Channel 4, 3 and 10 October at 9pm
Conjoined twins are hot media property. Following their birth in August last year, twins Jodie and Mary became major celebrities. The Guardian reported in June that the girls' parents were due to earn an estimated half a million pounds from the sale of their story. In a two part series, Channel 4 offered its viewers a more affordable, but less enthralling, alternative.
Joined: The World of Siamese Twins followed Allison and David Lawler through the pregnancy and birth of their conjoined twin daughters. Radio Times billed this as “a moving look at the medical and moral challenges presented by the birth of conjoined twins.” The Sunday Times “critic's choice” described how the Lawlers “could soon face a daunting dilemma: whether or not to agree to the surgical separation of the twin girls.”
However, allusions to the sort of issues that arose in the case of Jodie and Mary were wholly misplaced. Though Allison's pregnancy ran to term, the twins died within half an hour of their birth. Consequently, questions of whether or not to separate the girls and which twin should be allowed to live never arose.
Having followed the story this far, the producers of the programme appear to have been faced with a decision of their own. They could either produce a documentary focusing on the Lawlers' experience or they could simply use this story to launch a broader survey of conjoined twins. In the event they chose to let the first story die. This was a tragic loss, for what little insight we gained into the experience of David and Allison proved fascinating.
“Nobody's given them an iota of good news since the beginning,” observed one doctor. Yet despite this, the gaps in medical knowledge allowed room for optimism: “We are expecting a miracle,” David declared. We never learned how robust this optimism was, nor how it was maintained. David described how he found it “very depressing” when he and his wife were told that, following the birth of their girls, they should expect nothing more than to hold them and “love them to death.” This was precisely the scenario that unfolded; yet David was able to assert later that he had “enjoyed” the experience. Following early references to his daughters as “children that are some way or another not perfect,” after the birth David concluded: “Those girls taught me that imperfections just don't exist.”
The story of the Lawlers' optimism in the face of medical pessimism, their need and method of finding hope, and their coping with loss could have made a valuable account in its own right. However, the emotional bonds that develop between parents and their offspring were evidently considered less worthy of exploration than the physical bond between conjoined twins. Consequently, we were presented with a montage of images and histories of twins and their families from around the world.
Masha and Dasha, the twins who were separated from their mother, but not from each other, in Stalinist Russia are now embittered alcoholics “waiting to die.” Assan and Hussein in London were successfully separated, but suffer nightmares in which surgeons “come and try to stick us back together somehow.” The Lewis twins in America remained joined at the chest and led apparently happy lives until their death at the age of 6.
The only reason for referring pejoratively and inaccurately to “Siamese” rather than “conjoined” twins in the programme title is to achieve popular appeal. And we need only insert the word “mysterious” to make “the world of Siamese twins” sound like the definitive 18th century circus entertainment. “We wanted to normalise the condition,” claims the director. However, it is hard to see how two hours of prime time television focusing on an anatomical abnormality that occurs in just 1 in 200 000 live births can amount to much more than voyeurism.
Few of us will ever encounter a pair of conjoined twins, yet the host of legal, ethical, medical, and moral issues that were exposed by the case of Jodie and Mary will affect us all. The judge's decision in the case irrevocably altered the way in which the courts, and perhaps society at large, confront questions of life and death. Consideration of these issues is arguably of greater value than exposure to the problems faced by twins themselves. Having chosen to look at the world of twins and not their significance for the outside world, the producers were at least wise enough to shirk the bigger issues entirely without subjecting them to superficial analysis. However, the issues cannot be separated from the subject matter so soon after such a momentous court case. It is perhaps irresponsible to address a subject that currently has so many weighty associations and deal with it using only anecdotal evidence.
Figure.
That's entertainment? Images of conjoined twins continue to fascinate the public