The Psychology of Conferencing

Every now and again, my life permits me some undeserved and unexpected joy. On my current trip to the Banff Television Festival (tagging along with someone who is actually attending - whoo! free press hotel room!) I had the pleasure of sharing a scotch with the Canadian correspondent for a famous hollywood-type newspaper. Mr. V is possibly the only person in my three years of hanging around this conference that hasn't made me want to grab them and demand to know how they can stand to live with themselves. Trust me... this is high praise for someone in the entertainment industry.

But Mr. V was much more than tolerable. He was pure delight of discourse -- someone born outside the Matrix of fake boobs, iPhone addictions, and $20 martinis. While most of the industry people my husband has introduced me to can barely sustain eye-contact with me once they realize that I have no power to grant them fame or fortune, Mr. V actually TURNED OFF THE RINGER of his crackberry when I told him that I was studying to become a clinical psychologist. He wanted to know how psych conferences compare to the gaudy showiness of entertainment networking... Here are some interesting comparisons:

1. Mr. V noted that beautiful young people often want to talk to him, and while this makes him feel good, he understand that they want to talk to his magazine, not necessarily to him personally. I have noticed that at conferences, I want to talk to professors/doctors who are "famous" or with whom I share a research interest. They rarely want to talk back. Unless of course I happen to let slip who my graduate supervisor is... then they are all ears.

2. Apparently, there are as many ways of "doing TV" as there are TV professionals. Despite the stench of gin and desperation, there seems to be agreement here that no one really knows what they are doing or why anything really works. Why is Wheel of Fortune a 3-hour long daily show with bellydancers in Turkey? Why do people cry when the get money on Dragon's Den in Japan, but the show never got picked up in the USA? Why, although Paul Gottlieb Nipkow has the first patent on a television-like contraption, can no one agree on who actually invented the darn thing? Despite the fickleness of our eyeballs and money, these conference goers all seem reletively at-ease with the ambivelence that pervades this industry. They make peace with it and still try to make and sell entertainment. However, in psychology, Freud is generally credited with bringing the science into the world, many psychologists hate and despise the man to whom the owe their livelihoods. But much worse, psychology proclaims to be a science, while all the while, scientists cannot agree on what seems like a damn thing. Psychologists proclaim that their research base, their theory, their mode of therapy is the key, the ANSWER... that they KNOW HOW TO DO IT! As a profession, psychologists are very bad at admitting what they don't know. Hmm... the only exception I can think of to this might be the rare breed of psychodynamicist who doesn't have a pickle lodged firmly up their rectum. So far in my short graduate career, I've been told by countless professors that "CBT is the only thing that works for depression," or "people with Borderline Personality Disorder are a hopeless bunch that will never improve and can only be managed," or "anti-depressants should never be given to children under 16." Psychologists proclaim their hypotheses as if they are truths with more conviction than lawyers. The one wonderful exception that I have encountered to this phenomenon lies within Dr. Art Caspary, who told me quite plainly, "If anyone ever tells you that they've got the answer to anything in this business, call horseshit and run out of the room!" TV people seem to know that they don't know anything and freely admit it, while it's questionable how many psychologists either know this or are willing to admit it.

3. TV people tend to be narcissists, psychologists tend to have god-complexes. Both are overrepresented on the addictions front.

After some delightful and witty banter, I eventually got around to posing a question that I always like to ask TV/movie people: Do you know of anyone in this industry who is using their power for good? Honestly, with the exception of Jim Henson bringing on Sesame Street, and a handful of educational/documentary shows, I really can't think of anyone who uses media exclusively to do good in the world. Movies and fashion prey on our insecurities and young people in particular tend to internalize their values in ways that leave them open to psychological and relational problems. Documentary makers take advantage of editing to further their politics and take advantage of people with alzhiemers to make them look like one-dimensional idiots (I'm looking at you, Michael Moore!). Even Sesame Street, the most psychologically researched TV show in history pepper their developmentally sound educational bits with advertisements for the latest diabetes-inducing cereal. After my rant, I think that Mr. V is going to need counselling. He concedes that no, no one is doing anything that is actually GOOD. Well, maybe a few people in Northern Canada or Sweden.

And then he brings out the spinach metaphor. It's true that no one is really doing anything good for us on television. But then why, he remarks, are we watching television in order to get our spinach? Why don't we just go eat some spinach?

Touche.

Mr. V freely admits that he doesn't have children, and that if he did, he would probably have a harder time justifying the monster from which he makes his living. It's remarkable that as a television writer, he actually watches very little of the box himself. "Are you kidding?" he says, "If I watched this stuff, I wouldn't be able to actually talk to the people who make it. And I have to talk to them to do my job!" Perhaps this is the most delightful difference between Mr. V and the Louis Vutton wearing lackies that surround him: he does his job to live, he doesn't live to do this job. He has perspective. And while I cannot shake the feeling that everyone in this industry might as well be working for a tabacco company, and he thinks that William Shatner actually deserves to be famous, we can share a knowing wink and understanding.

Everyone here is crazy but us.