VITAL TOPICS: SOCIAL WORK & FILM
by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD
(Editor’s Word: SaraKay Smullens has written movie and TV commentary and opinions for The New Social Employee since 2018. As of this writing, these will probably be printed underneath the column title of Important Subjects: Social Work & Movie, persevering with to deal with key problems with relevance to social work, social staff, and people in associated professions depicted in movie.)
In 2015, after the primary version of my e book Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work was printed, I started to obtain requests for workshops and displays from directors of school pupil psychological well being facilities staffed by newly minted social staff. To cite one, reflective of all, “Our younger workers is totally knowledgeable in regards to the deadly influence of injustice, inequality, and the evil ‘isms’ on people, households, work settings, and our society. However to assist with conflicts our college students current about their backgrounds, current private lives, instructions, selections, a greater understanding of their emotional ‘internal world’ growth is required.” Assembly with college students in myriad settings confirmed a robust want for richer consciousness of psychological growth, which led to the inclusion of this necessary emphasis within the second version (2021) of Burnout and Self-Care.
For the previous yr, pupil and normal psychological well being facilities have requested workshops and displays with a unique emphasis on what a number of time period as “the current epidemic”—a rising citizenry devoid of conscience, who manipulate and lie with neither concern for these harmed nor any obvious guilt. They ask not for idea, however for give attention to “actual life examples” of “what has gone so terribly flawed within the private, psychological world of liars and cheaters.”
With the urgency for this examination in thoughts, I flip to a dialogue of three extremely standard collection at the moment streaming on Netflix and Hulu. Every of those collection provides hints, glimmers, and full explanations of what can and does go so terribly flawed. Following a dialogue of every collection, I’ll briefly tackle social work/therapeutic instructions that may show useful.
These insights are meant to be significant for all social staff, for all of us hear the hopes, goals, and frustrations and ache of our shoppers and may information them towards claiming their “emotional sense of path,” resulting in resilience and success. In fact, in evaluating prompt therapeutic path and defining further ones, the usage of supervision and session is enormously necessary.
Ozark provides profound insights and can obtain essentially the most incisive framing. Creators of this award-winning collection illuminate how generations of uninterrupted familial pathology lead to what’s publicly labeled “evil.” This terrifying development can be seen in The Dropout and touched upon in Anatomy of a Scandal.
Additional, a spoiler warning: To elevate clues from myriad element and shed gentle necessitates the usage of spoilers. Nonetheless, spoilers are supplied in concentrated broad stroke evaluation. Most of every script’s intriguing particulars—the twists and turns resulting in fruits—won’t be revealed.
Ozark
Netflix, launched July 21, 2017-April 29, 2022
It takes time, on this grim, brilliantly acted 4-season collection (shot by means of a lens the solar won’t pierce) to verify and at last settle for who the protagonists Wendy (Laura Linney) and Marty (Jason Bateman) Byrde really are. Initially, they’re launched as a pair dealing with marital issues who get caught up in one thing unimaginable, the form of conundrum nobody is resistant to—one which for the sake of household survival requires determined measures (ala Breaking Unhealthy).
In time, the reality in regards to the Wendy-Marty union turns into plain. Theirs is a deadly dance, their connection and attraction pathological. Looking back, the seeds of this reality are evident upon first assembly. Wendy, dissatisfied together with her life, her work, her husband, harbors secret, seemingly unimaginable goals. Craving for pleasure and turned on by hazard, she seeks journey and new path by means of an affair.
Marty has a loving, trusting coronary heart; excellent accounting expertise; and is by nature a follower. He and his companion Bruce Liddell are monetary advisors who launder cash for the Navarro Mexican drug cartel. When Bruce skims $8 million and is murdered, together with others within the Byrde circle, together with Wendy’s lover, Wendy and Marty are pressured to unite or die. They depart Chicago for the Ozarks with their two kids, Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) and Jonah (Skylar Gaertner), to launder cash and save their lives.
The transfer to the Ozarks gives the chance for Wendy to rework her deepest yearnings right into a dream come true. Brilliantly expert at enjoying the martyred spouse, she is motivated solely by the survival and well-being of her household when the alternative is true. Wendy will do no matter she deems crucial to attain the ability, management, and wealth she craves, and can go to any and all lengths in her willpower to control and strong-arm whomever crucial, together with her kids.
Though Marty typically questions his spouse’s insisted upon path, Wendy’s maintain on him results in perpetual acquiescence. The love they declare is predicated on Wendy’s willpower to name all photographs and the management Marty surrenders to appease and fulfill her. Wendy’s schemes embrace relegating Marty to savage Navarro cartel territory, brimming with treacherous Oedipal plot and rivalry. In addition they embrace homicide.
The darling of Ozark is sassy, irresistable Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner), a part of a household “cursed” by a lifetime of petty (and worse) crime. Ruth’s seemingly robust exterior is for defense solely. Her capability for goodness, love, and loyalty is birthed as a result of, surrounded by lawlessness and corruption, she turns into the nurturer and mainstay of cousins who want her and whom she loves deeply, most notably and achingly, Wyatt Langmore (Charlie Tahan).
Marty hires Ruth, opening her door to a far completely different future than she might ever have imagined. You’ll always remember Ruth within the closing phase of Ozark, with a glowing barrette-broach in her hair, trying bride-like, free, and wealthy with optimism in regards to the future.
Ruth’s “internal world”—her capability to take care of others—is one Wendy works tirelessly to undertaking. Nonetheless, the ruthless, devious killer Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery), whose first husband Jacob (Peter Mullan) is the native heroin producer and feared crime boss of the realm, is the true portrait of Wendy’s internal self, her Dorian Gray.
We see the origin of the Byrde household pathology as Darlene cares devotedly for a foster child she is set to make her personal and can not often be separated from. Darlene provides a helpless baby all she has longed for, however by no means obtained.
Once we meet Wendy’s duplicitous, abusive father (Richard Thomas, in a job that may free him from John-Boy Walton), along with his saccharine pipeline to God cowl, the aching loss and eager for unavailable parental love reveals a shattering reality—Wendy’s father, a destroyer of souls, lives on in his daughter.
Social Work/Therapeutic Path: The important query for Marty to discover is why he permits Wendy to dominate him. In fact, if this subject is broached too shortly, defensiveness will set in. In my expertise, one with Marty’s dependency and talent to tolerate harmful circumstance has skilled monumental loss and hazard in adolescence. It’s uncommon for one with Wendy’s psychological make-up to hunt assist, until it’s to control one consulted. Additionally, in my expertise, marital remedy insisted upon won’t work until catastrophe strikes Wendy’s psychic world, resembling Marty telling her that until there’s change, he’s leaving her (and that means it!), or certainly one of her kids doing the identical. To vary, Wendy should face that she has turn out to be the particular person she hates most on this world. Both household or group remedy would supply Marty a secure place to face his loss in early years and awaken to the necessity to defend his kids. Charlotte and Jonah are of an age when household remedy may very well be useful. Additionally, with this alternative, it’s doable to isolate a harmful drive in a household and strengthen others, and there are occasions when this dramatic shift can result in change in a single like Wendy. Household life training in Charlotte and Jonah’s college might result in larger consciousness of their must separate from their mom.
The Dropout
Hulu, launched March 3, 2022
(Please be aware: In my dialogue of The Dropout, evaluation for the needs described is predicated solely on depiction supplied within the tv collection, which can have taken liberties with the precise life experiences of Elizabeth Holmes.)
Within the 8-episode collection The Dropout, we see the depiction of a real-life scandal acquainted to many—the event and fall of the disgraced, fraudulent firm Theranos. The multi-billion greenback start-up was based by Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried), who for years duped the world into believing she had revolutionized blood testing.
The script’s focus is slender—the unfolding of Holmes’ lack of any semblance of moral boundaries or empathy for these she manipulates and harms, together with sufferers. Towards this finish, the next is telling. Simply earlier than Holmes begins her freshman yr at Stanford, her father, Chris Holmes (Michel Gill), loses his place as an Enron government when the corporate is bankrupted by means of well-reported accounting fraud. Each her father and her mom, Noel (Elizabeth Marvel), are deeply invested of their daughter’s decided aim to attain such monumental success that she is going to turn out to be a billionaire. This blind parental funding marks the couple’s unveiled decision that their daughter compensate for his or her incapability to achieve fame and fortune.
When Holmes is raped at Stanford and nobody, together with these in school administration, believes the violation she endures, her mom will neither talk about what occurred together with her grieving daughter nor acknowledge her ache. Quickly, shamed and remoted, compensating with a defend of grandiosity, Holmes decides to drop out of school. With out crucial tutorial background, she convinces her mother and father to place tuition funding towards her analysis.
Later, though her relationship with tech entrepreneur Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews), practically 20 years her senior, is decidedly unsettling, her mother and father focus solely on Sunny’s wealth. As Holmes grows overwhelmed by the calls for of duplicity, a state intensified by the confines of her relationship with Sunny, she considers giving all up and confronting the reality. As soon as once more, she turns to her mom, aching for exploration and assist. But, her mom ignores Elizabeth’s ache and as an alternative relishes in her fame.
The end result: Elizabeth Holmes is a younger lady clueless about who she is. The satisfaction her mother and father want/demand is the driving drive in her whole life. She can not present caring, compassion, or empathy for others as a result of it has by no means been proven to her.
Social Work/Therapeutic Path: When listening to a life story like Elizabeth’s, the query, “How did you’re feeling when…,” or the request, “Are you able to inform me extra about this?” could open up important avenues for thought and reflection. Nonetheless, the script depicts Elizabeth and her mom locked in a deadly, concrete symbiosis, one that may show extraordinarily tough to deal with. If obtainable in jail, particular person and group choices for reflection and expression may be useful. A girl like Elizabeth Holmes can in time discover satisfaction mentoring others in optimistic methods, providing them what she has yearned for however by no means obtained. Ideally, for the reason that parental patterns dominating her life are obvious in her youth, a faculty social employee might have offered an important position mannequin, one poles other than her mom, representing a really completely different path to observe.
Anatomy of a Scandal
Netflix, launched April 15, 2022
The six episodes in Anatomy of a Scandal inform a story that’s extremely acquainted. James Whitehouse (Rupert Good friend), an entitled, charismatic, married British politician with younger kids, has an affair with Olivia Lytton (Naomi Scott), a a lot youthful workplace aide. James’ lovely spouse Sophie (Sienna Miller) stands by him when she first learns of the accusation, which he manufacturers a lie.
The plot intensely thickens, nevertheless, when Olivia accuses James of rape, a case that comes earlier than British prosecutor Kate Woodcroft (Michelle Dockery—you’d by no means consider Downton Abbey’s Girl Mary if it weren’t for Dockery’s voice).
Sophie takes her two kids to go to her privileged, rich in-laws. (We’re not instructed whether or not Sophie’s mother and father reside and her previous or current relationship with them.) Throughout this go to, the realities of her husband’s grandiosity and lack of character start to ferment inside Sophie.
Via disaster, Sophie’s progressive realization that her husband makes use of her for his personal functions and that her marriage is a sham recollects the adage about younger girls looking for their prince, who discover him, and are then relegated to a lifetime cleansing up after his horse. Motivated by a want to assert her personal life—and the significance of ethics, accountable habits, and take care of others sooner or later success of her kids—Sophie ditches each prince and horse in stunning climatic scenes.
Social Work/Therapeutic Path: The perfect time for social work involvement with a shopper like Sophie is earlier in her life, when a faculty social employee is obtainable to discover household points said earlier and assist her in taking herself severely as a younger, very smart rising lady.
Wrap-Up
Reflection on Ozark and The Dropout provides quite a few “if onlys”—needs for the kind of intervention Sophie acknowledges as crucial. If solely Marty had instructed Wendy, “Sufficient is sufficient!”—particularly when Charlotte and Jonah begged for his assist, somewhat than cementing a union with their deadly mom. If solely Noel or Chris Holmes had responded to their daughter’s ache and cries for assist, somewhat than pushing her relentlessly and basking within the solar of her seeming fortune.
Ozark, The Dropout, and Anatomy of a Scandal supply a unified warning. Ambition not tempered by conscience and the capability to like and take care of and about others destroys one’s soul—in household, in work, in politics. This course of begins in youth, creates demons, and brings a curse to all of their path. This actuality begs a closing “if solely.” If solely America’s faculties had a social employee in every, numerous abusive cycles endured can be damaged earlier than their malignancy takes root.
SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD, whose non-public and professional bono scientific social work observe is in Philadelphia, is an authorized group psychotherapist and household life educator. She is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) and the Social Employee of the Yr (2018) from the Pennsylvania chapter of NASW, and the 2013 NASW Media Award for Finest Article. In 2018, she was certainly one of 5 graduates of the College of Pennsylvania College of Social Coverage and Apply chosen for the college’s inaugural Corridor of Fame. SaraKay is the writer of Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work (2nd Version).
