Optometrists are generally perceived to have received poorer treatment than doctors and dentists over their NHS contracts, but government contracts are not the only area in which optics receives a worse deal in comparison to other health services.
Optics in the arts is another area which could lead practitioners to feel aggrieved over the indifference shown to their profession by filmmakers and musicians. Television doctors are extremely common with some prominent examples being Dr Karl Kennedy in Neighbours, Star Trek's Dr Leonard 'Bones' McCoy and Dick Van Dyke's Dr Mark Sloan from Diagnosis Murder. Doctors in film are similar common with portrayals of the profession in such classics as Frankenstein and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Set in the Vietnam war, M*A*S*H's Hawkeye and Hot Lips bought screen fame to physicians.
Even dentistry is reasonably represented on screen, with the character of Jennifer Aniston's husband being a dentist in the television series Friends, while who can forget Lawrence Olivier's chilling portrayal of a Nazi dentist in Marathon Man? A similarly memorable performance of a German dentist came from Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther Strikes. In fact a search on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for dentist brings up 39 films with the term dentist actually in the title, including six films simply titled The Dentist, 2006's Vampire Dentist as well as The Avenging Dentist and The Kaiser's New Dentist. However the Swedish Dentist does not sound like mainstream cinema.
An IMDB search for optician or optometrist does not yield any results at all and if anybody can remember an optical professional in film or television please add a comment.
A lyric search for optician or optometrist show that the profession has not been referenced by any musicians of greater note than Ulster punk band, Stiff Little Fingers who sang: 'I want to be dead the optician said 20 20 but you stumbled round like you were blind.'
So what to you make of this imbalance? While the drama of a casualty ward might naturally inspire writers, horror films aside surely optometry deserves as much screen devotion as dentistry?
The 1996 film by Mike Leigh, Secrets and Lies, featured Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a black female optician. She decides to track down her mum her turns out to be Brenda Blethin.
Monica's boyfriend Richard (Tom Selleck) in Friends was an optometrist (or maybe ophthalmologist - I can't remember!). Also I remember seeing an 80s film on tv with Judge Rheinhold as an optometrist. In Days of Thunder, Nicole Kidman plays a doctor: not an optical profesional, but she does demonstrate a very unusual direct ophthalmoscopy technique!
Rory Gallagher (Irish rock legend) had a song on the Tattoo album called 2020 vision.
The most recent series of Family Guy has a cutaway scene referencing "Aladdin 4: Jafar May Need Glasses", showing the evil lord hmm-ing and ha-ing over lens one and two.
Friends had one scene where jennifer Aniston's character had a red eye and was seen by and optom. Typical for a poorly informed programme, the optom wanted to perform NCT, but when he couldn't said "you probable dont have glaucoma anyway". Also Tom Selleck's character in Friends was an "eye doctor", though its not clear if he is an ophthalmologist or optometrist.
To add to the arguement that optometrist and opticians are less well regarded: Recently on "8 out of 10 cats", comedian Sean Lock said that dentistry will never be deregulated like opticians, because its not as difficult a job.
In Happy Days,I think Ralph's Father was an Opthalmologist. And the two Ronnies had a reasonably funny Optician sketch. Not much, but better than a poke in the eye!
to: Admin - If You want to delete your site from my spam list, please sent url of your domain to my emai: stop.spam.today@gmail.com
And I will remove your site from my base within 24 hours
webmastegz
to: Admin - If You want to delete your site from my spam list, please sent url of your domain to my emai: stop.web.spam@gmail.com
And I will remove your site from my base within 24 hours
webmastegz
PS. As the previous address of an e-mail has been removed also all letters on it have been lost I is compelled to make this dispatch once again.
PS2. To send url your site on an e-mail stop.web.spam@gmail.com is a unique way to avoid a spam from me. To write abuses to the various "stop spam" sites - it is useless.
PS3. Your addresses of an e-mail are not necessary to me, you can create an e-mail through free service and send me yours url through this e-mail
PS4. sorry for my bad English :)