R. Danielle Egan, Assistant Professor
Stephen D. Papson,
Professor
Department of Sociology,
St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY
Abstract
Using The Dr. Phil Show as a case study, this paper explores
the processes of secularization and sacralization in the media spectacle
of talk television. It argues that TheDr. Phil Show employs
the religious narrative of conversion to frame the personal experiences
and the problems of participants. Using discourse analysis, the
paper examines two shows that exemplify this narrative: “Addiction” and “The
Weight Loss Challenge.” It argues that the morphology of conversion
is comprised of two components: the confessional and the testimonial. As
participants proceed through these ends of the spectrum of the conversion
narrative, a transformation of self is depicted. The televised presentation
of reoccurring conversions functions to produce a sense of moral
authority, self-empowerment, and an imagined community. The paper
concludes that the boundary between the sacred and the secular blur
in this highly commodified television spectacle.
Introduction1
[1] A former college football player, Psychology Ph.D. cum life
coach, walks on stage after an introductory visual montage composed
of images of him that vacillate between the authoritarian who talks
tough, the compassionate man who puts his arm around a crying woman,
the regular guy who gives an audience member a high five and the
loving husband who walks hand in hand with his wife. These images,
along with the spotlights, loud music and the standing ovation he
receives from his predominately white female audience2 provide
a larger than life image. This image of a man who is part therapist,
part father, part fantasy husband and part televangelist not only
differentiates him from daytime talk show competitors, but also
validates his statements about the lives of program participants.
He will “tell it like it is” and give you the "truth," or
at least his truth, because he is “a man with a plan.”3 McGraw
offers a simple promise, to provide the answer to your problems.
If you listen, he will show you the way. If you follow his advice,
he “will change your life.”4 If
you are willing to invest in his (relationship) rescue remedies,
realize that your “self matters,” and incorporate his
life strategies and be converted, he offers the possibility of a
life transformation.
[2] We are interested in how The Dr. Phil Show blends a religious
narrative into the commercial world of branding through self promotion.
For the purpose of this article, we explore the ways in which religion
is used in service of the profane with regard to marketing, spectacle
and capitalism. We contend that The Dr. Phil Show employs
the religious structure of a conversion experience. Although most
literature on conversion is used to analyze religious or cult conversion
experiences, we argue that Dr. Phil employs this method in a non-religious
milieu. It is this structural mechanism that allows him to speak
with religious-like authority on his television show. It is his
combination of entertainer and expert located at the intersection
of spectacle, the drive for new markets and the structure of religious
ritual that makes The Dr. Phil Show a particularly rich case
study. Moreover, The Dr. Phil Show provides fertile ground
for a discussion of the reappearance of religious structures in
secular forms (therapy, self-help, TV spectacles), on the possibility
of agency within commodified markets, and the mix of the hyper-fragmented
style of postmodernity with a definitively modern message of certainty.
We contend that the conversion experience becomes the rhetorical
or narrative architecture upon which people place their experiences
and the solutions to their problems. Guests and audience members
are able to give ambiguous and complicated histories an intelligible
phenomenological understanding post facto. McGraw wants to “create
a new movement,” as well as new markets, and the rhetorical
method of conversion allows him to do so.
[3] We anchor our analysis in a sociological perspective informed
by Durkheim’s conceptualization of religion as a system of
practices that create the social and emotional ties that produce
and bind community together. The sacred (objects, persons, places
and events) emerges from the social and always speaks back to the
social. In this regard, Durkheim moves away from more theological
perspectives on religion or an assessment of the inherent value
of a particular religious belief system, instead he focuses on the
sociological effects of the social formation of religion.5 For
Durkheim, whenever there are social aggregations there are the possibilities
of emergent social phenomenon and concomitant manifestations (beliefs,
norms, laws) of collective consciousness. As such when discussing
secularization from this perspective we are referring to the weakening
of the moral order and increasing anomie. Following this conception
of religion we suggest that Dr. Phil does not represent secularization—he
offers the remedy to its problems. He offers re-sacralization in
a highly commodified form. He is at base reproducing the social.
Ergo he does not replace religion; in fact he and many of his members
espouse membership in various religious communities (primarily Jewish
and Christian). Rather he performs many of the same social functions
religion provides such as providing moral authority, a sense of
meaning for the situations within which we find ourselves, and a
community in which to participate (albeit a virtual one). This is
not a unique phenomenon in postmodern culture. Zygmunt Bauman
argues:
Postmodern men and women do need the alchemist able, or claiming
to be able, to transmogrify base uncertainty into precious
self-assurance, and the authority of approval (in the name of
superior knowledge, or access to wisdom closed to the others)
is the philosophical stone these alchemists boast of possessing. Postmodernity is the
era of experts in ‘identity problems’; or personality
healers, of marriage guidance, of writers of ‘how to reassert
yourself’ books; it is the era of the ‘counseling
boom.’6
While the demand for traditional religious experience may wane,
the desire for moral certainty and for a coherent sense of identity
results in, as Bauman theorizes, an “ever rising demand for
identity-experts.”7 Phil
McGraw is such an “identity expert.”
[4] McGraw enunciates with moral authority. He confronts participants
for their weakness while providing what sounds like a common sense
solution. And, while there are similarities between The Dr. Phil
Show and other ‘trash talk’ shows, such as the production
practice, the use of the spectacle, extreme case scenarios to engage
the audience, and topics (e.g., cheating spouses, child drug addiction
and sex addiction), McGraw differs from other "trash talk" television
hosts such as Maury, Montel, Jenny Jones or Rikki Lake8 by
his use of a discourse that blends life coaching, religion, self
help, cognitive behavioral psychology and a rational utilitarian
philosophy.9
[5] For this analysis, we focus on the narrative of conversion.10 In
order to uncover the predominant architecture in which problems
are presented and solved, our inquiry involves a systematic qualitative
examination of the structures of narratives at play in the show.11 We
approach The Dr. Phil Show as a simulated conversion that
acts as the primary repetitive and consciously produced structure
that allows both participants and audiences to frame their own experiences
in a narrative of self-transformation.12 While
the amount of material found in the Dr. Phil empire expands exponentially
each day, we argue that conversion is the structure that reoccurs
most often. Two narratives support the morphology of conversion:
the confessional and the testimonial. For this article, we
focus on two shows, one from each end of the conversion spectrum
as archetypical representations: the confessional with a show
entitled “Addiction” (1/27/04) and the testimonial with
a show entitled “The Ultimate Weight Loss Holiday Challenge” (1/19/04).
Our discussion, however, draws from our viewing of 40 Dr. Phil shows
aired from December 2003 to February 2004, a discursive reading
of McGraw’s books and workbooks: Dr. Phil’s Ultimate
Weight Loss Challenge (2003), Self Matters (2003) and Relationship
Rescue (2001), and the examination of the Dr. Phil website and
listserv (www.drphil.com).
[6] During the months of December 2003 and January 2004 The Dr.
Phil Show ranked in the top 10 household shows and had a
gross average audience rating between 4.7 and 4.8 according to
Nielsen ratings.13 In addition,
with viewers between the ages of 18-49, Dr. Phil ranked 2.1,
second only to the other talk television host in the top twenty—Oprah
Winfrey. 14 Moreover, The
Dr. Phil Show was in the top twenty shows with regard to
the price of a 30-second advertising slot ($45,000).15 It
is both the structure of his show as well as the popularity of
his discourse that makes The Dr. Phil Show such a compelling
site of analysis.
The Conversion Experience and the Structure of
Televangelism
[7] Research on conversion focuses on cults, sects, and new religious
formations. Often a processual step model is inducted from observation,
interviews and case studies following the convert’s path from
personal crisis to establishing affective ties to the chosen community
and internalizing a new belief system that serves as a paradigm
to interpret and make sense of the world.16 For
example, Loftland theorized the foundational sociological model,
which involved a seven-step process for conversion.17 These
steps illuminate how an individual first realizes that he or she
has some unresolved tension that becomes a “turning point” or
crisis that must be solved and then goes to religion (to which they
may already have a strong predisposition for anyway) to solve the
problem. During the conversion process, individuals create strong
affective bonds with members of a particular religious group, eventually
weakening their relationships with people outside that group.18 Loftland’s
model has been critiqued for being over-deterministic.19 Although
various steps may be involved in the process of conversion, the
most important catalyst for conversion within a variety of religious
communities (i.e., Buddhist, Christian, Hare Krishna, Mormon, etc.)
has been intensive interaction with members of the community and
the development of strong affective bonds with members and the leader
of the community.20 How then
can this take place in the distant and abstracted space of the televisual?
How can conversion be foundational to the production of a talktelevision
show and the construction of its star as a messianic figure?
[8] The Dr. Phil Show constructs a formulaic televisual conversion
experience. This structure makes McGraw’s show more similar
to the structure of televangelism than other talk television shows. Televangelism
is “fully integrated in the discursive and institutional practices
of contemporary American television, it aims to provide an overarching,
morally correct perspective on the world in concert with the evangelical
call to save souls.”21 The
success of televangelism is due, in part, to the combination of
popular culture, entertainment and religious ideology.22
[9] According to Hayden and Swann, televangelists combine religious
messages with market driven interests.23 The
goal of this form of “electronic religion” is to spread
a message, which will compel people to both follow and support them
financially.24 The messages
of most televangelists are simple, “Most religious television,
like its secular counterpart, deals largely in simple solutions
to human problems.”25 Moreover
these programs function to give answers and are constrained by the
structure of the media format.
What is said must be said quickly and extremely simply, or the
audience won’t understand. Furthermore, audiences also want to
be entertained. And they want to be made to feel good. When
they are made to feel bad, they turn to another channel. The
televangelists preach a message that is supportive to the
worth of the individual. 26
In her analysis of The 700 Club, White argues that the program “aims
to attract all of its potential viewers—all television viewers
in general—to join this subculture.”27 The
primary function of the televangelist is to convert the potential
believer as well as the non-believer to a position of commitment
and affiliation with his religious worldview. The success of this
strategy is evidenced in the far-reaching corporate enterprises
of televangelists such as Oral Roberts, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell
and Pat Robertson, whose empires include universities, hospitals,
research institutes and cable television companies. 28 Like
his televangelist counterparts, McGraw also works to attract television
viewers to his message and method. The allure of a swelling audience
base means not only a higher market share, but also a fecund customer
base for his books, tapes, workbooks and inspirational talks. The
success of this method is evidenced in the popularity of his products.
His books Life Strategies (1999) and The Ultimate Weight
Loss Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom (2003) were
both number one on the New York Times Bestseller List for
several months.29
[10] Media-driven preachers work to portray a mode of masculinity
that is compassionate and authoritative, and that speaks with uncontested
expertise. Frankl observes that televangelists project a paternalistic
image by bringing their families on the show to “reinforce
their own credibility as respectable and authoritative men.”30 For
example, Rex Humbard evoked a fatherly concern with his viewers
to convey the message, “Join my prayer key family, and you
will not be alone. I will pray for you in return for your
financial gift to my ministry.”31 Similarly,
Phil McGraw’s wife Robin appears almost daily as an important
audience member who watches and sometimes provides “a woman’s
perspective” and holds McGraw’s hand as he walks out
at the end of the show. Moreover, his son Jay has now authored several
books (The Ultimate Weight Loss for Teens and Life Strategies
for Teens (2003) and provides the "young and hip" perspective
on the show. There is also a photo gallery on the Dr. Phil website
that chronicles his life (since age 6) and provides a visual history
of his marriage and family. Photos range from wedding pictures to
Dr. Phil holding or coaching his children to family vacations in
France and Grand Cayman respectively. These provide
visible proof of his dedication as a husband and father.
[11] The content of McGraw’s messages rarely refers to religion
nor does it mirror what televangelists say. What is striking
is the similarity in form and structure rather than substance. As
in televangelism, McGraw relies on conversion as the primary narrative
strategy of his show. In this way, McGraw positions himself
as an expert who can create the solution to your problems. Participants
in this process first confess, renounce their former self and/or
self-sustaining practices, subscribe to a new set of beliefs, enter
into a struggle with their former belief system and practices, often
with occasional backsliding, emerge triumphantly, give witness to
their transformation, enter an imagined community, and then proselytize.
This is the narrative of conversion—a sense-making device
that is intelligible for participants and audience. According
to Harding, conversion “is rhetorical in the sense that it
is an argument about the transformation of self that lost
souls must undergo, and a method of bringing about change
in those who listen to it (emphasis in the original).”32 The
show positions participants in this proven pre-existing structure.
Keep in mind that televisual conversion is a simulated conversion
constructed through the use of montage, planned interviews, cutaways
to the audience, and other cinematic and narrative devices, and
then performed for an audience for the purpose of expanding that
viewing audience and transforming it into a market.
Narratives for Self-transformation
[12] Narratives function as dynamic discursive devices that construct
particular understandings for the mundane aspects of everyday life
or the realities of events.33 They
emerge from particular institutional positions and carry with them
particular assumptions and interpretations of the phenomena they
translate. The Dr. Phil Show employs two narratives that
underpin the larger structure of the conversion experience: the
confessional and the testimonial. The confessional functions as
an acquiescence to the argument for the necessity for change; it
is the rhetorical request for help. The testimonial shows
the transformation and demonstrates the success of the method used
to produce it. Most Dr. Phil shows begin with the confessional (often
times in the form of a montage)—the telling of one’s
problems or sins which then end with a request for help. Then, usually
on a later show, the convert offers a testimonial that always begins
with a confession to show how far she or he has come. These two
narratives function dialectically, with thesis and antithesis guiding
individuals closer to the ultimate solution to either a personal
or a relational problem.
[13] By using these narratives, McGraw is able to create a structure
or architecture for the stories individuals bring to the show. By
providing a ready-made phenomenological framework into which individuals
place their experience (whether they may have initially viewed their
experiences this way or not), McGraw is able to create for the audience
and participants a transformative experience in a highly commodified
and secular sphere—daytime television. This structure is not
dissimilar to the ways in which religious belief operates more generally:
In religious belief and practice a group’s ethos is rendered
intellectually reasonable by being shown to represent a way
of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs the world-view
describes, while the world-view is rendered emotionally convincing
by being presented as an image of an actual state of affairs
peculiarly well arranged to accommodate such a way of life.34
[14] According to Dovey, the use of these two narratives is pervasive
in talk television. Mixing the therapeutic with the political, a
new form of identity politics has emerged in this genre which privileges
self-speaking. Both the confessional and the testimonial move the
discussion of abuse and victimization into the public domain.35 Dovey
also argues that self-naming is a central element in self-transformation
relative to a collectivity.36 Working
within these similar structures, McGraw establishes himself as the
charismatic authority figure with the answers. McGraw shows
the necessity for people to “get real,” transform their
lives and, if they follow his “ten steps,” gain entrance
into the Dr. Phil community—as imagined as that community
may be.37 Therefore, the extent
or actuality of the community is irrelevant, what is important is
how it comes to be understood by its members.
[15] The attraction of this entrance or acceptance at a time of
hyper-individualism, the privatization of women’s lives and
postmodern fragmentation seems clear—an imagined community
is far better than no community at all.38 It
is this promise that is made intelligible via a religion narrative,
even though Dr. Phil may use secular language. The confessional
functions as the first step in the structure of the conversion.
It is the "turning point" or crisis where someone acknowledges
her need for help and that McGraw has the solution to their problem.
Through the use of narrative, Dr. Phil generates sense-making maps
for the individuals on his show as well as for his audience. Moreover,
these narrative structures serve as conduits into the Dr. Phil fold.
Participation not only functions as a strategy for self-transformation
but also as a prerequisite for entering the Dr. Phil community/market.
“Because I Thought You Could Help”:
Mapping the Confessional
[16] The confessional is a common narrative format in the West.
Entangling individuals within the microphysics of bio-power that
grants access to the “life of the body” and the forms
of discipline which seek to control it, the incitement to speak
and confess is a modern compulsion.39 Foucault
theorized,
The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject
is also the subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds
within a power relationship, for one does not confess without the
presence of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the
authority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates
it, and intervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console,
and reconcile; a ritual in which the truth is corroborated by the
obstacles and resistances it has had to surmount in order to be
formulated; and finally, a ritual in which the expression alone,
independently of its external consequences, produces intrinsic modifications
in the person who articulates it; it exonerates, redeems, and purifies
him [sic]; it unburdens him [sic] of his [sic]
wrongs, liberates him [sic], and promises his [sic]
salvation.”40
The increasing proliferation of the confessional as a method gave
rise to increasing forms of surveillance vis-à-vis medical
exams, psychoanalytic sessions, pedagogical technique and scientific
classification.41 Within
these institutional settings, individuals became objects of knowledge
and were subject to various regimes of classification and comparison
against a discursively produced norm. It is through the confessional
that individuals are situated and place themselves within institutional
systems of classification. As individuals attempt to fit within
the norms set forth by particular institutions, they begin to self-impose
hegemony. How then does the structure of the confessional operate
in our contemporary media culture?
[17] According to White, confession is the predominant narrative
structure of American media. White theorizes that “through
television, confession disperses and proliferates to the point where
it turns in on itself, redefining its own conditions of expression.”42 Baudrillard
contends that televisual confession creates a condition where language
loses its originality, its irony, and those qualities “which
make language more important that what it conveys,” reducing
it to only a mode of communication.43 Hyper-mediated
confession transcends the privacy of doctor/patient interaction
and modifies it to include the person confessing, the television
host, the in-studio audience, the at-home television viewers and
the products advertised during the show.44 In
our contemporary media landscape, those confessing become subject
to the scrutiny and the schemes of normalcy of the host and audience.
Therefore in the “context of American television, all of these
strategies and trajectories of discourse are circulated within networks
of consumption and commodity exchange” and thus transform,
through the production process, both the medium and message of the
confessional.45
[18] The narrative of the confessional employed on The Dr. Phil
Show operates in a similar way. Individuals, through their
confessions, are evaluated and classified against Dr. Phil’s
schema of normalcy. For example, McGraw has shows where guests
have had to account for their actions to concerned viewers who
are “helping them get real.” Often there are
cutaways to the audience nodding heads and clapping hands to
show support for Dr. Phil’s comments. His famous dictum, “What
were you thinking?”, produces the most enthusiastic response
and serves as a transformative marker. The structure of the confessional
thus serves to reinforce McGraw’s position of authority
and expertise and the superiority of his method.
[19] Divided into three segments, “Addiction” features
three women (Joann, Laura and Anne) with three different addictions:
pain pills, ephedrine and sex. During each segment a different woman
is featured whose problem is confessed both verbally and visually.
After the confession, each participant/patient goes on to talk to
Dr. Phil or be spoken to by him, as the case may be. Most often
these sessions are composed of several events: (1) the confessing
of the problem; (2) the expression of regret; (3) further elaboration
and sometimes justification of the problem; (4) the search for an
answer; and (5) an acceptance that the correct way to solve their
problems is Dr. Phil’s strategy. It is in these confessional
moments that McGraw requires his patients to “get real,” as
it were, and “get with [his] program.”46
“What Were You Thinking?”:
Public Confession, Visual Proof and the Call for Help
[20] The confessional narrative usually starts with a montage that
provides both visual and auditory proof. It is made up of quick
edit splices, close ups, color and black and white images, music
and a "hidden camera" or fly on the wall perspective,
whereby the producers incorporate a staged, highly edited and seemingly
natural vantage point on the patient’s life. Although
a staged production, realist cinematic encoding produces a sense
of authenticity of the request for help. For example Joann, in her
montage, says,
I’m running out of pills. I’ve only got about
10 left. I wrote to Dr. Phil because I felt that it was my
last hope. I began taking Vicadin in May 2000. Each
time that I gave birth I would feel a strong pull from it. I
used to model. I wore nice clothes. I felt good about myself. Now
that I’m not working I’ve lost me. I don’t have
any self esteem. Every day I take 20 extra strength
Vicadins.
During her verbal confession, images of Joann appear “popping
pills” in despair in her backyard with her family looking
on. Her small son asks if the pills she is giving him are for his
asthma or if they are her Vicadin? The montage ends:
I feel like every tissue in my body is saturated with Vicadin. Some
days I think this is how I’m going to die. Dr.
Phil, how can I kick this habit and stay alive for the sake
of my family?
This narrative prefigures Joann as a woman in need of salvation.
This suburban mom garners the empathy of the viewer through her
request for help and the visual images of her in desperation. The
combination of both message and image create a sense that her confession
and her need for Dr. Phil’s intervention, or as he terms it “confrontation,” are
authentic.
[21] In a similar fashion, Laura confesses her addiction and her
need for help.
Laura: I’ve been addicted to ephedrine for 11 years
and I’m killing myself because of it. I need to stop. I
started taking ephedrine when I was a freshman in college. Because
I was falling asleep. It kept me awake through my classes,
and it kept my GPA up. The bottle said do not exceed 2-4 within
a 24 hr. period. I was taking 25 pills a day. I noticed
a significant loss in my weight. I also noticed men were paying
more attention to me and complimenting me on my weight loss. I’m
a bartender. Ephedrine helps me with my job because I work
such late hours. It keeps me awake, keeps me goin’,
keeps me fast. When I wake up in the morning I go and grab
5 pills of ephedrine. And that will probably last me
till about noon, I take another 5 and I hit a lull about 7
at night so I take another five.
As Laura confesses, images of her trying to stay awake at work,
going to her local gas station to buy ephedrine and looking in the
mirror are shown to McGraw and the television audience. As further
proof of her addiction, Laura discusses the effects of her ephedrine
addiction, “I’ve had a ton of bad side effects. Been
in the hospital for heart palpitations, thinking I was having a
heart attack. I’ve had to have a blood transfusion.” At
the end of her confessional she asks, “Dr. Phil, I know that
my ephedrine addiction is killing me, so why can’t I kick
the habit once and for all and save my life?” Establishing
authenticity of Laura’s problem, McGraw states, “Is
that video a fair representation of how you feel?” to which
she replies, “Very true.”
[22] During the final segment Anne, a sex addict, is featured. The
form of her confession mirrors the first two. According to Anne,
I have had sex with over 200 men and a few women. This addiction
has ruined my life. It ruined a great marriage. And it estranged
me from my children. I am ready for change. I want the
second half of my life to be better than the first half of my life. When
I first got married, I was having affairs and I was just messing
up. Whenever I have an emotion that’s out of the ordinary,
I want to have sex, whether I’m extremely happy or extremely
sad or extremely stressed.
At the end of her confession she states,
My sexual addiction has become a monster that has taken over
my life. Dr. Phil I am a sex addict and I want to stop going
from man to man. Please can you help me?
In the same fashion as the earlier montages, Anne is seen picking
someone up, trolling the internet for a potential sex partner and
finally walking the street alone. At the end of the montage we see
Anne crying. Her desperation palpable, she is clearly in need of
McGraw’s “intervention” and “help.”
Confession as Entertainment, Manufactured Crisis and Required
Solution
[23] All three confessional montages are fashioned through fast
cuts and various camera techniques to both produce authenticity
and to garner the empathy of the television audience. However, the
confessions also operate as a form of spectacle. The routine of
the everyday is given both coherence and vibrancy within this media
format. McGraw attempts to mitigate against the idea that
his show is only about spectacle, entertainment or “trash” by
stating that although these may be titillating topics, “this
is not Jerry Springer.” To confirm his difference he must
affirm his expertise. During the show, all three women state that
they tried other methods, but it was through Dr. Phil that they
thought real change could be made. This is illuminated by this interaction
with Joann.
Dr. Phil: And we’ve talked to your therapist. How
do you feel about your psychologist?
Joann: I love him, he’s great.
Dr. Phil: He is. He’s well trained, he is highly
skilled and he cares deeply about you. Do you lie to
him?
Joann: No. I haven’t lied to him.
Dr. Phil: So you’re tellin’ him that you’re
taking all this Vicadin everyday?
Joann: Actually, I was going to tell him on an appointment
previous to knowing I was going to come here, I got in there and
I couldn’t because I was too ashamed and so I left and
then I—
Dr. Phil: Would that be a no?
Joann: Yes, sorry.
Dr. Phil: You haven’t told him the truth about all
this until you knew damn well I was going to make you tell the
truth.
Joann: Correct.
McGraw becomes the expert par excellence who, because of his direct
approach, is able to “get through” and make Joanne “admit
the problem” that her therapist failed to do. The use
of extreme case scenarios illuminates that if his methods could
work for these problems, they could work on any. Confessions must
have resolution or absolution, or else they become moot. The
Dr. Phil Show, to use White’s phrase, “manufactures
crisis” which consequently necessitates McGraw’s solution.47 By
incorporating his solution into various and sundry crises, both
viewer and guest are able to fit into McGraw’s schema for
healthy (hegemonic and highly individualistic) living.
[24] This production of crisis and solution engenders a form of
identification with the audience and creates more potential converts.
A similar structure is found in televangelist programs, where a
person may happen upon a program and “realize that precisely
his or her problems and situation are being addressed” and
thus both viewer and guest become saved.48 McGraw
articulates the universalism of addiction as a manufactured crisis
with his opening statement for this particular show.
Today is a very important show that goes to people that you wouldn’t
always think to be in this category. Today I’m talking
to addicts. And I’m not talkin’ about the bums
that you pretend not to notice on the street. These
addicts are more like your sister, your best friend, maybe
even your wife or your husband.
Crisis becomes the indispensable formula for both televangelism
and The Dr. Phil Show. “As is so often the case with
television, one first has to watch, even with disdain, to be a potential
subject for conversion.”49 The
messages on the list serve mirror narratives found on the show where
individuals confess their problems as they relate to the problems
they heard on a particular show. However, unlike the patients on
the show, who hear advice from McGraw himself, on the list serve
advice is given from other “converts” who espouse and
advertise his method. In this regard we see that individuals come
to assess themselves and assess others via McGraw’s strategies. The
confessional, as part of the overall structure of conversion with
its emphasis on crisis, ultimately becomes an advertisement for
McGraw’s products, collapsing religious method with capitalist
goals.
The Testimonial: Witnessing the Self-transformative
Process
[25]Each Friday Dr. Phil’s Weight Loss Challenge sells
his weight loss program. The show includes participants who have
used his advice to lose weight and also follows 13 selected regular
Challenge participants. Appearing regularly on The Dr. Phil Show,
these 13 participants attain a pseudo-celebrity status by unveiling
their personal lives to a nationally televised audience. Short biographies,
as well as before and after shots, appear on the Dr. Phil website.
[26] “The Ultimate Weight Loss Holiday Challenge” (1/19/04)
typifies weight loss shows. Broken into four segments separated
by commercial breaks, this show begins with McGraw’s welcome
to the audience sprinkled with self-promoting statements. The first
segment is composed of three persons (Joy, Amy, and Mike) who have
lost weight using McGraw’s program. Each person narrates a
montage of their struggle and comments on their success in using
McGraw’s method. Joy and Amy appear on the show to provide
the visual evidence of their weight loss success. The second segment
takes the form of a competition. Here seven of the weight loss challengers
are broken up into two teams. Each member of the team that lost
the most weight per person over the holidays will win a paid vacation
at the Golden Door Spa. The members are brought on stage and weighed.
They then comment on their struggle to lose weight during a period
of time where there is a lot of social eating. McGraw cheerleads.
Segment three is introduced with another weight loss story focusing
on Laurie, the mother of two, who lost 76 pounds. This is followed
by community advocates for McGraw’s program. Monica runs a
contest to lose weight and has a kick-off rally. McGraw attends
one of the sessions to show his support while the mayor of Goldsboro,
NC proclaims December 27 as Dr. Phil Day. McGraw then visits
another group in Philadelphia. Finally, Garrett the weatherman for
KFSM in Fort Smith, Arkansas runs a weatherman weight loss challenge
to engage viewers. The final segment cuts to Jay McGraw at North
Dallas High School talking to adolescents about weight loss to promote
his book Ultimate Weight Solutions for Teens (2003). Giving
audience members a copy of his book, the show ends with McGraw promoting
Quest Diagnostics and Designs for Help, two companies involved with
his program. The program weaves multiple personal stories into this
narrative providing multiple points of identification (entrance
into the narrative) to its television audience.
Congregations, Audiences and Markets
[27] The testimonial is a rhetorical structure of affirmation shared
by many discourses. On the one hand, the testimonial served as structure
to enter in or to reaffirm one’s membership in a congregation.
Associated with the revivalist tradition, bearing witness functioned
to center a member in the moral discourse of religiosity. On the
other hand, medicine men of the nineteenth century used shills to
testify to the miraculous cures found in their elixirs. The
use of the testimonial can be found in the recovery movement strategies
as well as advertising discourse, particularly the infomercial,
a structure that mixes testimonies by both experts and users to
hawk “innovative” products and services.50 For
all these discourses, evidence lies in the testimony itself. Framing
it by codes of authenticity is essential. It must be believable.
[28] We argue that the structure of The Dr. Phil Show draws
on both these traditions, mimicking a segment of the conversion
experience while simultaneously extending a market segment. The
testimonial proclaims the healing power of McGraw’s advice
that allows for self-transformation, whether physical and/or psychological.
By giving witness, participants on the show both attest to their
personal salvation (self-actualization) while selling the Dr. Phil
brand. Perhaps the only difference between The Dr. Phil Show and
an infomercial is that the show buries its commercial intent deeper
into the narrative structure and disguises it with a discourse of
concern.
[29] In September 2003 when Dr. Phil entered the weight loss market,
the New York Times speculated that this life strategist might
lose credibility to what seemed to be an obviously market-driven
strategy. The article suggested that McGraw was perhaps overextending
his brand name into an already saturated market.51 McGraw,
however, effectively changed weight loss terminology to create his
own niche. According to McGraw his plan is not a diet but a lifestyle
change. The use of this terminology not only differentiates McGraw
from other weight loss gurus, but also places weight loss under
the McGraw umbrella of personal problems that a life strategist
can help solve. Supporting McGraw’s claim to a superior weight
loss method, program participants often speak of failed diets. For
example McGraw asks Mike, a participant, “You’d been
on every diet there was, right?” Mike replies, “I’d
been on so many diets that you know, when I finally found the right
way to not be on a diet to change my lifestyle I went to the cabinet
in my bathroom and it took almost a trash bag just to get rid of
things didn’t work for me.” These comments on failed
diets are often followed by participants testifying to the effectiveness
of McGraw’s life strategy.
[30] In both interviews and clips, participants routinely promote
McGraw’s books. According to them, reading these books resulted
in transformative experiences not unlike the reading of religious
literature. For example, commenting on her perception of herself
Joy states,
My lowest moment was realizing that I was so big that you couldn’t
miss me yet I was invisible. I purchased Self Matters and
started this healing process that I had no idea was leading me to
a complete life change . . . When I purchased the book the Ultimate
Weight Solutions and got to the second key this light
bulb went on. I’m going to be successful this time.
This is not just another diet.
Participants often used words like “healed” when describing
the transformation of self that they experience. These comments
double as selling propositions and testimony. While references to
McGraw’s books are found in every segment of the show, the
selling intent is buried in religious/therapeutic language.
[31] The entire fourth segment of the show is a promotion for his
son’s book: The Ultimate Weight Solution for Teens (2003).
Here, McGraw “checks in” with his son Jay at a Dallas
high school. Jay comments,
I think that parents should go get the book and read it and then
give it to their kids. I think every parent should because
your teenagers may not have a weight issue and a body issue but
I’m gonna bet that they have a body image issue.
At the end of the show, copies of the book are left under the audience’s
chairs. Self-promotion is read as an act of concern, care and altruism.
The loop of praise between McGraw and participants closes off criticism.
Participants constantly express their gratitude to McGraw. Amy states,
I’ve lost 153 pounds with his help with the book and the exercise,
I feel like a whole new person. I can walk. I can hold my head up. I
just want to thank Dr. Phil for helping me change my life.
Whether or not participants are cynical or sincere actors doesn’t
matter. What is essential is that their statements can be arranged
and edited to support the spectacle itself. Debord argued that a
central component of spectacle is self-laudatory monologue.52 Here,
it is as if self-praise entered an echo chamber. Testament is reproduced
in every facet of the show.
[32] Not unlike the infomercial, the testament of participants is
supported by visual evidence of quantitative transformation. Audiences
must be able to see a product work; there must be measurable, viewable
results. Visual evidence of weight loss is supported by before and
after photographs. These images are always framed by positive audience
reactions and compliments from McGraw.
Dr. Phil: Well stand right there and let’s get a before
and after shot of this girl. Hold on, hold on. Man,
that is amazing.
Dr. Phil: If you think Joy’s 98 pound weight loss is incredible
and it is, wait until you hear Amy’s story. She lost
152 pounds and over a hundred inches. Take a look.
Dr. Phil: Wow, OK. Well. Amy stand up. Can we see Amy before
all of this started and can we see her now? Oh my god.
Before a participant is brought on stage, a montage of the participant’s
struggle is shown. Although constructed, these montages are given
the appearance of the Real. They are shot in the participant’s
home, often include other family members, are given a narrative,
and most importantly are personally narrated by the participant.
Likewise, they are photographed using hyperreal cinematic codes.
Joy (voice-over montage): My name is Joy and I’m 30 years
old. When I started Dr. Phil’s program I weighed 238
pounds and now I weigh 140. Look Dr. Phil, I used to wear
a size 20 and now I wear a size 8. I have tried every diet. As
soon as I would go off the diet I would gain back all of the weight
plus some.
Even though the artificial commercial intent is obvious with a minimum
of critical distance, because the montage is enunciated in a “this
is my life” voice, it is both authentic and authenticating.
The montage is the reference point, the visual ground to judge the
degree of transformation.
[33] Mol describes conversion as the expression of a new identity
in which the convert reorganizes her life along a new set of principles.
Conversion is to the person what charisma is to the social group. It
is the means by which a new perspective becomes emotionally anchored
in the personality; which is unified in the process. The convert
feels that he has obtained a new identity, and very often he strengthens
his new assumptive world by repeating over and over again how evil,
or disconsolate, or inadequate he was before the conversion took
place. Conversion then is the adoption of a new orientation,
a re-ordering of priorities and values. 53
Testimony is the expression of this new identity. It proclaims the
new self.
[34] What makes The Dr. Phil Show something more than an
infomercial? The transformative experience evidenced by weight loss
and life style change is located in a deeper sense of self. Although
this is only superficially articulated, it is expressed as a celebratory
shared moment. Joy states, “I’m going to be healed
and I’m going to be a completely different person on the other
end.” Amy follows with similar experience of self-transformation. “I’ve
lost 153 pounds with his help with the book and the exercise, I
feel like a whole new person, I can walk, I can hold my head up.” Mike
likewise celebrates a new sense of self. “I’m a new
man. I’m a new person. And I have to thank you.”
[35] McGraw himself plays the central role in the conversion narrative—he
listens, diagnoses, prescribes, cures, and validates. Moreover,
he oversees production.54 He “provides
imperative guidelines for behavior, inhibiting impulses and producing
structure and stability, all with the promise of protection from
an omnipotent authority.”55 As
part and parcel of this spectacle, McGraw dons the role of Dr. Phil
and becomes the charismatic “father figure, a new authority
from which the follower eagerly accepts a new interpretation of
both the past and the future.”56 Charisma
is produced within the codes of entertainment television. Mimicking
Sports Center’s introductory graphics, hugs and hand shakes
replace dunks and home runs to establish McGraw as a dynamic personality
in the opening credits. Cutaways to an applauding audience follow. The
production of charisma is routinized by a set of televisual marketing
techniques. A simulated conversion experience is constructed to
serve as a witnessing narrative that in turn functions to build
sign value for the Dr. Phil brand. What is important here is how
the conversion experience has been orchestrated into a marketing
strategy. Dr. Phil claims knowledge that the participant lacks,
makes judgments on behaviors, and bestows blessings on those who
promise to mend their errant ways. He is a Weberian charismatic
leader with a rational organization—this is exactly what capitalism
is about today: a sign economy based on fabricated charisma.
[36] Charisma is not a personal characteristic but a relational
category. Produced within the codes of television, it relies
on intermediaries as well as the audience. The Weight Loss Challenge
provides intermediaries: the thirteen participants serve as Dr.
Phil’s inner circle, McGraw’s chosen ones. Their comments
and experiences, their successes and failures, are constructed into
montages and played on programs. Their biographies are found on Dr.
Phil.com. Appearing regularly, they sit in the first row of
the audience as McGraw often imparts knowledge through interactions
with them. These participants return weekly and speak of their progress.
In the final episode of their weight loss saga, they are showered
with not only gifts but also potentially new lives (would-be actors
and actresses are given bit parts on shows). Most importantly, by
exposing their personal problems, they function as apostolic figures
of identification for audiences. For example, when Joy is brought
on stage, she states, “My emotions. I had some real problems
with how I felt about myself, my self esteem, things that had happened
to me in my past. I really identified with Anne Marie. Had a similar
situation as a child, was raped and needed to get past that.” These
participants serve as conduits through which identification takes
place. These conduits extend well beyond the thirteen participants.
Listserv discussants often express similar forms of identification
with other program participants. Charisma is thus channeled through
participants who testify to the power of McGraw’s advice.
[37] Moreover, charisma is supported by an audience. Cutaways to
expressive audience members are standard fare in this genre. Their
nods and smiles function to authenticate participant/McGraw interactions.
They stand in for the televisual audience and function to reaffirm
the narrative. These moments are interspersed to give weight to
the witnessing narrative.57 Like
a laugh track, cutaways are manufactured affect. They function to
direct an audience down a particular narrative path. They not only
affirm McGraw’s strategic advice, but also a moral position. Witnessing
is spread across both participants and audience.
The Conversion Experience as Entertainment Spectacle
[38] The crisis of modernity is often associated with the process
of secularization defined by Berger as the “process by which
sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of
religious institutions and symbols.”58 Compounding
this shift, sociologists decry the erosion of both community and
tradition resulting in increasing privatization. How does the individual
combat the anxieties that ensue when collective meaning and moral
certainty weakens?59 Theories
of religion have posited two arguments with respect to this modern
dilemma. On the one hand, they express disenchantment with the modern
and often mythologized pre-modern social formations.60 Here,
the "juggernaut" of modernity driven by capital follows
its own logic and gobbles up all social and cultural formations
that attempt to hinder its progress. On the other hand, theories
of secularization have been countered by theories of re-sacralization.
Theorists point both to backlashes against modernity (i.e., jihadic
movements) and to the rise of new forms of religious expression
emphasizing both the need for “functional equivalents” to
satisfy spiritual needs and new found agency in converts who now
choose their religion (new religious movements as well as New
Age movements).61 Does The
Dr. Phil Show re-sacralize the world of its participants and viewers
by producing a sense of moral certainty, self-empowerment and community?
Or does The Dr. Phil Show fall into the realm of the profane? Is
it just another capitalist enterprise that thrives on social dislocation
(anomie), privatization, and feelings of disempowerment and disenchantment?
[39] The line between the sacred and secular/profane becomes even
more blurred in postmodernity. According to Zygmunt Bauman,
Postmodern cultural pressures, while intensifying the search
for ‘peak
experiences,’ have at the same time uncoupled the search
from religion prone interests and concerns, privatized it,
and cast mainly non-religious institutions in the role of
purveyors of relevant services.”62
Religion and its discursive structures have moved into the marketplace
and are being subjected to and reinscribed within its logic.63 Beckford
further theorizes that, “variants on ideas of spiritual and
religious liberation have seeped into sundry spheres of life to
the point where, for example, management training programmes, therapeutic
practices, new social movements and ‘human resource management’ schemes
have appropriated them.”64 This
shift from an other-worldly to a this-worldly concern is expressed
as the drift of religion into the realm of the therapeutic.
In new religious movements of Christian persuasion (especially
in charismatic movements which show the influence of psychology
and human relationship theories) the perspective is usually reversed: the
theme of salvation no longer refers to the (culturally devalued)
expectation of a full life in another world; it functions as a symbolic
marker enhancing the hope of being healed in all aspects of self-realization. In
this individualistic reinterpretation of the link between salvation
and healing, it is the vision of salvation that becomes a metaphor
for healing, a means of expressing the extent of personal regeneration—physical,
psychic and moral—implied here and now by the fact of
being healed (in a way that is beyond the power of modern
medicine, highly specialized and technicized as it is.65
[40] Theorizing the cultural shift from heavenly salvation to earthly
self-actualization, Lears argued that during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, there was a weakening of repressive
religious formations and the subsequent emergence of a therapeutic
ethos. Lears associates this shift with the rise of medicine and
psychology, increased urban living and the feelings of being over-civilized,
the rise of bureaucracy and the decline of the autonomous self,
and an increasing prevalence of advertising messages associating
consumption with self-actualization.66
[41] Likewise, Bellah posits the growing dominance of a therapeutic
discourse.67 He locates the
rise of the therapeutic in an excessive individualization associated
more with privatization rather than freedom. Therapeutic discourse
permeates work, home, family, friendship, and functions to reduce
the anxiety associated with a moral uncertainty resulting from the
weakening of tradition and community. Bellah further notes that
therapeutic discourse is underscored by a utilitarian trajectory
that blends a reflexivity focused on “feelings” with
a cost-benefit analysis of the relationships that sustain them.68 Referring
to this relational model as therapeutic contractualism, he draws
parallels between therapeutic discourse and managerial discourse
in which “the purely contractual structure of the economic
and bureaucratic world is becoming an ideological model for personal
life.”69 The emergence
of therapeutic discourse is a response to the expansion of the service
of economy of late capitalism in which both therapy and managerial
skills demand a self-surveillance grounded on “an acute concern
for the monitoring and managing of inner feelings and emphasizes
their expression in open communication.”70
Anxiety and uncertainty about more important and enduring relationships
are increasing rather than decreasing. Therapists have grown
increasingly concerned about the lack of “community” in
modern life, and, as we have seen in our discussion of the therapeutic
quest for community, have often suggested that people need to “reconnect” to
families, join a church, or become involved in political activity. These
admonitions suggest that therapy cannot really replace older forms
of relationship, but must somehow seek to reinvigorate them. Yet,
as we have seen, the very language of therapeutic relationship
seems to undercut the possibility of other than self-interested
relationships.71
Monadic concerns for intimacy and personal success legitimized under
the guise of self-fulfillment fail to provide the necessary grounding
found in community, religion and family.
[42] Furedi’s recent attacks on the pervasiveness of therapy
echo Bellah’s analysis. Furedi, however, positions therapeutic
culture, particularly self-help movements, as rechannelling social
problems into private troubles and away from political action. Therapeutic
discourse functions to label and control even minor forms of deviance.72 It
is this dilemma that The Dr. Phil Show addresses. It is
also the contradiction that undergirds the narrative structure of
the show, further contradicted by the logic of spectacle that underwrites
television programming. On the one hand, The Dr. Phil Show reflects
needs for moral certainty, self-empowerment, fulfillment and community
in a volatile anomic social world. It offers a philosophy and a
community that support these needs. It functions as a community
of support for a range of self-transformations. On the other hand,
the show is a media spectacle driven by the logic of capital. Its
primary goal is to create value as quickly and efficiently as possible.
It subscribes to the same logic that erodes traditional institutions,
such as religion, family and community, producing privatization
and the rise of a therapeutic culture. Conversion is the entry narrative,
the rite of passage into this ambivalent commodity form. Moreover,
the solutions offered reaffirm a politically and socially conservative
ethos that functions to provide a sense of moral certainty for the
show’s audience.
[43] We argue that this contradiction plays out both in the substance
of McGraw’s discourse and in the structure of his shows. Not
dissimilar to religious narrative, McGraw's media-determined conversion
narrative provides moral certainty, self-fulfillment and empowerment,
and a feeling of community. His interactions with participants,
supported by the confessional montage followed by testimonies of
transformation, produce a commonsense certainty that puts order
back into the ambiguity of everyday life. The acceptance of his
prescriptions by participants, supported by audience reactions,
reenacts the religious conversion on the television stage. Each
program reaffirms the social, not unlike religious rites theorized
by Durkheim.
Producing Moral Authority
[44] Luckmann notes that “moralizing discourse takes many
forms”—the sermon, the political speech, domestic encounters,
etc.73The Dr. Phil Show is
a moralizing discourse. It is McGraw’s authoritarian style,
his absolute certainty that appeals to audiences. “Tell it
like is” or “Get real” are trademark slogans associated
with McGraw. For Luckmann, moralizing discourse both blames and
praises, and threatens and appeals.74 Essentially,
an oppositional binary is constructed by the speaker. The listener
is expected to accept the moral dichotomy presented by the speaker
and move to the moral/good side of the binary. While sermons use
examples to personalize and concretize the moral abstraction, The
Dr. Phil Show presents streamlined case studies of onstage participants.
Moralizing discourse produces a binary that disguises the multiple
contradictory discourses that interweave through the binary. The
Dr. Phil Show blends rational-utilitarian, therapeutic, bio-medical,
colloquial, personal narrative, commercial, and religious moral
discourses within a heavily scripted televisual environment determined
by the media market measured in ratings and shares and the sale
of paraphernalia. Like an alchemist, McGraw’s authority is
based on his adroit style of mixing and calling forth the appropriate
discursive expertise. For example, positioning himself a life coach “who
tells it like it is” and who provides step-by-step solutions
to problems, he often criticizes the therapeutic as soft and fuzzy.
And yet, he we will argue for the necessity of getting to know the
true self, “what I call the authentic self.” McGraw’s
discourse is primarily a rational-utilitarian discourse; it is played
out in the conversion narrative. His ten steps program (referred
to the Ten Laws of Life) defines the path to return to a healthy
life, to re-enter the fold.75 Moreover,
televisual charisma mixes with his rational discourse to create
a form of social control. McGraw offers a strengthened ego shored
up by his totemic authority. McGraw himself states, “I can
be a great ally, but I can also be a powerful enemy.” He prescribes
his rules for participants and audiences, necessitating self-surveillance.
Offering a religious asceticism based on self-transformation, McGraw
produces a highly seductive form of the iron cage.
Producing Empowerment
[45] The Dr. Phil Show creates a televisual space designed
for women to air “problems in their lives.” McGraw hails
women as “incredibly important,” regardless of how their
spouses, children and/or bosses might make them feel. He constantly
states that women need "to put themselves first.” Although
the position of women is idealized, empowerment strategies usually
function within the parameter of relationality. “Relationship
rescue” is a recurring phrase that defines the limits of female
concern and power. Moreover, the “space of support” is
a market-driven entertainment spectacle. The women on the show,
as well as in the audience, are simultaneously situated as potentially
empowered women, data for market research, consumers of Dr. Phil
brand products, and dutiful wives and mothers. Before one enters
the conversion narrative, one is positioned as disempowered, i.e.,
unable to control one’s weight, one’s addictions, or
one’s relationships. At the end of the conversion narrative
lie feelings of self-empowerment, the ability to take control of
one’s own life. Confession speaks to one’s own failure
and lack of agency; testimony speaks to a reborn, empowered self.
While men occasionally take centre stage, they are almost always
positioned in a relationship in which their primary role is to provide
support for their spouse as she moves through the narrative. While
McGraw offers empowerment for viewers and participants, his discourse
and ensuing strategies serve patriarchal ends.76 We
have that argued McGraw himself is positioned by his own rhetoric,
his personal style, and the codes of the media spectacle as a celebrity
totem. While McGraw stresses agency and self-empowerment, the chosen
path leads the participant into the centre of the hegemony.
Producing Community
[46] Durkheim argued that religious rites establish a binary, separating
the sacred from the profane. Both positive and negative rites function
to renew the commitment to religion (the social) in what Durkheim
saw as an increasingly utilitarian world.77 However, since Durkheim sees religious forces and their capacity
to sacralize “the world” as always already social, these
sacralizations are theoretically displaced from the taken-for-granted
symbolizations of transcendence current in any historical group
into the realm of social immanence from which they initially emerged. Society
turns back upon itself—not without risk—to selectively
ratify its own mundane pursuits through varied sacralizations, even
while the social actor believes – not wholly in vain—that “higher” forces
are at work.78 The Dr. Phil Show produces an imagined virtual community
organized around chat rooms, a listserv, commodities and public
appearances and televised appearances. It exists as a community
of support. The Dr. Phil Show re-sacralizes the world by
reproducing the social. The conversion narrative, whether
it is performed in front of a television audience, given expression
on a listserv, verbalized by an audience member at a McGraw public
presentation, or acted out in the privacy of one’s home, serves
as an entry practice into this community. The boundaries between
social/sacred and the secular/profane are formed by the conversion
narrative—the confessional montage, McGraw’s prescriptions,
and the testimony, seconded by media-driven cutaways to the audience. Where
does the profane exist in the world of Dr. Phil? Outside the
hegemony. It exists in overweight bodies, drug use, addiction, non-monogamous
relationships, and in the unnamed psychological disorders that determine
these conditions. Conversion is a return to the hegemony of the
social and to a renewed self, predicated on the needs of late capitalism.
[47] McGraw is able seamlessly to blend his success in the media
market dictated by the logics of spectacle with capital and expressions
of a concerned all-knowing authority on relationality and self-fulfillment.
Capital in this guise has appropriated community and the entry narrative
of conversion. While one might argue that The Dr. Phil Show is
the profane, there appears to be little critical ground to stand
on when morality, empowerment, and community, that which the sacred
signifies, have been so totally appropriated. The Dr. Phil Show reflects
the power of capital-driven media to appropriate and to juxtapose
contradictory discourses.
Notes
1 We would like to thank our
reviewers for their helpful comments. We also want to thank Rita
Hewlett for her skillful copy edits.
2 Demographically speaking, target
audiences for most talk television are women between the ages of
30-45 (with the exception of Jerry Springer). The Dr. Phil Show is
no different. Given the investment television executives and advertisers
have in creating and sustaining markets, it should come as no surprise
that most topics and concerns on talk television are geared toward
women (Manga 2003, 45).
3 Phil C. McGraw, Life Strategies:
Doing What Works, Doing What Matters (New York: Hyperion
Books, 1999), 258-9.
4 McGraw, Life Strategies, 21.
5 Emile Durkheim The Elementary
Forms of Religious Life. (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1954),
465-67.
6 Zygmunt Bauman, “Postmodern
Religion?” Religion, Modernity and Postmodernity. Ed.
Paul Heelas (New York: Blackwell, 1998), 68.
7 Bauman, “Postmodern Religion?”,69.
8 Julie Manga, Talking Trash:
The Cultural Politics of Daytime Television (New York: New
York University Press, 2003), 5; Linda Grindstaff, The Money
Shot: Trash, Class and the Making of TV Talk Shows (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002), 22; John Dovey, Freakshow:
First Person Media and Factual Television (London: Pluto
Press, 2002), 103-114; Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid
Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1998), 14; Vicki Abt and Leonard Mustazza, ComingAfter
Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV Talk Show (Bowling
Green, OH: Bowling Green State Press, 1997), 3.
9 There are, of course, similarities
between Dr. Phil and other "trash" talk television shows.
For example, both offer "help" and both are at base about
entertainment. Moreover, as Manga argues, talk shows serve as a
place where the television viewer (particularly those in marginal
positions) can relate to participants and thus they may view the
shows as a space of legitimate public discourse. We have no doubt
that a similar mechanism may be at work on The Dr. Phil Show;
however, we are less interested in audience reception of the Dr.
Phil and more interested in the semiotics of the narratives present
in the show.
10 We are less concerned with
how individuals on the show come to make meaning of their experience
or in the audience reception of the show and are more interested
in the narrative and the cinematic structures of the show and how
discourse is compressed or made to fit into these structures.
11 This form of narrative analysis
is less common in sociological contexts and more common in communication
studies. Our use of this form of narrative analysis is heavily influenced
by Mimi White’s work on therapeutic discourses in American
media (Mimi. White, Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American
Television [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1992], 19).
12 Simulation replaces “actual” events
or objects with their virtual electronic signs and image counterparts.
According to Baudrillard, simulation is different from a lie or
fiction, because it not only presents an absence as presence, the
representation as the real, but also undermines the contrasts with
the real through its absorption of the real. William. Bogart, The
Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 37-56; Jean Baudrillard, Simulation (New
York: Semiotext[e], 1983), 45.
13 “Neilsen Ratings,” Broadcasting
and Cable (1/19/2004), 31. One Nielsen rating point equals
1,084,000 households. This sample accounts for about one percent
of households with televisions in the United States (Broadcasting
and Cable 1/19/2004).
14 “Neilsen Ratings” Broadcasting
and Cable 2/16/04, 29.
15 Steve McClellan, “Syndie
Spots Pass $200K Mark,” Broadcasting and Cable (January
12, 2004), 28.
16 John Bauman, “Postmodern
Religion?”: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and
Maintenance of Faith (New York: Irvington Press, 1977), 34-49;
Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human
Side of Religion (Berkley, CA: University of California Press,
2000), 114-25.
17 Bauman, “Postmodern
Religion?” , 34.
18 Bauman, “Postmodern
Religion?”, 57.
19Stark and Finke, 114-125;
Malcom Hamilton, Sociology of Religion: Theoretical and Comparative
Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2001), 260-68.
20 Hamilton, Sociology of
Religion, 260-268.
21 White, Tele-Advising, 111.
22 White, 156; Steve Bruce, Pray
TV: Televangelism in America (New York: Routledge, 1990),
35.
23 Jeffery Hayden and Charles
Swann, Prime Time Preachers: The Rising Power of Televangelism (London:
Addison Wesley Press, 1981), 16.
24 Bruce, Pray TV, 39.
25 Hayden and Swann, Prime
Time Preachers, 12.
26 Hayden and Swann, Prime
Time Preachers, 12-13.
27 White, Tele-Advising, 117.
28 White, Tele-Advising, 114;
Bruce, Pray TV, 4; Hadden and Swann, Prime Time Preachers, 12;
Walter H. Capps, The New Religious Right: Piety, Patriotism,
and Politics (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1990), 24; Razelle Frankl, Televangelism: The Marketing of Popular
Religion (Carbondale, Il: Southern Illinois University Press,
1987), 123-24.
29 Sophia Dembling and Lisa
Gutierrez, The Making of Dr. Phil: The Straight Talking True
Story of Everyone’s Favorite Therapist (Hoboken, NJ: John
Wiley and Sons Press, 2004), 138.
30 Frankl, Televangelism,
119.
31 Frankl, Televangelism,
119-120.
32 Susan F. Harding, "Convicted
by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric of Fundamental Baptist Conversion," American
Ethnologist 4 (1987), 167.
33 William Labov, Language
in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 360; William Labov, “Speech
Actions and Reactions in Personal Narratives,” Analyzing
Discourse: Text and Talk, ed. Deborah Tannen (Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 1982), 235; Eliot Mishler, “The
Analysis of Interview-Narratives,” Narrative Psychology:
The Storied Nature of Human Conduct, ed. Theodore. R. Sarbin
(New York: Praeger, 1986), 37; Catherine Riessman, Narrative
Analysis (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1993), 17.
34 Clifford Geertz, “Religion
as a Cultural System,” Anthropological Approaches to the
Study of Religion Ed. Michael Banton, (New York: Praeger, 1966),
3-4.
35 John Dovey, Freakshow:
First Person Media and Factual Television (London: Pluto
Press, 2002), 105-12.
36 Dovey, Freakshow,
113.
37 We are less concerned with
how individuals on the show come to make meaning of their experience
or in the audience reception to the show and than we are interested
in the narrative and the cinematic structures of the show and how
discourse is compressed or made to fit into these structures.
38 According to Anderson, a
community "is imagined because the members of even the
smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet
them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image
of their communion”; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities:
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York:
Verso Press, 1991), 6.
39 Michel Foucault, The
History of Sexuality: Volume One: An Introduction (New York:
Vintage Press, 1990), 60.
40 Foucault, The History
of Sexuality, 61-2.
41 Foucault, The History
of Sexuality, 29.
42 White, Tele-Advising,
9.
43 Jean Baudrillard, “Dust
Breeding,” C Theorywww.ctheory.net (2001),
2.
44 White, Tele-Advising,
19; Dovey, Freakshow, 107.The allure of this form of public
confession may range from the desire for fifteen minutes of fame,
an ever-increasing culture of narcissism as Lasch argues, to what
Gamson and Manga refer to as the desire to have a voice in a public
forum as access to the public dialogue shrinks due privatization.
Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss
the lure of the show for guests. To do so, would require intensive
interview data with former guests. Christopher Lasch, The
Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New
York: Warner Books, 1979), 48-54; Gamson, Freaks Talk Back,
138; Manga, Talking Trash, 54.
45 White, Tele-Advising, 10.
It is important to note that White’s research focuses more
on the links between the confessional and therapeutic discourses
in the media. While we find her argument compelling, and we in fact
do find therapeutic discourse in The Dr. Phil Show, we found
that the structure of conversion was far more prevalent. Unfortunately
due to space limitations, we cannot provide a prolonged discussion
of the therapeutic discourses found in the show.
46 Again it is important to
remember that these shows are meant to entertain and the show being
aired has been subject to editing (this is evident with cutaway
shots, shifts in camera angles, etc.) and thus are not in vivo narratives.
47 White, Tele-Advising, 130.
48 White, Tele-Advising, 131.
49 White, Tele-Advising, 131.
50 Wendy Kaminer, I’m
Dysfunctional, Your Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and
Other Self Help Fashions (New York: Madison Wesley Press,
1992), 6.
51 Sherri Day, “Dr. Phil,
Medicine Man,” New York Times (October 27, 2003), C
2, 1.
52 Guy Debord, Society of
the Spectacle (Detroit: Red & Black, 1977), 24.
53 Hans Mol, Identity and
the Sacred: A Sketch for a New Social Scientific Theory of Religion (New
York: Free Press, 1976), 50-1.
54 Dembling and Gutierrez, The
Making of Dr. Phil, 161.
55 Chana Ullman, The Transformed
Self: The Psychology of Religious Conversion (New York: Plenum
Press, 1989), 54.
56 Mol, Identity and the
Sacred, 45.
57 Heather Hendershot, “Virgins
for Jesus: The Gender Politics of Therapeutic Christian Fundamentalist
Media,” Hop On Pop: The Politics and Pleasure of Popular
Culture, ed. Henry Jenkins, et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2002), 93.
58 Peter Berger, The Social
Reality of Religion, (London: Faber and Faber Press, 1960),
107.
59 Berger, Social Reality, 27-36;
Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Avon, 1965),
157-62; Daniele Hervieu-Leger, Religion as a Chain of Memory (New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 23-41.
60 Bryan Wilson, “Salvation,
Secularization, and Demoralization,” The Blackwell Companion:
The Sociology of Religion, ed. Richard Fenn (New York: Blackwell
Press, 2003), 43-8.
61 Paul Heelas, “Introduction,” Religion,
Modernity and Postmodernity, ed. Paul Heelas, (New York:
Blackwell Press, 1998), 4-6.
62 Bauman, “Postmodern
Religion?”70.
63 Bauman, “Postmodern
Religion?”73.
64 James Beckford, Social
Theory and Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2003), 127.
65 Hervieu-Leger, Religion
as a Chain of Memory, 139.
66 T.J. Jackson Lears, “From
Salvation to Self Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots
of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930,” The Culture of Consumption:
Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980, ed. Richard
Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears (New York: Pantheon Books, 1983), 6-17.
67 Robert Bellah et al., Habits
of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New
York: Harper and Row, 1985), 131-150.
68 Bellah et al., Habits
of the Heart 126.
69 Bellah et al., Habits
of the Heart 128.
70 Bellah et al., Habits
of the Heart 138.
71 Bellah et al., Habits
of the Heart 139.
72 Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture:
Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. (London: Routledge,
2004), 66-84.
73 Thomas Luckmann, “Moralizing
Sermons, Then and Now,” The Blackwell Companion: The Sociology
of Religion Ed. Richard Fenn, (New York: Blackwell Press. 2003),
388-89.
74 Luckmann, “Moralizing
Sermons, Then and Now,” 388.
75 McGraw, 1999; see Table of
Contents and back cover.
76 Here, we might distinguish
between Oprah Winfrey and McGraw. McGraw was first introduced to
television audiences on Oprah as a tough talking “tell it
like it is” life strategist. While McGraw draws heavily on
traditional codes of patriarchy and speaks with authority, Winfrey
is the Über-empath who not only listens with concern,
but appears to share any pain that her guests have experienced.
77 Durkheim, Elementary
Forms, 299-309.
78 Donald A Nielsen, “The Transformation of Society and the Sacred in Durkheim’s Religious Sociology,” The Blackwell
Companion: The Sociology of Religion. Ed. Richard Fenn (New
York: Blackwell Press, 2003), 120-32.
Bibliography
Abt, Vicki and Mustazza, Leonard. ComingAfter Oprah: Cultural
Fallout in the Age of the TV Talk Show. Bowling Green, OH:
Bowling Green State Press, 1997.
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso Press,
1991.
Baudrillard, Jean. “Dust Breeding.” C Theory. www.ctheory.net,
2001, 1-4.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e),
1983.
Bauman, Zygmunt. “Postmodern Religion?” Religion,
Modernity and Postmodernity. Ed.
Paul Heelas. New York: Blackwell Press, 1998, 55-78.
Beckford, James. Social Theory and Religion. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
Bellah, Robert et. al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism
and Commitment in American Life. New York: Harper and Row,
1985.
Berger, Peter. The Social Reality of Religion. London: Faber
and Faber Press, 1969.
Bogart, William. The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol
in Telematic Societies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1996.
Bruce, Steve. Pray TV: Televangelism in America. New York:
Routledge, 1990.
Day, Sherri. “Dr. Phil, Medicine Man.” New York Times. October
27 2003: C 2, 1.
Dembling, Sophia and Gutierrez, Lisa. The Making of Dr. Phil:
The Straight Talking True Story of Everyone’s Favorite
Therapist. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2004.
Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Red & Black,
1977.
Dovey, John. Freakshow: First Person Media and Factual Television.
London: Pluto Press, 2002.
Durkheim, Emile The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Glencoe,
IL: Free Press, 1954.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: Volume One: An Introduction. New
York: Vintage, Press, 1990.
Frankl, Razelle. Televangelism: The Marketing of Popular Religion. Carbondale,
IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Avon, 1965.
Furedi, Frank. Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in
an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge, 2004.
Gamson, Joshua. Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual
Nonconformity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Geertz, Clifford. “Religion as a Cultural System.” Anthropological
Approaches to the Study of Religion.Ed. Michael Banton. New
York: Praeger, 1966, 1-44.
Grindstaff, Linda. The Money Shot: Trash, Class and the Making
of TV Talk Shows. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Hadden, Jeffery and Swann, Charles. Prime Time Preachers: The
Rising Power of Televangelism. London: Addison Wesley Press,
1981.
Harding, Susan F. "Convicted by the Holy Spirit: The Rhetoric
of Fundamental Baptist Conversion." American Ethnologist 4,
1987, 167-80.
Heelas, Paul. “Introduction.” Religion, Modernity
and Postmodernity. Ed. Paul Heelas. New York: Blackwell Press,
1998, 1-18.
Hendershot, Heather. "Virgins for Jesus: The Gender Politics
of Therapeutic Christian Fundamentalist Media.” Hop On
Pop: The Politics and Pleasure of Popular Culture. Ed. Henry
Jenkins, et al. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002,
88-104.
Hervieu-Leger, Daniele. Religion as a Chain of Memory. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000.
Kaminer, Wendy. I’m Dysfunctional, Your Dysfunctional:
The Recovery Movement and Other Self Help Fashions. New York:
Madison Wesley Press, 1992.
Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life
in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Warner Books,
1979.
Labov, William. Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black
English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1972.
Labov, William. “Speech Actions and Reactions in Personal
Narratives.” Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk. Ed.
Deborah Tannen. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1982.
Lears, T.J. Jackson “From Salvation to Self Realization: Advertising
and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930.” The
Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980. Ed.
Richard Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983,
1-38.
Loftland, John. Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization,
and Maintenance of Faith. New York: Irvington Press, 1977.
Luckmann, Thomas. “Moralizing Sermons, Then and Now.” The
Blackwell Companion: The Sociology of Religion. Ed. Richard
Fenn. New York: Blackwell Press, 2003, 388-403.
Manga, Julie. Talking Trash: The Cultural Politics of Daytime Television.
New York: New York University Press, 2003.
McClellan, Steve. “Syndie Spots Pass $200K Mark.” Broadcasting
and Cable. January 12, 2004: 28.
McGraw, Jay. The Ultimate Weight Loss Solution for Teens: The
7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom. New York: Free Press, 2003.
McGraw, Phil C. Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What
Matters. New York: Hyperion Books, 1999.
______. The Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight
Loss Freedom. New York: Free Press, 2003.
______. Self Matters: Creating Your Life from the Inside
Out. New York: Free Press, 2003.
______. Relationship Rescue. New York: Hyperion Press, 2001.
Mishler, Eliot. “The Analysis of Interview-Narratives.” Narrative
Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct. Ed. Theodore.
R. Sarbin. New York: Praeger, 1986.
Mol, Hans. Identity and the Sacred: A Sketch for a New Social
Scientific Theory of Religion. New York: Free Press, 1976.
Nielsen, Donald A. “The Transformation of Society and the
Sacred in Durkheim’s Religious Sociology,” The Blackwell
Companion: The Sociology of Religion. Ed. Richard Fenn. New
York: Blackwell Press. 2003. 120-132.
“Neilsen Ratings.” Broadcasting and Cable. January
19, 2004, 31.
“Neilsen Ratings.” Broadcasting and Cable. February
16, 2004, 29.
Riessman, Catherine. Narrative Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Press, 1993.
Shattuc, Jane. The Talking Cure: TV Talk Shows and Women. New
York: Routledge, 1996.
Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. Acts of Faith: Explaining the
Human Side of Religion. Berkley, CA: University of California
Press, 2000.
Ullman, Chana. The Transformed Self: The Psychology of Religious
Conversion. New York: Plenum Press, 1989.
White, Mimi. Tele-Advising: Therapeutic Discourse in American
Television. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1992.
Wilson, Bryan. “Salvation, Secularization, and Demoralization.” The
Blackwell Companion: The Sociology of Religion. Ed. Richard
Fenn. New York: Blackwell Press, 2003, 39-51.
