(Ben)Jamin' with Dr. Phil: part 2?

In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin asserts that “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” (Illuminations 220). Benjamin goes further, pointing out that reproduction through mechanical processes also removes itself from the original and places the subsequent copies “into situations which would be out of reach for the original.” (Ibid). In the case of Dr. Phil episodes, this is particularly true. Imagine a guest sitting down and watching the show they appeared on during a repeat, a year or so later. If symptoms and psychoses have intensified, it is easy to see how the patient would feel manipulated, abandoned, and like a failure. If the condition originally complained of has improved, it is likewise easy to comprehend how a repeat could retrigger or reshape a latent disorder. This is, of course, not exactly replicated when an average viewer watches a repeat, or a first-run example of mechanical reproduction. Benjamin is adamant, however, that this is as true for a spectator as it is for a participant. It is what he calls the “aura” withering, becoming alienated, and losing its uniqueness (222). While this idea has comprehensive implications for all arts and communicative media, Benjamin is focusing on film. Just as film loses ritualistic value and the ability to interact with an audience, Dr. Phil’s program—as compared to a heretofore non-existent live theatre version of Dr. Phil—is embroiled in difficulties since Dr. Phil is psychoanalyzing and performing, not for real live people, but to a camera. The audience, as Benjamin points out, is put in the position of the critic, identifying with the unseen cameraman, seeing Dr. Phil only through his mechanical, impersonal eyes (228). While Dr. Phil claims that his show aims to help viewers at home (particularly children) as much as he tries to help guests, this is of course impossible in a true psychoanalytical sense. Dr. Phil has the most powerful and oppressive bodyguard conceivable in the camera, taking away the audience’s freedom and preventing two-way communication. Benjamin describes a consequence by positing that “the aura that envelops the actor disappears, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.” (229). The mechanical reproduction inherent in the television industry seems to analogously extinguish the aura to the person, the real humanness, of Dr. Phil. What is left? According to Benjamin it is the “spell of the personality” and “the phony spell of a commodity.” (231). The difference between a person and a star has nothing to do with their ability to communicate artistically and everything to do with whether or not they are being filmed. Film’s salvation is that it changes the methods of participation in a way that has positive, as well as negative, effects. It can be personal in a new, mechanical way in the sense that it is perhaps better adapted than any artistic medium to “mobilize the masses.” (240). If the Dr. Phil show is unsuccessful, then, it may have less to do with the capabilities and disabilities that follow the camera, and more to do with the limits of psychoanalysis. Unless one is speaking of a mass psychosis, a public and communal therapy is useless by its very nature. Benjamin ends his essay with a rather curious epilogue. Thinking of the essay as a quarreling over semantics or an arcane argument about aesthetics is shown to be completely false. In fact, as Benjamin makes clear, what is at stakes is far more serious: fascism, modern society, and war. Benjamin (a Marxist, of course) has a simple solution: “politicizing art.” (242). Dr. Phil’s politics are about as personal and overt as is his contact with the television audience. Following Benjamin’s model, Dr. Phil’s vague and cautious political aesthetic—“children are important!” and “craziness is bad!”—is the perfect fodder for a war-mongering fascist. The only question remaining is whether the aggressive Fascist of the future is today’s Dr. Phil or the viewers of his enduring repeats.

Murder He Wrote

Today’s episode of Dr. Phil showed that, even with the ongoing writers’ strike, fiction and humor are far from extinct on the airwaves. Yesterday’s episode focused on Wade, who was brought to the Phil by Michelle, his wife. She had recently started to suspect that her husband was a compulsive liar and, as per usual, cheating on her. The standard schema of accusations, phil plashbacks, yelling, lie detector results, crying, and excuses resulted. No big surprises, until the last 5 minutes or so, where we learned that the next episode (today’s) would reveal how Wade admits not only to a long list of affairs and marital transgressions, but also multiple rapes and murders. Apparently, after the show, when heading back to Iowa (to get their divorce) Wade told Michelle that he had vague memories of raping his ex-wife and a co-worker, as well as a time where he picked up a hitchhiker who refused to have sexual intercourse, leading him to a violent outrage, murdering and dumping the woman’s body on the side of the road. Adding to the intrigue, the audience learns of restraining orders, fruitless FBI investigations, death threats, stalkings, and suicide attempts from basically all the parties involved except Phil. While adding a certain dimension of excitement, and, perhaps most importantly, providing reason to extend the show for 2 more days, it’s also extremely unbelievable. After all, as Dr. Phil actually made clear on the first show, Wade is a compulsive liar, fibbing about little inconsequential things and distorting big, important matters. Considering Wade’s modus operandi, it seems far more likely that this new story of murder is a different, albeit perhaps more intense and perverse, outlet for his persistently compulsive lying. The ethical complications, therefore, are not so apparent. One interesting authority to consult would be St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, particularly question 110, “the vices opposed to truth.” Aquinas writes of Wade’s condition, calling it “the lie which is told ‘out of mere lust of lying and deceiving.’ This proceeds from a habit, wherefore the Philosopher [Aristotle] says (Ethic. iv, 7) that ‘the liar, when he lies from habit, delights in lying.’” (article 2). Perhaps more importantly, in terms of ethical consequences, Aquinas argues that this type of lie has its “own measure of gravity without addition or diminution.” (article 2). Aquinas believes that lies, by their very nature are sinful and bad—though some are worse than others depending on the nature of the lie, its end, and its nature as a sin. The compulsive lie is only unique in that the nature (as a lie and sin) and end can provide neither mitigation nor further condemnation. This should call attention to Aquinas’ notion that all lies are intrinsically wrong. Why does he say this? Following Aristotle, and more directly Augustine, Aquinas justifies this claim by writing: “words are naturally signs of intellectual acts, it is unnatural and undue for anyone to signify by words something that is not in his mind.” (article 3). This is a startling discovery in the modern age and is a drastic contrast with any poststructuralist idea, since the latter philosophy is founded upon the concept that words do not (and can not) truthfully express intellectual ideas in a natural way. If we take poststructuralists’ model of language and signs as accurate, while simultaneously following Aquinas’ moral code as complete and true, then we are left with no choice but to conclude that all communication is a lie. This isn’t that difficult to imagine, especially considering today’s episode of Dr. Phil, where, in just 20 minutes we learned that Wade is a serial killer, Michelle enjoys cutting herself, and Dr. Phil kept huge secrets from his loyal fan-base. At the same time, these accusations must all be accompanied by words like: “potentially,” “appear,” or “according to…” Is everyone, including Dr. Phil, a liar? If we take Aquinas’ words literally—that it is “unnatural and undue for anyone to signify by words something that is not in his mind”—then the most innocent and well-meant thought-experiment, hypothetical, or act of subjective thinking could be construed as unethical whereas an objectively false accusation, if honestly believed, is completely moral and blameless. To deconstruct Aquinas and Phil side-by-side, it seems strange that, despite the Saintly one’s definition of lying, Summa Theologica is structurally supported by unconcealed lies. Aquinas offers many articles, containing questions, followed by several short objections, then his answers to them, plus concise and exact replies to each objection. Thus, each original objection is a hypothetical strawman for burning down, seeming to fit the philosopher’s own description of a lie. In a similar way, the Dr. Phil show exhibits a deeply rooted structural lie by attempting to focus on a “real” and “serious” problem—i.e. compulsive lying—only to completely disregard a problem when a more attractive (for ratings, revenue, etc.) interpretation comes along—i.e. the compulsive liar is telling the truth about being a serial killer. If, as on the Dr. Phil show, everyone’s a liar, then the act of lying honestly might become a question of aesthetics more than ethics.

Anorexic to Dr. Phil: "Bite me"

Today’s Dr. Phil show dealt with eating disorder, primarily anorexia and bulimia. I had expected it to be a particularly telling episode, especially from the previews, which showed Phil staring down an emaciated girl with the words “you are going to die...soon!” In fact, McGraw was far more reasonable and reasoned than normal. He went out of his way several times to say “it’s not as easy as saying: start eating,” and he did make several salient points. However, if there is one part of Phil’s logic and methods that needs to be addressed, surely it would be that he claims—in an apparent contradiction—that it is a problem that stems “from within” as well as being “driven by media images [and] media icons.” McGraw did not elaborate how such a relationship between the subject’s interior psyche could be related to a larger social consciousness, but luckily Freud did precisely this in his work Civilization and Its Discontents. Freud writes that “it was discovered that a person becomes neurotic because he [or she] cannot tolerate the amount of frustration which society imposes on him [or her] in the service of its cultural ideals.” (39). Considering only this idea, one could imagine how any or all of the four guests on the show could have become anorexic or bulimic because of society’s imposed cultural ideas. However, the fact that Freud writes “cannot tolerate” clouds the situation. The standard explanation of anorexia, incorporating Freud’s vocabulary when possible, would be: the subject feels society imposing the cultural ideal of skinniness, health consciousness, and so on, causing them to try and fulfill the objective to the extreme. But that is no longer Freud’s model. To him, psychosis arises not from the wish to fanatically fulfill society’s imposed ideals, but rather from the subject’s inability or unwillingness to tolerate such ideals. It would be more in line with Freud to say that these guests are, in fact, not enthralled by the media’s glamorous portrayal of youth, beauty, and tiny figures. Instead, from the very beginning of their psychosis, they found these images and ideals to be quite disgusting and deplorable. It was exactly this desire to not tolerate, to rebel, which drove them to the extreme, just so that they could prove to themselves, to their families and friends, to Dr. Phil, and to the whole world that the ideal is an extremely dangerous and perverse one. Engrained within their psychosis is a realization that Freud already understood, but Dr. Phil and the mainstream media are understandably reluctant to make: “this useless thing which we expect civilization to value is beauty.” (45). Dr. Phil can blame Nicole Ritchie and the media which fetishizes small sizes but, as Freud understands, that is simply a confined, contemporary manifestation of the problem and not the problem itself. As he writes: “the urge for freedom…is directed against particular forms and demands of civilization or against civilization altogether.” (49). Today’s guest, then, are obsessed and drawn into the values and images of the media at the exact symbolic location of their rebellious psychosis. Specific cultural values have always, and will always, continue to change, but the individual’s great need to “defend his [or her] claim to individual liberty against the will of the group” is an innate and unstoppable force and one which, not surprisingly, Dr. Phil cannot understand or articulate.