Full Description
Cinema, MD follows the intersection of medicine and film and how filmmakers wrote a history of medicine over time. The narrative follows several main story lines: How did the portrayal of physicians, nurses, and medical institutions change over the years? What interested filmmakers, and which topics had priority? What does film's obsession with experiments and monstrosities reveal about medical ethics and malpractice? How could the public's perception of the medical profession change when watching these films on diseases and treatments, including palliative care and medical ethics? Are screenwriters, actors, and film directors channeling a popular view of medicine?
Cinema, MD analyzes not only changing practices, changing morals, and changing expectations but also medical stereotypes, medical activism, and violations of patients' integrity and autonomy. Examining over 400 films with medical themes over a century of cinema, this book establishes the cultural, medical, and historical importance of the art form. Film allows us to see our humanity, our frailty, and our dependence when illness strikes. Cinema, MD provides uniquely new and fascinating insight into both film criticism and the history of medicine and has a resonance to the medical world we live in today.
Contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1: THE PHYSICIAN IN PRACTICE: SUPREMECY, MD
Acting the Part
The Early Celluloid Doctor
The Specialist in Film
Cinematic Identities
It Is All About Surgeons, Isn't It?
Portraying Compassion
CHAPTER 2: THE NURSING PROFESSION: STEREOTYPE, RN
Pioneers
Innovative Caregivers
Cut from a Different Cloth
The Nurse (and often the Doctor)
Chauvinistic Tropes
And Then There Was Nurse Ratched
CHAPTER 3: HOSPITAL AND ASYLUM: CROWDED AND INSANE LIVING
The Hospital Room
Bricks and Mortar
Not all Hospitals are the Same
The Asylum
Haunting places
Abysmal places
CHAPTER 4: EPIDEMICS: KILLERS AND CRIPPLERS
Infections through History
Tragic Misfortunes
Killer Outbreaks and Other Fantasies
The 20th Century Epidemics
Poliomyelitis on Screen
AIDS on Screen
CHAPTER 5: DISEASED AND DISABLED: A LANDSCAPE OF SUFFERING
Diseases in Cinema
How Much Time Do I Have, Doctor?
Senses Lost
Unable To See
Unable To Hear
Unable To Feel
Unable To Taste
Aging and Frailty
An Erasing Mind
CHAPTER 6: MENTAL ILLNESS: CRAZED, HISSY FITS AND A COUCH
Weimar Kino and Dr Caligari
When Freud and Psychoanalysis Came Along
Cinematic Psychopathology
Labelling Personalities
Wired Differently
Maniacal and Murderous
War and Wounded without Wounds
A Crazy Side Effect
Socially Awkward
Wired Differently
CHAPTER 7: ADDICTED: THE LAST LEGAL DRUGS
Live By Example
To the Brim
Smooth Smoking
From Den to Hospital to Street
CHAPTER 8: TRANSPLANTATION: A SECOND CHANCE
Stumbling and Rejecting
Transplantation Horror
Transplantation Foibles
Who Receives? Who Matches?
Metal to Flesh
Transplantation with Love
CHAPTER 9: DEATH AND DYING: GOOD, BAD AND ASSISTED
The Good Death
The Bad Death
The Assisted Death
Posthumous
The Morgue
Left Behind in Grief
CHAPTER 10: MEDICAL VIOLATIONS:A LINE CROSSED
Cinema of Nazi Physicians
Forced Sterilization
The Tuskegee Study
Vivisection
Lobotomy
Psychological Experiments
CHAPTER 11: GROTESQUES: UNWANTED AND ABANDONED
Exhibit the Revolting
Misshapen
An Odd Face
The Elephant Man
The Neurology of Frankenstein's Creature
CHAPTER 12: ACTIVISM AND MEDICINE: ANGERED AND AGGRAVATED
Woeful Healthcare
First Do No Harm?- an American Story
First Do No Harm? -a British Story
AIDS Activism
Big Pharma
The Abortion Debate
The Vaccination Debate
CHAPTER 13: EPILOGUE: MEDICINE IN CINEMA THROUGH THE AGES
Themes and Tropes
Defining Decades
That's Not All, Folks
Closing Credits
FILMOGRAPHY
GLOSSARY OF MEDICAL TERMS
