Popular culture: June 2008 Archives

With the exceptions of "St. Elsewhere" and "Scrubs," both of which reasonably captured the high-flying absurdities of medical training, I've rarely watched medical dramas. The aversion had been based partly on time constraints but mostly on eye-rolling inaccuracies, like when the impossibly trained Mandy Patinkin went directly from performing a heart transplant to separating conjoined twins on "Chicago Hope."

I've also had an aversion to most documentary-type medical programs—probably for the same reason that a short-order cook wouldn't watch a reality-based show called "Diner" in his downtime. Nevertheless, when a TV series calls itself the venerably hip "Hopkins," it's hard to ignore. According to the show's website, this documentary-type medical program advertises "an intimate look at the men and women who call The Johns Hopkins* Hospital their home." (At this point, I assume—rightly, it turns out—that the referenced men and women are the hospital's physicians and not its long-term inpatients.) The first of 6 episodes aired on ABC last Thursday but is also available for online viewing.

Depicting a world where health care costs and insurance matters don't exist,^† the premier installment of "Hopkins" showcases the work of 3 physicians: the hospital's first female urology resident (ahem, both Duke and U Penn had their first female urology residents more than 20 years ago), a remarkable migrant farm worker turned neurosurgeon, and a cardiothoracic surgeon whose marriage is falling apart. And while the show clearly attempts to emphasize the real poignancy of their real work—which is actually made less real by the cloying use of singer-songwriter tracks^‡—it inadvertently shows how boneheaded the best of us can be when attempting to connect with patients. For instance, the neurosurgeon delivers the not-so-reassuring, "There's a fine line between life and death," to a clearly anxious man who is about to undergo resection of an undefined brain tumor. And the CT surgeon attempts to apologize to a woman in the ER who just endured the pain of a chest tube with, "Are we still friends?" Her reaction, or lack of it, pretty much says the accurate, "We were never friends."

Then there's the filming of the CT surgeon's home life, or what's left of it, to add personal drama that's evidently characteristic of "ER" or Grey's Anatomy." The problem—and we've become desensitized to this fact with the proliferation of reality-based shows—is that the pain of his young children, like that of the Hopkins patients, is indeed real. Which begs the question: It's one thing to embrace the filming of your medical practice, but why on God's green would you subject your children's divorce-induced anguish to the TV camera?

* Of course, we can't forget the capitalized "The" in front of "Johns Hopkins," anymore than we can forget it in front of "New England Journal of Medicine."

† To its credit, "Hopkins" did show how a patient with a documented brain tumor had to wait several weeks for an appointment with a neurosurgeon.

‡ I'm reminded here of John Belushi smashing the guitar of the folk singer on the stairs of the Delta House.

Today's NYT features a write-up of optical, or really perceptual, illusions ("Anticipating the Future to 'See' the Present" by Benedict Carey) and refers specifically to a Flash image of a spinning dancer* created by Nobuyuki Kayahara. The popular idea behind this fascinating (and infuriating) image is that it is a kind of left-brain-right-brain personality test, which depends on how you see the image spinning. Dancer rotating clockwise? You're right-brained. Counterclockwise? You're left-brained. Whatever that means in popular culture.

As Tara Parker-Hope explained in April at the NYT Health blog, the silhouetted image doesn't have any depth cues—such as lines to indicate how her legs should overlap. For instance, notice in the still-shot thumbnail (above) that the dancer could be facing toward you with her left leg extended or away from you with her right leg extended (a la the ambiguous Necker cube). How she spins depends on this split-second decision, which is perhaps based on how your brain is wired, past experience, or both. Parker-Hope indicated that most people will see the dancer flip her rotation, if they stare at her long enough.

Thinking I'd somehow be a better person for it, I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to get the dancer to flip at will. It's tough, particularly because there's some weird desire to maintain her movement that interferes with the flip. It's easiest if you scroll your PC screen so that only the dancer's lower legs are visible. Then once the flip happens, scroll back to view the entire image. There are also Wikipedia cheat views (here and here), which fill in the overlap lines to define the rotation.

BTW, I'm one hardcore right-brainer.

*Kayahara's Web site features a faster-spinning image here.

Pathetic update: Turn your head away from the monitor (either left or right), so that the dancer is in your far peripheral vision. She should appear to be some undulating blob; her movements may even resemble those of a rollerblader. Then imagine her turning clockwise or counterclockwise. Then look back directly at the image. Repeat this exercise until you can reliably flip her rotation, and then tell your friends and family members that you can do this.

If you're at a loss to understand the slogan of yesterday's anti-vaccination march on Washington, DC—led by Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey—you're not alone. The costar of Witless Protection* and the star of Horton Hears a Who! evidently want to promote "cleaner" vaccines (whatever that means—more bacteriocidal Thimerosal?). But what they really want to do is alter the current CDC-recommended schedule for vaccinating children...to God only knows what.

Orac dives into the mess and provides commentary.

*You know, the vehicle for Larry the Cable Guy.

Photo: Jenny McCarthy playing with garden hose in kiddie pool.