I watched most of the first season of House, but since have mostly just dipped in once in a while. While the medical mysteries, the ethical quandries and House’s general outrageousness were pretty compelling, I was getting pretty sick of all the highly sexualised fifteen-year old young women and House’s casual bigotry.
Recently, a few feminist critiques of House have popped up. The spoiler disclaimer appiles from here on in. (What is this disclaimer of which I speak? Check out the new “Further Notes” page up top.)
In Saved from destruction?, a post largely focussing on the treatment of Hadley’s (Thirteen’s) bisexuality, mzbitca wrote:
Hadley’s sexuality is not truly touched on until she has trouble dealing with her Huntington’s diagnosis. She goes on a reckless spree that involves doing drugs and taking random women home with her. [...] The fact that her taking home random women is considered part of her downward spiral sends a very clear message about what type of relationships are “correct”.
Now, I haven’t seen all of the episodes that mzbitca discusses, but from what I know, I agree with this. This is a reflection of some of society’s attitudes about bisexuality, specifically that it’s not quite real. I don’t want to run the risk of speaking for people identifying as bisexual, so I’ll just pick out the phrase ‘bi now, gay later’. Not only does it treat bisexuality as temporary confusion or cover, it invokes a shallow commodity rather than a rich segment of identity. This story arc draws on such attitudes in wider society and perpetuates them.
I can’t say I entirely agree with mzbitca’s idea that the writers successfully balance House’s attitudes with ‘making sure that House is not someone you should want to be’ through episodes in which he is shown to be ‘messed up and miserable’. I think that for this to work, the lines need to be more clearly drawn. After House makes any given racially inappropriate comment towards Foreman, for instance, the dramatic power relations have House high and Foreman low. Drama lives from scene to scene, on immediate power and emotion, much more than the memory of House’s unhappiness. If the writers are doing as mzbitca suggests – and that would be a good strategy, subverting the idea of the bigot as the truly powerful character – they’re doing a half-hearted job. Perhaps cynically, I think they’re just getting a kick out of epousing a little hate in what they can argue is an acceptable manner.
Moving on to the episodes around the “Painless” and “Big Baby” mark, neither of which have aired yet in these parts. I’ll just quote as I can’t do much commenting. Apparently it’s all about women – in their quinessential role of motherhood, that is. Bene has a succinct breakdown of “Big Baby” in everybody lies in the dominant paradigm, with outlines of what occurs for four female characters. But I think her last sentence says it all:
Yep, it’s nesting time.
Too right. You can also read mzbitca’s follow-up (heh, medical) called Ok, now I do feel kinda sorry for Cuddy:
Of course, since apparently the writers have lost any ability to write a well-balanced and nuanced character arc, now Cuddy is almost physically incapacitated at work because she loves her baby SOOOOOO MUCH (remember ladies, you don’t really love your baby unless you stay at home). She acts like an idiot, blames House because she created a monster only she can handle, and watches her baby on the computer instead of doing her job.
Immediately prior watching this latest season, I was watching Season 3 reruns. Well, you’ve got the idea of how I feel about House so far. Which is why I was so surprised to hear this in “Lines in the Sand” (S3E4) during a conversation about a young autistic patient:
Cameron: Is it so wrong for them to want to have a normal child? It’s normal to want to be normal.
House: Spoken like a true circle queen. See, skinny socially privileged white people get to draw this neat little circle, and everyone inside the circle is normal, anyone outside the circle should be beaten, broken and reset so they can be brought into the circle. Failing that, they should be institutionalized or worse, pitied.
Here’s a transcript of the whole episode. First, I hardly need point out Alison ‘Normal Normal Normal’ Cameron’s… behaviour in that quote. Pretty bad coming from a doctor. But I want to talk about House. It’s kind of odd to see him switch from bully to advocate. Of course, it’s really because he’s describing himself, too.
Isn’t that a great explanation of privilege, particularly with regard to disability, chronic illness and medical conditions? Cameron, the pretty, heterosexual, highly educated, middle class doctor, is part of the ruling group. There’s an arbitrary, indelible line which grants all the “haves” a privileged place and community. The “have nots” are not only left in the cold, they’re left alone, no brethren for them. And isn’t that just the case with so many disabled and ill people and their carers? Society won’t deal with you, so the best way to make you go away is to isolate you. But it’s better still that the normal people don’t have to have the marginalised hanging around at all, so the thing to do is tear people down and reshape them to specifications that will mean the privileged will be comfortable. if it doesn’t work, shut them away from everyone else and/or remove the need to treat them as people because they’re just creatures of misfortune and pity. Just keep working at the other so the privileged can maintain their comfort, their obliviousness, their sense of entitlement to all they have.
House is multifacted, to say the least. Even if I go off it again this season, I’m sure I’ll want to come back again. However skewed, there’re some interesting depths in there, which is what has made it as popular as it is.
Though we have no way of knowing how the writer intended it, I’m feeling some gender stuff in the “skinny socially privileged white people” conversation. When women express their privilege wrongheadedly, they’re “princesses”. When men do it, they’re taking their rightful place in society.
That’s a good point.
House is…interesting that way. It examines a lot of social constructs and race and gender and things, but it’s not necessarily feminist.
To be honest, I’m okay with that…as long as I still get to rip it apart.
Perhaps cynically, I think they’re just getting a kick out of epousing a little hate in what they can argue is an acceptable manner.
I watched the S4 DVD extras and a bunch of white, male writers (there was a female writer a few seasons ago, but I’m not sure if she’s still there) were talking about what it was like to write for the show. Their mentality was that it was fun to write House (the character) because he gets to say horribly sexist and racist and bigoted things, which made it hard for me to keep enjoying the show. It’s one thing to write a bigoted character and it’s another to get a kick out of writing his lines, seeing it as unproblematic fun.
Well there you go, pizzadiavola. It’s as though they have to rigorously police themselves in real life which is such a bore and here they get a little freedom and no one can do anything about it ’cause it’s TV and we have an excuse!
Also, Lauredhel, I’ve been mulling over your comment because that did vaguely cross my mind when I was writing the post, but I dismissed it. Which troubles me. I think discussions of privilege are coded in my mind as something happening mostly in feminist and anti-racist circles (and mostly on the Internet).
That’s the thing, Bene. We can’t exactly live our lives entirely in accordance with our principles, so we might as well do it consciously nevertheless.
I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’ve seen a few episodes of House here and there. I pretty much stopped watching it after I saw the most ridiculously maudlin pro-life episode. Regular watchers will probably know the one I’m referring to.
A woman refuses to get an abortion, even though she’ll die within a few weeks if she doesn’t get one, so they have to do surgery on the fetus while it’s still inside the womb. House pointedly refers to it as a fetus; everyone else, especially Cuddy, insists on calling it a baby. And then when he cuts open her abdomen to start the surgery, the thing reaches its hand out of the womb and grabs House’s finger. And then he presumably, on some level, realizes the error of his ways and understands that of course life starts at conception and abortion is evil.
Oh, I should add: My sister was also telling me about an episode she watched where there were two babies in the ICU, one belonging to a lesbian couple and one belonging to a hetero couple. The woman in the het couple talks about how if the baby dies, she knows that her marriage will not last through the trauma and grief of the experience. Then, of course, the straight parents’ baby lives, and the lesbian parents’ baby dies.
My sister was like, “So…what, the lesbian couple doesn’t really count as a couple and won’t be affected by it? Their grief isn’t as real as the straight couple?” She is a baby feminist, I was so proud of her!
Wow, heaps of comments! It’s very nice for me, everyone! Lauren, I haven’t seen either of those but they sound… horrible.
But at the same time there’s an episode in S3 that involves a rape victim who is pro-life who House does talk into having an abortion…it’s complicated and problematic, definitely.
I have been battling with this show since it started. For a medical show it is so contrived in its treatment of illness. Almost every episode it casually throws out sarcoidosis as a possible cause. Then does not deal with how serious this disease. The way it treats illness and disability as completely divorced from the person is reprehensible. Yet again on tonight episode it was Sarcoidosis…funny how they lied and said how easily treatable this disease is. Sure just pop a few prednisone they say…that is until you live with it in IRL and world comes to a dead halt.
Agreed. I originally stopped watching because of the horrible treatment and bizarre sexualisation of sick young women. Lauredhel got me thinking about ridiculous the writers are about House’s addiction. He’s in awful pain. He is taking drugs because he is in pain. Not because he’s addicted. Because that’s what he needs to function. You scumbags. The contempt for illness and disabilities, not to mention the people who have them. The show is often an exercise in dehumanisation. You’d hope that there’d be better representations considering, I don’t know, the title character has a disability.