The Show That Expresses Our Secret Fantasies...About Health Care
Or, an excuse for me to paint scenes from Call the Midwife
Every now and then, a movie or TV show comes along that expresses our collective longing for…better public policy and civic institutions. (If you thought I was going to say “decadent baked goods” or “steamy romance”, you’re in the wrong place.)
It’s a Wonderful Life, which might be in your holiday rotation right now, isn’t just a movie about Christmas and second chances. It’s also a fantasy about how we wish banking actually worked: we long for a bank that’s run by our neighbor, a decent guy who has our best interests at heart and understands that the bank doesn’t succeed unless the whole town succeeds. The enemy in this story, who we all want to see defeated, is a wealthy, money-grubbing weasel who puts profits over people.
If the banking industry was interested in giving people what they actually want (they aren’t), maybe they’d start by watching this movie.1
West Wing was, of course, a very specific kind of wish fulfillment about the executive branch of our federal government, written for those of us who fantasize about a government run by the smartest kids in the class: people who are well-read, well-rounded, honest, moral, ethical, hard-working, and filled with integrity and a lifelong commitment to public service (sigh).
But the example I’ve been thinking about this week is Call the Midwife, which I happened to be binge-watching in the middle of recent events that have stirred yet another conversation about how dissatisfied Americans are with our health care.
Call the Midwife is one of those unusually long-running British shows: The (original) Office ran for only two seasons consisting of a scant 14 episodes; there were only ever 45 episodes of Monty Python over four years; and even Downton Abbey, which seems like a never-ending cultural phenomenon, ran for just five years. Call the Midwife, on the other hand, is in its thirteenth season with 113 episodes, and season 14 is in the works.
It rarely makes anyone’s lists of must-see TV, perhaps because it’s seen as a cozy medical drama, perhaps because it is centered almost exclusively on women and their health care, or perhaps because reviewers have nothing new to say about such a long-running show.
But I’d argue that it’s stuck around for so long not just because it’s comfort television with a dedicated fan base. It also shows us, in episode after episode, a highly detailed version of our health care fantasy. If anyone in that industry was confused about what we want from our health care system, they could binge a season of Call the Midwife and have their answer.
Health care delivered at home. The most striking feature of the show, which is set in the late 1950s and 1960s, is how much health care people receive at home from visiting nurses. Babies are born at home. Infections and injuries are treated at home. And people die at home, attended by a nurse and surrounded by their family.
Rest and emotional well-being matter. Any woman who’s been pregnant would laugh bitterly at the episodes in which a caring-to-the-point-of-tears doctor or nurse tells an overwhelmed and exhausted mother-to-be that she’s been booked into the maternity home for a few nights (or weeks) of rest before the baby comes. Matters at home are well in hand, she’s assured, and what’s most important is that she enjoy some peace and quiet in this crucial time. Off she goes for a steady regime of magazines, tea and biscuits, perhaps a bit of knitting, and camaraderie with other women. (where do I sign up?)
The patients’ whole lives are taken into account. Is there mold in your building? Are your children going to bed hungry? Is your husband an alcoholic or suffering the ravages of post-war PTSD? We can’t have that! In episode after episode, the midwives rally some community resource or another to mend the broken bits of their patients’ lives so that they have some chance of recuperating, having a healthy delivery, and getting on with things.
The health care workers are themselves looked after. The midwives and nurses all live together in a veritable palace of coziness, nurturing and loving one another and brewing innumerable pots of tea over which they might discuss their troubles and shed a tear. Every now and then (probably when an actor has to go off and shoot a movie) one of them suffers an emotional breakdown or illness, and they’re sent off to recuperate at a distant convent in the countryside or at the seashore, where the fresh air and change of scenery will do them good.
There is no paperwork, administrative hassle, or delay in getting treatment. Ring the convent and a nurse will jump on a bicycle and race right over. Dr. Turner is always available to pop round. Patient records seem to be kept on a chalkboard and a card catalog, but mostly in the heads of the nurses and nuns, who know their patients well. Any delays or difficulties in getting treatment are attributable to the encroachment, in later seasons, of the new hospital and its modern medicine, which has its uses but also spells the beginning of the end of the bucolic, it-takes-a-village fantasy world that the show depicts.
Oh, and did I mention this is all free of charge? Because of course it is.
I don’t have any groundbreaking conclusions to draw from all of this, except that two contradictory things are both true: (a) this show is a total fantasy, and (b) many of the more delightful aspects of how health care happens in the little East End neighborhood of Poplar are entirely do-able and quite likely more affordable and cost-effective than what we’re doing now.
Mostly, though, I enjoyed doing these extremely quick little sketches of scenes from a TV show I’ve watched for years, and if you’re into making art, maybe you’d like to give it a try.
Supporters are making light in the darkness
For the month of December, paid subscribers are sending me pictures of whatever the holidays or the winter season means to them, and I’m painting some of them, posting a video demo of how I painted it, and sending the painting to whoever sent me the photo.
Today’s painting is this beautiful Hanukkah menorah. Join us, and get access to the full archive of over 60 video lessons covering just about everything you can do in a sketchbook.
The bit at the end
Here’s an interview I did on the wonderful Cultivating Place podcast and radio show.
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Banks like this actually do exist, sort of. We have twice bought buildings for my husband’s bookselling operations, and in both cases, a locally-owned bank or credit union loaned us the money. The members of the loan committee walked over to check the buildings out themselves. Our loan officer answers the phone when we call. Problems or mix-ups get handled in real time by people we actually know as human beings. Dealing with a smaller bank is not without its hassles, but it’s been worthwhile for us.
I am a nurse-midwife and years ago another midwife recommended this book to me as true incidents in a British midwife’s practice. Loved it! And then lo and behold it became a TV series. Wikipedia says: "Call the Midwife: A True Story of the East End in the 1950s, is a memoir by Jennifer Worth, and the first in a trilogy of books describing her work as a district nurse and midwife in the East End of London during the 1950s"
Ex-British midwife here. Really enjoyed this article. The camaraderie and tea (so much tea!) bit still exists, and the support, but it's interesting to see how much the times really have changed. Women have more complex pregnancies now due to factors like higher body weight and attendant diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, women being older first time mothers, more women are having second babies after having had a c-section for their first etc. And the reams of documentation now...oh, for a simpler life!