Analysis of groups through the lens of subcultural studies can give a new and helpful perspective to our reading of the world. Investigating the ways in which groups function within a society as a whole allows us to see the roots of the groups we study. From Rastafarians to punks, beats to hippies, rockers to mods, all things sprout from similar soil. One group has aspects that a number of people find more attractive to their worldview than another group; they branch off and form their own group. The dominant society does not offer the room for individual expressions or political stances; a subculture is formed. Regardless of the school of thought that is used to approach a subculture, simply recognizing and viewing that group through the sensitive eyes of a subcultural analysis can benefit any reading.
A group that exists within the larger society that has not been significantly viewed through a subcultural analysis is that of the anonymous support-group. These groups, aimed at providing support for people living with addiction, revolve around meeting in designated places at certain times to share stories and encourage recovery of fellow addicts in their re-entrance into the dominant culture. Typically, these programs have been fashioned after the 12-step system of dealing with addiction laid out by William Griffith Wilson and Robert Holbrook Smith in 1935. Wilson and Smith were the founding members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Wilson authored the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions (see Appendix A) that would become the only doctrines to governing AA groups throughout the world.(Makela, Klaus...et al. 19)
As membership in AA increased in the United States and eventually spread world wide, there came a need for larger regional and national meetings to discuss the organization and a newsletter that circulated to inform groups in other areas of the activities of other groups. This vast network has grown and membership has increased every year since AA's inception. A study conducted in 1990 lists the number of AA groups Worldwide as 92,300 and membership at 1,994,000. It also sites that 44.8% of those members live outside of North America. (Makela, Klaus...et al. 26) These figures obviously exclude support groups outside of Alcoholics Anonymous, which may make the numbers all the more staggering when the number of non-AA support groups are considered. The number of people who call themselves members of a support group certainly deem that portion of society large enough to be included in a subcultural analysis.
Alcoholics Anonymous and other support groups have been material for Hollywood films and television presumably since the time when AA had diffused throughout the North American continent. The plight of the drunk who loses everything because he can't "control his thirst" has made for dramatic narratives and slapstick comedies throughout the silver screen's illustrious history. With AA coming of age, there has been a movement in Hollywood films to capture the struggle of characters as they sort through their alcoholic pasts and try to find reason and peace in the sobriety of the present-future. Hollywood has dealt with AA and other support groups through established conventions of cinema and in a effort to further the narrative codes and to emerge with a marketable product. Although support groups are complex social structures intended to foster reintegration into to the parent culture, Hollywood films tend to focus their representational aspects on the storytelling and dramatic aspects of the support groups for the purpose of furthering the narrative. The event of the storytelling and the groups meetings are represented by Hollywood films as the signifiers for reintegration into the parent culture.
The idea that support-groups could be considered a subculture may be counter
to the self-image held by individual members. However, through this paper we
intend to look closer at this question of the subcultural relevance of support-groups
in the context of the larger society. The term 'subculture' is given to support
groups to refer to a group that exists within a larger social context. This
question, as well as the ways in which Hollywood films represent members of
support groups and support groups as a whole, will be addressed in several parts.
First through an analysis of the interaction between the dominant culture and
the subculture, and then a closer look at how Hollywood films address the subculture.
Aspects regarding spirituality of the AA subculture, the importance and significance
of anonymity, as well as the differences between a Chicago School reading of
the subculture and one that favors the Birmingham School, will be addressed.
We hope that through this paper we may present a better understanding of how
the subculture of the AA-based support group works within the parent culture,
as well as how Hollywood films work to represent and misrepresent that subculture.
"For an item of behavior cannot be understood in isolation from its social
milieu: man is the only animal that gives meaning to his actions and it is his
system of values which provides these meanings."
Jock Young, The Subterranean World of Play [1971)
When looking at a subculture and making efforts to analyze its behavior and courses of action it is important to look to the dominant or parent culture from which the subculture has come. Subcultures are better understood when the social conditions and ideologies that have brought about their formation are viewed concurrently with the group to be studied. This section of the paper will be devoted to looking through the subculture of support-groups in order to discover how the parent culture is responsible for raising it. We will look at the socially accepted behavior that created an initial deviation from the parent culture, thus, leading to membership in the subculture of support groups, as well as how the infraction of deviance is forgiven by the parent culture once the subject has entered the subculture of the support group, and how Hollywood films represent this relationship.
The United States of America, being a modern and industrial society, with its developed and tested infra- and superstructures, is a society based on consumption and production. In an advanced society of this type, the distinction between work and "free time" (leisure) is made through the sets of behaviors that follow each. Work is a place for production, efficiency, and a hierarchy of rules governing individual behavior. When the days work has ended it is time to "relax", to be yourself, and set your own rules. Jock Young writes, "It is during leisure and through the expression of subterranean values that modern man [sic] seeks his identity, whether it is in a 'home-centered' family or an adolescent peer group." (Young, 73) These subterranean values, Young suggests, are values that run alongside the dominant social values and have a time and place where they may come to the surface and be displayed. These values are oppositional to the dominant values yet accepted by the society as long as they are reserved for "appropriate times". When observation and adherence to these appropriate times are not kept, deviance arises. Essentially, personal control and understanding of these subterranean values is the most important value to the dominant society. It is these accepted subterranean values and the moment when a member of society allows these values to emerge at inappropriate and uncontrollable times that they may be labeled deviant. The use of alcohol is permitted in moderation and during appropriate times of leisure and celebration, but its excessive use and uncontrolled abuse to the point where a person becomes unproductive or counter productive in a society that defines itself on production, is the point where rehabilitation must occur. Rehabilitation in this case, is the relearning of the subterranean values coexistence with the dominant values. However, with AA, the option of returning to the acceptable behaviors of drinking at appropriate times is out of the equation. Alcoholism is thought to be incurable and the only solution is abstinence. Therefore, complete rehabilitation is impossible, and thus reentrance into the subterranean/dominant value system is not through adhering to these parallel values, but instead through being a more productive member of society, free of subterranean values.
This relationship of subculture to dominant culture through the understanding of subterranean values, is shown in the TV movie, My Name is Bill W., staring James Woods as William Griffith Wilson, one of the two founding members of the AA movement. The film depicts Wilson as a productive, risk taking, go-getting member of 1930's industrial society in America. In the first flashback scene (the majority of the film is a flashback), we see Wilson returning from the first World War and celebrating the allies victory with his army buddies and wife by getting exceptionally drunk in a dimly lit and very smoky speak-easy sort of bar. This excess of consumption is accepted in this time of national exuberance immediately following the victory in war and the return of soldiers. However, if the same display of drinking and rowdy behavior were to have taken place during a battle while bombs crashed down and bullets whizzed by the heads of drunken and disorderly soldiers, the offenders would be thrown in a military prison. While this comparison may seem extreme, it does illustrate the film's assumption and depiction of acceptable time and place for allowing subterranean values to overtake the dominant one.
Throughout the film Wilson is shown to be losing control of his grasp on drinking. He is shown wanting a drink while he works, taking a client to a bar and ordering drinks in order to talk the client into buying into his new investment idea. When the deal at the bar falls through, Wilson and his army buddy/coworker/drinking buddy get drunk and stay out late. Here we see that the socially accepted behavior of separating work from leisure is deviated from when Wilson conducts business in a bar; and with alcohol playing a major part in sealing a deal or, in this case, alcohol being used to wash away the stress of not sealing the deal.
This deviance from the socially accepted behavior of subterranean values coexisting with the dominant values and abuse of alcohol, eventually leads Wilson to health problems, loss of employment, loss of friends and respect from peers, and potential loss of his wife. When he decides that the road he is traveling is not worth this sacrifice, he stops drinking and tries to help others stop drinking as well. He ends his deviant behavior and begins a crusade to save other deviants (starting with bowery bums and homeless drunks) from the socially destructive forces of alcohol. The only way to regain the trust of his wife and friends is to reenter the society from which he has deviated. And the only way that Wilson can succeed at this is to focus all his efforts on one thing: not drinking.
Oftentimes, American films present the view of support groups and facilities for rehabilitation of drug and alcohol abusers, as being entirely separate from the dominant culture and free from the laws which govern that culture. In the film Clean and Sober, actor Michael Keaton plays Daryl, a high profile investor with a propensity for cocaine and drinking. Waking up from a binge, he finds the girl he went to bed with the night before to be dead from a cocaine overdose. He is a suspect in the case and to avoid prosecution he enters a drug and alcohol clinic to "hide out" for awhile. It is the program's insistence on anonymity that allows Daryl to feel safe from the law in the rehab center.
The relationship of the subculture to the dominant culture in the case of the film, Clean and Sober is worth looking at because it represents the way in which the dominant culture deems the role of the rehab center to be above the law, in that those centers aim to place people back into the dominant society after a period of rehabilitation. What goes on within the walls of the center is sacred and useful enough that laws set up to control the people in a society are temporarily put aside in favor of the rules of patient conduct established by the center. Becker defines subcultures as cultures that, "operate within, and in distinctions to, the culture of the larger society...." (Becker, 56) This definition of subcultures is certainly useful when analyzing the subcultural aspects of the support group.
When looking at 12-step subculture critically, the Chicago school is lacking in its analysis in that it looks at subcultures from a sociological perspective. The Chicago school gives subcultures a specific definition. Its premise is that the subculture is "all human action (within the subculture), which is an ongoing series of efforts to solve problems" (Cohen 44). In this definition, the 12-step subculture comes together in order to collectively solve the problems of addiction and substance abuse. For example a person will join AA in order to solve their problems with drinking. Cohen focuses more on how subcultures are formed than the existence and functioning of the subculture itself.
The aspect that seems to be limited in the Chicago school of thought is looking at the relationship of the subculture to the dominant culture, and/or the influence the dominant culture has on the subculture. It is discussed briefly, but only in terms of the members of the subculture's performance in the outside world (Irwin 69). The Chicago school refers to subcultures as involving a type of performance level when they are in the dominant culture. John Irwin discusses Sheldon Messinger's concept of the members of the subculture acting when in the "outside" world (Irwin 69). Twelve-step groups do not act in regards to performing like AA members. To call them actors is inaccurate due to the idea that they do not play the role of a support group member "when they are in the outside world." For example, when a member of AA is out in the world, he/she is invisible due to his/her autonomy. The member of the support group does not display any visible signs of being a support group member. They do not wear T-shirts that say "Hi I'm an AA member". It is not the boy scouts; there are no patches to wear on your sleeve for 40 days of sobriety. The 12-step membership is invisible and cannot be performed for the outside culture as a member of the support group. For example members of AA can be seen in a bar, drinking if they "relapse" or at a nightclub, as seen in the film Drunks, when the main character leaves an AA meeting to go out, wander the streets, and drink. Their membership to the support group is voluntary and they weave in and out. The support group becomes a "safe haven" for its members and the membership into the subculture just requires the desire to address his/her problem.
The Chicago school looks at the subculture as an "independent variable or explanatory concept," when the 12-step subculture exists in a sociological perspective, but other aspects of the Chicago school are relative in order for the members to deal with the dominant culture (Irwin 69). The 12-step support group members are from different walks of life and classes. Anyone can be a member and once a person is a member they are anonymous within the group. From observation they come together and discuss issues related to their problem and how to deal with that problem in the "outside world." Looking at the 12-step group as an "independent variable", one cannot see the whole idea of discussing issues that help them deal and coexist within the dominant culture. Their interaction with the dominant culture is center to the existence and woven through their beliefs and traditions.
Therefore the "complex social structures" as identified in the thesis, might not be applicable in that these social structures are complex in that the group of people vary from race to sex to class, but they are only defined by the title that is applied to each support group. Alcoholics' Anonymous is for a person with problems with alcohol and Narcotics Anonymous is for people with problems related to narcotics use. Another aspects of these "social structures" are the reasons behind why they go. Of course these reasons vary, but the fact that some of the members are forced to go because of troubles with the law extinguishes their motivation for going and raises an important question. Physically being at the meeting may be mandatory at times but interaction and practice of the 12 steps and 12 traditions is voluntary.
The Chicago's sociological school of thought in reference to subculture should be taken back to the idea of why the members participate. Most of the members of support groups are in them because of substance abuse, which is a common problem and is mostly treated with a type of psychotherapy. In an article posted online at www.positiveatheism.com, Dr. Kenneth A. Gleaves discuses the contradictions in its traditions and discusses the 12-step model used in support groups as a hybrid form of therapy. He states, "I do not believe that the social sciences are simply to analogue to the physical sciences (Gleaves 7). The physical science being psychology, his argument that in order to correctly treat someone for substance abuse, one must undergo psychotherapy. This also brings to light the problems with the sociological perspective and the social aspects of the 12-step phenomenon. Is there something more about 12-step groups that makes them appealing to people desiring to deal with their addictions? Dr. Gleaves describes 12-step support groups as a cheap form of psychotherapy. He writes support groups attempt to be a narrow psychotherapeutic model of dealing with complex issues, and not just substance abuse (Gleaves 5-7). He is mostly concerned with treating the substance abuser as an individual and states that they should receive professional help from a psychotherapist. The problems of substance abuse and addiction are not just the only problems, and addiction is not the only reason for an individual to abuse alcohol, drugs, sex, or food. There are other factors that contribute to each individual's addiction (Gleaves 1-7).
In Clean and Sober, Daryl checks himself into a rehab clinic to avoid the law, which is ironic due to the fact that if he was busted by the authorities, he would most likely have to undergo some type of drug rehabilitation program. In the rehab center, he participates in group meetings, supervised by head counselor Craig, played by Morgan Freeman. These meetings are modeled after the twelve-step model in that they have all of the rehab patients in a room to talk about their problems with their respected addictions. Another aspect of the rehab that proves the 12-step influence is the fact that Craig reveals to Daryl that he was once an addict and went through the same process of rehabilitation. Once Daryl is allowed to leave and he gets a sponsor, and then is seen going to a 12-step support group meeting towards the end of the film. The film follows him with his separation from the dominant culture by turning the viewer's attention to his abstinent behavior and partaking in dominant rituals such as going to a bar or club and recreational drug use, and by doing this narrows the perspective of looking at just the substance abuse.
The film is biased in that the isolation that Daryl feels when he leaves rehab is to move the narrative forward and eventually lead him to find a love interest, who is supposed to be his salvation. When he does find her, he eventually thinks that she is using drugs, and this forces him to finally take a look at himself as an addict and not his relationship to the dominant culture as the cause of his addiction.
With the emerging Internet community, anonymous support groups are being formed
on the web. There are numerous AA chat rooms and web sites devoted to the 12
steps and traditions. AA meetings are held online in chat rooms and give new
definition to the idea of autonomy in the support group. A person can log on
to the web site and become faceless, identified only by a username. The online
support group member has complete autonomy, and the computer becomes the place
to go to attend the meetings.
In our observations of these meetings, we found some people were willing to answer some questions about being a member of a support group. One question asked was if they (as members of AA chat) identified as a subculture. The replies were "Hell yea" and " Some people think we are a cult", and "A Super-culture." These answers demonstrate that there is a group mentality and identification as a group that stands outside the dominant culture. Another question asked in the chat room was whether they thought the "mainstream" (dominant) culture promoted drinking. The answers to the question from the members said that they do think the dominant culture promotes drinking. From these answers, the online AA group not only thought of themselves as a group outside the dominant culture, but they also expressed that they also felt a level of oppression from the dominate culture, because of their sobriety.
A major component of Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as the range of other twelve-step
recovery programs which use its structure as a model, is the doctrine of belief
in God (in some instances, the somewhat less strongly connotative term "Higher
Power" is used). Notably, this theistic aspect of recovery programs is
often minimized in Hollywood portrayals of support groups.
Even though AA's founder, Bill Wilson, was said to have harbored a good deal
of suspicion toward organized religion, he nevertheless found belief in God
to be both a tremendous factor in his own personal recovery from alcoholism,
as well as a key component in the program of recovery which he would lay out
in AA. In correspondence with Carl Jung, Wilson wrote regarding Jung's proclamation
that the only hope for recovery from alcoholism lay in "a spiritual or
religious experience-in short, a genuine conversion," that; "This
candid and humble statement of yours was beyond doubt the first foundation stone
upon which our society (AA) has been built."(Kurtz 9) Indeed, AA literature
makes clear that the process of recovery hinges heavily on one's relationship
with God; six of the twelve steps of AA (including the steps which are arguable
most important) mention God or a higher power explicitly, delineating a process
which involves surrendering to God's will, confessing wrongs to God, appealing
to God's aid, and improving one's "conscious contact" with God. In
fact, if the implicit doctrine of God-belief is expunged from the AA program,
very little remains.
AA literature also states that the program is "spiritual," and not "religious," a distinction which illustrates the organization's attempts to avoid association with institutions of organized religion. However, whatever this distinction is meant to imply, it does little to dispel the fact that AA doctrine is centered on a rather particular brand of theology which derives quite directly from Protestant Christianity. The roots of AA ideology can be traced back to the group's origins as an off-shoot of the so-called "Oxford Group," a loosely knit fellowship of Christians founded by Lutheran minister Frank Buchman. The Oxford group had at its core a ferocious devotion to evangelical Christian doctrine, as is exhibited in the words of one of Buchman's speeches from the time; "The secret is God-control. The only sane people in an insane world are those controlled by God. God-controlled personalities make God-controlled nationalities. This is the aim of the Oxford Group." (Buchman 24) Wilson's idea of a surrender to God's will which serves to "return us to sanity" can be seen to develop quite directly from this Oxford Group rhetoric, forming the basis of the AA recovery program.
As AA has developed over the years, and as other organizations have sprung up based on its structure, various attempts have been made to reformulate the doctrines in ways which are intended to render them more attractive to persons ascribing to religions other than Christianity, and even to agnostics and atheists. This includes the emphasis on spirituality over religion, the replacement of the word "God" with "Higher Power," and even extended explanations of how an atheist can somehow believe in the "Higher Power" necessary for taking the twelve steps of recovery without compromising their atheism. (OA, 14) Still, the underlying premises of the program remain the same, and carry with them the absolute reliance on theism.
These prominent vestiges of the twelve-step program's Christian origins can prove quite problematic in light of the governmental imposition of participation in recovery programs through court sentences and prison policies. In fact, courts have ruled on several occasions that forced participation in AA-style twelve-step programs is unconstitutional, as such mandates are in violation of the religious freedom of the individual.
Interestingly enough, an organization known as Rational Recovery was founded in 1986, offering itself not only as an alternative to the religious-based twelve-step recovery programs, but also as an antidote to such programs themselves. The literature of Rational Recovery characterizes AA as an insidious cult which has done vastly more harm than good.
Given the centrality of theistic ideology to the nature of AA , one might expect to see many more references to God in films portraying support group subculture than one in fact does. Certainly, in films such as Drunks, there are a handful of largely incidental references to religion, but religious experience itself is almost never integrated into the narrative. In Drunks, the AA meeting at which much of the film takes place is set in a church (as many AA meetings are in real life), and we catch glimpses of a couple crucifixes and the word "God" on posters included in the mis-en-scene. Most notably, the meeting closes with the so-called "Serenity Prayer," an AA favorite which does indeed comprise a religious ritual of sorts, affirmative in its small way of God-belief on behalf of the group's members. However, this brief and largely inconsequential moment is as close as the film comes to dealing with spirituality. Of all the various characters who deliver detailed personal testimony over the course of the film, not one mentions God, a Higher Power, or religious experience. These characters are portrayed as struggling with addiction, in the context of AA, yet the God-belief which is so evidently integral to the twelve-step process is expunged completely. What remains is a fairly ambiguous portrayal in terms of the success of the recovery process; the characters in the meeting seem, for the most part, to be pursuing sobriety with some amount of success, yet the plight of the main character is suggested as comprising a vicious circle of sorts from which he may never escape.
The film 28 Days portrays an unambiguously successful recovery, but once again, with no sign of God. In it, Sandra Bullock's character, Gwen, is forced by court sentence to check in to a rehab clinic. At first, Gwen has no inclination whatsoever of actually pursuing sobriety, but her attitude suddenly and rather inexplicably reverses when she falls out of a tree and breaks a leg while trying to retrieve some pills which her fiance had smuggled into the clinic for her. From then on, Gwen's recovery is portrayed as proceeding rather smoothly and painlessly, though something is made of her character's stubbornness and refusal to ask for help. In the climactic scene where Gwen apparently chooses to leave her old, drunk-tinged life behind for good, she finally calls out, in the direction of the sky, "I need help." Though this certainly echoes AA's twelve-step process of surrender to God's will, it is a weak echo indeed. In the case of the film, it is not clear who Gwen is addressing, for though she calls toward the area in which Christian theology has traditionally placed God, i.e., the sky, there is absolutely no mention of God in the entire film. And in 28 Days, the being that answers the call is not God, but a horse, which lifts its hind foot obediently in response to Gwen's touch in a none-too-gracefully set-up metaphor for life (in an earlier scene involving the shoeing of horses, it has been explained that, "The way you approach the horse is supposed to be the way you approach life.")
The most explicit reference to God as part of the recovery process which we ran across was in the made-for-TV movie, My Name Is Bill W., which portrays the life and times of Bill Wilson himself. In it, we are treated to the portrayal of an experience reported by Bill Wilson, in which, lying in a hospital bed, he experiences a vision of the room filling with white light. In Wilson's actual written account, the experience involved not only light, but a "wind not of air, but of spirit," and the overwhelming feeling of a "Presence." (Wilson et al. 63) According to Wilson, this was his first-hand encounter with God himself, which started him off on the road to recovery. In the film, the depiction of this event features a tortured-looking Bill in bed, the room filling with light, and a greatly changed-looking Bill explaining to his doctor the next day that he felt, "Peace." Notable is the choice of this word over the word "Presence."
What then can we conclude about Hollywood's tendency to excise the theistic core from its portrayals of recovery programs and support group subculture? It is interesting to note that this phenomena dovetails nicely with the PR strategy of twelve-step groups as they strive to extend their programs far beyond the Christian origins of AA, campaigning for membership among the wider secular and non-Christian population. Also, in terms of the ideology of the dominant culture of modern American consumer society, it is sobriety and the production and consumption generated by the individual which are most highly valued, much more so than the dissemination of Christian theology. It is no surprise that Hollywood, as a dispenser of this dominant ideology, would wish to emphasize the supposed fruits of twelve-step programs and support groups (the reintegration of deviant individuals into consumer society) over the Christian rhetoric which drives them.
Part of the success of self-help support groups is due to an internal structure
that allows members of the subculture to preserve anonymity while valuing each
as an autonomous individual. The individual is crucial and yet, an expendable
element of anonymous support groups. The faith in anonymity poses an interesting
impenetrability for filmmakers representing the subculture. The insider is not
permitted (it is against the twelve traditions as stated in the handbook) to
represent him/herself in film or any media, and as a result, there is most visibly
the Hollywood perspective from which to draw. The only 'honest' observation
originates from the 'insider', but any person may walk into a meeting from the
street and be considered a member. Anonymity is at once established by this
voluntary membership, and once a person joins he/she is strongly encouraged
but not required to speak. Each member has a choice whether or not to have a
voice or identity within the group, and is never a visible member in 'outside'
life. There is no obvious physical mark that distinguishes people who frequent
AA meetings, unlike the non-conventional appearance of punks or Rastafarians.[1]
Anonymous support group members come from a diverse range of backgrounds, but
are bound by a common individual struggle of addiction that affects every aspect
of their lives.
There is a tension in any support group between the needs and interests of the individual member and the needs and interests of other members or of the group as a whole. Consider the extent to which self-interested individualism pervades American culture, and a paradox emerges. The subculture functions in contradiction; members are co-dependent towards each other but remain in the group because of an individual sense of autonomy and free will. Choosing a group on the basis of what one can get out of it is a norm supported by the ideology of most groups. Conversely, those who are critical of groups such as AA and NA claim that the group is a widespread cult that causes further deterioration in its members.[2] Members are exposed not only to networks of care and support in these groups but to an ideology or set of beliefs that emphasizes the value of certain kinds of relationships rather than others. Emotional support is emphasized far more than physical or monetary support. Individuals are expected to be rigorously independent when it comes to taking care of themselves medically and financially. Wuthnow argues that emotional support is defined to mean encouragement rather than criticism or guidance (Wuthnow 14). Yet the group itself may function more as a place where each individual comes to think about him/herself than where genuine concern about others triumphs over individual needs. The subcultures power is thus that it provides some sense of caring and community but does so without greatly curtailing the freedom of its members (Wuthnow 190). "40% of the American public is involved in small groups"(191), a figure that is indicative of the idea that individual identity is fundamentally important but cannot survive without some sort of social network. Members of the subculture must make conscious efforts to abide by the group's ideology, which is usually managed by paying attention to one's own feelings. The problems reinforced by group involvement are the same ones that groups aim to resolve.
They do not fundamentally challenge our individualism. They allow us not only to retain our individuality but also to focus deeply on our own personal interests and needs and, for the most part to limit the time we spend with other people or the levels of obligation we are willing to incur towards them"(197).
Support groups adapt its members to individualistic norms in American culture to promote assimilation back into the status quo. Addiction is contrary to the dominant ideology that labels people as "normal, healthy" adults. Each 12-step program is designed to abolish its respective deviant lifestyle. The subculture maintains a belief system founded on a genuine desire to stop (drinking, using drugs, eating, etc…) and to help support others through their addiction, but the dominant culture can also enforce membership. In the case of a convicted drunk driver or crack user, the law requires AA and NA meetings as part of one's recovery and redemption. The individualistic norms upheld by the subculture help perpetuate a cycle of compliance to dominant standards of living among drug and alcohol abusers because these groups can be so specialized that everyone in them is basically alike. By creating a kinship among members who have the same addiction problem convinces individuals that they have choices; the group makes them feel in control of their own actions. Despite enormous diversity within age, class, race, ethnicity, religion, political views, and sexuality, members of the subculture manage to get along by denying the importance of all these 'other' characteristics. By implementing a type of selective perception, members can overlook or devalue differences within the group. The individual must, however, be willing to acknowledge the fundamental importance of whatever has brought the group into existence.
Those who insist that AA is a cult argue that its anonymity creates an exclusivity that rejects any outside opinion. The authors of Rational Recovery: The New Cure for Substance Addiction explain that AA and NA's "perverse philosophy of sin-disease and deliverance by faith in a heterogeneous deity contradicts the fundamental values of a free society, but is uniquely appealing to people addicted to substance-pleasure"(Trimpey 2). Trimpey claims that its members, shielded by anonymity and presenting themselves as addiction experts have infiltrated federal and state bureaucracies, where they manipulate social policies and funding patterns affecting America's social service system (Trimpey 4). As discussed earlier, penalty for resisting AA participation may be imprisonment, death from the lack of organ transplant, imprisonment as in parole, loss of social welfare and health care benefits, loss of child custody, or loss of employment (Trimpey 5). It is commonplace for AA-dropouts to receive calls from AA members asking, "Haven't seen you for a while. Are you OK?" Trimpey maintains that these kinds of calls are not from concern or friendship, but only to manipulate people back into meeting attendance. An example of this is also observed in Drunks, when the meeting's speaker and coffee maker, Jim, leaves suddenly, fellow members make numerous calls to his home, leaving several long messages at a time. "When a dropout makes it clear that he or she will not be returning, there is no possibility that the grouper will continue to associate or call for other reasons"(Trimpey 7). This leads us to standard methods of communication performed within the subculture. The meeting structure itself forbids two-way communications, allowing for one to "share" whatever, with only marginal or no commentary from the group.
Communication and the construction of identity in the subculture are understood through personal storytelling, which is possible only once a member attains a certain level of comfort. Trust among group members is necessary for the subculture to provide useful sources of interpersonal support. "On average, 4 out of 10 group members in self-help groups rate their group as excellent in terms of 'having people who trust each other' (Wuthnow 154). The main factor that generates trust is whether or not members feel they have a chance to share their problems with one another; a sense of intimacy is established within a group context. Therefore, sharing is key to cultivating trust of the group as a whole. Drunks creates an environment of trust when the first members arrive at the meeting. They greet one another with a warm embrace, suggesting an immediate insider connection to the viewer. This common practice of greeting was also observed in my visits to AA and NA meetings. I observed, on average, three greetings of this sort per each hour-long meeting. (See appendix) Size is also a relevant issue in establishing trust; smaller groups cultivate trust better as heart-to-heart sharing becomes much more difficult when a group becomes larger than fifteen or twenty people. This intimacy is often not present in Hollywood representations of AA or NA. In Drunks, the meeting consists of more than twenty-five people but almost every individual takes an opportunity to tell his/her story of addiction. This is contrary to what typically occurs in actual meetings. I have observed meetings both large and small, and in all instances there was not enough time for everyone to share. Group members get to know one another through each other's stories over an extended length of time. Individuals do not trust the group simply because they know the intimate details of the lives of particular members. They trust it because they identify closely with it.
Hollywood films often concentrate their representation of anonymous support groups on this storytelling aspect. The personal accounts, as is the case in Drunks, are dramatized to be penetrating and emotionally engaging. Every character in the film has a story of child abuse or waking up in jail when in actuality, the stories are often quite mundane (Wuthnow). Through storytelling individuals turn their own experiences into a collective event. They preserve their individuality but at the same time find community in the similarities between their stories and those told by others in their group. As people tell their stories, they become these stories. This is how the viewer comes to understand each character in Drunks and But, I'm a Cheerleader, where each character's story is his/her primary identification.
Their operating norm is that each member should contribute something from his or her unique perspective. This means that personal opinions are highly valued. But these opinions also must be validated in some way; otherwise, they lack seriousness and strike group members as being a waste of time (292).
It is expected that members will share something from their lives, especially when spirituality is required for visualizing one's recovery. Feeling comfortable in a group comes about as a result of developing a socio-biography[3] that reflects both the member's own and the group's input. What a person chooses to share in a group becomes ever more important to that person's identity. The group's affirmation of this identity reinforces and legitimates it. The scene where Megan declares, "I'm a homosexual!" is highly stylized and embellished with motion effects both in sound and image. After her anxious affirmation, the group enthusiastically encourages her with hugs and praise, thereby reinforcing her identification with homosexuality.
The declaration of one's personal problem is used as dramatic conflict and comedy in film representations. There are five satirical steps in the process of recovery in But, I'm a Cheerleader. The main character, Megan, is forced to enter a program designed to "de-homosexualize" individuals. The program resembles a retreat for rehabilitation, but the rules and methods in this setting are extremely exaggerated. The leader enforces sharing, and anyone who does not participate wholly is kicked out of the program and left to her/his own devices. In this case, the individual must be willing to acknowledge that homosexuality is a problem. The subculture is founded upon stereotypical gender roles, a false and unattainable construction for this group of homosexuals. With every subsequent step that is "achieved" within the narrative, the more each individual expresses his or her homosexuality with other group members. The similarity between this comic look at anonymous support groups and the more serious representation in Drunks is the way each character's identity is trivialized to encompass his/her "problem". The difference, of course, is that the comedy is outwardly mocking the effectiveness of these programs, while the more dramatic film uses the "meeting" as a signifier of reintegration of its main character. In both cases, meetings are used as structuring devices to suggest a pivotal step in the character's life. Membership into the subculture is represented as a dominant method of recovery back into society.
In Drunks and But, I'm a Cheerleader, the camera functions as a sort of voyeur into the safety of small group anonymity. The camera is consistently placed directly in front of the character in a close up during the sequences where each is introducing him/herself, or sharing a personal story. The camera remains static for the entire delivery, sometimes resulting in long, five to six minute takes. The actor addresses the camera directly, which allows the viewer to feel like an insider. The effect is that the actor is in essence addressing the viewer, a device used by the filmmakers to simulate a more intimate connection to the characters. Our participant observations of self-help support group meetings indicated that individuals do not typically address any one person specifically. The group forms a multi-layered circle so that everyone or almost everyone can be seen, and this yields more group address. It is typical for support groups of this kind to build a non-threatening environment that resists classroom dynamics. The leader of each meeting has no declared authority; he/she is simply another member willing to mediate a conversation.[4] This individual usually sits among the group circle, which is contrasting to the representation in Drunks. The meeting takes place in a church daycare room; the chairs are arranged in rows with a head table at the front of the room where the leader and/or speaker sits. Behind this table are the 12-steps and three typical AA slogans, two of which make reference to God. The group dynamic is set up to suggest a power structure not common in anonymous support group meetings. The leader decides who will speak and although he seems to know many individual's names, there is a distance created between the viewer and the group members. The viewer is more likely to identify with the leader if he/she has never had/does not have an addiction problem. This representation is problematic in this way because it shapes the way viewers understand the subculture. The film's representation is taken for granted by the viewer to be an honest representation of a meeting because of the assumed seriousness present in the drama. Thus a cycle of defining and re-defining of a subculture by outsiders occurs. Films, television, and other media are influenced by the dominant culture's stereotypes of the subculture, which in turn influence viewers' readings of the film.
Although support groups are complex social structures intended to foster reintegration into to the parent culture, Hollywood films tend to focus their representational aspects on the storytelling and dramatic aspects of the support groups for the purpose of furthering the narrative. The event of the storytelling and the groups meetings are represented by Hollywood films as the signifiers for reintegration into the parent culture.
By investigating the ways in which the subculture interacts with the parent culture, the spiritual aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as the importance and significance of anonymity, and the various schools of thought that might be used to analyze and study subcultures, we have better understood the representational power that Hollywood films hold over society, and how support groups function as subcultures.
The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
The Twelve step support groups, despite their autonomy, have rules and guidelines to which they abide. These Guidelines are the 12 steps themselves and the Twelve Traditions. These Twelve-steps and Traditions are printed on pamphlets that are available at the meetings. The difference between the Twelve steps and the Twelve Traditions is that the traditions are the guidelines from which the group abides by and the Twelve steps are the outline for the process, which the members follow on their road to recovery. They are as follows:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
From observing several open AA meetings, the steps and traditions were read
out loud before the meeting began. Then someone tells his or her story of how
he or she got to AA. Before a person speaks there is a specific dialogue that
takes place. For example:
Speaker: "Hi, My name is John/Jane D and I'm an alcoholic."
Group: "Hi John"
The speaker then goes in to his or her own stories or issues related to their
addiction. Sometimes a group will focus on one of the steps and discuss it.
The meetings are informal and hostility towards anyone is frowned upon. There
are small chips that symbolize a member's sobriety for a certain period of time.
For example if a person has been sober for two months, they would receive a
chip, as a symbol of their sobriety, when someone that has been sober for ten
days might receive a different chip. When a member of the group reaches a longer
period of sobriety, he or she will receive another chip. The chip might seem
like a generic reward, but to the member they mean a great deal. If a member
relapses back into the addiction and comes to a meeting the process of counting
days of sobriety will begin again. The chips represent the process of recovery
and mean different things to different members.
At the meetings attended, there was a serenity prayer read at the beginning
of the group, right before the 12-steps and traditions. The serenity prayer
states, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
It is also read at the very end of the meeting as well. The only difference
in the two readings of the serenity prayer is the positioning of the members.
In the beginning, the serenity prayer is said aloud while everyone is in their
respected seats, symbolizing the fragmentation and isolation the members feel,
after spending the previous week submerged in the dominant culture. At the end
of the meeting, the members stand, hold hands, and form a circle while the prayer
is recited. This action is a sign for the unity the members feel after hearing
the stories and discussing their problems with each other.
The Twelve Traditions of AA provide a telling revelation of the value system
promoted by the organization:
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose-to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.
6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.