RG 5022/2: Many good lives? Televisual negotiations of generativity and diversity in the context of medicine, temporality and the good life (SP B01)

The media cultural studies sub-project analyses how German-language film, television and streaming productions narratively negotiate the interrelationship between medical innovations and ideas of a good life in time with regard to aspects of generativity and diversity on the basis of the FOR's three fields of practice (chronic illness, reproductive medicine and old age/care). Within the framework of the FOR, it assumes a position that links the sub-projects. Our basic assumption is that generativity and diversity, as supra-individual dimensions of a good life, are in a tense relationship with often heteronormative implications. From the perspective of temporality, intergenerational relationships can be understood as historical-vertical forms of social differentiation (with a view to the past/preceding and the future/subsequent), while diversity refers primarily to forms of horizontal (present/simultaneous) social differentiation. In three sub-studies, the sub-project looks at 1) doctor and hospital series (medicals), 2) documentaries and 3) television and cinema films from the arthouse and independent sector (e.g. queer cinema).