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Doctors are pushing Hollywood for more realistic depictions of death and dying on TV (www.npr.org)

submitted 11 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/health@lemmy.world

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We've seen it so many times. A young, handsome man rushed into the emergency room with a gunshot wound. A flurry of white coats racing the clock: CPR, the heart zapper, the order for a scalpel. Stat! Then finally, the flatline.

This is Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider's biggest pet peeve. Where are the TV scripts about the elderly grandmothers dying of heart failure at home? What about an episode on the daughter still grieving her father's fatal lung cancer, ten years later?

"Acute, violent death is portrayed many, many, many times more than a natural death," says Ungerleider, an internal medicine doctor and founder of End Well, a nonprofit focused on shifting the American conversation around death.

Don't even get her started on all the miraculous CPR recoveries where people's eyes flutter open and they pop out of the hospital the next day.

All these television tropes are causing real harm, she says, and ignore the complexity and choices people face at the end of life.

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[+] Pratai@lemmy.ca -10 points 11 months ago (4 children)

This doctor needs to find a hobby. They’re MOVIES. It’s expected to suspend a bit of disbelief when watching them. If every profession pursued a realistic representation of their career in movies, we’d have nothing but boring movies.

People watch movies to EACSPE reality. Not become engrossed it it. If someone wants to see how REAL medical procedures work. They can google it or watch a documentary.

[–] abbotsbury@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

People watch movies to EACSPE reality

This argument never really makes sense to me. Obviously some people just want escapism, but this line is brought out to justify any sort of discrepancy even when the more realistic option would be less jarring and therefore make better escapism by not reminding the viewer that they are watching a movie.

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 3 points 11 months ago

the desire to make movies more palatable for wider audiences comes only from either the production houses trying to make more money, or the Mary Whitehouse style Republicans who believe it makes Jesus cry when we say poopoopeepee on TV.

The concept is called attraction to mediocrity - in which with so many competing detractors, art by committee ends up being bland, fake, dry, mass produced and mass consumed.

Also, plenty of people are interviewed for interest segments in media and still have hobbies? It's not like this doctor dedicated years of her life to these comments.

[–] wildcardology@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hey I got hit in the head and fell unconscious for a few minutes but the guy in the movie I saw just walked it off. I'll be fine.

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca -3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah. That’s how movies are. Want tutorials? Go to YouTube.

[–] wildcardology@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lol, I want him to go to the hospital instead of walking it off.

[–] Pratai@lemmy.ca 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Naaah. If they’re so dead-set on following the “reality” of how things are in movies…. The world might be better off if they take their chances and just walk it off.