Polysemy of Drama: The Representation of Autism Spectrum Disorder

Abstract

Within the frame of Self Media Lab Study Center (University of Pavia) starting from open research on the theme New digital and visual technologies in therapeutic and diagnostic protocols for patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder, this paper focuses on the concept of “drama”, in the sense of dramaturgic writing. It is aimed at the representation of the disease, focusing on three fields of study: how the therapeutic relationship with subjects affected by autism is represented (drama as a form of representation); how this representation is shared through social media (drama as a form of awareness); how the use of digital video technologies can elaborate therapeutic forms of storytelling (drama as a health device). The study of autism portrayal focuses on a corpus of medical drama, starting from the analysis of The Good Doctor (2017 -), and including some of the most famous TV series such as Grey’s Anatomy (2005 -) and Chicago Med (2015 -). The aims are to investigate the stereotypical models of medical and patient figures on the one hand, and on the other hand to highlight forms of dramatization of an often-invisible disease.

Keywords

Autism Spectrum Disorder; Medical Drama; self-representation; visual digital technologies; The Good Doctor.