introductions
Hello out there, and welcome to Mapping Grey’s Anatomy!
My name is Zoe, and I’m a writer, director and nanny based in Chicago, IL. The goal of this project is to investigate the cultural context and ethical values of one of the most popular TV shows in the United States: the hit medical drama Grey's Anatomy, now entering its 18th season.
One episode at a time, I hope to find out what the many stories of Grey’s Anatomy tell us about what it means to be a doctor, patient, caregiver, family member, and human being, inside and outside of the American healthcare system. I’m sharing my work through this newsletter because I find that talking about my research helps me articulate my ideas, but also because I’d like to be in conversation with others and receive recommendations, questions, and constructive feedback as I go. Please feel free to reply to a post or contact me via email if there is something you think I should consider (or re-consider - because if there’s one thing I can guarantee, it’s that I will make mistakes).
Before we dive into Grey’s Anatomy, I’d like to talk about why I believe it’s important to think deeply about where stories come from, what they signify, and how they impact us.
In storytelling, firsts matter because they are foundational: they tell you what you need to know in order to understand what comes next. First introductions create expectations for how a character will behave in the future. First scenes often explain why this story is starting here and now. And in a first episode – or a first chapter, or first act – you begin to learn about the world of the story.
I’m not referring to the show being set at a hospital, or in Seattle. The world of a story might resemble ours, and that can provide useful insight. But a fictional story – even a realistic one – is set in a fictional world, with its own rules, rhythms, standards and patterns, and treating it as an unknown allows us to examine it more closely, giving us answers to questions we may not have otherwise thought to ask. In this way, studying the underlying norms in Grey’s can help us understand the parts that serve as a basis for the whole, influencing everything that rests atop them.
In playwright, scholar and professor Elinor Fuchs’ essay “Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play,” she writes,
“We must make the assumption that in the world of the play there are no accidents. Nothing occurs ‘by chance,’ not even chance. In that case, nothing in the play is without significance…This is the deepest meaning of the idea, often-repeated but little understood, that the study of art shows us how to live.”1
Art often imitates life, but we also imitate art, and for that reason, the art we make and distribute teaches us in turn. And all stories - from fables to television to theater, and more - are always making ethical arguments about who we are, what kind of world we live in, and how we should interact with others.
Stories teach us about good and evil and right and wrong, and whether those are directions that are inherent in someone’s character or choices that a person makes over time. They tell us about our human capacities and explore our limitations. They talk about society, and communities: why we build them, what problems they have, how we improve them. They describe the past and the future, and how the present reflects or predicts them. And what they say - what they assert to be true about us and our world - demonstrates a whole range of different ideas about how to build happy, healthy and successful societies, relationships and lives.
Often, their arguments are conscious and intentional. But I think that just as often, if not more frequently, there are unconscious ideas, beliefs and valuations subtly woven into the fabric of the story that add fundamental meaning and dimension - some of which may not be intentional at all. And when we’re talking about good and evil and right and wrong, human capacity and limitation, and the purpose and functions of society, those unconscious ideas are shaping what we believe to be true about the world we live in. X leads to y, and therefore we should invest resources in x in order to achieve y. Or x leads to y, and therefore we should make x punishable by law.
Every story has a moral, and every moral helps us understand how to exist in the world, how to participate in society, how to be a person.
For this reason, I’m especially interested in how stories with or about violence influence our understanding of where violence comes from and what we should do about it, on the individual, interpersonal and institutional levels - particularly when oppressive structures so often both spawn and punish individual violence while never undergoing systemic reform. When we look carefully at the narratives we’re absorbing, we can decide whether we agree with them; and when we reject narratives that aren’t helping us, we create space to build.
Art often imitates life, but art also enables us to imagine life - to create new worlds, new ways of being, new selves entirely. And - given our urgent need to divest from the fuels and weapons and ways of living that are killing our planet, living as we are under late-stage capitalism, and in the midst of the ongoing crisis of the coronavirus pandemic - creating new worlds that promote our flourishing is a matter of survival.
This is, as prison abolitionist and educator Mariame Kaba says, daunting. But, she continues,
“It also means there are many places to start, infinite opportunities to collaborate, and endless imaginative interventions and experiments to create. Let’s begin our abolitionist journey not with the question ‘What do we have now and how can we make it better?’ Instead, let’s ask, ‘What can we imagine for ourselves and the world?’ If we do that, then boundless possibilities of a more just world await us.”2
I decided to focus on Grey’s Anatomy for two reasons. The first reason is that Grey’s Anatomy is one of the most popular TV shows in the United States. Now screening its eighteenth season, it has consistently commanded the attention of millions since 2005, holding its own even through the shift to streaming services that usurped broadcast television as viewers’ easiest option.3 Studies conducted in 20084 and 20115 demonstrated that huge percentages of the medical and nursing students surveyed watched the show.
And a number of academics have shown that, while it’s difficult to prove causation, consistent viewing of Grey’s Anatomy correlates with certain perceptions of doctors’ strengths, weaknesses, priorities and standards of conduct.6 For example, one study found that “the more people watched the show, the more realistic they thought it was; the more realistic they thought it was, the more likely they were to perceive actual physicians as courageous, brave, heroic, clever or brilliant.”7
The second reason is that, while much of the absurdity on Grey’s Anatomy is harmless, the show is also packed to its breaking point with serious ethical issues. Every single doctor at some point commits egregious violations of basic standards of care, and those violations are rarely treated with the severity that we would want if we or our loved ones were the patients in question.
Doctors at every level from the interns to the Chief of Surgery conduct workplace romances and affairs, almost invariably between professional unequals, and these storylines raise questions about true love and following your heart rather than the serious personal and professional harm that can occur in such situations. Further, while the show is known for groundbreaking representation of people typically excluded from mainstream television, the show also often recycles oppressive, dangerous or damaging ideas that are better unpacked and confronted than left alone.
And there are other, more subtle problems - small but persistent indicators of common beliefs that, upon examination, we may want to change. One example is the idea that a good doctor never makes mistakes. The obvious incentive for this idea - or ideal - is that we don’t want anything bad to happen to us or the people we care about, ever, and if we’re going to avoid that, we need doctors to be perfect. The obvious problem is that perfection is impossible, because every human makes mistakes, and doctors are human.
This paradox cannot be resolved, but neither can it go unaddressed. At the heart of the issue is the question: how should we, as patients, family, healthcare professionals, and members of society, react to medical error?
Grey’s Anatomy may not have the right answer, but it does give us answers, to this question and to many others. We may not identify them as answers because the problem isn’t always posed as a question; more often it’s conflict, suffering, perhaps violence, and the response is in our reaction, how we handle the pain and proceed. But the way that the events play out will exemplify just one possible solution of many to a broader human issue.
The specificity of a given scenario determines the specificity of the ethical question asked, and so the moral takeaway may not always seem wide-reaching. Over time, though - eighteen seasons! - patterns emerge, connecting characters and storylines, and creating meaning through consistency. And when put into broader cultural context, it becomes apparent that Grey’s is not disconnected from reality, no matter how many medical mysteries show up, no matter how many beautiful doctors there are to solve them. The ethical problems that exist in Grey’s are very much present in our lives - and the way the show interprets them may not be helping us navigate them.
That doesn’t mean we can’t watch and enjoy! Ethics are complicated, and television shows struggling to write complex ethical dilemmas doesn’t mean that they’re ‘bad’ or somehow too flawed for consumption. First, all TV is flawed. Second, we don’t have to lock troublesome ideas away like they’re uncontrollably contagious; we want to be careful with them, but examining them doesn’t automatically put us at risk of infection. And third, not only have censorship efforts never succeeded in eliminating harmful cultural mores, they are also often used most harshly and destructively as violence against marginalized groups.
Instead, I’m advocating for cultural literacy in storytelling. The more we know about the stories we’re consuming, the better we’re able to navigate ethically complex situations and decide for ourselves what we believe and what kind of world we want to live in.
And telling stories about how we want to live can be a uniquely thrilling and fulfilling experience. Babies mimic adults as a way of learning movements and expressions, and kids’ toys are often miniature versions of adult tools - made of plastic or rubber instead of steel - because it allows them to practice using them safely. Similarly, theater scholar Jill Dolan writes that
“Utopian performatives let us embody conditions of which we can otherwise only dream. Perhaps, in fact, performance is an act of public dreaming.”8
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Fuchs, Elinor. “Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play.” Theater, Vol. 34, no. 2, Sept. 2004.
Kaba, Mariame. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Haymarket Books, Feb. 2021.
Epstein, Adam. “The enduring success of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ will never be repeated.” Quartz, May 12, 2021.
Czarny et al. “Medical and Nursing Students’ Television Viewing Habits: Potential Implications for Bioethics.” American Journal of Bioethics, Vol. 8, no. 12, Dec. 2008.
Weaver, Roslyn, and Ian Wilson. “Australian medical students’ perceptions of professionalism and ethics in medical television programs.” BMC Medical Education, 2011.
Yan Tian and Jina H. Yoo. “Medical Drama Viewing and Medical Trust.” Health Communication, Vol. 35, no. 1, 2020.
Berger, Eric. “From Dr. Kildare to Grey’s Anatomy: TV Physicians Change Real Patient Expectations.” Annals of Emergency Medicine, Vol. 56, no. 3, Sept. 2010.
Dolan, Jill. “Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater.” University of Michigan Press, 2005.