House M.D.: the monitoring of life, crime and disease in the age of its technical visuality

Abstract

When the body, the subjectivity and disease are converted into medical information, statistics and ballistics, MRI, contrasts, maps and images, they appear as new actors and dramatic elements in contemporary fiction, especially in series as House M.D. and CSI. In this article, we analyze some House M.D. episodes, highlighting how these body visualization technologies, genetic mapping, diagnostics, monitoring procedures, equipment for production of evidences of every kind (medical and criminal) are co-actors in these dramas. Technological devices and information surpass the experts’ domain and turn into a new form of entertainment, becoming vital games that mobilize specialists and amateurs. In these games we see a gradual status change from the patient or the victim, turned into participant, inter-actor, and co-director of his disease, his suffering or his crime.