Seeing Red
When Wendy Petrie leaned into the camera
and “warned” TV1 viewers that they were about
to see a real, beating human heart, I laughed. Hah! A beating
heart? What’s the prob, Wendy? What’s so bad about
that?
After all, popular dramas deliver buckets of blood every evening.
CSI adores showing us hot metal slugs ploughing through mock-flesh.
There are slow-mo close-ups of bullets and knives ripping
into livers and lungs.
The news brings us real blood sprayed on walls, stained on
clothes and congealed in car seats. Blood is so commonplace
that we’re unfazed at the thought of having All Black
DNA hanging on the bedroom wall, infused into a promotional
“bonded by blood” poster. We shrug at Colin Meads
cutting himself shaving in an ad for All Blacks sponsor Mastercard
while a dulcet voice intones, “Knowing we’re all
made of the same stuff – priceless”.
Blood is everywhere.
There was a time when blood was just hinted at on TV. Vintage
M.A.S.H. shows may have featured a few red splatters on Hawkeye’s
scrubs, but it was ER that really got us used to the sight
of doctors daubed from shoulder to shin.
Nip/tuck was next to offer up dark storylines against a backdrop
of shiny instruments and gloved hands immersed in ruby slush.
And now Bodies, set in a gloomy British women’s ward,
shows there’s no obstetric emergency deemed too lurid
or liquid to zoom in on.
Real surgery’s just fine, too. Discovery Channel’s
true-life ER show, Trauma, is merciless in showing actual
blood oozing from quivering skin.
When Extreme Makeover arrived we found we could watch comfortably
as people had component parts reorganized. Simultaneous eating
was even possible. “Look at that guy’s eye-bags,”
we’d murmur, reaching for another potato chip as a Beverly
Hills surgeon laid lumpy semi-circles of pink flesh on white
gauze.
We’re also accustomed to seeing men (though not women)
vacuuming abdomens. Rosy fat globules slide down those plastic
tubes like damp fur balls hoovered from under the bed. And
we’re blasé about docs poking plastic bags into
chests and wedging implants into the jaws of the chinless.
Such disinterest is remarkable for we’re fiercely attached
to our red stuff. Christians sip wine to remember Christ’s
quota of it. Sports teams go all out to score “first
blood”. Shakespeare had Henry V exhort his fighters
to “stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood”.
Winston Churchill warned wartime Britain that he could offer
nothing but “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. When
businesses and governments crash we say there’s “blood
on the floor”.
Murder “in cold blood” seems somehow more horrible
than the same crime committed in a of rage or passion. Our
families are “flesh and blood”. Toffs are still
“blue bloods’ and most of us stand by siblings
because “blood is thicker than water.” That is,
unless we’re in the midst of a “blood feud”.
Blood is handy for swearing. In a crisis we get bloody furious
and snarl any bloody insult we bloody well like.
The words just pop out of our mouths without any prior thinking.
If we think about blood at all, we just hope that ours is
pumping around nicely and carries only “good”
cholesterol.
The only place we still don’t see actual blood is in
the coy world of “sanpro” (sanitary product) advertising.
Blue-ink imagery has given way to more jokey approaches but
there’s absolutely no red in sight, even if a curious
website called www.mum.org (run by a odd sort of bloke called
Harry Finlay, in honour of his mother) is offering hundreds
of cute period euphemisms. Big Red, Old Faithful, Carrie,
Code Red, Monsoon, and The Hunt for Red October have been
posted by eager contributors, along with AF (for Aunt Flo),
Cousin Tom (for time of month), and any number of aunts (as
in Aunt Sally has come to stay). Even early literary star
Katherine Mansfield used a pert pet name – Aunt Martha.
All this jesting must all be hellish for the world’s
hematophobes – people with blood phobias. Such a character
popped up on-screen last year in Doc Martin. Martin Clunes
played a Cornish GP so squeamish that he had to look the other
way when drawing a blood sample for the lab.
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association, blood phobics
(as many as three or four per cent of the population) have
fears of “seeing blood, receiving a blood test or injection,
watching medical procedures on television, and for some individuals,
even just talking about medical procedures”.
Blood pressure and heart rate can plummet, causing fainting.
There are plenty of things in life to be phobic about –
snakes, spiders, birds, rats, heights, confined spaces, crowds
and even clowns – but it’s only blood (and needle)
phobia that makes people pass out. Men and women are equally
affected.
Many a tough guy has fainted in the maternity suite. Just
seeing a doctor’s blood-spotted surgical gumboots can
turn some dads pale, yet Mel Gibson’s The Passion of
Christ drew crowds who managed to sit through brutal flogging
with little more than a wince and a whimper. But then, movies
have long been plumbing bloody depths. Classic sloshy moments
include the critter head-butting its way out of a man’s
chest in Alien, the pluming head shots in Pulp Fiction, the
bucket-of-blood spill over Carrie in Carrie, even the murky
plughole swirl in dear old black-and-white Psycho.
We cringe, of course, but knowing it is make-believe allows
us to keep the violence in a mental safety-zone.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority’s communications
and research advisor, Kate Ward, says the authority has received
no complaints about surgical gore on TV. “Even though
there might be a ‘yuk factor’ about it, I think
maybe we see operating theatres as some sort of holy place,”
she theorises.
The director of psychological services at Auckland Phobic
Trust, Gavriel Philip, (says some people can’t even
watch the news for fear of seeing something awful, “but
thrillers and movies don’t have the same impact”.
Even so, he adds that it’s still “highly appropriate”
for networks to screen warnings before they show lots of blood
and/or surgery.
Hematophobia is often co-mingled with other anxieties and
panic disorders. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can
make recovery more complicated, but most anxiety disorders
are “highly treatable”, Philip says.
Cognitive behaviour therapy helps people recognise and challenge
the thoughts that arise around a phobia and sufferers can
also learn relaxation techniques. “It’s all about
establishing control.”
Meanwhile, the tougher ones amongst us can still calmly watch
news footage of carnage in dusty Middle Eastern streets and
feel little more than dull despair.
If blood belongs to others then we scarcely notice it, leading
perhaps to the ease with which so many people pick up rocks,
knives and guns these days to spill even more.
If it’s our own, well, different story. We’re
not fond of sharing it at all. The blood transfusion service
has to bust a gut, so to speak, to persuade us to give any
away. (Go to www.bloodnz.co.nz to find out more). Fewer than
five percent of New Zealand’s possible donors actually
get around to baring a vein.
Maybe it’s because we don’t, in reality, like
to see the stuff at all. Prone on an operating table a while
ago as a camera took a look inside, I heard a nurse suggest
that I might like to watch the surgeon’s monitor screen.
‘Lots of people find it interesting,’ she chirped.
I turned my groggy head and then shrank from the shocking
sight of the bright sea inside me. I think it should be hidden
again, all that red, tucked away under the skin where it ought
to be, not dripping all over our television sets. Using so
much blood for mere entertainment, we are losing some of our
humanity.
New Zealand Herald
© Copyright 2009-2010 Lindsey Dawson