Alexa Ware
Professor Vu
COMPSTD 1100
12/5/20
Familial Privilege on Greys Anatomy
For years, Grey’s Anatomy has been a television mainstay, with the medical drama never failing to excite their viewers with incredible surgeries and intense relationships. The show follows the titular Meredith Grey on her journey from a lowly intern to running the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. While on the bare surface the show may seem to be superficial and concerned only with overdramatic relationships, in reality, they aren’t afraid to confront and portray challenging real world issues. The most common of these issues is the conflict between the different classes of society and how different privileges can affect people. For example, one of the overarching plots of a couple of early seasons is that some of Meredith’s colleagues believe that she is getting assigned more responsibilities and more difficult surgeries not because she necessarily deserves it, but because her mother was a famous surgeon who had relationships and connections with the hospital management. They believe that Meredith’s pedigree and not her skill is responsible for her elevated status, while Meredith herself doesn’t even think it may be a factor. This theme further continues with the introduction of Dr. Jackson Avery who, like Meredith, comes from one of the most prestigious and well-known families of doctors within the show. His privilege is even more addressed than Merediths, for example, in season 9 of the show his family outright buys the hospital and places him at the head of the board despite Jackson not having any managerial experience and not having fully completed his training. He eventually grows into the role, but for almost an entire season he is seen being judged by his peers for his family’s decision.
I believe the writers of the show included these portrayals to not only depict class conflict and privilege but also to remind the viewers that there are multiple sides to every story. For example, while it may have been true that Meredith and Jackson got ahead of their peers as a result of their privilege, neither of them specifically wanted it. They didn’t ask for these things to be handed to them and both showed that they wanted to work, but they still received hate and derision from their coworkers because of it. They both eventually attempted to change and go against their privilege in the end, but they still shouldn’t have received so much crap because of it. It serves as a warning for when class conflict can go too far. Their peers made wrong assumptions about their situations and caused unnecessary damage and hurt to their friends, teaching the viewers a lesson that almost all of us can apply to our own lives at some point.
