The Language and Imagery of Coma and Brain Injury: Representations in Literature, Film and Media

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What occurs within coma What does the coma patient experience How does the patient perceive the world outside of coma, if at all The simple answer to these questions is that we dont know. Yet the sheer volume of literary and media texts would have us believe that we do. Examining representations of coma and brain injury across a variety of texts, this book investigates common tropes and linguistic devices used to portray the medical condition of coma, giving rise to universal mythologies and misconceptions in the public domain. Matthew Colbeck looks at how these texts represent, or fail to represent, long-term brain injury, drawing on narratives of coma survivors that have been produced and curated through writing groups he has run over the last 10 years. Discussing a diverse range of cultural works, including novels by Irvine Welsh, Stephen King, Tom McCarthy and Douglas Coupland, as well as film and media texts such as The Sopranos, Kill Bill, Coma and The Walking Dead, Colbeck provides an explanation for our fascination with coma. With a proliferation of misleading stories of survival in the media and in literature, this book explores the potential impact these have upon our own understanding of coma and its victims.

Reviews

An intriguing journey through the representation of brain injury in fiction, Colbecks wide ranging analysis invites readers to consider the power of false conflations and highlights the deployment of soap opera paradigms of recovery and the re-purposing of old archetypes such as Lazurus. This book is relevant to anyone with an interest in illness narratives and cultural studies, or with a specific concern with the substantive topic of brain injury. * Jenny Kitzinger, Professor of Communications Research, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University, UK *
This is what the best work in medical humanities can do: move illuminatingly between scientific and cultural frames to explore both their conjunctures and disjunctures. Colbecks exploration of coma states explores the gap between medical realities and popular representations in fiction, memoir, film and TV. Grounded in authoritative medical knowledge, it is also sympathetic to the emotional investments and fantasies that this blank spot in consciousness has produced across our culture. An important intervention in an emerging field. * Professor Roger Luckhurst, Geoffrey Tillotson Chair, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK *

Author Bio

Matthew Colbeck is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of English, University of Sheffield, UK.