Grey's Anatomy and Critical Theory: Marxism Edition

Last semester I took one of the best classes I've ever taken. It was a class on pop culture and critical theory, and we examined Marxism, Structuralism/Post-Structuralism, Feminisms, Psychonanalysis, and Post-Modernism. For the class we had to write a paper on each section, choosing a piece of pop culture to analyze throughout the semester. OBVIOUSLY, I chose Grey's Anatomy. In fact, I still sometimes watch Grey's Anatomy and think about the different ways I could use theory to analyze it.

I thought it would be fun to share the papers I wrote for the class with you in mini series of blogs. The things I write are by no means completely perfect or completely polished, but the class and the papers I wrote for it made me think about things I'd never thought about before. Maybe they'll make you think, too.

Here goes:

Whether it is a bomb nearly going off inside a patient’s chest, figuring out the John Doe who got hit by a bus outside the hospital is a resident, or a husband seeking to avenge his wife’s death by attempting to shoot every surgeon who failed to save her, there is no shortage of notorious Grey’s Anatomy episodes. Shonda Rhimes, the show’s creator, broke the hearts of fans everywhere when she put six surgeons on a plane destined to crash. And while most fans focus on the plane crash taking away their beloved characters, Mark Sloan and Lexie Grey, it also brought to light aspects of hegemony, false consciousness, and ideological state apparatuses.

After the hospital was found negligent in their hiring of a chartering company with pervious crashes, it goes bankrupt when it has to pay each of the six plane crash victims fifteen million dollars in compensation. In order to keep the doors of the hospital open, chief of surgery Dr. Owen Hunt turns to a physician’s advisor, Alana Cahill, who wants to sell Seattle Grace/Mercy West hospital to Pegasus Horizons—a company that owns hundreds of hospitals across the country and is more concerned with money, efficiency, and algorithms than patient care, research, or innovation.

To see what their future might hold, in the fourteenth episode of the ninth season—“The Face of Change”—Dr. Callie Torres and her colleague Dr. Richard Webber take a road trip to a hospital owned by Pegasus Horizons. At first, they pretend Webber is a patient with chest pain, something that warrants an automatic in at any emergency room, in order to observe how the doctors work. Within seconds of sitting down, a nurse comes to tell them that Pegasus values their time and that a doctor will be over as soon as possible. Then, when the doctor, Kan Mattoo, arrives less than a minute later he greets them by saying “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t experiencing some pain or discomfort, I apologize if we exacerbated that with a wait” (McKee). Torres and Webber respond that they have not been waiting long and assure the staff they need not apologize.

Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci would say this is an example of hegemony, a concept in which “a social group seeks to present its own particular interests as the general interests of the society as a whole” (Storey 83). The Pegasus staff—the hegemon in this instance—presents the idea that time is the most important factor for Webber, the patient and proletariat. The hospital suggests that they value the patient’s time, but in reality they are more concerned with being as productive as possible to save money; this is made clear when the tablet Dr. Mattoo is using malfunctions and he becomes frustrated. Webber tells him “it’s okay, take your time” and Dr. Mattoo responds, “I can’t really do that as we only have 15 minutes together today” (McKee). This scene shows that the hospital is more concerned with their own well-being than the patient’s and further proves Gramsci’s point that “despite oppression and exploitation, there is a high degree of consensus” (Storey 83). Because the patient can at times benefit from a quick appointment, the hegemon makes its interests the endgame.

Later on in the episode, Torres and Webber are wandering around the hospital posing as Pegasus representatives looking for feedback, and they run into Kenton Giles, an orthopedic surgeon and brand ambassador for Pegasus. Marx and Engels would say that Dr. Giles is suffering from false consciousness—the idea that ideology can mask injustice and mislead the working class to become supporters of capitalism, even if it is to their disadvantage. “Ruling Class and Ruling Ideologies” says capitalists “give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones” (Marx 59).

Dr. Giles, who used to be interested in cartilage regeneration research, tells Torres and Webber that most of his days are now full of press meetings and cutting into raw chicken for a photo opportunity in the operating room. When Dr. Giles sees that Torres and Webber are clearly appalled, he quickly makes excuses saying, “well, I work on the Portland Trailblazers though—real guys, not chickens” (McKee). His point about the Trailblazers further proves his false consciousness, as Torres later notes working with athletes brings money and press to the hospital: yet another advantage for Pegasus. Marxist analysis shows that Dr. Giles has bought into Pegasus’ ideology, despite it negatively impacting his career.

The final theorist who would be intrigued by “The Face of Change” is Louis Althusser. He would argue that the Pegasus Horizons hospital is an ideological state apparatus, or ISA. Althusser says, “it is essential to say that for their part the Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression (Althusser 303). The other doctors Torres and Webber talk to in Portland say that Pegasus protocols put their patients at risk and do not allow for physician advocacy. When one doctor says Pegasus seems to know instantly if they decide to ignore protocol to help a patient, another adds, “I swear the walls have ears” (McKee).

The ISA’s predominate function is ideology—the protocols set in place to be efficient—but, like Althusser notes, it leads to a repressive state that hurts the doctors and patients. Althusser also argues that when you are in an ISA, you can be part of the dominant culture without realizing it. Until their trip to Pegasus, Torres and Webber did not realize they were part of a dominant culture. When they return to Seattle, Webber says “you don’t really know what you have until it’s gone” (McKee). And although the doctors can see how ideology is impacting them, they still cannot escape it; while their hospital does not have the same ideologies as Pegasus Horizons, it still has, and always will have, ideology.

While many see Grey’s Anatomy as a simple show about sex and surgery, the show’s writers make sure it delves into deeper topics like ideology. “The Face of Change” is full of material to analyze through a Marxist perspective.

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, Fourth ed., Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2009, pp. 302-312.

Marx, Karl, and Frederick Engels. “Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, Fourth ed., Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2009, pp. 58-59.

McKee, Stacy. “The Face of Change.” Grey’s Anatomy, season 9, episode 14, ABC, 7 Feb. 2013. https://www.netflix.com/watch/70247930?trackId=14170289&tctx=0%2C13%2Cd5d416 d9-88af-4722-8ccc-a72678fb078d-42115719

Storey, John. “Hegemony.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: an Introduction. Seventh ed., New York, NY: Routledge, 2015, pp. 83-86.

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