"Fixing" Katie and Eilish: Medical Documentaries and the Subjection of Conjoined Twins Journal Articles uri icon

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abstract

  • Myser and Clark analyze the cultural representations of conjoined twins (so-called Siamese twins) in medical documentaries. They argue that medical documentaries seem to perform a descriptive function for lay audiences, but also function as a prescriptive force that reproduces the cultural assumption that there must be singular self correlated to a single body. Their primary analytical focus is three documentaries about the Irish conjoined twins Katie and Eilish Holton and their family: Mark Galloway's Katie and Eilish and Life without Katie and the subsequent 20/20 TV segment on the surviving family.

publication date

  • March 1998