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House
So I've finally started watching House. No one had made it clrear to me in advance that this was speculative fiction, and it seems to being marketted as medical drama. I think I would like it better if it were marketted as fantasy. I am impressed with the quality of the acting and am quite pleased Mr. Laurie's American accent is vastlyt improved since the A bit of Fry and Laurie days. This is a good thing. I know from hanging out at certain panels at various Orycons, that among toxicologists in particular and medical folk in general, the show is held in some contempt. apparently a lot of the plots are the medical equivalent of Star Trek's techno babble when eyed by physicists. Logically, I get that it's likely hard to present real or even realistic medical mysteries every week, but knowing this, it is in rather stark contrast to the realism and gritty feel they are aiming for. I'm in no position to judge for myself, of course and this doesn't touch on the much larger fantasy element underlying the show: the fact that it takes place in an alternate universe. Again, this doesn't bother me in things marketed as SF such as Torchwood and Dresden files. but it seems fundamentally dishonest to not mention such a large fantasy angle anywhere in the marketing. This was nagging at me, though i didn't put my finger on it until I saw the episode "Locked In," which brought the alternate universe angle into the foreground. For those who did not see it, "Locked In" was about a nice man with a loving family struck with deep paralysis. The man was a small business owner hit by the financial downturn who had to resort to janitorial work while looking for a job after the loss of his business. Instead of letting him die and harvesting his organs, they did all these exploratory surgeries and provided expensive life support while trying to cure him. This is when I realized this was alternative universe fiction. In the real world, the fact that the man was a good hardworking person with a curable illness wouldn't matter a jot. no way would anyone pay to save him, because our society has decided that wealth is the only measure of the value of human life. In the real world, he would have died. Pretending otherwise seems to bme rather dangerous as it gives middle and working class people the idea that their work and insurance and savings would lead to them getting life saving medical care at need. This is a lie, and by reinforcing that lie, the show House is part of the problem. People are unlikely to move to save themselves if they don't grasp that they are in danger and nothing would change. If they presented this as a fantasy, some utopia in which people who are not rich get quality care, I wouldn't mind, it's pretending that this is how things are that sticks in my craw.
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