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Dr. Hollywood: An Overview of Doctors on Film

By Ore Fawole

“Write what you know.” 

Every writer has heard these four simple words. A lot easier said than done, right? What do you know? Is it entertaining enough to keep a reader engaged for 400 pages or, say, a feature-length film? Screenwriters have often approached this statement metaphorically. We accept movies about astronauts, detectives, and firefighters that are written by people who are not in those professions, because who is really leaving space to write The Martian? These films are great at entertaining people, as they are meant to do, but what happens when we, as an audience, carry those films outside of the theater with us? What happens when writers write what they don’t know, and it influences the opinions we have about the people on screen?  

We are no strangers to incorrect depictions of people with mental illness on the silver screen. From Psycho in 1960, and more recently, the catastrophe of Joker (2019), Hollywood has cast the reality of mental illness aside in favor of a more entertaining story. However, many have criticized this behavior and made strides to correct how we present people with mental illness. Filmmakers are improving the depiction of patients in movies, but we often forget about the other side of the coin: the people diagnosing them. Physicians are often featured in films, but we rarely note how they are portrayed. So, who are our doctors in Hollywood?  

Although filmmaking began in the late 1800s, we didn’t see an influx of physicians in films until the early 1930s. During this time, both medical discovery and the film industry exploded. This combination spurred what Dr. Christopher R. Cashman, a researcher in medical education at Johns Hopkins, dubs the “physician hero.” The Golden Age of physicians on film, lasting through the 1940s, was marked by celebrating modern medicine and the demonization of “dark medicine”. Doctors who refused to accept the innovation in medicine during this era were depicted as users of “dark” medicine, or simply old medicine, who did not care for (or about) their patients, whereas their peers who readily accepted microscopes and vaccines were represented as superior healers. As stated by Cashman, “The ‘monsters’ were defined as separate from the ‘newly developing academy of science,’ thereby assisting in the construction of the devoted physician hero by depicting their opposite.” This dichotomy is seen in our most prominent doctors from the Golden Age. Our heroes, Dr. Kildare from the Dr. Kildare (1937-1942) film series and Dr. Arrowsmith from Arrowsmith (1931), were both young, attractive physicians dedicated to caring for their patients and were enthralled by modern medical research. Conversely, our “monsters,” Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll, in both versions of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931, 1941), were both played by older, less attractive actors. Our heroes were always cast in bright, angelic lighting, while our “mad scientists” were dimly lit, casting shadows over both their faces and their approach to medicine.  

Hollywood’s abandonment of the physician hero happened slowly and then all at once. As stated by Eelco F. M. Wijdicks in his book Cinema, MD: A History of Medicine on Screen, “The 1960s quickly ended any filmmaking tendencies to glorify medicine and perceptions quickly evolved from awe to suspicion to disdain.” This era was characterized by, well… bad doctors. M*A*S*H (1970) features each type of subpar doctor. Enter: boozy doctors who drink and sleep their way through medicine, such as Dr. McIntrye, Dr. Pierce, and Dr. Forrest, or their pompous yet still incompetent colleague, Dr. Burns, who aligns with the characterization of most doctors in this era as pretentious and absent of wisdom. The most famous of these bad doctors is Dr. Spivey, a weak-willed psychiatrist addicted to opiates who is always surrounded by thick medical novels the audience can be sure he doesn't read, from One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1979). This bleak view of physicians has continued into the state of doctors in film today. Doctor Strange from the Marvel Cinematic Universe may be a benevolent sorcerer now, but his origin story followed a demeaning and disrespectful surgeon. Although these stereotypes do not apply to every doctor to ever grace the silver screen, the attitudes toward physicians of their respective eras are evident.  

So, we’ve examined the medical stereotypes in film, but how do we consume these characterizations What are our feelings after leaving the theater? Audiences are led to believe that every doctor is a white male surgeon, with each demographic making up 91, 85, and 33% of medical depictions, respectively. Our expectations of medical care are also led astray by the media. Seventy-five percent of on-screen doctors can save patients after cardiac arrest, 15 times higher than the non-cinematic rate of 5%. These statistics have real-world implications. Forty-four percent of on-screen physicians are portrayed negatively, and cultivation theory states that viewers often integrate the media we consume into our perception of the real world. In studies conducted in 1995 and 2000, researchers demonstrated that negative depictions of doctors on-screen influence people’s views on the physicians in their lives. Without evidence to the contrary (that which can only be created by going to medical school), people subconsciously associate the doctors on screen with their physicians in real life. The only way to break these associations is to avoid creating them in the first place, which is possible with the right tools. For example, the growing field of medical consultation for entertainment media is making strides in television already; Greys Anatomy is famous for collaborating with medical consultants during screenwriting, but the film industry has yet to make these advancements.

We have versed ourselves in who our Dr. Hollywoods are and how they make us feel, but at the end of the day, aren’t these just movies? While arguments can be made for both sides, it is essential to acknowledge the harm in this rhetoric. Women are already 20% more likely to avoid medical care because of unfavorable evaluations from their physicians. Research indicates that Black patients are 19% less likely to trust doctors compared to their white counterparts. This depiction also skews our perception of who our physicians are. Women and people of color make up 36 and 43.8% of the physician workforce in real life, respectively, despite making up less than 15% of doctors in the movies. Dr. Pamela Wible, a medical advocate for human rights, states, “Even when women … identify themselves as physicians, they’re still pushed aside due to unconscious prejudice that affects our behavior.” Although we cannot solely attribute these sets of beliefs to films, poor depictions are certainly not helping. Doctors are not perfect; however, by unfairly smearing our healers in the media, we are reinforcing negative stereotypes that influence our healthcare decisions. During the 1930s, at the peak of positive portrayals, films offered solace from the horrors of the Depression surrounding audiences. Now, in a time when we need comfort and trust in our physicians more than ever, Hollywood owes us a return to their golden age.