What do our Movies Say about Us?

When archeologists dig up an old culture, they are able to better understand that culture by the kind of art it produced. The most notable art America has produced, arguably, is its movies. Movies began to be mass produced primarily in America, beginning with the silent era of the early 1900s. Hollywood became not only the center of American film, but the center of world movie production. What will our movies tell future archeologists about our culture?

If archeologists were to take a sampling of the movies that are being produced at the moment, what they would mostly find are escape themes.  Of 25 mainstream American movies to be released in December of 2013, nine are comedies and six are adventures. There are also two musicals, two cartoon fantasies, a western, a disaster movie, and a documentary. The other three are dramas.

In other words, 22 out of 26 December American-made movies contain escape themes. Typical of these movies are The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, a fantasy about dwarves, dragons, wolves and other creatures;  This is 40, a comedy trivializes a married couple's trials and tribulations with middle age; The Impossible, a disaster thriller about a family on vacation in Thailand when the tsunami hits; and Les Miserables, a movie version of the long-running Broadway musical confection.

Nor did the four dramas that were scheduled for release in December appear to delve very deeply into the human condition from a psychological standpoint.  On the Road, based on the novel by Jack Kerouac, though billed as a drama, is more a quirky adventure of a group of hippies on a road trip in the 1960s. Any Day Now is based on a true story of gay couple and their troubles trying to adopt a child with Down syndrome. While the theme is laudable, it appears to be more soap opera than drama. Only one drama, Flying Lessons, about a young woman coming home to confront friends and family she had left behind, seems to attempt to look objectively and realistically at life in America right now.

If you took a sampling of the entire year of movies for 2012, I suspect the breakdown would be somewhat the same. You would find a predominant number of thrillers, comedies, adventures, fantasies and other escape themes. Among them are stories about men who can fly, who can slink from wall to wall like a spider, who have the resources of a bat are who wear a steel suit that makes them super powerful. And the people who watch such movies are not children, they are primarily adults.

Shakespeare, who is regarded by many if not most experts to be the greatest writer who ever lived, noted that a writer should "hold the mirror to nature." But it appears that those responsible for making our movies-Hollywood's screenwriters, directors and producers-are not interested in holding a mirror to nature, unless it is a distorted mirror.

What they are interested in is producing movies that make the most money. And apparently escape movies make the most money and are the ones that people most want to see. The four highest grossing movies of 2012 are all thrillers and adventures: Marvel's The Adventurers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, The Amazing-Spider Man.

So what does all this say about us? We are apparently a culture that is no longer interested in producing or watching movies that portray realistic themes. We do not value movies that probe the human psyche. Realism seems to be out. Fantasy is in. The more fantastic the story, the bigger the screen, the louder the sound, the better audiences seem to like it.

Likewise films that explore the psychology of their characters are not popular as they once were.  In the 1950s and 1960s films like A Streetcar Named Desire, based on the play by Tennessee Williams, won numerous Oscars and also made money.  If anybody wrote a script like that now, it would be dismissed as sexist and would never find a producer.  We have become a culture that avoids psychology and truth and realism, out of a fear it may put off the audience.

"So what's so good about realism?" we might ask Shakespeare if he were sitting in front of us. "Why hold the mirror to nature?" And I imagine he would reply, "Only by looking objectively at ourselves can we be true others and live a healthy life."

An individual that avoids reality and lives in fantasy is not a healthy individual. And a culture that lives in fantasy and avoids reality is likewise not a healthy culture.

Perhaps that is what future archeologists will say about us.

Why do so Many of Today’s Pop Songs Decry Love?

Pop songs of the 1950s featured primarily male singers and their songs generally extolled the glories of love. Of the top 100 songs from 1950 to 1959, only four were by female singers: Ruth Brown, Patti Page, Mary Ford and Faye Adams.

A hit song of 1951, "Glory of Love," was epitomized by the line, "As long as there's the two of us, we've got the world and all its charms."  Ray Charles in "I've Got a Woman," sings of a woman across town who loves him. "She saves her lovin' just for me, oh she loves me so tenderly. I got a woman way over town that's good to me, oh yeah."  In "Good Golly Miss Molly," Little Richard croons about a girl who is rocking and rolling and inspires him to marry her. "I'm going to the corner; gonna buy a diamond ring."

Of course there were occasional songs of unrequited love, such as "Hound Dog," by Elvis Presley, with its famous line, "You ain't nothing but a hound dog, crying all the time." However, for the most part the songs of the fifties expressed positive feelings, and if they contained negative feelings they were more likely to be regretful or humorous rather than hateful.

In contrast, women dominate the top ten in the 2000s, and most of their songs focus on the men who love them and disappoint them.  Katy Perry, one of the top-selling singers of all time (she had five number-one hits in her album, "Teenage Dream," tying Michael Jackson's earlier feat) almost always decries the regrets and hurts in the area of romance.  In her most recent song, "Wide Awake," she sings of having awakened from a relationship in which she had naively allowed herself to fall in love with a man who shattered her. "I'm wide awake, yeah, I am born again, out of the lion's den."

Taylor Swift, another top-selling singer of the 2000s, winner of the Grammy for the Album of the Year in 2010, among many other awards, is famous for songs about ex-boyfriends. Her most recent album contains a song about a boyfriend who puts her down, cheats , lies and drives her crazy. "I'm never ever ever getting back together!" she exclaims throughout the song.

Lady Gaga sprang to prominence on the basis of a slew of songs proclaiming the toxicity of romance and of men.  In the music video of "Telephone," she goes around killing off men and refusing to answer her telephone calls from her ex.  In "Bad Romance," she sighs, "I want your ugly, I want your disease." Rather than extolling the glories of love, her songs bemoan the pathology of love and the joys of revenge.

Pop songs tell us about the values of the times.  In the 1950s, male singers were adulated and what those males valued were good relationships with women. "The Glories of Love," noted that in love "You have to cry a little, laugh a little," emphasizing the give-and-take of healthy relationships. Most of the pop songs today are by women, and most of their songs seem to value dumping men, who are seen as cheaters, liars, and abusers. 

The emphasis today is not on making relationships work, but on leaving them the minute they don't work. Bad relations have become the norm, not just among pop singers but also among their fans. The current pop songs reflect the values that are borne out by statistics. For example, the U.S. leads the world in divorce rate; here 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. Generally first marriages end in divorce, indicating that young people go into the marriages without a clue about how relationships work. It is generally women nowadays who initiate divorce, and current values that that make men culpable for problems in relationships seem to encourage them to do so.

Pop songs clearly indicate that today's young people are finding relationships difficult.  In the songs mentioned above, the female singers almost entirely blame men for their problems in relationships. There is no semblance of any kind of self-objectivity. It is always easier to blame others for our failures than to look at ourselves. And the male singers are no different.  Bruno Mars, one of the top male singers today, in his song, "I'd Catch a Grenade for You," calls out an ex: "Oh, take, take, take it all, but you never give."

Relationships are difficult because they require people to be in touch with their own feelings and to be able to empathize with the feelings of others. If we aren't in touch with how we are occasionally uncaring to others, we won't be able to understand those who are uncaring to us.

Does this mean that the people of the 1950s had better values than the people of today? In some ways they did and some ways they didn't. The values that encouraged male singers but not female were of course not healthy. But the values that spoke about the ups and downs of relationships and the importance of being willing to work on them were very healthy.

The songs we sing are the products of the feelings we feel. I suggest we pay more attention to what we are feeling than what we are singing.

Why Kill Your Beautiful and Loving Teacher?

When I saw the picture of Colleen Ritzer in November, 2013, like almost everybody else in America, I was stunned. Smiling out from the picture was a 24-year-old woman whose warmth and humanity was apparent, and whose physical beauty shined because of it. And, like almost everybody else, I wondered why.
Why would someone want to kill their pretty, loving teacher?

"To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." This was a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that Ritzer posted on her Facebook page. This quote seems to say a lot about her.

"She was energetic and compassionate," fellow teacher at the Danvers High School in Massachusetts Charlotte Dzerkacz said. "You couldn't ask for anything more from a teacher or a friend. She cared about every single student and put in many hours after school every day, always thinking about how she could be better and better help students. She was truly a beautiful person. She was "a dynamic and brilliant ray of light," according to the school district's statement. "Colleen Ritzer was everything one could ask for in a teacher -- dedicated, passionate and invested in her students. Our entire community will feel this loss for many years to come."

It is one of those seemingly incomprehensible happenings. How could a 14-year-old student, Philip Chism, murder a person who was almost universally loved? How could he kill the very math teacher who may have taken more of an interest in him at this small Massachusetts school than anybody ever had?  Is this a case of "biting the hand that feeds you?"

Philip Chism’s parents, Diana and Stacy Chism filed for divorce in 2001, three years after being married. He was just 2. The divorce agreement limited Stacy Chism's time with the children due to "physical abuse, sexual abuse, or a pattern of emotional abuse." The decree also asserted the father was guilty of adultery and "such cruel and inhuman treatment or conduct towards the spouse as renders cohabitation unsafe and improper."

At an early age, Philip and his older sister were forced to move, first from Florida to Tennessee, then to Massachusetts. Friends in Clarksville, Tennessee noticed that the boy was quiet and only spoke to people when he was spoken to. "It's kinda like an aura around a person," said Marcus Evans, 19, who lived in his neighborhood. "He didn't like moving a lot . . . family problems may have gotten to him."

As a psychoanalyst, I have experienced how traumatic family discord and instability can be for a child. I have also seen what happens when parents separate and the mother is the victim of domestic abuse, as the divorce decree of Diana Chism contends. Often times when a mother is angry at the father and the father leaves, that anger is taken out on her son. The son at such times needs love and reassurance from both the mother and the father, but he gets just the opposite. The father is hostile and distant, and the mother sometimes treats the son as if he is a miniature version of his father. That is, she treats the son as if he, like his father, is a potential abuser. Sometimes such treatment can end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.

 A report in the New York Post stated that the Danvers police were exploring a theory that young Chism had romantic ideas toward Colleen Ritzer. "One of the theories going around is that this boy had a major crush on Colleen," a police source noted about suspect Philip Chism. "She was a very friendly, approachable teacher and it is possible he completely misread her affable nature and made some kind of advance towards her," the source told the paper. This theory seems plausible to me. And probably the police developed this theory because of what he told them during their interrogation, which has not been revealed to the public.

I would further speculate that she, being a very empathic person, was drawn to this moody, quiet boy and wanted to be of help to him. She was a dedicated teacher who seemed to love the challenges of teaching. This was a boy who was unused to anybody paying attention to his feelings. He was a boy who had probably become enraged by parents who were angry and neglectful, parents who probably did not have the time or inclination to notice what was happening to him, since they were too absorbed in their own difficulties. The cruel things that can happen inside of families are never visible to the people around them.

When Collen Ritzer reached out in a loving way toward Philip Chism, it most likely did not provoke love, because he had apparently never known love. It provoked the hatred that comes from not having known love, and the jealousy one feels toward a person such as Ritzer, who has known much love and is so obviously happy with herself and able to give of herself. The police theorized that Philip may have reacted in a teen-aged, sexualized way to Ritzer's loving attempt to help him. However, when he followed his teacher into the women’s bathroom, his actions appear to have been planned. He had come to school with a box cutter, mask, gloves and a change of clothes. After he punched her and slit her throat, he rolled her to the woods in a recycling bin, pulled off her panties, and molested her with a three-foot stick.

The rage that came out was undoubtedly directed at the wrong person. It had probably been engendered by his mother, father, older sister or by the generally traumatic situation of his childhood. In psychoanalysis we call this a transferential reversal. He treated the eager and naïve young teacher the way his father or mother had most likely treated him when he was a tender young boy. In my therapy work I have found this to happen more than people realize. Nobody realizes how much rage a boy may have inside him until it unexpectedly explodes one day.

And so one of the most beautiful human beings who ever lived was extinguished on a sunny afternoon in Danvers, Massachusetts. It seems as if it is always the kind-hearted person who takes the fall for life's miseries.