The Birth of Phil Studies

Today’s episode of Dr. Phil was rather uninteresting, unless, of course, you enjoy listening to former child star Danny Bonaduce recount his failed marriage and the myriad of other problems he so clearly continues to have despite being “sober.” Still, there was some theory that we could talk about. Phil made his usual reproductive futurist rant about how the important thing is the children and their lives. We get it, you’re a heterosexual—yawn. We also had the astute point by our esteemed Dr. that “there are two Danny Bonaduces—Danny Bonaduce the personality and Danny Bonaduce the real person that I know, who cares about his family and his kids.” It would be interesting to take this to the next step: people on t.v., or in any theatrical situation, are not real people. We could think of Žižek’s idea of acting “as if,” Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality, Lacan’s Borromean knot, Brecht’s alienation effect, and so much more! It will be fun, and Dr. Phil is one thing, but I’m not going to do it with Danny Bonaduce, at least not until he starts calling himself a poet or a philosopher, or something like that.

Instead, tonight we have a bit of meta-analysis to do as it has recently come to my attention that I did not, in fact, create the field of Phil studies. I had hoped that, like Freud or Marx, I was working as a “founder of discursivity” (Foucault, What is an Author?) Therefore, it was quite a surprise to find that, over two years ago, a pair of professors from St. Lawrence University had written a good-sized scholarly article on Dr. Phil in The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, a web-based periodical from the Department of Religious Studies and Anthropology at The University of Saskatchewan. Professor Egan and Papson’s full article, “You Either Get It or You Don't”: Conversion Experiences and The Dr. Phil Show,” is available here: http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art10-drphil.html.
I encourage you to at least read the abstract. Egan and Papson are observant enough to realize that there is no religious content in the Dr. Phil show, but do assert that the episodes follow the structural pattern and the narrative of a religious conversion (particularly of the televangelist ilk) with a confession and testimonial followed by conversion and transformation. The authors conclude that “the televised presentation of reoccurring conversions functions to produce a sense of moral authority, self-empowerment, and an imagined community [and] that the boundary between the sacred and the secular blur in this highly commodified television spectacle.” Now, I have a friend who says he likes theory, but thinks a lot of theorists argue too much with each other. I find these two positions difficult to reconcile, as it should be the duty of any decent theorist to envisage critiques and theories that can hold up against the entire world to reinvent and reinvigorate its intellectual understandings and possibilities. The idea, the theory itself, might stand out in (or against) reality, but it does not reach the level of discourse until it is acknowledged, reproved, and re-proved. Egan and Papson are already, of course, part of the discourse within Religious studies. They’ve cited authorities within the field and it’s periphery (at least, not being an expert on theology, I assume that’s what they’ve done). They’ve been reviewed to reach publication, and have likely been cited or read as a result. But this is all as religion experts, or, perhaps in the amorphous field of cultural criticism. When it comes to Phil studies, however, it is safe to assume that this is—as Dr. Phil would say—their first rodeo. We can remedy that. Firstly, I think Egan and Papson are wise to bring in things like Neilson ratings and advertising. Economics and politics are central organs in Phil studies. Egan and Papson also sagaciously pick up on the fact that the Dr. Phil we see on television is actually a staged personification. The analysis has only one glaring deficit in that Egan and Papson do not seem to pick up on the fact that there is a Phil canon. Instead, they simply observe two shows, “Addiction” and “The Weight Loss Challenge.” This ignores the fact that Dr. Phil often brings back guests, revisits segments, issues, or mini-series like the Dr. Phil house and obviously expects his viewers to watch regularly, visit his website, and read his books. More importantly, it seems to skew their findings slightly. While both the episodes they chronicled might have taken on the mode and style of a conversion, there have also been many that might more aptly be described as promoting reversion (to better times, etc.), aversion (when something just needs to stop), or diversion (for preventing that which hasn’t actually even begun to occur). From outside the actual mechanism of the Dr. Phil Show, the possibilities are even more numerous. As we’ve tried to demonstrate, the show can also be seen as the location of perversion and subversion. Even limiting oneself to the domain of theology, it might be just as fitting to describe the arc of most shows as an exorcism or, in some cases, an excommunication. The fact is, the Dr. Phil canon is large and often contradictory. This is also a part of Egan and Papson’s largest mistake. While they seem to see an insidious side to Dr. Phil because he attempts to become the high priest, carving out his own commodified religion, mixing the secular and the sacred, there is an equally dark side. Failing to promote the scriptures, the pillars of psychology—the great psalmists like Freud, Jung, etc. and their seminal works—is tantamount to heresy. If Nietzsche and Marx are correct in their assertions that “God is dead” and “religion is the opium of the people,” then we must conclude that—if Dr. Phil is attempting to rule over a conversion to a half secularized, half sacred televangical reality—he is continuing to feed his guests’ various addictions, refusing help, and instead embracing philosophical death for all parties involved (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right").

The Phil-Phunction

Today’s episode, “The O.J. Simpson Book Battle,” discussed the circumstances and controversies involved in the recently published book If I Did It. The show featured the work’s ghostwriter and the Goldman family as guests. Most peculiarly, it presented Dr. Phil in a novel role, that of the literary critic, as he promised to give the audience his “reading” of the book. When Pablo Fenjves explained that the book was proposed, agreed to, and created in the context of a “hypothetical confession,” Dr. Phil seemed unable to comprehend such an abstract idea and even noted: “hypothetical and confession, I don’t see how those two words go together.” In the realm of critical theory, however, there are, in fact, many ways of interpreting this. One of the more interesting pieces to discuss such issues is Michel Foucault’s essay “What is an Author?” In this piece, Foucault makes a great many comments that help to elucidate problems in today’s Dr. Phil. It is suggested that “today’s writing has freed itself from the dimension of expression,” that “the work, which once had the duty of providing immortality, now possesses the right to kill, to be it’s author’s murder” and that “we must locate the space left empty by the author’s disappearance.” In fact, Foucault focuses not on the author, but rather the author-function. The author-function is more than the realization of the act of writing—even a famous writer’s signed checks, grocery lists, and tic-tac-toe games are generally not authored. Instead “the author-function is…characteristic of the mode of existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses within a society.” The authorship doesn’t simply describe who wrote something, but how, when, and under what circumstances. As Foucault writes, “literary anonymity is not tolerable,” perhaps—as this episode shows—because readers and their societal discourses need someone to punish. Nonetheless, the author-function is a construction and the specifics are “only a projection…of the operations that we force texts to undergo, the connections that we make, the traits that we establish as pertinent, the continuities that we recognize, or the exclusions that we practice.” If it is so mind-blowingly incredible that a hypothetical statement could also be a confessional one, it is only because we (not he) find it so impossible and because we are actually operating within a self-structured discourse which aims at separating the two concepts both hermetically and hermeneutically. Such a perspective is only as interpretively necessary as we make it; in fact, one could easily turn around and say that the idea of a hypothetical confession is at the root of all fiction. If it was conclusively discovered that Shakespeare was a murderer (like so many of his most realistically written characters in works of stunning detail) would that in any way affect his work? Objectively, it doesn’t, only when viewed through the author-function does it matter in the least whether any writer is a real murderer or simply imagines. Foucault also points out that the author-function demands a “certain unity of writing—all differences have to be resolved.” Dr. Phil and the gang are clearly fulfilling that end of the function, but it also glazes over a more serious issue. After all, while it might have been from interviews, it was not actually O.J. Simpson who wrote the book. No, it was Fenjves. The discourses are not in a position to evaluate Fenjves, however, either as a murderer or an author. Therefore, he is pushed aside radically, left to talk about what is not in the book, explaining his interactions with the true author. In this sense it seems that what Dr. Phil really can’t comprehend is that “all discourses endowed with the author-function do possess this plurality of self.” The “I” that is talking in one sentence is never the same exact “I” that is in the next, nor does the pronoun mean the same thing as the viewer jumps through passages, between chapters, or across books or genres. In this way, there is little connection between the speaker, the writer, and the author. In short, Dr. Phil’s show provides an answer to Foucault’s final question that is very different from the one given by the author himself. The question is: “what difference does it make who is speaking?” Foucault leaves it up to the reader, whereas Phil is not shy about letting his audience know that it matters a great deal, especially when he’s the one speaking.

We "Other Genians"

The premise of today’s episode of Dr. Phil, if it is to be believed, is that last Friday’s episode was so controversial, so action packed, so mind-blowingly amazing, that it had to be extended to a second show. Thus we are again entertained (it is, after all, a daytime television show) by the racially motivated violence and bitter division among the inhabitants of the small Louisiana town of Gena. In honor of Louisiana’s French roots, I suggest we take shelter with the esteemed French post-structuralist, Michel Foucault. Let us consider a few thoughts from his essay “We ‘Other Victorians’”:

[I]f repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost: nothing less than a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions, an irruption of speech, a reinstating of pleasure within reality, and a whole new economy in the mechanisms of power will be required. For the least glimmer of truth is conditioned by politics (5).

This passage, from Foucault’s book The History of Sexuality does, of course, focus on sexuality, though it seems just as applicable to our study of race. The story of the Gena six and perhaps all racial conflict is the story of a corrupted and uneven politics of language. As evidence, we see that members of Gena’s African-American community refer to the hanging of the 3 nooses on the schoolyard tree as a “terrible hate crime” and the beating of the white student as “a school fight” while the white citizens represented on the Dr. Philippe show had the exact opposite view of the magnitude of each event. Systemically, there is no resort, of course, otherwise Dr. Phillippe would not need to be talking to these people and their would have been fair and equitable treatment for all parties. More importantly, though, there’s also no easy remedy in the philosophical discourse. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy’s entry for “race” is shorter than its entry for “comedy.” Tying and hanging a noose is surely less insidious (though more overt) than the real injustice: there’s no statute to prosecute the act under. It is obvious, further disturbing the situation, that the problem is not with Gena, but rather the entire culture. Indeed, the power behind society seems to, quite literally, quarantine and segregate such problems to the geographically remote “Other” which is no longer quantifiably associated—except that it is everywhere within it. Perhaps there is something latently teleological and dialectical about any binary—male and female, modern and postmodern, black and white—which does not only allows, but leads to the power struggle over linguistics and knowledge. Even by looking forward and claiming that compromises can be reached is only a matter of affirming the repression (The History of Sexuality 7). It is not enough to be weary of politics, the system, or society, one must also take a critical eye to the language and knowledge controlled under the hegemonic dominance of the aforementioned institutions. To watch Dr. Philippe is to actively take part in racism; then again, to not watch Dr. Philippe is also to engage actively in racism. In a Foucauldian universe, there is perhaps more benefit to all sitting down and admitting that we are each alike and united in our socially embedded, inescapable racism.