Grey's Anatomy and Critical Theory: Post-Structuralism Edition

Yesterday I started a blog series using papers I wrote for a pop culture and critical theory class last semester.

Here's round 2/5:

In Dr. Meredith Grey’s voiceover that starts the seventh episode of the fifth season of Grey’s Anatomy—“Rise Up”—she says, “If you’re a normal person, one of the few things you can count on in life is death. But if you’re a surgeon, even that comfort is taken away from you. Surgeons cheat death. We prolong it; we deny it; we stand and defiantly give death the finger” (Harper). While death has power over most people, it does not have power over surgeons. Through analysis of “Rise Up,” Michel Foucault’s ideas of discipline, discourse, and power are highlighted.

Residents in Grey’s Anatomy are known to be surgery-hungry, competitive doctors who will do anything to get the craziest cases. Stan, a robot patient stimulator new to the hospital, is the last thing on their mind—until Dr. Richard Webber, Seattle Grace Hospital’s chief of surgery, announces a competition: the resident that best impresses the attending surgeons will perform a completely solo-surgery. Webber tells the residents, “Stan can educate you in airway management, trauma assessment, and care. He breathes, he pulsates, he seizes, he hemorrhages, he secretes, and he speaks” (Harper). In a robotic, syllabic voice Stan responds, “Hello, doctor. I am not feeling well” (Harper). Stan represents post-structuralism theorist Michel Foucault’s idea of the panopticon, a mode of surveillance designed to make a society—in this case the hospital rather than a prison—efficient. Instead of experienced doctors training each resident in basic medical tasks, the robot does, making the society as productive as possible.

In “The panoptic machine,” Foucault says “[S]urveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary… He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumed responsibility for the constraints of power” (Storey 136). Stan’s goal is to have the residents believe they are being observed, so that in turn Stan’s discipline is internalized and the residents become more efficient on their own.From another room, Dr. Webber occasionally observes the residents; speaking into the microphone attached to Stan, Webber tells Dr. George O’Malley, “I’m surprised you even passed your intern exam” (Harper). O’Malley, who failed his exam on the first attempt and had to retake it, knows that Stan is specifically monitoring him. And although Webber leaves the microphone to attend to other business, O’Malley begins to monitor his own behavior because he believes Stan is. After Stan codes on O’Malley’s table and he has to run a defibrillator to save Stan, O’Malley shouts, “Clear. Yes! You don’t get to die!” (Harper). Despite knowing that Stan is a robot, O’Malley is still extremely invested in saving his life—and therefore invested in efficiency.

Grey’s Anatomy also highlights Foucault’s idea of a medical discourse. According to Foucault, “Discourses work in three ways: they enable, they constrain, and they constitute” (Storey 133). Dr. Erica Hahn and her residents, Dr. Meredith Grey and Dr. Isobel Stevens, have a patient in need of a heart transplant. Although he is on the UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) list, the patient needs a painful procedure to help his current heart continue working long enough to find a new, suitable heart. Trying to understand medical discourse, the patient asks his doctors, “So… you’re gonna give me a heart attack, literally?” (Harper). He is being constrained by a medical discourse that he does not understand. On the other hand, the residents are enabled by the discourse. Grey explains, “It’s a procedure called alcohol ablation, through a catheter in your femoral artery, Dr. Hahn will inject ethanol straight into your heart. The alcohol will incinerate any tissue cells it touches” (Harper). Although she attempts to explain the procedure to her patient, she is still speaking in a mild medical discourse difficult for a person without that knowledge to understand. Stevens then adds, “We’re gonna be burning away the muscle in your ventricle that’s blocking your ability to get oxygen. If we’re successful, you should feel immediate relief” (Harper). After Stevens explains the process in easier terms, the patient seems to understand; he says, “Just like that I’ll be able to breathe?” (Harper). The discourse is constituted when they actually do the procedure, which also demonstrates Foucault’s second and fourth rules of power—continual variations and tactical polyvalence.

After the procedure fails once, Hahn, Grey, and Stevens tell their patient they are going to try one more time, but he refuses to go through with the procedure again. In “Methods,” Foucault’s second rule of continual variations states, “Relations of power-knowledge are not static forms of distribution, they are ‘matrices of transformations” (Foucault 317). Unlike the Marxist idea that power always comes from the top down—in this case the doctor’s medical discourse deciding the patient’s treatment—this shows that power is always in flux, and can transform itself in different ways in different situations. While the doctors know more about the procedure and the condition of the patient’s heart, the patient makes the final decision.This situation also highlights the rule of tactical polyvalence discourses, which like the second rule, states that power can exist in many directions within different discourses. Foucault says, “Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy” (Foucault 319). The medical discourse enables the doctors to choose a treatment plan; however, it also enables the patient’s discourse—in this case, providing him a means of resistance to take control and tell his doctors he won’t go through with the second procedure. Both the patient and medical discourses wanted the patient to find relief, but they went about it in different ways. Later in the episode, the patient’s wife is visibly upset when she leaves to get discharge papers for her husband. Using this to their advantage, the doctors try to convince the patient to repeat the procedure one more time. Stevens says, “If you die, she will not get over it. She will not move on” (Harper). Reminded of his love for his wife, the patient decides to go forward with the second procedure, showing just how easily power can and does shift for many different reasons.

“Rise Up” demonstrates many of Foucault’s ideas. From the notion of self-discipline as a means to the end of efficiency to a medical discourse enabling, constraining, and constituting the people in and around it, power is a complex concept. And just as power is a multifaceted, confusing topic, so is the soap opera like show that is Grey’s Anatomy.

Works Cited

Foucault, Michel. “Method.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader, Fourth ed., Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2009, pp. 313-319.

Harper, William. “Rise Up.” Grey’s Anatomy, season 5, episode 7, ABC, 6 Nov. 2008.

Storey, John. “Discourse and power: Michel Foucault.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: an Introduction. Seventh ed., New York, NY: Routledge, 2015, pp. 133-134.

Storey, John. “The panoptic machine.” Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: an Introduction. Seventh ed., New York, NY: Routledge, 2015, pp. 135-138.

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