Less rapturous among mothers
Critics may have raved about This Is Going to Hurt, the television adaptation based on Adam Kay’s memoir about life as a junior doctor at the sharp end of maternity healthcare.
The response has been less rapturous among mothers, however. Many viewers praised the series, starring Ben Whishaw, for its dark humour and unflinching portrayal of NHS maternity services. But midwives and women said that the male doctor’s wisecracks as his patients faced life-or-death situations were “misogynistic” and “unfunny”.
The director, a woman, said she wanted to keep it real, but many women chose different terms.
They claimed that the “condescending” attitude of the lead protagonist reminded them of the traumatic experiences of childbirth. Anita Singh, a critic for The Daily Telegraph, said that anyone who had had a traumatic birth should “avoid it like the plague”.
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Milli Hill, an author and founder of the Positive Birth Movement, said that the lead character’s attitude towards women in his care was “nasty”. She said: “Kay doesn’t realise that what he is exposing is that paternalistic, misogynistic attitude where women are objects in the background and the doctors are the celebrity lifesavers. It is trauma and I don’t find it funny. In his defence, the system does dehumanise people and people who are working in it are going to begin to use humour to deflect from their difficult feelings.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of midwives over the past ten years, and they say it’s very difficult to carry on being caring when you’re under all that pressure, you’re overstretched, overworked and you can see people suffering and can’t help. It would be progress if this were a programme saying, ‘This is wrong, what can we do to change it?’, but it’s celebrating it as a joke.”
Well, you know – women. They’re funny, aren’t they.
Well I did watch the first 3 episodes and found them pretty funny – the gallows humour among the NHS staff is especially believable. Everyone is getting spattered with blood. Of course women in difficult labour are not funny in themselves – they wouldn’t be in real life – any more than being in traction with a broken leg is – however it can certainly be turned to black comedy.
Ben Wishaw is a very good actor – he plays Paddington Bear and won a raft of awards for his portrayal of Norman Scott in a Very English Scandal. He is both endearing and infuriating as the hapless, overworked acting registrar in a desperately stretched obstetrics ward, and all the supporting cast are good as well.
I saw a chunk of this the other night when I was trying to go to bed and I was quite unexpectedly appalled by it. I think it’s what Milli Hill says about women being objects in this – it’s presented like the horrific life-or-death experiences of these women are just bad things happening to the doctor. Poor guy, covered in someone else’s blood* again when he’s got a stag do to go to! Plus, retreating to the far side of a room to answer his phone to his boyfriend after handing a more junior doctor a foreceps and telling her to crack on, the way he’s keeping track of his time on the ward which makes clear how much he’s hating it, and the little joke of him having to return to the hospital wearing the stag night’s “one last night of pussy” shirt (let’s not start on the misogyny of that whole thing), it all grated. What I took away from it was probably not a novel idea – if someone has a job where they have to make life or death decisions about other people, maybe ensure the working conditions are such that they are at least well rested, fed and hydrated and firing on all cylinders? I would be interested to know if his experience on other wards were similar, or if it’s specifically the maternity ward where patients are treated like cattle.
* is it preferable to be covered in one’s own blood?
@Catwhisperer – It is a comedy drama. You couldn’t make a comedy about a well-run, efficient ward where everyone is well rested, well fed and hydrated. It would be like having Alan North in Police Squad not tripping over everything and remembering to put the hand brake on in his car.
There are some also great women parts – the noisy, competent ward sister and the receptionist rolling their eyes at a training course where they are told to say “customer” instead of “patient”, the little trainee doctor who is getting the hang of things and the foul mouthed woman consultant who takes the piss out of Adam’s poshness. I thought we were in for a soap opera bonding session when the trainee doctor tells the foul mouthed consultant about her difficulties and she would be reassured that it will get better, just be herself etc. Instead she tells her bluntly she might be in the wrong job.
I’m loving the mixture of mayhem and then the touching moments when the baby is born safely, starts crying and is put in its mother’s arms and the fathers go teary eyed.
Black humor is at the very heart of coping with the endless stream of misery that passes through any intercity hospital. I remember reading ‘House of God’, when I was a medical student and being appalled by it. I read it again when I was a 3rd year resident and thought, “yeah, that’s about right.” Every profession has their version. And none of them translate to those outside. In most cases it doesn’t have anything to do with the actual compassion felt for those served. It’s just a way to keep coming back for more.
As for OB, most of us had our first experience with the ‘miracle of birth’ in a county hospital. My own first OB experience was horrific. County hospital EDs are theaters of the absurd on pretty much any given day.
FYI: the most accurate rendition of a hospital I’ve ever seen is the movie, ‘The Hospital’ with George C Scott. There’s one scene that fortunately hasn’t aged well, but otherwise it rings true.
I can easily see how that would be the case, but at the same time…isn’t that a good reason not to publish a book about it? It’s a coping mechanism but I would think not one the practitioners want to announce to the patients.
Ophelia, that is one of several reasons why I have never written a memoir :) But we live in an age of oversharing.
Boy do we ever. I loathe oversharing.
Hmm. Like I said, I only saw a chunk of it, so I can’t claim to have given it a proper chance to grab me. But I’m usually into dark humour and fully expected to like it when I realised what it I was watching. It may be because it felt, I don’t know, realistic? I know it’s not a documentary, but it didn’t feel like anything was exaggerated for comic effect, either. I will put it in the “I don’t know what to think about this” pile for now.