Stigma has long been associated with disease and illness, whether communicable or non-communicable, chronic or acute. In a medical context where the physical signs of disease and ‘sick’ behaviours help everyday people and medical professionals identify and segregate the infected from the uninfected, stigmatizing behaviours can sometimes be productive because they can limit the spread of disease and save lives. And yet, scholarly research and everyday discussions about health-related stigma often emphasize its counterproductive outcomes, such as when stigma discourages or undermines testing, treatment and other public health interventions. Like people living with HIV/AIDS, zombies, vampires and werewolves which are found in fictional narratives experience a variety of stigmatizing behaviours. They are diagnosed as ‘sick’ or ‘diseased’, labelled and stereotyped as dangerous and contagious, and separated physically as well as rhetorically from human beings. They are also quarantined, ridiculed, experimented on, and executed by medical professionals, military and law enforcement officials, and everyday citizens. While the zombie narrative has been useful for understanding the outbreak of disease and the spread of a global pandemic, when the nature of a disease changes from acute to chronic and is of a prolonged nature, these narratives are less useful. Instead, more sympathetic ‘monsters’ such as the vampire and the werewolf can act as a vehicle for understanding that disease does not equal death. Using the vampires and werewolves of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series as a case study, this research explored the role of monster metaphors and storytelling in popular culture as a health communication intervention strategy for challenging the counterproductive stigma outcomes experienced by those living with a chronic, transmissible disease. The analysis of the Anita Blake series conducted in this dissertation clarifies how stigma could be presented in popular culture narratives to account for both the experience of stigma and the stigmatized experience of those living with chronic, infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS. In particular, three criteria were identified in the series that lay the foundation for creating a productive learning opportunity for understanding chronic, transmissible illness and disease: the use of health-related indicators linking ‘monstrous’ conditions with the diagnosis of illness or disease; the presence of all of the steps in the stigma process; and, the inclusion of a variety of differential and discriminatory responses to ‘monstrous’ characters by the medical, legal and social systems present within the fictional world. When these criteria are met, monster narratives can achieve three objectives. First, they can demonstrate how structural and public stigma behaviours – whether differential or discriminatory – impact individuals and groups who are recipients of such treatment through the generation of self-stigma. Second, they draw attention to the counterproductive stigma outcomes that result from self-stigma sentiments. Third, they can show how groups and individuals generate productive stigma outcomes through a variety of stigma management practices. This analysis also led to important precisions to the existing understanding of the process of health-related stigma and stigma-related behaviours that may not have been possible without popular culture. In particular, it was determined that for those being stigmatized, it matters little whether treatment is differential or discriminatory for the effect on the individual or group is the same – the internalization of stigma and the generation of self-stigma sentiments. It was also confirmed that stigma management practices can result in both counterproductive and productive outcomes and, finally, it was possible to identify four personas that emerged from these outcomes: ‘villains’, ‘victims’, ‘survivors’ and ‘thrivers’.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/44523 |
| Date | 17 January 2023 |
| Creators | Dumoulin, Jennifer |
| Contributors | Grandena, Florian |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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