Film Analysis Of The Movie Wit

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The movie wit is about a woman named Vivian Bearing who has stage four ovarian cancer. The story is told from her perspective and views her experience as a cancer patient. Her experience as a cancer patient from the audience’s perspective was unethical. Her identity at the hospital revolved around her illness and she was rarely treated like a human being by hospital staff. This is because doctors are taught using the biomedical model which trains them to focus on mainly treating an illness. This essay will look at how the elements of the biomedical model shape her experience as a cancer patient, and will focus on major themes of the movie (health professionals, the power of the biomedical model expertise, health technologies, and the nature …show more content…

Such as life support, a device that is used to sustain life when no other medical measures can be used; Physicians are required to exhaust all options to prolong the life of their patients unless otherwise stated by the patient or their families. In the film “Wit” the audience witness Dr. Jason Posner discovering Vivian in cardiac arrest and he calls in the recitation team to revive her. The doctors only view Vivian as her cancer which is what Michel Foucault calls the gaze, and explains that this is dehumanizing the patient because it separates the patient’s body parts that’s diseased from the patient’s identity (Woronko, 2014). Medical technology also contributes to the gaze because the technology speaks for the patient and therefore further separates the patient’s diseased body further from their identity such as the invention of the x-ray machine. In the film “Wit” Dr. Jason Posner reveals to the audience that he wants to revive Vivian only because she is a benefit to his research (Nichols, 2001). The article “The New Reproductive Technology: Problem and solution” by Jen Strickler” argues that reproductive technology takes ownership of a women’s reproductive organs and their life and can take a physiologically and psychological toll on a couple’s relationship (Strickler, 1992). Infertile has also become a commodity for doctors and has also created a new medical profession for doctors called a fertility specialist. Medical technology further separates a patient’s body from their identity which dehumanize the patient. Even though medical technologies dehumanize individuals, society is becoming more dependent on medical technologies. This is because if a medical technology is developed to diagnose and treat an illness then it

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