I love my readers because their level of brilliance never ceases to impress me. They keep coming up with really striking insights. See, for instance, blogger Z’s contribution to our recent discussion of the marketing strategies employed to dupe people into endless consumption of psychotropic drugs:
The narrative of revelation, how after the drug they had their first normal day ever, is taught. It fits the Christian conservative “I have been saved” narrative very well and it kind of sticks.
You don’t have to be actively religious to respond to this message. All you need is to have grown in an environment where the narrative of salvation is wide-spread. I didn’t recognize this message because I didn’t grow up in such an environment but Z saw it for what it is. And as we all know, nothing is more convincing than the familiar.
So the pharmaceutical companies have managed to create marketing campaigns that tap into the following major narratives:
1. The Christian narrative of revelation and salvation;
2. The essentialist narrative of being wired a certain way and having an inescapable biological way of existence that conditions one’s every action;
3. The progressive narrative of tolerance and inclusion where any identity (including the badly wired one) has to be celebrated unquestioningly.
Remember that good marketing campaigns do not try to manufacture needs. They identify the existing ones and tap into them. Anti-depressants do not cure depression but consumers don’t care because it isn’t the relief from depression they are trying to buy. It’s one (or two, or three) of the identity-building narratives listed above that they are purchasing. This is why they get so distraught and angry when you suggest that the pills are useless and even dangerous: they feel like you want to undermine one (or two, or three) pillars of their identity.
Clarissa's Blog 
Paraphrasing from Douglas Rushdoff
First, find out what the customer wants*
Then, turn whatever you have as a product into that.
*not the need for the product but some unmet psychological need
AFAICT all professional sales are based on this. It’s also one of the approximately 456,890,261 reasons I would starve if I had to work as a salesman
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What is really curious is that I, who knows nothing about marketing and would perish in sales much faster than you, have been saying precisely this – that marketing taps into the existing needs instead of creating new ones – and people have reacted with scorn and derision.
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I don’t think you can say that anymore Clarissa! Your blog is a living proof of the contrary!
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My blog is proof that I can tap into existing needs, you mean? This makes me sound devious. I like that. 🙂 🙂
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People need to know they’re not alone, that their ideas are also shared by others. They need a place to share their voice and be listened to. Your Blog is that place and for that you’re the popular woman you always wanted to be!
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Last night I watched Silver Linings Playbook. The two main characters, a man and woman, who meet in the course of the movie both have psychological problems and are full of pain and grief. For the first 1/2 or so of the movie, the filmmakers actually seem to handle the story with care: the characters have their daily ups and downs, are connecting and fighting, their families have deeply problematic dynamics, and both of them are resistant to taking pills, as pills they’d taken before had merely fogged their minds.
Then comes the last 1/2 of the movie. By that point it appears that one of the characters (the man) has started taking pills and nothing further is said about it. The whole tone of the movie shifts abruptly to that of a light romance, a romantic comedy. The man’s father has a gambling problem and puts pressure on his son to be his good luck charm as he gambles the family’s savings on football games; instead of this being treated as the problem it is, the gambling becomes a cheerful part of the contrived cinematic climax, where all the characters win what they want to win, and the man then sweeps the woman off her feet.
I don’t care one way or another about happy vs. sad endings – all I care about is whether the ending is true to the characters. They could have had a hopeful or bright ending in an honest way; instead the filmmakers wanted to wrap everything up neatly. Some contrived acts of romance (and perhaps some pill-popping) save the day. Oh, and let’s not forget the mental health mantras tossed out throughout the movie.
And this movie was praised to the skies by critics and nominated for an Academy Award.
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This is the kind of movie I hate the most. When there is no internal consistency, I feel completely confused and duped as a spectator.
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I think you had too great expectations. The movie is fine as a comedy and not if you’re expecting a Shakespeare drama that you can discuss on afterwards. If you had a laugh when you watched it, that was it! I had one, and you know I love dramas a la Francaise!
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No… I wasn’t expecting Shakespeare and greatness (I rarely believe in hype that surrounds movies). And I enjoy light comedies too, if they’re actually funny. But this had such a jarring inconsistency in tone; any expectations I had of the movie came from the movie itself. First it seemed like it would be drama with some dark comedic elements, then it turned into a series of rom-com cliches that were a disservice to the characters but might please people who want a generic happy ending (Mental Illness Lite). It also wasn’t that funny either.
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So they actually want the depressed (or whatever) identity. Hmmm… I wonder then, is this the reason I came into conflict with psychotherapy, did not want what it expected me to want.
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They want AN identity. And this one is very respectable, allows for very flamboyant self-manifestation, attracts a lot of attention, and requires very little effort. So why not?
” I wonder then, is this the reason I came into conflict with psychotherapy, did not want what it expected me to want.”
– I’m guessing you already had an identity and didn’t want it substituted with anything created for you by others. This is just my guess, of course.
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Yes. The whole Reeducation crisis I had seems to have been an identity crisis. And brought on from the outside.
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The movie is fine as a movie that depicts life from both the humorous and tragic aspects of mental illness. As a person who has family dynamics that at certain times matched the tone of the film, I thought they did a pretty good job with it. I don’t think they wrapped up anything other than the fact they won something at the end. As we all know, life goes on after that.
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It started out as a movie that did a good job depicting the more humorous and tragic aspects of mental illness. But the second half of the movie didn’t live up to that by a long shot.
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hkatz
Fictional entertainment, not documentary. I think people who have mental illness in their families can make the distinction. Its all perspective though, we thought it was pretty good overall, you obviously didn’t.
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@titfortat: “Fictional entertainment, not documentary.”
Yeah I know. And it failed as fictional entertainment for me; I even explained how.
I also think the interpretation has nothing to do with the presence or absence of mental illness in one’s family. Believe me, I know.
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“3. The progressive narrative of tolerance and inclusion where any identity (including the badly wired one) has to be celebrated unquestioningly.”— this one is also linked to philosophical idealism — the idea that we are able to removed from our bodies and live out our lives in transcendence of them. Thus certain unfortunate, incohesive states of mind can be viewed as requiring “a radical ontology”, as if what had been required is a simple relabeling of the negative into something interesting. But what if nonetheless the person goes on suffering?
Philosophical idealism is, unfortunately appealing to the intelligentsia. As an extreme example, Mike once told me of this genius-level woman he met at Stanford. “She went on to become a breatharian,” he told me. She believed she could live purely on air.
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At least 80% of TV ads for prescription drugs depict at least one dog. People find the image of a dog comforting. One especially irresponsible use of a dog is in an antidepressant commercial, the bored dog (looks like a Weimarener), tennis ball in mouth, human companion nowhere in sight, implies untreated depression is a non-victimless crime…as if “hurts” in the slogan “depression hurts” is a transitive verb…
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I never noticed the dogs because I hate them, but you are totally right. “Take a pill, so your dog won’t be sad.” Scary shit.
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