Strong Medicine at the Movies: A Review

-S^Strong Medicine at the Movies: A Review James M. Welsh With increasing regularity lately, Hollywood doctors have been making movie-house calls. Some of them we have seen before: their characters have been extrapolated from familiar stereotypes; they are dedicated professionals capable of compassion. But these days they tend to be conflicted about their primary goals, preoccupied, overworked, even burnt-out. Some of these new film doctors find their careers at odds with their personal lives, and the screenplays humanize them by dramatizing their personal conflicts. Others have been shaped by a developing postmodern skepticism that is not always flattering. Still others have been satirized and lampooned for their vanity and ambition. And, at the negative extreme, there is even the stereotype of the mad doctor, the doctor as psychopath. Should the medical profession be concerned about recent Hollywood images of doctors or medical professionals in general? On the one hand, those images may be considered trivial or silly: for example, young interns playing games with death-and-dying experiments in Flatliners (Columbia Pictures, 1990); the idiotic yuppie doctor just out of medical school in Doc Hollywood (Universal, 1991), who, on his way from medical school to Beverly Hills to practice cosmetic surgery, gets detoured in the rural South where a general practitioner is needed; or the celebrity plastic surgeon motivated entirely by greed, Dr. Ernest Manville (Bruce Willis), in the Robert Zemeckis satire Death Becomes Her (Universal, 1992). On the other hand, the point has often been made that popular culture is like a mirror reflecting the values and attitudes of society at large, and if doctors are made to seem greedy or cynical or ridiculous in mass-marketed films, the medical profession might well have reason to reconsider its image. The notion that doctors are somehow sacrosanct and above criticism has been shaken by a public awareness of malpractice suits and the skyrocketing costs of health care. Over the past several decades, more and more people have become aware that doctors are human and therefore capable of mistakes. Literature and Medicine 12, no. 1 (Spring 1993) 111-120 © 1993 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 112 MEDICINE AT THE MOVIES: A REVIEW The image of Dr. Kildare, developed from Max Brand's characters, starting with Internes Can't Take Money (Paramount, 1937) and Young Dr. Kildare (MGM, 1938), established a favorable stereotype that extended for more than a decade but eventually became dated. Fifty years later, in more cynical times, doctors were not faring so well at the movies. By the early 1990s satirical treatments were clearly in evidence, but there were still favorable treatments to be found, offering some hope of reversing this cynical trend. The most heroic of these recent screen doctors, for example, was Dr. Robert Campbell, a physician and scientist who has dedicated his life to finding a cure for cancer in the South American rain forest, in Medicine Man (Hollywood Pictures, 1992), directed by John McTiernan from a script developed by Tom Schulman, winner of an Oscar for his work on Dead Poets Society (Touchstone Pictures, 1989). As played by Sean Connery, Dr. Campbell has gone native and is worried about the aborigines, whose society he has entered and embraced, and about their habitat, which produces a plant that apparently yields a miracle drug (see Figure 1). He is so absorbed by his research that he has neglected to file progress reports with the company that sent him into the wilFigure 1. Dr. Robert Campbell (Sean Connery, left) with an aborigine, in Medicine Man (Hollywood Pictures, 1992). Photograph by Phil Bray. Copyright © 1992 by Cinergi Productions Inc. and Cinergi Productions N.V. AU rights reserved. Reproduced courtesy of Hollywood Pictures. James M. Welsh 113 derness six years earlier. Representing that company, Dr. Rae Crane (Lorraine Braceo) seeks him out in the Heart of Darkness. Dr. Campbell, an old-fashioned sexist, rejects her until he discovers that his continued funding depends on her judgment. She is a prize-winning scientist herself and resents his attitude, until he convinces her that he has discovered a possible cure for cancer, distilled from an exotic "sky flower" that grows high in the canopy of the rain...