ER clip - January 2013

This clip is from the American TV drama, ER. It is set in a hospital and the first scene that audiences see is a long show of two characters walking towards the camera in natural, day-light lighting whilst discussing the reports of a patient using digetic dialogue. The audience assume that both of the characters are doctors due to their white lab coats; however the female, who looks older than the male doctor, seems to have more authority as she orders the younger doctor to carry out tests. This positioning of the characters side by side suggests equality however when the female doctor starts talking we can assume that she is wiser and the male character approaches her for advice due to her experience as she is older.

The scene then continues into another where the male doctor walks into a room with low-key lighting which foreshadows the morbid tone of a patient’s illness which is about to be revealed to the audience. In the room a young male character is sitting on the bed with a book, dressed in a hospital gown. This may surprise audiences as a child of his age would be expected to be playing a game or using a technological device such as a mobile phone instead of reading. The director then uses several ‘shot-reverse-shots’ to display the dialogue between the doctor and the child. During the conversation, the digetic dialogue portrays the child to be very mature as he tells the doctor how he asked a graduate student to perform a muscle biopsy “on the DL”. The fact that the child seems to have lots of knowledge about his disease of Progressive Motor Disorder puts him on the same level as the doctor and suggests to audiences that even though the child is young, he is still very intelligent. This is re-emphasised when she doctor asks the child if there are any experimental treatments, to which he responds by shaking his head and later confirming that the disease “is inevitably fatal”. When the child refuses to tell his mother in fear of worrying her, the roles between the doctor and the child are almost reversed. However this is dismissed when the doctor forces the child to reveal the news of his disease to his mother which is emphasised by the high and low angled shots. The high angle shot makes the audience feel as if they are looking down on the child, placing the doctor in a place of authority which suggests that with age comes wisdom. The maturity of the child is juxtaposed with a clip of another stereotypical child who is whining about a gerbil bite. The attitude of this boy is the binary opposition of the terminally ill child suggesting that maturity depends on circumstances and personality rather than entirely on age.  When the doctor is talking to the child with the gerbil bite, she crouches down to his level in order for the child to be able to speak to her confidently, however the doctor soon stands up, which is shown through a low angle shot making her seem like a wiser character as she is older and of higher authority. This is re-emphasised when the doctor dismisses the young boy by telling the nurse to just prescribe him antibiotics.

Furthermore, in one of the later scenes the audience hear immature dialogue between some of the male nurses saying things such as: “There’s no o-zone in the tropics…our skin will melt off”. This character’s childish behaviour is further highlighted by the high-key lighting which is contrasted with the low key lighting of the second scene. This immaturity juxtaposed with the behaviour of the sick child signifies how an older character may not always be wiser due to their extended education and further emphasises the complications of age and the judgements and expectations that society places on people depending on how old they are.

Narrative continuity editing typical of TV dramas is allows this scene to flow into the next using ‘cut’ editing. The final scene in this clip depicts a worried young girl whose boyfriend has been forced to have an operation by the police in order to remove a bullet from his body. The doctor who leads the girl into the ward is obviously lying about ‘losing the bullet’ due to the smirks on their faces which suggest how with age may come authority, however this may not bring wisdom as the doctor is obviously doing something illegal by ‘losing’ a piece of evidence. The patient is a young youth lying on the hospital bed who has been associated with gun crime, signifying how society judges all youths to be criminals even though details about this patient are never revealed to the audience due to the lack of dialogue.