Narc, Narc, Narcing on Heaven's Door

A&E’s “Intervention” is, according to their website, “a powerful and gripping television series in which people confront their darkest demons and seek a route to redemption. The Intervention Television series profiles people whose dependencies on drugs and alcohol or other compulsive behavior has brought them to a point of personal crisis and estranged them from their friends and loved ones.”

Notice the religious language of this summary’s first line, intentional or accidental. Us Westerners, especially Americans born of the Christian tradition, tend to dramatize our existence, preferring epic struggle where personal anecdote would suffice. Ever since the Puritans (John Winthrop’s “Citty on a hill”), Ben Franklin (his “bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection”), and Walt Whitman (who “celebrated himself”), each canonizing a new form of American Exceptionalism, we have inserted our idiosyncrasies into a hazy, continuous narrative bound for some glorious destiny. We print “In God We Trust” on our currency in hopes of avoiding an economic crisis (don’t worry - Heaven called; they’re doing everything they can).

We think alcoholism, for another example, is not only the product of an excessive or idle lifestyle, but a lost battle with a Dark Angel, yea, one of Lucifer’s personal minions (!), who keeps us in sadistic bondage to spite the Lord. It is no coincidence that most recovering/recovered substance-abusers also find religion critical to their rebirth (baptism?) into sobriety and survival. We are hard-wired with Melodrama, eager to be heroes, but willing to be villains, if only we can play some role. To be alone, to struggle anonymously for survival, is a black depression, a vacuous coil constricting our airways. As the drug addict continues to hurt his/her self, maybe their best motivation is the false impression that no one is watching, no one is even there to validate their own self-loathing. Drugs block their users’ perceptions in that way. Drugs sever users from their most important relations, and finally isolate them in pure Duality: you are high, or you are desperate to become high – no other voice allowed, not even your own, which is already in use against you. The Duality even functions in recovered users: you are no longer high and doing the Devil's work, but sober and at peace with God.

One reason “Intervention” is an interesting show is that it exposes the addict in that lonely state, making his or her private deterioration impossibly public. One critic may say:

“I think the show is exhibitionist. While I feel compassion for victims of addiction (I was once married to an alcoholic), I don't think the show is designed to get victims of drugs off drugs. I think it's designed to entertain those who aren't drug addicts and who have a morbid curiosity about those who are. Maybe there is some value in showing how family members rally around the victim and bring them to health, but I don't know. It's TV, it's concerned with ratings, and it shows what sells, not what heals.

Plus, addicts seem to me to be pretty much alike . . . one addict's story is very much like another addict's story. There might be different personalities involved, but their modus operandi is always nearly identical: nothing gets between them and their drug of choice. Until a family member says, "enough." That's the plot, and it's played out with slight variation in every episode.”

Yes, TV shows are always geared towards ratings and thus not fundamentally made for genuine education or benefit. There is a serious trend in the last decade of TV toward "reality," or, as I prefer to say, "non-fiction" shows, which was partially popularized by the show "Cops." That trend adds a new element of interaction between the show and the viewer. We are granted access to the personal lives of real people like us (and not Brad Pitt), whose stories are neatly broken down, packaged, and sold to us. They are not humans, but characters who can only play the part of themselves. By nature, exhibitionist TV has to one-dimensionalize people in this way, and the audience is caught rubber-necking.

In his famous essay about the porn industry in the US, David Foster Wallace interviewed a porn-fan who said he watches it for that seminal moment (pun intended) when the actors achieve climax and involuntary drop their "mask,” showing their genuine, orgasmic facial expressions. Put simply, he sees their defenseless sides, and he feels a little less lonely for a moment. Non-fiction TV must be closely related to that porn phenomenon.

So is there any way to justify our addiction to watching addicts? Probably only if you accept that all TV non-fiction lacks a certain moral foundation.

I read recently that up until 2007, there were around 18 million Americans with substance abuse problems. I would bet most of them have access to a TV, along with those closest to them. More than pure entertainment for non drug-users, Intervention may be a legitimate source of reassurance to many people that something can be done about addiction. If there are around 300 million Americans, of which 6% are getting high in various ways, we have to assume at least 20% of America is affected in some way by drug use. "Intervention" is a way of addressing the white elephant (or white powder?) sitting in the living room of America. If addiction is such a big problem in our country, and TV is the largest and quickest source of distributing information, what better than an A&E series to increase not only the awareness of the problem, but to offer an example about what can be done? Subsequently, if a significant percentage of the show’s participants get clean and stay clean (and then get famous for it, and then in some cases start working in rehabilitation centers), is the show not ultimately contributing positively?

As much as an exhibitionist TV show can, anyway, given that it panders to a nation full of morally-exhausted TV-junkies.