The Popularity of Medical Dramas

Admittedly most of my rants on this little blog are informal and frivolous in nature. Every now and then my education kicks in and I am drawn to write about the bigger topics at hand then my likes and dislikes.

There are many academic areas of study in film, and many ways in which to study. You can study something from the historical perspective and talk about what pieces influenced it. You can study a film from a more artistic standpoint and pick apart every last bit of symbolism. You can study a film for it's technical achievements. Tonight I am going to focus on a new and rather exciting (to nerds like me) branch of film studies, anthropology.

Film is an excellent way to study the development of culture and society. Naturally non-fiction pieces and news reels play their part in documenting what is going on with a society, and that is all well and good. Yet I have this strange theory that in time the fictional works of a culture will be able to tell us a lot more about what people were like then documentary.

When we look at popular works of fiction during any given time period we can't help but notice themes. The films that we classify as Film Noir were never advertised as being Film Noir when they first came out, it took a few years and critics from France to recognize that all of the dark crime movies coming out from the US were deeply connected even if no one planned it that way.

As is often the case with movies, if you have one hit in a specific field (vampires, super heroes, ect) many similar films will suddenly be developed in an attempt to try and duplicate it's success. The financial motivations behind putting out a lot of similarly themed movies makes sense; however the really interesting question is why do audiences keep going back for the same type of movie.

Much of the time popular films represent little more then wish fulfillment, when a certain genre suddenly becomes popular it often says a lot about the wishes of general population. For example shortly after 9/11 superhero movies became extremely popular. Why? Because many Americans found themselves wishing for greater security, or wishing we could have some sort of vengeance, and perhaps most importantly we found that we were no longer the invincible superpower we thought we were. At a time when we felt so scared, and angry, and powerless we needed to see some heroes up on the silver screen. We needed to see good triumph against evil, we needed to see heroes who didn't die trying to save innocent lives, and we wanted villains that were clearly defined and easily thwarted.

A new trend has sprung up in American popular culture that has struck me, the popularity of the medical drama. Now Medical dramas have been around for years, but the most recent crop of shows seem to be closely tied. "House", "Nurse Jackie", "Mental", "Royal Pains", and "Hawthorne" all feature medical professionals who break rules and often work outside traditional medical systems in order to save lives.

If you want to take a financial standpoint on this you can blame the popularity of House for all of these new shows, but again lets not think about the studios producing these shows lets think about the audience who watches it.

I think the popularity of "House" is largely due to the fact that so many Americans are deeply dissatisfied with with the current state of health care. Even if you are lucky enough to have insurance it is a nightmare trying to get anything treated. There are so many insurance companies who refuse every claim as a matter of policy and promote workers who turn down the most people in need of medical care. There are hospitals that charge $60 for an aspirin, and miles upon miles of red tape to get proper referrals and treatments done. There are many good doctors who are forced to leave their practices because of an utterly fucked system which constantly raises rates for malpractice insurance even if they have made no mistakes, and forces doctors to settle out of course regardless of weather or not the person suing them is telling the truth.

We have a medical system that is so utterly and completely broken that the only foreseeable way for some people to be saved is doctors and nurses occasionally ignoring the rules. All of the new medical dramas popping up fufill a wish of the American populous. That if you became ill or injured you would not only be able to get the procedures and treatments you need, but that you would also have someone competent who was willing to break and bend rules in order to make sure you live.
Sure Dr House is a jerk, but if something was going horribly wrong with you he is the man you would want to hire.

Right now we are not seeing a lot of sitcoms which show loving families, or Gossip Girl rip offs which focus on being super wealthy, right now we are seeing a huge crop of Medical Dramas. Ok and Vampire related stuff, but I have no idea what that trend means yet.

Back to the point

What does it say about America that right now one of the greatest wishes of it's people is to simply have decent health care?

You know what it says to me, it says that there needs to be some changes made in the system. I am but a simple film snob, so all I can do is give you a link to a place where you can actually make a difference.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/health-care-action-center/?source=feature

I know I know, I'm sorry for turning this post all political, honestly I didn't start out with this intention. Alas I am a selfish blogger. I am currently covered under my Mother's health insurance plan, if for some reason I stop being covered I will be in big trouble. Legally insurance companies have the right to refuse me because of my serious pre-existing illness Lupus (sorry House sometimes it is Lupus), insurance companies also have the right to charge me far more then other people, most likely I will be unable to afford health insurance on my won, without insurance I will also be unable to afford my current medications and doctors visits, and I will without question become extremely ill and be in constant pain.

I promise not to make my blog a political one, but this is an issue that my life literally depends on. So if your a US citizen please at least look at the site and get involved if you can. Donate, Call your Congressmen, sign the dam petition.