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"Fixing" Katie and Eilish: medical documentaries...
Journal article

"Fixing" Katie and Eilish: medical documentaries and the subjection of conjoined twins.

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.

Authors

Myser C; Clark DL

Journal

Literature and Medicine, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 45–67

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

Publication Date

March 1, 1998

DOI

10.1353/lm.1998.0004

ISSN

0278-9671

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