Introduction
Poverty is a phenomenon that has plagued humanity throughout its existence. It is associated with inequality, injustice, restrictions, and economic and social problems. The United States is usually perceived as a country that is constantly prospering, but unfortunately, poverty exists here as well. Despite the rapid progress in many areas, people in the United States also face the challenges of poverty, low income, and limited access to healthcare, education, and security.
Approaches to Overcome Poverty
Individualistic
Getting out of poverty is a difficult task for many people. One of the best ways to look at it is through the prism of two main approaches: individualistic and structural. The first one considers poverty individually, because of a person’s character, personal actions, and decisions, such as laziness, lack of motivation, desire, skills, time, and so on. The structural approach, on the other hand, considers destitution to be the result of some specific problems in society.
For instance, a good American TV series, “Emergency Room,” depicts life at a Chicago hospital and the situations that occur there, affecting its employees and patients. A structural approach to poverty undoubtedly dominates this TV series. Watching the series, it is clear that the causes of poverty are not the fault of individuals who have faced this phenomenon or related to individual characteristics, but rather to systemic problems of the whole society.
An example of this is the scene where the main character, Dr. Carter, and a patient share his situation. The man tells him that he works for minimum wage, has a large family to feed, and they are just surviving, not living. Dr. Carter supports the man and confirms that many people live from paycheck to paycheck. Despite working hard all the time and rarely seeing his family, he still does not receive the decent salary he deserves. “ER” raises a lot of social issues in American cities, such as racism, gang violence, alcoholism, and drug addiction.
Structural
Another example of the structural approach to explaining poverty is a scene where doctors are faced with an increase in drug use in the local ghetto (“Emergency Room”). They discussed systemic problems rather than individual shortcomings and viewed the issue as a general, progressive phenomenon in society, which confirms the structural approach. Lack of access to quality medical care, low levels of education, wages, and family problems lead to the spread of alcoholism, drug addiction, and crime.
Moreover, “ER” also often breaks myths and stereotypes about poverty. The scene is where a patient from the ghetto comes to the hospital to ask the doctor for a prescription for drugs. He does not even understand the whole problem, and the doctor explains to him that the cause is social inequalities that force people to get into this situation and live in poverty, and then crime. This scene shatters the myth of the poor as lazy, irresponsible people and shows that the problem is deeper than it seems at first glance.
Conclusion
To summarize, it is important to understand that poverty is a very complex phenomenon with many cause-and-effect relationships. The TV series “ER” not only reflects the causes of poverty but also destroys myths and stereotypes that exist in society. It reminds viewers of the importance of understanding the structural causes of poverty as a societal problem and the need for change to counteract the worsening situation.
Work Cited
“True Lies.” ER, created by Michael Crichton et al., season 4, episode 2, NBC, 1997.