The Trap, Big Pharma, and New Media
Loading ...One of the most intriguing points that I discovered while watching “The Trap” was the use of psychotropic and psychiatric drugs in order to treat unhappiness. The documentary puts forward the point that drugs such as Prozac were released by the pharmaceutical companies partially as a ploy to “normalize” the masses, making them pliable and easier to control. The example of the red-haired woman, who cheerfully praised the effects of Prozac while her husband lamented how much she’d changed since she started taking it was a powerful image. Convincing people their unhappiness is an abnormality, then drugging them up in order to better place them within a homogenized sphere is a dangerous practice. Right before I blogged this, my home page presented me with an article concerning just this idea.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/75081/
The article discusses how certain political ideologies or personal beliefs are now being placed within the realm of mental illness. This includes distrust of the government, which is being diagnosed as paranoia, along with a recommended treatment. This rejection of authority has been labeled as “ODD” (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), obviously labeled to conjure similarities with another “widespread” but debatable diagnosis, ADD.
So what does this have to do with new media? In this case, I’m considering new media anything that involves the near-instantaneous transmission of desired information, such as the internet, PDAs, and some cell phone technologies. Given the vast amount of alternative information and news sources present on the net, it stands to reason that individuals who feel uncomfortable with the current media power structure would seek out information online. These individuals also tend to cluster together in groups, in the form of newsgroups, listservs, or blogospheres. Given that these communities now have the chance to spring up on the internet, whereas previously geographic proximity would have been a necessity, it makes sense that oppositional forces would arise. In this case, the increasing diagnoses of thinking Americans as abnormal or disordered is a somewhat troubling situation.
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