Women, people with skin of color underrepresented in popular film depictions of acute MI
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Key takeaways:
- Women and diverse populations are underrepresented in popular film depictions of acute MI.
- Films tend to portray more severe symptoms of acute MI, which may perpetuate false beliefs about typical symptoms.
Depictions of acute MI in popular film are underrepresentative of women and patients from racial and ethnic minority groups, according to a research letter published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
“For clinicians, our findings highlight the importance of educating patients about the more subtle signs of heart disease and utilizing our preventive tools, such as coronary calcium scores, to catch heart disease before it leads to more serious problems,” Kirsten E. Shaw, MD, a cardiology fellow at Allina Health Minneapolis Heart Institute, told Healio.
“For women and underrepresented patients, it's a call to be proactive in advocating for their heart health and to recognize that their symptoms of heart disease may not fit the Hollywood script,” she said.
To investigate how popular film depicts acute MI in women and diverse populations, Shaw and colleagues used the search term “heart attack” in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) to identify movies depicting acute MI.
The researchers sorted movies from most to least popular based on IMDb ratings and consecutively reviewed 172 top-ranked movies to identify 100 acute MI scenes from 1932 to 2022; 83 of them were U.S. films.
Of the 100 scenes, 10% depicted women and 90% depicted men. Also, 6% of scenes depicted people with skin of color (1 woman, 5 men) experiencing acute MI and 94% depicted non-Hispanic white people.
The researchers wrote that no Black women were represented in any of the scenes.
“It was surprising to see the near-total absence of women and racial/ethnic minorities in these portrayals of heart attacks in film,” Shaw said. “This stark underrepresentation could be reinforcing dangerous misconceptions about who is at risk for heart disease.”
Falls and loss of consciousness were the two most prevalent presenting signs or symptoms of acute MI, according to the researchers.
Overall, 100% of women and 88% of men fell at the time of their MI. Additionally, 88% of women and 68% of men experienced loss of consciousness.
Other signs or symptoms of acute MI portrayed in the scenes included chest pain, screaming or yelling and clutching of the chest.
Among the women depicted in the scenes, 50% portrayed chest pain, 40% screamed or yelled and 50% clutched their chest.
As for the men, 67% portrayed chest pain, 29% screamed or yelled and 63% clutched their chest.
The disparities did not improve with time, the researchers wrote.
“This research could be expanded by analyzing other forms of media, like television and social media, to see how heart attacks are portrayed and whether these patterns persist,” Shaw said. “Future studies could also explore how these portrayals influence patient behavior and health outcomes. Most importantly, we need to find better ways to educate people about heart disease before they suffer a heart attack.”
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