- The Wounded Storyteller — Arthur Frank, 1995
A sociologist who has been seriously ill writes about the work of being believed. Frank is good on the specific exhaustion of having to explain, again, why you look fine and are not, and on the way illness reorganizes a life that nobody else can see has been reorganized.
- Safe — Todd Haynes, 1995
Carol becomes ill in ways no one can quite name or photograph. The film is patient with the experience of being unwell in a culture that wants visible proof, and refuses the easy ending in which she is either cured or shown to be imagining it.
- Pinkerton — Weezer, 1996
An album recorded by someone in chronic pain who sounds, on the surface, like he is just having feelings. Listened to closely, it is full of the particular irritability and tenderness of being inside a body that is letting you down quietly enough that no one notices.