My House Issues
Feb. 16th, 2005 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katallisonI write this entry (which has been floating around in my head) with some trepidation; many of my friends are over-the-moon smitten with House, and I have no intention of raining on anyone's parade, pissing on anyone's cornflakes, or otherwise harshing the love. But there are reasons why I shall never, despite some geniune fondness for some aspects of this show, be able to be a *fan* of it, or in fact to watch it a whole lot, and I felt moved to type them out (possibly because I am cranky from spending way too much time in hospitals the last six months).
Disclaimer the first: I haven't seen all the episodes. I've seen maybe -- five? Six? Something like that, anyway. The last one I saw was the mysteriously-ill high school kids.
Disclaimer the second: My having reservations about something, or not liking something, implies *no* slur or disrespect toward people who unreservedly like that thing.
Having said which -- There's stuff I actually do like a lot about the show:
It's a by-god actual hour-long TV drama! With characters, and storylines, and dialogue! Not reality TV! This alone is (sadly, in our age) worth praise.
It seems on the whole to be well-written and well-acted.
In particular, Hugh Laurie is a whole big tasty bundle of rrRRAAWWRRrrrr, does a fantastic job in the role, and is clearly having a blast.
I love hospital series to an unreasonable degree; medicine really interests me, while at the same time I'm not enough of an expert to be bugged by inaccuracies/implausibilities in the show.
But I have one big difficult and apparently insuperable Issue:
It's the attitude. I mean, I'm not bothered that House is written as an arrogant, snarky, insulting SOB. I have been known to love such characters before (e.g., Methos, Toby, Ray Vecchio). And if the show was constructed so that the objects of his snark and arrogance were his peers, more or less (Cuddy, the members of his team, organized medicine in general) -- or if they were people who had in some way earned his attitude (say, if he were a help-desk tech for an ISP dealing with hordes of abusively clueless Entitlement Cases [and wouldn't that be a cool show?]) -- that would be just fine with me.
But. But.
The people on the show who frequently get the sharp edge of his tongue and his attitude are patients. As in, people who are sick, in pain, vulnerable, scared, and who have been thrown against their will into the meat-grinder that is Organized Medicine.
I know those people. I have *been* those people, from time to time. And I can tell you if there's one thing that truly and royally *pisses me off*, it's a doctor who pulls attitude on me--overrides me, dismisses me, implies that I'm stupid or hypochondriacal, plays the "I know better than you do" card. As House does, all the time, with his clinic patients.
And you know what? I don't *care* that he's a freakin' genius. I don't *care* that he's doing clinic rounds against his will. I don't *care* that he has chronic pain, and Issues, and whatthefuckever. He's being an asshole to people who are sick, in pain, vulnerable, and--relative to him--powerless. And in those moments he exemplifies everything I hate about the arrogance of Organized Medicine, a world where very real power differentials exist between patients and doctors, with results that range from the humiliating to the tragic.
And part of what's frustrating is that I can see how they've painted themselves into a corner on this one. I applaud, actually, a show that's willing to make their main character a right bastard; and if they relented and had a Very Special Moment on each show displaying him actually being a heck of a nice guy to his patients, it would undercut the audacity of that. ("Audacity" relative to the norms of mainstream US TV, that is.) Part of what I respect about the show is that they don't seem to take the easy fluffy-bunny way out on this; but they've placed House in one of the very few professions where consistent, across-the-board assholery is pretty much guaranteed to lose me, because it too closely and painfully reflects the ways that people in that profession do in fact abuse their power, and do actual damage to the lives of actual people in the process.
And there's a related issue -- I'm supposed to cut House some slack because he's portrayed as a diagnostic genius, but the fact is (at least, from everything I've heard from actual doctors) that diagnosis is as much art as science, that a lot of key information you gain about a patient comes not from lab reports or test results but from sitting with that person, closely observing, noting the nonverbal details of appearance and speech and manner. And asking questions in a way that will get honest unguarded responses, and truly listening to what is said. And he cuts himself off from all that data, which counts as willful stupidity in my book, and for no good reason. So he thinks all his patients lie to him? Well, no shit, the way he treats people, I'd lie to him too.
So. I repeat, perhaps needlessly, that I intend no slur towards those who dig the show--dude, I'm happy whenever anyone finds a new object of fannish love. I just wish I could enjoy it as fully, and am a little sad that I can't. But -- I can't.
Disclaimer the first: I haven't seen all the episodes. I've seen maybe -- five? Six? Something like that, anyway. The last one I saw was the mysteriously-ill high school kids.
Disclaimer the second: My having reservations about something, or not liking something, implies *no* slur or disrespect toward people who unreservedly like that thing.
Having said which -- There's stuff I actually do like a lot about the show:
It's a by-god actual hour-long TV drama! With characters, and storylines, and dialogue! Not reality TV! This alone is (sadly, in our age) worth praise.
It seems on the whole to be well-written and well-acted.
In particular, Hugh Laurie is a whole big tasty bundle of rrRRAAWWRRrrrr, does a fantastic job in the role, and is clearly having a blast.
I love hospital series to an unreasonable degree; medicine really interests me, while at the same time I'm not enough of an expert to be bugged by inaccuracies/implausibilities in the show.
But I have one big difficult and apparently insuperable Issue:
It's the attitude. I mean, I'm not bothered that House is written as an arrogant, snarky, insulting SOB. I have been known to love such characters before (e.g., Methos, Toby, Ray Vecchio). And if the show was constructed so that the objects of his snark and arrogance were his peers, more or less (Cuddy, the members of his team, organized medicine in general) -- or if they were people who had in some way earned his attitude (say, if he were a help-desk tech for an ISP dealing with hordes of abusively clueless Entitlement Cases [and wouldn't that be a cool show?]) -- that would be just fine with me.
But. But.
The people on the show who frequently get the sharp edge of his tongue and his attitude are patients. As in, people who are sick, in pain, vulnerable, scared, and who have been thrown against their will into the meat-grinder that is Organized Medicine.
I know those people. I have *been* those people, from time to time. And I can tell you if there's one thing that truly and royally *pisses me off*, it's a doctor who pulls attitude on me--overrides me, dismisses me, implies that I'm stupid or hypochondriacal, plays the "I know better than you do" card. As House does, all the time, with his clinic patients.
And you know what? I don't *care* that he's a freakin' genius. I don't *care* that he's doing clinic rounds against his will. I don't *care* that he has chronic pain, and Issues, and whatthefuckever. He's being an asshole to people who are sick, in pain, vulnerable, and--relative to him--powerless. And in those moments he exemplifies everything I hate about the arrogance of Organized Medicine, a world where very real power differentials exist between patients and doctors, with results that range from the humiliating to the tragic.
And part of what's frustrating is that I can see how they've painted themselves into a corner on this one. I applaud, actually, a show that's willing to make their main character a right bastard; and if they relented and had a Very Special Moment on each show displaying him actually being a heck of a nice guy to his patients, it would undercut the audacity of that. ("Audacity" relative to the norms of mainstream US TV, that is.) Part of what I respect about the show is that they don't seem to take the easy fluffy-bunny way out on this; but they've placed House in one of the very few professions where consistent, across-the-board assholery is pretty much guaranteed to lose me, because it too closely and painfully reflects the ways that people in that profession do in fact abuse their power, and do actual damage to the lives of actual people in the process.
And there's a related issue -- I'm supposed to cut House some slack because he's portrayed as a diagnostic genius, but the fact is (at least, from everything I've heard from actual doctors) that diagnosis is as much art as science, that a lot of key information you gain about a patient comes not from lab reports or test results but from sitting with that person, closely observing, noting the nonverbal details of appearance and speech and manner. And asking questions in a way that will get honest unguarded responses, and truly listening to what is said. And he cuts himself off from all that data, which counts as willful stupidity in my book, and for no good reason. So he thinks all his patients lie to him? Well, no shit, the way he treats people, I'd lie to him too.
So. I repeat, perhaps needlessly, that I intend no slur towards those who dig the show--dude, I'm happy whenever anyone finds a new object of fannish love. I just wish I could enjoy it as fully, and am a little sad that I can't. But -- I can't.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 12:26 am (UTC)you are making a lot of excellent points, and I totally get where you are coming from...but I've started to take a different perspective. I don't think we are necessarily supposed to forgive him because he is "diagnostic genius" - I think we are probably supposed to empathize because it is clear that he, too, has been vulnerable to the fragility of his own body and chances are? He didn't deal with at particularly well at the time (this is probably a massive understatement) and he isn't dealing well with the aftermath (I think last night's episode did a lot of work on this issue, I don't want to spoil you because it appears you haven't seen it?)
I'm not trying to convince you out of your reaction - I think that the text is fairly ambiguous in a lot of ways. I just think I've started it reading it in a way that allows me to understand how he can say such terrible things to his patients (to be fair he actually tries NOT to interact - he sends his interns as his "human face" and I suspect he actually knows what he is doing when he does that.) and still be a person I want to know *more* about.
Also, this was an excellent meta-post on a show I have a hard time thinking about analytically.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 12:53 am (UTC)I wish now that this had been more explicit in the character's set-up from the start (or that I'd been able to read that into my understanding of the character). I mean, I'm totally on board with the whole wounded-healer damaged-hero dynamic, but I've had a really hard time getting past the fact that House's history (or current status) of woundedness/damage is (in the episodes I've seen) secondary to the actual power he wields now as part of the medical establishment. If we'd seen *why* he wields that power so unfeelingly, it would have made a big difference to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 01:28 am (UTC)Very unreliable memory speaking--but I think in either the first or second ep, he does imply soemthing like that in regards to his leg--that the doctors refused to listen/didn't know why his leg was in chronic pain and it ended in a leg-stroke (I guess a blockage in his leg?), hence the fact he doesn't have full use and pops vicadin, and possibly why he's so hot for trial and error in diagnostic medicine. Since so far on this show, we have *never* gotten a straight answer to anything whatsoever regarding everyone's past, I've kind of been hoping they'd address it again. It could have been the same ep where it's shown a flash of kids playing soccer at the end of the ep adn then flashes to him looking blankly at an empty soccer field, but man, that was many, many eps ago.
Wow, I didn't realize how many eps this show has been on now. I keep thinking it just started. Gah.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 01:31 am (UTC)I think you are right...wow, can't believe I forgot about that. Last night they also made it TEXT that there was an extreme personality change when he had his infarction (is that how it is spelled?), verified by House who knew him before the medical problem surfaced.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-17 01:32 am (UTC)