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To Be Continued: Serial Narration, Chronic Disease, and Disability
Literature and Medicine
|August 13, 2019
Summary
Television series offer new ways to understand Parkinson's disease narratives. Serial storytelling can challenge typical decline stories and offer insights into chronic illness representation and medical encounters.
Area of Science:
- Media Studies
- Medical Humanities
- Neurology
Background:
- Michael J. Fox's portrayal of Parkinson's disease in TV shows.
- The role of serial narration in health contexts.
- Television's episodic structure and its relation to medical encounters.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore how serial narration in TV shows like 'The Good Wife' and 'The Michael J. Fox Show' represents Parkinson's disease.
- To examine if serial narration can reframe the narrative of decline associated with neurodegenerative diseases.
- To analyze how television's episodic format offers insights into clinical encounters with chronic illness.
Main Methods:
- Dual perspective analysis from a literature/film researcher and a neurologist.
- Examination of serial narration, continuity, and repetition in TV representations of Parkinson's disease.
- Comparison of fictional chronic illness narratives with actual clinical encounters.
Main Results:
- Serial narration provides a unique lens to reimagine Parkinson's disease narratives, moving beyond simple decline.
- Television series can challenge the sense of premature closure often linked to chronic illness diagnoses.
- The study highlights the potential of media to influence public understanding of neurodegenerative conditions.
Conclusions:
- Serial television offers valuable frameworks for understanding and representing chronic illness and disability.
- The narrative structures in TV can inform how we approach and discuss medical encounters in neurology.
- Further research into media's role in health communication is warranted.
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