Cultural Representations and Narratives of Identical Twins
Author(s): Mvikeli Ncube
Abstract: This paper is part of a broader project which looks at the experiences of identical twins in Western society and the way in which they account for their identity. The project includes interviews with identical twins. I look at identical twins because among other things, the notion of twins appears to be of psychological interest to many people in Western society. Identical twins played significant role in academic debates, for example, twin studies have prompted psychologists to explain the role and the value of inherited and environmental factors on individual personality traits and behaviours. Numerous and substantial findings have been generated from identical twin studies and these have had an impact not only in the discipline of psychology but other disciplines like medicine and genetics. The study and the understanding of such traits as intelligence, aggression, alcoholism, criminality and schizophrenia have been strongly transformed by ‘evidence’ gathered from identical twin studies. In this paper I particularly focus on films and novels because they appear to be a rich source of twin representations in Western culture. From the interview material I have gathered in the broader project, I realised that I needed to explore and account for cultural resources that the identical twins were drawing on to make sense of their identity. This paper is meant among other things to provide a socio-cultural analysis context for those interested in doing research on twin’s identity or the accounts of their lives. The aims of this paper are: To show how identical twins are represented in western popular culture and to critically discuss the implications and significance of such representations of identical twins and of Western society at large. The paper seeks to lay out themes that emerge from a broad range of cultural texts sampled from plays, films and novels. I draw on the account of thematic analysis described by Braun and Clarke (2006). I want to provide a rich thematic description of twin representations so that the reader can get a clear sense of predominant twin themes in Western popular culture. Analysis in this paper will not go beyond what is written in the texts. It will focus on how identical twins are represented in films, plays and novels. I will then critically discuss the significance, implications and meanings of those representations of identical twins and Western society at large in the light of other studies. Culture according to Griffin (2000, p. 17) is to be looked at, ‘as traditional and communicated meanings and practices, and focuses on how these meanings and practices are lived individually, how they affect identities and subjectivities.’ The paper will briefly outline the concept of representation, and some theory of visual and written fiction and cultural representation. I briefly explore both cultural and social representations because these overlap and affect each other, including through their social effects. I will then focus on the representations of identical twins in three different kinds of text (Western films, plays and novels) before drawing conclusions about possible implications of these representations on our understanding of identical twins and within Western society. In this paper my analysis focuses on novels, plays and films, and have not included other sources that relate in particular to cultural representations of identical twins. While I acknowledge that the cultural representations to be focused on are not limited to identical twins only but can be seen in other closer siblings like brothers and sisters and what are referred to as ‘hetero zygotic’ twins. I find them to be more prominent, frequent when concerning identical twins. It is important to note that cultural representations are not the only factors that affect how people understand or react to identical twins but other factors count as well, for instance economic and micro-social factors among others.
Pages: 41-51
Date Published: 2014
Place of publication: London
Publisher: School of Social Sciences.