What Does the Word "Markets" Mean to You? (Reflections on an Episode of Good Times)

In the Good Times episode "Where Have All the Doctors Gone?" (season 6, episode 17) Ms. Florida Evans and Dr. Paula Kelly had an exchange regarding the latter's intention of leaving the clinic where she works--a departure that, as she is the last doctor still working there, would mean the closing down of the clinic on which the residents of the neighborhood is reliant. In the course of said exchange Dr. Kelly, whose decision is admittedly about heading for greener pastures, tells Ms. Evans that she thinks the sacrifices she made in working at the clinic did not do much good anyway given the irresponsibility of the neighborhood's residents in regard to their health, as judged by, among other things, their diets. Ms. Evans replies that "in the ghetto" the issue is not health but "survival," its impoverished residents having no choice but to " buy what is cheapest, and the markets make damn sure it isn't cheap" (emphasis added).

To much of the public (and indeed, not just the public) that is exactly what markets are--the institution that makes sure that the necessities of life aren't cheap, that they are as expensive as the traffic will bear, to the benefit of corporate bottom lines and the disadvantage of the rest of society.

It can seem characteristic of the different era in which this show was a top ten hit that the dialogue acknowledged this view here so explicitly--that, indeed, the show was so socially critical, in this episode directing its barbs at even the medical profession before which television is usually reverent in this superficially irreverent era (the supposedly past exaltation of the doctor as a "god in a white coat" enduring here). It can seem characteristic of that era, too, that it showed parents like the Evanses who, in spite of not being "highly educated professionals," were clearly functional, conscientious, responsible, intelligent people; who in spite of being functional, conscientious, responsible, intelligent people did not have an upper-middle class, suburban, standard of living; and that the show showed such a person quite able to get the better of the highly educated professional above her in the social scale in an exchange that is not an occasion for the sort of cheap anti-intellectualism we see when figures like Frasier Crane are made fools of, but, beneath the one-liners, a serious dialogue about a serious subject.

Meanwhile it can seem characteristic of the way we live now that the actor who was for many (unfortunately) the face, or at least mascot, of that show recently went on TV in commercials in which he did his bit for the privatization of Medicare, all as the market made sure that health care, along with all the other necessities of life, grow ever less cheap.