Publicity poster for “Doctor X”
Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the Japanese media’s depiction of women doctors, or, at least, one TV drama’s depiction. What prompted the column was the cited article in Shukan Gendai, which openly defended the Tokyo Medical University’s practice of shaving points off of examination scores for female applicants in order to reduce those applicants’ chances of being accepted at the school. The university’s, as well as Gendai’s, rationale is that women are more likely to leave the medical profession when they marry and have children, thus robbing Japan off much needed medical expertise, especially in the realm of surgery. If women were allowed to compete for medical disciplines openly, then, in the future, says the magazine, there will be an “increase in the number of doctors who cannot perform surgical procedures.”
It’s an odd turn of phrase, but the scare tactic is obvious: Your chances as a patient of surviving certain diseases will be diminished because there will be fewer surgeons to treat them. What’s particularly galling about this forced connection between presumed choices and medical productivity is how dependent it is on circumstances that aren’t that difficult to overcome. One is already mentioned in the column, which is that women are not as physically strong as men and therefore cannot cope with the demands of surgery. It’s one reason why women doctors do not opt for surgery when choosing a discipline. Since there are women surgeons working without any known drawbacks all over the world, this is a facile argument.
But Gendai really shows its hand when it tries to knock down the proposal that Japan should just train more doctors in general rather than limit any demographic from attaining medical licenses. After all, Tokyo Medical University only accepts a certain number of applicants, whether they be male or female. If the overall number were increased without handicapping women, the issue of fewer surgeons would go away. The problem with this idea? The Japan Medical Association doesn’t want to increase quotas, presumably because more doctors means lower average salaries. Also, most doctors work in private clinics, not hospitals, and if there were more doctors there would be more competition for patients. If this is one of the reasons for discrimination against women doctors, then Gendai should insist the JMA change its ways, but instead it doubles down on the supposition that women still won’t want to be surgeons and the “consequences” of such decisions will be dire.
The limitations demanded by the JMA also play into another bogus theory of why women are not cut out for medicine: work load. Doctors, especially emergency room professionals, often have to work punishing hours, and women, the magazine contends, can’t handle the burden as well as men can. This theory is not limited to medicine; in all occupations in Japan, real dedicated employees–read “men”–are expected to go the extra mile to prove their worth as workers or professionals, and women don’t necessarily buy into this ethic. That’s probably true, and for good reason. It’s stupid. Overworked doctors may be the norm and something of a romantic cliche, but it is in no way an ideal situation. A larger pool of doctors would solve this problem, and women have to be included. It’s not rocket science, or, to use a more apt metaphor, brain surgery.
Barbara, the preteen protagonist of this earnest work of empathy, played by newcomer Madison Wolfe, is one of those troubled free spirits who channels her anxieties into flights of fancy that threaten to spin out of control. She wanders forests and beaches with a pair of rabbit ears on her head and clutching an old, worn purse, gathering mushrooms and laying bait for giants, which she believes exist. As the title of this movie, adapted from a graphic novel, suggests, Barbara thinks it is her mission to slay these creatures, and even though the director, Anders Walter, depicts them on screen, the viewer is constantly reminded by other elements in the story that they represent something darker in Barbara’s unconscious.
Though based on a best-selling kids’ story written in 1973, The House with a Clock in Its Walls feels overly determined as a film, as if it were conceived and developed from scratch by a bunch of Hollywood executives. Some find it curious that torture porn maven Eli Roth directs what is basically a Harry Potter concoction with a few more jump scares and less literary ambition, but by now Roth is firmly in the establishment, and the movie has already proven to be his biggest box office hit to date.
The jump scare has become a tired cliche of horror films, a method that was never that necessary in the first place. Suspense and terror are often more potent when the viewer is allowed to perceive threats in an organic way. In a sense, John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place takes off from this premise, but that’s not its primary appeal. He and his scriptwriters don’t provide a lot of back story, and it takes a little time for the viewer to fully understand the danger at hand. It’s not clear where the monsters who kill and eat humans came from, though indications imply that they’ve been around for three months as the movie starts. These creatures have no sense of sight, and can only locate prey through sound, so the movie is by necessity quiet. Even the music, when it’s used, is subtler than what you normally hear in horror films—most of the time, anyway.
Whatever one thinks of Israeli policy and militarism, Israel’s filmmaking contingent more often than not addresses the country’s sticky matters with imagination and verve; which isn’t to say they necessarily confront their problems head-on, but they don’t ignore them. Samuel Moaz’s Foxtrot is built around a unique narrative that bookends an absurd tragedy with a play-like dramatic comment on that tragedy. Michael and Daphna Feldman (Lior Ashkenazi, Sarah Adler) live in a nice Tel Aviv apartment whose privileged air of complacency is shattered when they receive news that their son, carrying out his obligatory military service, has been killed. Immediately, the couple becomes disoriented and incapable of providing each other with the consolation they so desperately require. It’s obvious the relationship has been strained for some time, but instead of bringing the parents together, the news drives them further apart, partly owing to the nature of the tragedy. Michael, it turns out, was deeply traumatized by his own military service, and news of his son’s death only works to make the past come back with unexpected fury.
As some of my colleagues have noted, the Japanese arm of Warner Bros. has dropped “Asians” from the title of this surprise box office hit, and while we can probably surmise the reason for the elision, the Japanese socio-historical relationship with its continental neighbors is so fraught with problematic baggage that any attempt to parse it would likely result in the inflation of bad stereotypes.
It’s no scoop to say that the IMAX format dictates the production of certain movies, since it’s difficult to imagine a Hollywood conference call where, after a movie has been greenlighted and cast, someone thinks out loud, “Hey, maybe this would work on a towering screen!” The latest Dwayne Johnson vehicle, in which the former wrestling hulk shares top billing with a 4,000-foot CG Hong Kong office-and-residential building, was obviously made with the IMAX format in mind, and after you think carefully about it, Johnson is the only A-list actor at the moment who could have starred without wilting in the shadow of the titular edifice.
Collaboration is more than just the theme of Agnes Varda’s latest curiosity. Teaming up with the tall-glass-of-water visual artist JR both on camera and behind it, the veteran nouvelle vague director expands her late career discussion of the French polity by engaging it in one of JR’s art projects, thus freeing herself up as more than just an enthusiastic observer of what is mostly rural life.
Here’s 
philipbrasor.com 