Daddy Knows: On daytime television, no one is hotter than Dr. Phil, a stern father figure offering wise advice in an uncertain world. Too bad listening to Dr. Phil's "advice" just means submitting to his authority.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=L1e0tda ... 7BkG%3D%3DExcerpts this very lengthy and well written article:
The pause for a stammered assent is unnecessary. Everyone knows the question is rhetorical. The folks who ascend the studio's stage are flat-out desperate to hear what the famously opinionated Dr. Phil has to say about whatever problem is mucking up their lives. During a representative week in November, America's favorite psychologist offered his televised counsel to a jilted bride, an aspiring bride with a marriage-phobic fiancé, a runaway bride with five broken engagements, two teenage targets of pedophiles, an engaged couple squabbling over the groom's bachelor party plans, a couple with an out-of-control weimaraner, a wife enraged by her hubby's Web chats with an ex-flame, and a bevy of "real-life 'Desperate Housewives'" harboring shady secrets ranging from alcoholism to kleptomania. Unrequited love, unfulfilled dreams, adultery, addiction, fear of commitment, fear of rejection, parents with violent kids, parents with lazy kids, parents with kids who refuse to wear anything but pajamas--no topic is too serious or too silly for dissection by Dr. Phil.
Oh, where to begin? For starters, McGraw relies on much the same exploitative freak-show format as Jerry Springer or Jenny Jones, with everyone from drug-addicted housewives to love-starved transsexuals spinning their tales of woe for a salivating audience. But to help himself--and his audience--feel less icky about their voyeurism, Dr. Phil exposes America's dark side under the guise of inspiring hope and change. In Dr. Phil's formulation, cheating couples who air every nauseating detail of their sex lives on national television aren't shameless media whores, they are troubled souls courageous enough to seek help. Even in cases so marginal as to have no bearing on 99.9 percent of viewers--such as parents struggling with a child exhibiting homicidal tendencies--Dr. Phil reassures us that the publicity is beneficial to other families because these problems occur "on a continuum": A six-year-old with low-grade behavior problems today could, if left unchecked, turn out to be a serial killer down the road.
Luckily for anxious parents everywhere, Dr. Phil knows exactly how to save a rambunctious child from becoming the next Jeffrey Dahmer. In fact, McGraw has a blueprint for how to overcome virtually every life challenge, the more frightening and complex, the better. His books are subtitled like little flowcharts to happiness--"The seven keys to weight loss freedom"; "A seven-step strategy for reconnecting with your partner"; "Your step-by-step plan for creating a phenomenal family"--and subdivided into a dizzying array of numbered lists, bullet points, charts, and sidebars. This country boy doesn't just "tell it like it is"; he tells people what to do to get the life/love/weight/kids/self-esteem they want. The lure is irresistible: For a nervous, insecure nation, nothing is more seductive than a stern yet benevolent father figure offering to lift the burden of decision-making from our shoulders. Much like Fyodor Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, McGraw has assumed that burden, dispensing direction, certainty, and moral clarity in an increasingly uncertain world. (Think of him as the George W. of daytime television.) The "self-help" label often applied to him is inaccurate: Dr. Phil isn't TEACHING PEOPLE TO MAKE GOD DECISIONS SO MUCH AS HE'S TEACHING THEM TO LOOK TO HIM FOR SOLUTIONS. This is the real secret to--and the most disheartening aspect of--the Dr. Phil phenomenon. Forget personal responsibility, what McGraw is promoting is sweet submission to his authority. And, as his popularity grows, so do his ego and his ambitions, to the point where it is increasingly hard to tell if Dr. Phil sees himself more as America's daddy or its messiah.
ennifer may be the quintessential Dr. Phil supplicant. A worn-down, middle-aged divorcée, Jennifer has journeyed to Los Angeles to have McGraw tell her what to do about her son, Tim, an out-of-control 16-year-old who is heavy into pot and porn and has a long history of stealing to support his drug habit.
Like most segments, Jennifer's begins with a pretaped video outlining the basics of her predicament. These "video diaries" include narration by guests, interviews with friends and family members, melodramatic reenactments, and, most disturbing, grainy footage from unmanned cameras that the show installs in people's homes to capture the unguarded "reality" of their daily lives. (As if most Americans could forget for a moment that they're being filmed for television.) Many of the diaries conclude with a guest's plea: "Dr. Phil, can you please help me [insert appeal to fix tawdry, silly, or sad personal problem here]?" Jennifer's ends more dramatically, as she drops her face into her hands and sobs at the thought of her son's grim future.
Next, we flash to Jennifer and Dr. Phil sitting close together in tall, red chairs at the center of his round stage. McGraw runs down a laundry list of Tim's misdeeds--which include slipping a 13-year-old girl into his bedroom and getting arrested the night before the show's crew showed up for taping--and Jennifer's parental failures. As usual, when a particularly juicy tidbit is revealed--such as the fact that Jennifer's last beau liked to knock Tim around--the camera cuts to a visibly shocked member of the studio audience (which tends to be overwhelmingly female and blindingly white). Eventually, McGraw shifts into judgment mode: "You can't be in that denial anymore!" "It isn't about meeting your emotional needs!" "You are in over your head!" As he scolds and dispenses his Solomonic ruling on what must be done--"I can tell you, that kid needs to be in a supportive and therapeutic environment before the sun sets today"--a cow-eyed Jennifer nods obediently, interjecting her acquiescence to McGraw's verdict: "Yes. Yes." "That's exactly it." "I know." "That's exactly what he needs." And, just to ensure that no one misses the import of this TV moment, McGraw repeatedly stresses that "we are fighting to save this young man's life." ("I truly believe that the decisions we make in the next little bit of time here are going to be determinative," he intones.) Don't touch that dial, people! Springer may have strippers and dwarves, but Dr. Phil is saving lives!
Ever the savvy host, McGraw likes to go to commercial with a stay-tuned teaser. ("The question becomes: Is it too late? Can Jennifer's son be saved?") Jennifer's case provides an extra dash of suspense: Unbeknownst to Tim, who is sequestered in the studio's green room, McGraw has arranged to have the boy enrolled in a wilderness-therapy program in North Carolina--by force if necessary. "I'm gonna try to help him see the wisdom of this," McGraw tells Mom. But, if he resists, the program's "transport agent" is "standing by." How exciting! Viewers may experience the thrill of seeing an unruly adolescent, whose every sin they now know by heart, hauled away in restraints--and they can feel good about watching, because this is all being done in the name of helping others.
Toward the end of the segment, the host physically propels his clinging guest toward the moment of truth. The doctor holds Jennifer's hand. He wraps an arm around her shoulder. He leads her (and the cameras, of course) backstage to the waiting Tim, but only after issuing a stern warning: You've shown courage coming this far, he comforts the trembling Jennifer. But, if you can't handle whatever happens next, he chides, "I don't even want you to go back there with me."
ow seems like a good time to pause and address Dr. Phil's particularly disturbing tendency to drag children into the cesspool of daytime television. Despite his oft-professed obsession with protecting kids from adult realities, McGraw is constantly spotlighting the little darlings on his very adult show, frequently featuring them in pretaped or even in-studio interviews about all the yucky things that go on at home. Often, the youngsters are nothing more than props used to up the emotional stakes in parental dramas. Beleaguered wife Kandi, for instance, wanted Dr. Phil's help with a breathtakingly selfish husband, Ed, who had managed to impregnate his mistress/co-worker. Installing cameras in the family's home, Dr. Phil recorded Ed and Kandi shrieking about the affair in front of their three kids; one particularly heart-warming moment featured a small boy running around the house demanding to know what an STD was.
Lest anyone accuse him of exploiting innocents, McGraw justifies such footage as an instructional tool: evidence that parents need to learn to keep the kids out of it. Stressing its sensitivity, the show digitally blurs the faces of most minors shown in the video diaries. But this only applies to full-face frontal shots. These same children are shown in profile, from behind, and in segmented shots (e.g., from the nose up, from the nose down), and their unaltered voices are heard discussing all manner of domestic seediness. Then there's the fact that everyone these children has ever met--friends, teachers, classmates, ministers, scout leaders, grocery clerks--will see (or hear about) their disgusting, pathetic parents on national television, talking about, for instance, how Ed liked to do it with his mistress on his and Kandi's bed when poor Kandi was off tending to her dying father. With that kind of exposure thrust upon youngsters, digital blurring seems beyond pointless.
But back to Jennifer. In the green room, Dr. Phil talks with Tim about his hideous behavior. When Tim admits that he's terrified of going to prison, Jennifer meekly suggests that maybe that won't have to happen. McGraw lunges, berating the now cowering woman for having "rewritten the code" and for "minimizing the situation." "Are you kidding me?" he demands, scolding her like a naughty child. "What are you thinking?" Jennifer is reduced to babbling apologetically, head bowed, eyes downcast in the face of McGraw's scorn--effectively destroying whatever shred of respect Tim might have had for her parental authority. "Well, you can listen to me, or you can listen to your mother," McGraw snaps at the teen. "But you are in a lot of trouble."
And therein lies the core message of Dr. Phil: If you know what's good for you, you'll listen to me. When preparing to voice his opinion, McGraw often self-deprecatingly insists, "I don't expect you to substitute my judgment for yours." But that is precisely what he expects. It is the premise of his entire show. In fact, perhaps the most honest episodes don't involve McGraw giving "advice" so much as simply doling out rewards or threats to get people to clean up their acts. In a segment featuring a compulsive shopper, McGraw offered the young woman a gigantic diamond ring if she would agree not to buy any frivolous items for 30 days. In a more serious vein, he personally arranges for people with drug addictions or emotional problems or eating disorders to be admitted to top-notch treatment facilities that they could otherwise never afford. He often sends these people off with a good-natured warning that, if they "don't do their homework," they'll have him to answer to--the therapeutic equivalent of your dad telling you to clean your room or he'll whip your butt. Hopefully the individuals receiving such intense assistance wind up healthy. But, whatever else they achieve, Dr. Phil's grand interventions sell the idea that what we all really need is a rich, well-connected fairy godfather to swoop in, reorder our lives, and keep us in line--perhaps not the best message for most adults to internalize.
Perhaps my favorite Dr. Phil guest was Heather, who wanted to know what to do about the fact that her two-and-a-half-year-old son, Connor, was having recurring nightmares in which Dr. Phil crept into his bedroom and put him "in headlocks." The adorable tot was shown on tape (blur-free), recounting the details of how he actually dreams of two Dr. Phils (quelle horreure!): The good Dr. Phil, who is brown and lives in a little house at the local Wal-Mart, and the bad, headlock-prone Dr. Phil, who is blue.
Since Connor's nightmares began around the time his baby sister was born, McGraw posited that the little guy feels threatened by the family newcomer. (What insight!) And since, in addition to spending so much time with the new baby, Heather spends an hour each day glued to the "Dr. Phil" show--which Connor is allowed to watch but during which he must remain appropriately quiet--McGraw ventured that Connor sees him as yet another drain on Mommy's attention. He cautioned Heather and her husband against coddling Connor (allowing him, for instance, to crawl into their bed after a nightmare) but assured them that the dreams will dissipate as Connor adjusts to his new sister.
Perfectly sound advice. Of course, the even more obvious advice would have been to ask what kind of moron lets her two-year-old watch a show that pokes and prods America's nasty underbelly graphically enough to give the average adult nightmares. To quote the good ol' boy himself, "What in the hell is this gal thinking?"
It's a question more of us should be asking about our national surrender to Dr. Phil.
Michelle Cottle is a senior editor at TNR.
More at the link
