Anyway, that's a working title. I will definitely need to make it a bit hipper. Honestly, it looks a bit sterile up there, doesn't it? Maybe start with some troublesome quote from the show. Possibly "this mutilated, useless thing" in reference to his leg. That probably won't work- but I'm not working on this paper with D (how anonymous), and she'll have something clever.
There really don't seem to be that many papers written about House M.D. I wonder why that is. I wish that the book of philosophy based on it was more widespread in theme-- it seems like his pain is only mentioned versus addressed as a major characteristic of House himself.
D and I are really interested in how this tv show has influenced public perception of CNCP (chronic non-cancer pain) and treatments. For example, everyone seems so irritated that House takes Vicodin at all. In reality, very few people become addicted (and my hallucinations were more of an allergic reaction than addiction thing)-- the issue should not have been him taking Vicodin, but his consumption of so much Vicodin. And is he even taking any pain medication at this point? I mean, seriously, it is impossible to function without something-- literally, impossible.
There's a great episode in season one where he goes off Vicodin full stop on a bet, and that one is very powerful. He breaks his hand to distract his mind from the leg pain-- effective empathy-building depiction of pain. In any event, how can this episode be related to later ones, where he stops taking Vicodin and seems more or less fine? Especially his response to a placebo-- that was just irritating because it suggests that CNCPers' pains are 100% mental. All hail the all-powerful mind, the body is dead. Why do people so easily forget that the brain is a physical place, an organ?
End mini-rant. I will be putting up a proposal for the Cultural Studies conference which better lays out this paper and the associated theory. Someone has a pretty sweet House M.D. paper doing a Foucaultian analysis in terms of Birth of the Clinic. What's not fun about that? :)
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