Netflix, Cliff-hangers and the Death of Delayed Gratification

There was a time (well before my time) when people who went to the movies saw more than one movie. There would be a newsreel, some cartoons, a short serial movie and then one or two longer movies. The serial movie was a multi chapter movie in which every chapter ended with the heroine or hero in a precarious situation.  The films were designed to bring back the audience the following week to see how the hero or heroine got out deadly trap or got untied before the train ran them over or stopped themselves from plummeting to their death. It was a clever marketing device.

And then came television. Initially with limited choice in terms of programs, producers did not have to work hard to attract viewers week after week. However, when there were more than two or three television stations available in any one area, advertisers and program producers started to look for ways of getting the audience to return for the next week. An obvious and well tested method was to end each program with a cliff-hanger - some event that would, at the very least, rouse some curiosity as to what would happen next. Day time dramas (soap operas) have frequently used this device and almost all hour long shows especially at the end of their season have some sort of season finale that is designed to attract viewers back in the fall.

With the advent of such companies as Netflix , Amazon or Crackle, customers no longer need to patiently wait a week, or perhaps the summer, for the next hour of their favourite program. They can binge watch an entire series all at one time. Plots that may have taken thirteen or more weeks to evolve can be seen in one long viewing session. In a week, one can watch four or five years of a program. The viewer no longer needs to patiently wait  to see how the cast of Gray's Anatomy or the Walking Dead will resolve the next crisis - they only have to wait about 19 seconds for the next program in the series to start.

I would never suggest that people's inability to wait a week to find out what will happen next to their favourite character is the root of all of the world's problems. But there are other signs that our capacity to wait to get rewarded for anything is decreasing. We expect our news to be instantly delivered to our phones, we are hurt when people do not respond to our emails immediately and certainly our bosses expect us to be available at all hours. We live in a world where gratification of all our needs is expected to be instantaneous. If it is not - we assume the right to complain about poor service. Educational programs are designed to feed information in short bursts - with an immediate reward for the young viewer; computer games are designed to frequently reward players so that they will continue playing (Seidman, theweek); even college text books are designed to make the information simple to find. It feels as if people can no longer be expected to wait or to work for their rewards. 

Binge watching a whole season's worth of  Dexter or Breaking Bad is only proof that most of us have no desire to delay our gratifications - binge watching by itself, is not the cause.  But surely it is a symptom of what ails society. It might be useful for us to remember that sometimes waiting to eat the cherry last is in fact, the most rewarding way of eating a sundae.

The Wrong Question

Breese Davis in this month's edition of the Walrus, in just under two pages, succinctly sums up the issue of the Canada correctional system's poor handling of individuals who live with a mental illness. As part of that exercise he list a few of the 104 recommendations made by the coroner's inquest into the death of Ashley Smith. They are fine recommendations but that inquest and in fact the whole article asked the wrong question. It is not surprising therefore that the recommendations have not been implemented . As long as we continue to ask what we can do to help people who live with a mental illness and who have been incarcerated within our provincial and federal correctional system - the solutions will be at best unworkable. The fact that there are so many people incarcerated who are struggling with mental health issues is only a symptom of the problem. The question that we should be asking is - why are there so many people struggling with mental health issues being incarcerated and what can we do about that?

A number of years ago, in another life, I spent a lot of time in court. I was at that time working for a community based agency that supported some individuals who had a dual diagnosis. That is - individuals who had been labelled both as being developmentally challenged and as having a mental illness. On occasion some of those individuals committed a crime. Most of the crimes were of the nuisance variety although occasionally the charges were more serious. Some of their activities put themselves at risk. Again and again I attended court with these individuals, trying to get the defence lawyers, the Crown and the judges to be creative in their sentencing. Again and again the lawyers wanted me and my colleagues to provide treatment solutions.

There were no solutions. What few programs there were, were underfunded and had extensive waiting lists. There were times when we recommended that jail time be given to the individual in the hopes that some consistent structure and some sort of program would be better than anything available in the community. I can remember clearly when a judge, in open court, expressed his frustration at seeing one of my clients for the umpteenth time by saying " stop using my court as a behavioural management program!". He was right - in the absence of anything else - I along with many of my colleagues across the province were attempting to manipulate the courts to get services for people. It was inappropriate for us to do so - but we were desperate to find any solution that made an individual's life safer.

In the twenty or so years since that judge's comments, nothing has changed. There are still not enough services to support people who are living with a mental illness. According to the Globe and Mail, a Corrections Canada report in 2009 suggested that 33% of all women and 10% of all men incarcerated had a mental health problem. More recent reports suggest that those numbers have only increased. People are being convicted and sent to jail because there are insufficient  supports in the community. Canadian jails are being used as behaviour management tools because there are no programs in the community.

I, along with many social service workers were delighted when the government announced that they were going to close institutions. Some of us had spent years fighting for that very decision. However, we were told that all of that funding, and more would flow into the community to provide the necessary supports. That never happened. The community members who needed special support s lost access to intuitional programs - but nothing was made to replace it.

The issue of people who struggle with mental health issues in Canadian prisons will not go away until we provide community based, treatment options for them. Pouring money into the correctional system to fabricate  programs will only mask the problem. The solution does not lie within the correctional system because the problem originates within the community.

As long as we only deal with the symptoms - we will never create the solutions.