It's not the subject, but the treatment.

Art has always been a mirror for reflecting society. Even ancient cave paintings depicted their artists' civilisations warts and all; you could maybe even say Egyptian hieroglyphics also did. Today, even very casual consumers of art have become accustomed to that. But many of us, I think, have lost faith in art's ability to make change or increase awareness of a cause. If not that, then no fewer of us have learned to smell overkill when we experience it.

In each art form, artists should be free to explore whatever themes or issues they choose, but if those are topical or confronting, how you approach them can mean the difference between moving the audience and smashing them over their heads with it. For cinema the most recent example I can think of that I found excessive was 2012's The Impossible, about a family on holiday in Bali when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hits. I found it so heavy-handed and unrestrained thanks to the score alone that I thought it should've been called The Unwatchable. There are plenty more films like that for me (including nearly all of Ron Howard's filmography, quite honestly), but that's the freshest in my mind. (And indeed I wish I could erase it from there.) Even worse was 2016's Deepwater Horizon, one of the most shamelessly ignorant and parochial films I have ever seen. For a recent, similarly dramatic movie that has the opposite effect, try 2013's devastating documentary Blackfish, which I've already reviewed here. That works so well because it was pointed but objective and balanced.

You can also do justice to delicate subject matter through metaphor. The Cranberries' 1994 hit song Zombie was long taken to be about, well, a zombie, but that imagery and title was actually meant to represent two children who were killed in an IRA terrorist bombing. The song is a passionately angry memorial to them and all the other casualties of Ireland's Troubles, and it's lost none of its relevance or power today. Looking at more intimately personal subjects, Lt. Col. Mark M. Weber's 2012 memoir Tell My Sons is a series of letters he wrote to his three young sons after being diagnosed with terminal intestinal cancer; no other book has ever made me cry. For a terrific novel about cancer, there's John Green's 2012 effort The Fault in Our Stars; its 2014 film adaptation is inferior but nonetheless worth watching, too, and Jodi Picoult's 2010 novel House Rules evokes the hardships of growing up autistic superbly (and having done that I should know). These four works, along with those of Lisa Genova (2009's Still Alice et al), are ideal examples of how to examine disease and disability in literature with restraint for more impact. Contrast that with anything by Nicholas Sparks, whose writing is notoriously manipulative.

Using art to tackle challenging subjects is always brave and well-intentioned, and I acknowledge all artists have their own styles, instincts and preferences. But for your work to generate empathy, thought, discussion or above all change, the key is not the subjects you cover but how you cover them.