Three Shots at Prevention: The HPV Vaccine and the Politics of Medicine's Simple Solutions

Chapter Eight. Re-Presenting ChoiceTune in HPV

chapter eight Re-Presenting Choice Tune in HPV Giovanna Chesler and Bree Kessler Merck’s 2008 Gardasil TV spots add two words to their “One Less” advertising mantra: “I Chose.” In these spots, mothers repeat the line “I chose to get my daughter vaccinated” and young women boldly proclaim, “I chose to get vaccinated .” The spots conclude with a tagline suitable for any feminist enterprise: “You have the power to choose.”1 In Merck’s “I Chose” advertisements for Gardasil , the choice as presented seems a limited binary: “I receive the vaccine” or “I do not receive the vaccine.” Yet as a product for consumption, this choice, further encouraged by interactive Web tools and lobbying groups, involves choosing to agree to a limited understanding of human papillomavirus. Choosing to purchase and receive the Gardasil vaccine also includes choosing to protect oneself from only some of the strains of HPV that may lead to cervical cancer and genital warts (see chapter 3). Further, by choosing to situate Gardasil in any conversation about HPV and in allowing Gardasil the power to construct the public discourse surrounding the virus, one limits (if not negates) a consideration of sex practices involved in contracting the human papillomavirus. The Tune in HPV project (www.tuneinhpv.com) was developed as an alternative space for public discussion of HPV, one that might reinsert sex practice Re-Presenting Choice 147 and sexual behavior into any consideration of the virus and one that would diversify representations of people who contract and spread HPV beyond the limited set of young girls featured in Gardasil advertisements. In its initial iteration , Tune in HPV began as a series of videos titled HPV Boredom, made and performed by Giovanna Chesler in October 2006 and posted to YouTube.2 In these tapes, Chesler recovers from an HPV-related surgery, immobilized in her bed. In HPV Boredom 2, she receives a call from her “doctor,” a robotic voice that tells her about HPV contraction and the Gardasil vaccine: “The vaccine will only cover you if you are between the ages of 9 and 26. It is our hope that if you are over the age of 26 that you are married, settled down, and monogamous .” The videos have inspired multiple readings: “Is this the future of the public service announcement . . . in the form of a video made and edited on one’s home computer and uploaded directly to the Internet? Or is this an ironic spoof of the public service announcement as a genre?” (Serlin 2010). As an artist, an activist, and a scholar in gender and media, Chesler sought to expand the 2006 series to include considerations of HPV beyond those of her performed character and in a format that would build from the stories of anonymous authors who wanted to share their HPV experiences. Sexual health educators , nurses, and physicians affiliated with the Washington, D.C., Department of Health HIV/AIDS Administration and the Sexually Transmitted Disease Control Program served as preliminary advisers to develop a Web site design that could bridge educational content and personal expression. Tune in HPV was launched in February 2008 in collaboration with Web architect Zulma Aguiar and students in Chesler and Aguiar’s course “Communication and Social Change,” taught at American University. The site they developed, www.tuneinhpv.com, is a participatory Web channel dedicated to providing information and entertainment related to the human papillomavirus . The site contains two streams of content: user-generated stories about HPV that are submitted anonymously through a story-submission tool and videos made by the producers of the site. The stories submitted by users provide examples of HPV transmission and treatment, while the video content enacts elements of the stories and conveys information on HPV contraction. As a project built from stories of people commonly affected by HPV, Tune in HPV experimentally identifies a public and provides a potential service platform to that public around a sexual health issue. Bree Kessler, a trained public health practitioner , analyzed users’ stories to better understand the emerging themes related to sexual health. The site launch was supported in part by the Center for 148 Girls at the Center of the Storm Social Media at American University, whose ongoing projects and studies consider the future of public media as media that contribute to “helping people understand ongoing and complicated issues, both with content and through practices” (Clark and Aufderheide 2009, 18). In their study...