The short horror film Our First Priority tackles the important concept of medical gaslighting, which is not talked about as often as it should. Writer/Director Ariel Baska utilizes music, light, and color to give the topic the horror treatment.
Opening with music evoking a horror film, the tone quickly shifts to viewers seeing a young girl named Hannah in the hospital for a checkup. The sudden lack of background music is jarring, highlighting the importance of the interaction. The nurse makes it clear that Hannah is there by herself, but the viewer sees an older version of Hannah lurking, watching the entire interaction, inserting her thoughts.
Our First Priority takes viewers into Hannah’s mind – showing how the fluorescent lights distort her vision and hearing, all the while hearing older Hannah saying she should be worried. When Hannah reads her long list of symptoms – that are recurring – the doctor ignores her, instead playing with a flashlight. The flashing of the light underscores the doctor choosing to ignore the patient.
When the doctor runs tests, an older Hannah touches him, there are flashes of scenes in deep reds and purples, evoking fear, but not enough to make the doctor take young Hannah’s symptoms seriously. Instead, he dismisses the symptoms as psychological while older Hannah comments on the doctor’s lack of care for her and being more concerned with checking boxes than listening to what his patient is saying.
It’s not until young Hannah faints that the doctor is able to view older Hannah, where he gets to experience how patients feel when their doctors dismiss them. The lighting switches from florescent to red-tinged, and the doctor’s treatment is straight out of the horror genre.
In addition to music, Baska uses light and color to highlight the differences between the young patient sitting patiently, going along with what the doctor says, and what happens when a doctor just doesn’t listen.
The primary focus of this short horror film is medical gaslighting, which has a large impact on many minority groups including women, people of color, and people with disabilities. It is a very important topic to bring to light, because it can lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening or altering conditions.
“Medical bias, as far as I’m concerned, is one of the most important health problems we have in this country because so many people, particularly women people with disabilities, people who are overweight, people of color, people with mental health issues, like my Uncle Jack, are dismissed as drug seeking, or attention seeking,” said Baska in the behind-the-scenes film, The Devil in the Details: The Making of Our First Priority.
Baska herself experience medical gaslighting when her medical conditions were dismissed as anxiety. The term gaslighting is refers to the method of psychological manipulation when another person causes one to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or even memories, which leads to them becoming confused, lose their confidence and self-esteem, and erode both their emotional and mental well-being. In terms of the medical field, it is when doctors dismiss a patient’s symptoms as being all in their head or things they just made-up.
This film taught me about medical gaslighting for the first time. I have heard about all kinds of medical malpractices before but never heard about this before. This kind of psychological abuse is truly appalling to me, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think about how there are actual doctors doing this to their patients, especially to individuals with disabilities and to other types of minorities.
The film’s success is not just in its artful cinematography but in pushing a message that all medical professionals need to internalize – patients need to be the priority. Starting this fall, Alaska Airlines is showing Our First Priority as part of an initiative to showcase films on board that celebrate a wide range of diverse stories from leading West Coast and Hawaii film festivals, including Superfest Disability Film Festival, where Our First Priority won the Advocacy Award.
