Week 7: Project Nim and The Hospital

The Hospital: 1971
Project Nim: 2011

The 1960's and early '70's has two versions.  The first is the ideal version presented by grown flower children.  This era was to be one of peace, understanding, communion with nature, and a more just society.  Although people pursued those goals, there was also  The veneer that the 1960's and early '70's was all about peace and love wasn't entirely real, for people were still violent, dense, domineering over nature, and cruel.  The second version is the Slouching Toward Bethlehem-version, which attempts to expose the seedy undercurrents in our society.

The Hospital is a satire that could have been made about modern medicine today.  Dr. Bock (George C. Scott) plays a suicidal Chief of Medicine trying to hold together a hospital in disarray.  The hospital itself is the star, where modern medicine tends to kill as often as cure, bureaucrats from insurance companies wander emergency rooms, and people pursue selfish gain in the name of humanity.  As the film progresses, doctors and nurses begin dying in accidents apparently caused by disorganization in the hospital.

Outside the hospital, as a minor sub-point, was a group of protesters attempting to stop the hospital from taking over some abandoned buildings where some squatters reside.  A Black Panther-like group (with allies) attempt to stop the hospital from converting the abandoned buildings into addiction treatment centers.  The meetings between the hospital leadership and factions inside break down when one says, "This meeting is about how the medical establishment treats the black man," and another says, "No, it's about abortion."  The administration, fed up with the whole situation, leaves the meeting with no better understanding about how to solve the problems of relocating the squatters.  The administration didn't care until there was a protest, but the protesters were just angry instead of attempting to solve a problem.

Dr. Bock represents the old way of viewing America falling apart.  His parents were proud of him becoming a doctor because his struggle from the poor to "the upper-middle class" meant he achieved the American dream.  Despite Dr. Bock's success, his family rejects him, especially a son who calls Dr. Bock a "bourgeois pig."  The hospital he helped build was gutted by neglect, apathy, and selfishness; it became a place were sick people were laid in emergency rooms to die, doctors cared more about their profits than patients, and everyone scrambles to cover themselves rather than fix problems.  Because Dr. Bock thinks his life is pointless, he considers suicide.  He represents the middle-class American who simply wants to get by but must struggle against a collapsing infrastructure and selfishness.

In a troubling sequence, Dr. Bock meets Barbara (Diana Rigg), and forces himself upon her in a drunken, suicidal rage.  According to Barbara, it didn't matter because she provoked him to it.  She wanted sex, so it wasn't a violation.  Barbara came to the hospital to retrieve her father and bring him back to an Indian reservation in Mexico to live a spiritual existence and be a real healer.  She invites Dr. Bock along, and he considers leaving the hospital.  After the murders are solved (no spoilers here), Dr. Bock declines, saying, "Someone has to be responsible."  This line is an indictment not only of the decay of society but of the new movements' inability to focus on issues aside from themselves.

The self-centered 1960's-era person continues in Project Nim, a documentary about a project that attempted to teach a chimpanzee, Nim Chimpski, to speak a complete language.  Herb, the leader of the project at Colombia University, recruited a family to raise Nim in a typical human environment.  However, the hippie-style parenting where kids could run free with few rules was unsuitable for a chimp, and it destroyed the house without learning much.  Herb decided to integrate teachers and graduate students for the project.

All of the students joined with the hopes of better communing with nature and understanding it.  They loved Nim and enjoyed the project.  However, treating a chimp like a human caused great harm to some of the team.  Nim attacked some of the researchers and delivered serious injuries (Herb seemed unaware or uninterested in the dangers of the project).  Although the researchers wanted to bond with part of the natural world, Nim didn't always have the tools to bond with them.

Herb concluded that Nim never wanted to learn language but was a supreme manipulator.  He used the rudiments of language to get what he wanted instead of to communicate.  Although that was true of Nim, Herb behaved no differently.  Herb used press photo shoots to promote himself and the project.  He took little-to-no interest in the care of Nim if the project was intact.  When the project ended, Herb had few qualms about sending him away for medical research.  Herb's self-interest was front and center in the film, but that didn't undermine the essential goal of communicating with animals.

Both films explored the naivety and selfishness that crumbled the idealism of the 1960's.  The challenge of the era was to look beyond one's own needs and help others.  Barbara's dropping out from society helped one tribe of Indians, but she had no ability, nor desire, for major change.  Herb's students wanted to bond with nature, but their view of nature as a kindly place was mistaken.  Both examples stem from the good intentions of the 1960's faced with the reality of running the world.  The revolution of the flower children never held because some were afraid of governing.  Dr. Bock was right when he said, "Someone has to be responsible," which didn't mean "telling people what to do," but "someone needs to make things work."