the ob/gyn scene in the “Barbie” movie, we saw a 154% increase in online searches for a gynecologist.”

“Barbie,” a nominee in the Best Picture Oscar category for 2023, was included in the Lilly/USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study, which looked at all 8,676 speaking characters in that year’s top 100 movies and top 100 TV series.

Another Best Picture nominee, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” had the distinction of featuring the sole character out of all 8,676 who had diabetes (via an Oscar-nominated performance by Lilly Gladstone), despite 10% of U.S. adults having diabetes.  One positive was that the movie conveyed the disease impressively “in terms of symptomatology, care and caregiving” -- and despite the film being set decades ago, the study’s lead author, Dr. Stacy L. Smith, told the SXSW audience.

The fact that Gladstone’s character was the only one with diabetes also points to the finding that none of 242 characters (only 2.8% of the total, compared with 37% in reality) depicted with obesity also had diabetes. Obesity actually occurs in at least 15.7 % of diabetes patients. 

Not that Hollywood got much right about obesity, though, according to the panel.

“When you do have speaking characters that have obesity,  often they are depicted as the butt of a joke,” said Polimeni . “Or they are unlikeable, don’t have a partner or don’t have a job.”

They're also disproportionately Black, pointed out Dr. Smith. While Black characters made up 15% of all speaking roles, they over-indexed at 27% of obese characters, she said. 

Dr. Smith acknowledged that, after focusing “on the thin ideal for a long time,” the entertainment industry is now “showing all shapes and sizes.” But, she said, the characterizations of obesity “are completely devoid of any health risks.”

Cancer, on the other hand, is usually represented as a “death sentence,” said Polimeni, a common sentiment that’s been shaped largely through such depictions in film and TV. Yet, she noted, “most cancers, when caught early, are treatable.”

Only 14 characters, or less than 1% of the total in the top 2023 films and series, had cancer, “yet 40% of men and women in the U.S. are going to deal with some form of cancer in their lifetime,” said Dr. Smith.

Of those 14 characters, seven were shown in a hospital setting, with two deaths occurring and five “indicating that death was inevitable. That communicates that…you’re not going to survive. And that is simply not true. “

Quantitatively, the study results fared worst for eczema. The condition affects some 7% of Americans, but not a single character definitely had the condition, Smith reported. “But we could infer possibly six characters. Five had discolored skin patches, four had inflammation, three had itchiness. But some of them were caused by demonic possession.” 

Dementia, meanwhile, was “essentially erased in media content,” accounting for under 1% of characters, compared with up to 10% (of those aged 65-plus) in the real world. The study found that 67% of those characters were white males, compared with 67% being women in reality -- and, when caregivers were portrayed, they were also male, compared with 65% to 70% of them being women in the real world.

Also, dementia patients were almost exclusively elderly, despite rising rates of early onset dementia. Conversely, while from 4% to 10% of the elderly have dementia, only 1.3% of elderly characters in the study did so.

“There’s a disconnect between what’s going on in the world and what is in popular film and television,” stated Dr. Smith.