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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Date: 2005-02-17 03:49 am (UTC)And yet, it doesn't bother me in the show. I'm willing to give him a dramatic pass, and I'm not entirely sure why. It's partly, I suppose, because over the past few years I've met more people that I'd have simply pegged as assholes in the past, whom I now find to be "bright but deeply troubled." The fact that it's pretty much always "showtime" for House argues that he's one of these people; clearly, to him, patients are not really in a separate class, the way they are to many doctors. They are one with the rest of the world, the world he tries so assiduously to avoid.
I don't know if that's it entirely for me, but that's certainly part of it. If I only knew House as a patient, I'd walk away muttering under my breath. But if I had to spend days and days with him, I'd see him quite differently. As the audience, we're privileged with that overview the characters within the reality don't get -- in that, the writers of the show are using the same successful dramatic technique that's been used forever for the good old "dark lord" archetype. He allows people to think he's a schmuck when there are times he could easily set them straight -- but pride will not allow it -- and he'll often do terrible things for a good reason that not everybody can see.
Now that I think about it, it's kind of a classic. :)
Of course, I recently had a conversation with a colleague that went:
Colleague: "You're the only person I've met who ever speaks of that man with anything but hatred."
Me: "Well, he is kind of a sociopath. But he was always willing to push the envelope for the sake of the project." (As they look at me funny:) "Hey, I don't ask a lot of the people I work with."