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Script(ing) treatment: representations of recovery from addiction in Hollywood film.

Article Excerpt
Addiction and recovery have been topics of Hollywood films and movies of the week and are increasingly integrated into mainstream television shows through the inclusion of addicted characters. Now the producers of reality shows have entered the field with the new American television show Intervention, on the A&E channel. Intervention follows addicts (broadly defined to include substance abuse, as well as shopping and other addictive behaviors) through the progression of their addiction, and then confronts them with a choice between treatment or expulsion from the lives of their loved ones. Although there are myriad possible moral and clinical objections to such a show, Intervention seems to be the next step in a growing wave of media products using addiction and recovery as plot devices. Several recent American television shows, such as The Sopranos, Dawson's Creek, and Law and Order, include central characters seeking recovery from substance abuse through clinical treatment and support groups. Although new to the small screen, such television story lines tap into a narrative about institutional treatment that has been developing in Hollywood for the past several decades.

Addiction has appeared on the movie screen since Edison's earliest films (Starks, 1982); however, the now familiar images of modem institutional treatment did not appear until the late 1980s. After a decade of American cultural backlash against addicts and drug treatment during the years of the Reagan administration, public opinion seemed to shift throughout the 1990s toward encouraging people with substance-abuse problems to get help (White, 1998). Since that time, Hollywood has released several works with narratives focused on institutional treatment of addiction. Through their representations of addicts, substance abuse, treatment centers and the experience of recovery, these films help construct for their audiences a common cultural understanding of addiction. They can be viewed as a discourse in a Foucaultian sense--creating meaning and marking off the boundaries of how filmgoers should view and understand treatment.

The representation of drug treatment in America can affect society in several ways, including stigmatization. Elizabeth Hirschman (1992), in her study of cocaine use in films, argues that "motion pictures which focus upon addiction can serve as instructive, semiotically-rich texts for communicating cultural knowledge about addiction" (p. 428). This communication is not simply one-way, though; it exists as a continual feedback loop, with movies "both reflect[ing] and shape[ing] individual and societal values, attitudes, and behavior" (Wedding, 2000, p. 3). Thus representations from cinema can become received knowledge, which is incorporated into societal views. These shifts may then be mirrored and reinforced in subsequent movies. Obviously, films are no "magic bullet" with the power to instantly change public perceptions and beliefs; however, as a part of the culture industry, Hollywood does participate in teaching us about ourselves.

Films can speak to society as a whole, but they can also be instructive for individual groups. Previous research found that movies featuring substance abuse provide a strong point of identification for addicts (Hirschman & McGriff, 1995; Lalander, 2002). Films are part of a learning process about addiction, and the movie screen might be one of the few places where addicts can see their filmic counterparts receiving help.

This study compares the depicted reality the films present to audiences with previous addiction cinema and with real-world economic and cultural conditions. Since films privilege certain viewpoints through representational strategies and by leaving out alternatives, I also examine the ideologies of the films and issues of textual silence. The study offers a critique of these issues in the spirit of other well-known ideological film studies, such as Ryan and Kellner's (1988) Camera Politica.

In this article, I conduct a critical discourse/ideological analysis of the three major Hollywood films released since the 1980s that feature treatment as a major part of their narratives. After researching literature on addiction and film, I chose the films for the study and viewed each one many times, specifically looking for socioeconomic representations of characters, treatment of different races, sexes, and sexual preferences, methods of production as they relate to addicted characters and drug usage, and the depiction of treatment/ self-help groups. I then outlined the narrative of each film and compared the uses and meanings brought to addicts, addiction, and substances. I found that these movies construct a fairly unified image of treatment. In the films, 12-step-based substance abuse treatment is readily available to middle-class, non-minority addicts. The economic realities of treatment are ignored, as are alternative paths to recovery. Minority addicts are similarly disregarded or stereotyped.

Previous treatment film research

During the late 1970s, some film scholars and researchers involved in social, scientific and medical research of alcoholism began studying the ideological implications of alcohol and alcoholics in film. A 1978 conference sponsored by the British Film Institute generated several papers about the representation of movie alcoholics, including the only study devoted to examining the depiction of treatment. In his paper, Bruce Ritson (1979) writes: "If I were worried that I was becoming an alcoholic and decided to seek help on the basis of the films about alcoholism which I had seen, I would know that I must avoid hospital[s] at all costs" (p. 51). He discusses how most movies ignore treatment altogether, but those that do, feature "a blur of needles, burly attendants, locked doors and terrifying screams" (p. 51). No further research on treatment depictions in film has been published since that time.

When combined with the more general literature on addiction in films, Ritson's analysis provides a good starting point to question whether certain ideologies continue to appear in substance-abuse cinema, and how recent treatment films rework older concepts. Much of this previous research specifically centered on alcoholism; however, modern treatment facilities and psychiatric models tend to focus less on particular substances and group them all under the heading "addiction" (White, 1998). I adopt the same language and use "addiction" in place of substance-specific terms.

Treatment films

Although many Hollywood films include depictions of addicts and addiction, only three recent movies have devoted considerable screen time to depicting substance-abuse treatment: Clean and Sober (1989), When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) and 28 Days (2000). The structure and plot of these films share a common debt to earlier movies about alcoholism. Denzin (1991) has labeled the mid-1940s to early 1960s the "classic" period of Hollywood alcoholism films. Bracketed by The Lost Weekend (1945) and Days of Wine and Roses (1962), this era also corresponds to the height of the social-realism movement. Social-problem films fell out of favor in Hollywood, but they found a home with the oft-maligned "made for TV" movie during the 1970s and 1980s. Although alcohol continued to appear in major film releases, "excessive drinking was not automatically connected to the problems that appeared in drinkers' lives" (p. 129). Addiction was no longer the focus, merely a subplot. The only major American motion pictures addressing substance abuse during the 1970s were either comedies, such as Cheech and Chong vehicles, or biographical stories like Lady Sings the Blues (1972).

The 1980s signaled a return to the representation of addiction within a social-realist framework with Clean and Sober. The film follows an addict from drug abuse to treatment and back into society, with over half of the film occurring within a treatment facility. Since the release of Clean and Sober, many other movies have included characters entering treatment, trying to quit using, or seeking out self-help...