Graduation Year
2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
Degree Granting Department
Communication
Major Professor
Lori Roscoe, Ph.D.
Co-Major Professor
Keith Berry, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Aisha Durham, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Amy Rust, Ph.D.
Keywords
Death, Documentary Realism, Media, Melodrama, Television
Abstract
In this qualitative study, I analyze three episodes of the prime-time television medical drama Grey’s Anatomy to explore how the show stages conversations of end of life. I extend the work of end of life ethicists with attention to the ways that media may/should/could be used to teach and reflect issues of dying in America. Performing a close textual analysis, I identified two modes of storytelling within the structure of these episodes: Documentary Realism and Melodrama. I argue that if we are to understand medical dramas as a tool for the dissemination of information about end of life ethics, we must understand that they speak to the audience in ways which value the perspective of the physicians, holding a torch for how emotions are played out on the faces of the protagonists, but through the bodies of the patients who are brought in to be wounded in each episode.
Scholar Commons Citation
Swenson, Sean Micheal, "Grey’s Anatomy and End of Life Ethics" (2022). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/9470
