All along, I've referred to this show as Richard the Third: M.D. And I think your problems will vanish if you stop perceiving House as a hero. He's not. He's a villian, and the show is built around villiany.
I'm fond of villians, and Richard III is my favorite. He's a beautiful monster. His psychological twists have some obvious roots: in a great production I saw, the actor playing Richard made a great show of getting down on her (yes, her - she was brilliant) knees before the king, wrestling with the gimp leg to do so, and it made you think that Richard wanted to off everyone and ascend the throne just so he wouldn't have to fucking bow any more. And then there's the verbal brilliance of the character, the incredible poetry of maliciousness. You see the parallels.
Great villians -- Richard, Macbeth, Lex Luthor -- all are great because their villiany encompasses some human virtue twisted and made malevolent. Pride, independance, ambition, even empathy. I think House empathizes with his patients. Their helplessness reminds terribly him of his own, and his disgust for himself becomes his rancor at them. It's horrible, it's a tragedy that he is like this, but it's fascinating to watch.
He's a very human character. There are things to admire in him -- his obvious intelligence, his pride, his verbal wit. But his thinly disguised self-pity and bitterness well up and overwhelm him. He's like a man clinging to beam in a stormy sea. I watch the show to see what will happen if, inevitably, he looses his grasp.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 04:16 pm (UTC)I'm fond of villians, and Richard III is my favorite. He's a beautiful monster. His psychological twists have some obvious roots: in a great production I saw, the actor playing Richard made a great show of getting down on her (yes, her - she was brilliant) knees before the king, wrestling with the gimp leg to do so, and it made you think that Richard wanted to off everyone and ascend the throne just so he wouldn't have to fucking bow any more. And then there's the verbal brilliance of the character, the incredible poetry of maliciousness. You see the parallels.
Great villians -- Richard, Macbeth, Lex Luthor -- all are great because their villiany encompasses some human virtue twisted and made malevolent. Pride, independance, ambition, even empathy. I think House empathizes with his patients. Their helplessness reminds terribly him of his own, and his disgust for himself becomes his rancor at them. It's horrible, it's a tragedy that he is like this, but it's fascinating to watch.
He's a very human character. There are things to admire in him -- his obvious intelligence, his pride, his verbal wit. But his thinly disguised self-pity and bitterness well up and overwhelm him. He's like a man clinging to beam in a stormy sea. I watch the show to see what will happen if, inevitably, he looses his grasp.