Since reading Lorraine Bracco’s (Dr. Jennifer Melfi in The Sopranos) comment in a recent Men’s Health article that many men accessed therapy because of Tony Soprano, I’ve been thinking about the impact such portrayals have on the wider culture. What men saw in the fictional account of Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi has had quite the influence and in fact, thinking about it more I realised that in some ways Robin Williams as counsellor Sean Maguire in the movie Good Will Hunting shaped a lot of my own perceptions some 20 years ago. Media affect the culture and help to structure it. Right now we not only have film and television to look to for representations of mental health, there is of course the Internet and ever-proliferating social media. Instagram accounts such as Marcela Sabia promote a more positive relationship with mental health; Twitter accounts such as The Mental Elf shares various resources and information from conferences. There are countless mental health podcasts too, from Metro’s Mentally Yours to celebrity-hosted shows such as Frankie Bridge’s Open Mind.
In an ongoing process I will be considering portrayals in film and television both from the past and present as well as how mental health is depicted in the The Digital Age, looking to social media accounts and podcasts including those mentioned above. In doing so I hope to trace not only how the depictions contrast and correspond across these media but also how these depictions have changed across time.
I have seen and heard the phrase ‘break the stigma’ in so many areas of the media for several years and I worry that it is merely empty sloganeering. I’m interested to find out exactly what the stigma is at this point and whether or not media that believes it is helping to break the stigma is really helping at all.
In this first post I will be looking at a film from 1991 called What About Bob? The movie is about a careerist Psychoanalyst who inherits a client called Bob from another practice. Across 90 minutes the movie shows the relationship between an aloof professional with no empathy for his multi-phobic client and hints at some deep-seated cynicism about the world of Psychoanalysis. Following this I will be reflecting upon a podcast called The Naked Professors, a show hosted by two men who claim to ‘Represent the new breed of masculinity.’ Each will hopefully prove fecund ground for this contemplation of mental health presentations in the media landscape and how they affect the broader culture.
What About Bob?
The Frank Oz-directed What About Bob? starring Bill Murray as Bob and Richard Dreyfus as his reluctant therapist, Dr Leo Marvin presents as a comedy on the surface but as it develops we see that its writers may harbour some acerbic feelings about Psychotherapy.
In the opening scene Dr Marvin receives a call from a jittery colleague who informs him that he is ‘passing on’ a client named Bob. Marvin’s initial misgivings are assuaged when he learns that this client ‘Shows up on time and pays early’. The caller then fawns over Dr Marvin’s recently published book and, appealing to a fragile ego, succeeds in passing Bob on. And that’s all it takes to refer a client in this fictional world; The Psychotherapist calling is so selfish that he can pinball a client around when it suits and the Psychotherapist answering is so self-obsessed that a little flattery (and the promise of prompt payment and punctuality) is all it takes for him to agree. Message one in this portrayal; Psychotherapists are egomaniacal creeps who care not a jot for their clients.
Bob arrives at Dr Marvin’s office having negotiated his way through the building’s door handles and elevator buttons. We have already learned that Bob has caused one therapist to flee and have some sense of his disposition and now this Hollywood trope of germaphobia really hits the point home with the clumsiest of (handkerchief-swaddled) mallets.
Tropes and clichés abound in Dr Marvin’s depiction. We’re spared the therapy-room-chaise-lounge, however Dr Marvin eclipses this cliché with a bronze bust of Freud. We also learn as Bob scans the Doc’s family photo that his children are named Sigmund and Anna, respectively. Forgetting the ham-handed references for a second, what therapist displays their family in their office and then immediately reveals personal details? And what therapist receives a patient with zero referral information, zero preparation and then informs said patient that he is now off on holiday (after one brief meeting - and after Bob is abandoned by the therapist of the opening scene) and then gives him a copy of his own book as a balm? O, there’s more; Dr Marvin then instructs his secretary to bill Bob not only for the session but for the book he never asked for! It seems that the screenwriters have some serious anger that they’re working out on screen. Well, they couldn’t take it to a therapist I suppose when it’s the profession itself that they’re clearly incensed with - so instead they work it out across the film’s duration.
Presented as a comedy What About Bob? plays like a revenge flick, with Murray the anarchic avenger set upon Richard Dreyfuss’s pompous, Narcissistic Freudian. Bob seems to represent the writers and Dr Marvin Psychotherapy at large.
Marvin is interested only in himself, his book and an appearance on national television (which Bob hijacks). Marvin grudgingly offers glib advice to Bob which Bob then takes to heart - and he starts to enjoy much success from these reductive instructions. One is for Bob to take ‘baby steps’; a dig at Psychoanalysts who condense matters into neat (and ultimately hollow) axioms. Bob’s agoraphobia (this is Hollywood; he is a package of every phobia) dissolves into playfulness and he begins to try new things and open to the world. His amazement at the efficacy of this ‘technique’ translates as sarcasm from the animosity-dripped pen of the writers. It also shows that the film believes therapy primarily involves the giving of advice, which is a perception that I think has sustained in many regards.
Whilst Dr Marvin sinks into febrile frustration with Bob (who shows up at his holiday home) Bob flourishes with every bit of ‘wisdom’ that Marvin spits at him (often offered to simply get him out of his hair). Bob even teaches young Siggy to dive by simply showing how its done - an empowerment technique at odds with Dr. Marvin’s tack of bullying his son into doing it through control alone. The message seems to be that Bob, the regular guy is more relatable and down to earth. Dr Marvin can’t teach his own son because he is a Psychoanalyst and he’s not relatable, even to his own child.
It felt like Bob was a mirror for Dr Marvin’s rigidity and arrogance - a child, in one scene asking for the light to be left on while he sleeps, in conflict with the conceited careerist/domineering parent that is Dr. Marvin. Anna asks ‘I thought you were born grown up, daddy?’ By contrast Bob begins a scared baby, taking Dr. Marvin’s book ‘Baby Steps’ literally, leading him to explore and separate from his apparent ‘caregiver’, attracting the admiration of Dr Marvin’s family (and seemingly every one he meets). Conversely, Dr Marvin slides into abject opprobrium with every one except Bob himself.
’A man must consent to look a foolish, innocent, adolescent part of himself for his cure,’ so says Robert A. Johnson, famed Jungian analyst speaking on the Fisher King wound (which is part of the Arthurian legend of the Grail). At times I thought that Bob might be the fool of the legend, Parsifal, holding up the therapeutic mirror to Dr Marvin’s Anfortas, the wounded Fisher King. I think that gives the movie too much credit. Here, the therapist is only ever viewed through a glass, darkly.
The Fisher King has come to serve as a very effective commentary (by Johnson himself, amongst many others particularly in the Mythopoetic domain) on the ‘masculine wound’ of modernity. Johnson frames the tale of the Fisher King as a legend to consider alongside contemporary masculinity; that the wound the Fisher King suffers is indicative of dread, alienation and anxiety in the masculinity of today (masculinity as part of the male and female). This is where we begin with The Naked Professors.
The Naked Professors
Given that neither of the hosts are genuine professors of anything there’s a touch of grandiosity in the name ‘The Naked Professors’ which extends to their claim to ‘represent the new breed of masculinity’. The premise is, ostensibly to be at the vanguard of change for men; change here meaning, you know, blokes who can do that brand new thing of talking about feelings. Messrs. Johnson and Bidwell mean well, of course - but their claim, to represent, to lead all by themselves is so conceited and so bafflingly ignorant that it serves as a neat correlate of ‘mansplaining’. It’s traditional male heroism cast broad.
Entrepreneur Michael Maisey guests in season 1 and it appears he too thinks he’s freeing all of us from the Kingdom of the Working Men’s Club and post-war male Stoicism and he too believes he’s onto something new (in one cringeworthy moment he refers to himself and the hosts as ‘pioneers’). Despite beginning with an earnest check-in, Maisey pursues an ultra-masculine line (masculine as an archetypal principle) of achievement. The hosts continue this line in an episode with Davina McCall; couching their feelings in matters concerning concrete ambition. Worse still, Bidwell remarks at the top of the show ‘For Davina I think the uniqueness of having this conversation with two men…I felt we touched her heart.’
This lack of awareness/pretension is difficult enough but if anything norms are reinforced. This is absolutely no regard for LGBTQ. A lot of the mental health advice is Ableist. Maisey sounds like Ant Middleton when he affirms over and over ‘If I can do it then so can you’ which is probably my biggest pet peeve of all the motivational rubric that exists out there in Internet Land. As it turns out, Maisey actually appeared on Middleton’s ultra-masculine SAS: Who Dares Wins television show. There seems to be this often unhelpful narrative of mental health being ‘dealt with’ because here we have somebody who did so and busted down those doors for you now to idolise. I think there’s a fine line between sharing to influence and somebody organically finding a kernel of inspiration in your experiences to draw from. The power of relating to somebody is obviously unquestionably immeasurable. The difference here is, much like Dr Marvin’s counselling of Bob, mental health matters here seem to be reduced to only the subjective experience of, in this case Maisey - and what applies to him must simply apply to all.
The stigma, according to Johnson and Bidwell is that men don’t talk about their feelings because of the associated shame. I don’t know that they’re contributing much when this has been talked about as a stigma for decades now and things have clearly moved on (dependent upon your cultural reference point, of course). But not all men, especially of the youngest generation in the UK are this caricature of lads down the pub, keeping their feelings out of the way of talk about cars and football. In a way, sadly, it feels like The Naked Professors are reinforcing the stigma by still referencing it. It certainly feels like these conversations contribute nothing but to aggrandise their own sense of ‘leading the charge’ in, I don’t know, redefining maleness or however they like to think of what they’re doing. How gender is defined can vary across time and place and these conversations feel like they’re out of both.
What About Bob? takes a vitriolic stab at the commodification of mental health and portrays it as the preserve of emotionless, ego-driven elites. If you took the film to heart you might believe that therapy involves a detached professional offering some half-baked aphorisms for an exorbitant price. The misconception that therapy involves primarily this use of simplistic advice is kind of what The Naked Professors offer up in their show. Advice can be good, sure. I definitely believe that the show offers hosts and guests talking openly about their feelings and that this may encourage others to engage in similar interactions. But that doesn’t take into consideration boundary-setting and the other precautions to take heed of before sharing so much of the self so openly. And whilst it can be useful to hear of the experiences of others to see if we can find some correlation to our own struggles, I think there’s a fine line between doing that and then offering prescriptive advice to a generalised audience. I can’t help but think that this advice-giving will help shape the layman/laywoman’s expectation of what talking therapies are; somebody giving you advice on how to ‘fix’ things in your life.
However, there is a huge gulf between the movie of 1991 and its attitudes towards seeking help for mental health matters and the podcast of 2020 and its attitudes towards talking about mental health matters. With the character of Bob we have a sort of psychological mélange; a deeply crass mish-mash of overtly ‘whacky’ characteristics that border on cartoonish. I imagine watching the film would make many viewers assume seeking professional help is the preserve of such over-the-top (read, not very realistic) characters as Bob and would in no way help normalise doing so. At least The Naked Professors treat the whole endeavour with reverence, even if they both seem hellbent on outshining the premise itself.
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