Addicted to the Industry!
At times we know this industry is bad for us. Long hours, inconsistent work, egos, the unknown economics, but we keep coming back for more. The gratifying highs mixed with the anxious lows. Massey University senior lecturer in psychology Jocelyn Handy recently supervised research on people working in the film production industry, she came across a love/hate relationship many have with their jobs.
To outsiders, the New Zealand film industry is an enigma. Work within the industry is hyped as glamorous and super cool but we also read that pay is low, employment precarious, competitive is tough and working conditions hard. Many outsiders wonder why people chose to work in an industry with so many contradictions and whether the rewards of creative labour really outweigh the negatives of the work environment.
I recently had the privilege of supervising registered organisational psychologist Lorraine Rowlands’ thesis research investigating New Zealand film production workers’ experiences of the industry. Reading through the interview transcripts both Lorraine and I were struck by the intensely ambivalent relationship many production workers seemed to have with film work. Several people described their bond with the industry as being like an addiction. Reflecting on their words, Lorraine and I started wondering whether the metaphor of addiction could be used as a way of interpreting film workers’ relationship with their industry. Obviously, we aren’t suggesting that film workers are physically addicted, rather that the organisation of work within the film industry creates a social environment which has some similarity with the social contexts described in research on addiction. At a psychological level, the repeated experience of highly gratifying periods in work and the often anxious periods of down time between contracts resembles the repeated highs and lows described by many addicts.
Studies of addiction suggest that addictive activities have three key properties which help create a strong attachment to them. Firstly, addictive activities initially supply strong emotional rewards with few obvious disadvantages. Secondly, addictive activities have characteristics which facilitate the rapid escalation of the addictive connection. This may be through actual physical addiction or through a range of cultural mechanisms such as social reinforcement for specific behaviours. Finally, addictive activities can trigger rapid disconnections from other key relationships, which reinforce the importance of the relationship with the addictive activities.
Most people we interviewed described entering an industry which they initially perceived as glamourous and exciting. During these early years the pressures of film work were either discounted or seen as a relatively small price to pay for the social and creative rewards on offer. To use the terminology of addiction, young workers initially enjoyed the highs of film work and discounted the adverse aspects of the industry. After several years as freelancers the allure of the industry had diminished. While all interviewees emphasised the continuing creative rewards of film work they also highlighted the practical and emotional problems of project-based employment. As in many addictive relationships, the focus of interviewees’ emotional relationship with the industry had shifted from enjoying the relatively uncomplicated high of the early years towards a more complex relationship in which the rewards of creative labour were offset by dislike of the financial insecurity, low wages, competitiveness and general unpredictability of project-based work.
In order for addictive relationships to develop addictive activities need to offer psychological rewards which cannot be obtained elsewhere. For the people we spoke to the main attraction of film work was the lure of collective creative labour. Everyone we interviewed cited opportunities to work creatively themselves and to collaborate with like-minded others on joint creative projects as the primary rewards of film work. This applied to both those people who were employed in clearly artistic occupations and those in less obviously creative positions.
Many people described the close professional and personal relationships which developed during the intense creative process of film-making as another key reward of their work, while simultaneously recognising often short-term and context dependent nature of these relationships. Several people noted that they had relatively limited social contact with other freelancers between projects. They also pointed out that the extreme demands of filming limited the time available for other social relationships. The centrality of work-related relationships during the production process heightened the sense of disengagement some people experienced during periods of unemployment and increased their desire to return to the communal environment of film-making.
Models of addiction also emphasise the complex psychological and practical problems which people encounter when they attempt to end their involvement with the addictive activity. The process of change often involves multiple attempts before finally succeeding. Interviewees’ descriptions of leaving the film industry contained several parallels with the processes described in studies of addiction. During their interviews many people discussed the difficulties of quitting the industry. For some, these difficulties were primarily psychological and revealed their intense ambivalence about leaving an industry which they disliked in some respects but which also provided an important outlet for their creative talents, a key part of their self-identity and much of their social life. For others, the obstacles were more practical and highlighted the difficulties of establishing alternative careers while continuing to work in an intensely demanding profession. Those people who had left the industry permanently all described a drawn out process of repeatedly deciding to leave freelance film work and then returning for one final project before finally relinquishing their industry ties. In contrast to permanent employment, where resignation is irreversible, the project-based structure of film work facilitates this type of behaviour by continually supplying opportunities to leave and re-enter the industry.
The stark contrast between the highs provided by the addictive activity and the psychological and physical lows of withdrawal contributes to people’s desire to re-experience the addictive high. Our interviewees’ descriptions of the collective creative peaks of filmmaking and troughs of unemployment showed some parallels with this pattern. During projects production workers were creatively engaged, constructively focused and located within a self-contained and rewarding social environment. Once their contract finished people were often left unemployed, physically and emotionally fatigued and socially isolated. Under these conditions the lure of the next project is heightened since it offers both the promise of future creative involvement and an escape from the problems of unemployment and growing financial insecurity.
Many therapists suggest that understanding the ways in which feelings and behaviours are influenced by the situations people find themselves in can help them analyse their own experiences in a more objective and constructive manner. We hope that illustrating the addictive qualities that film work can have will help people working within the industry to understand and interpret their own often conflicted feelings about a work environment which can bring both considerable stress and immense sense of personal satisfaction.
A longer version of this article first appeared in the journal Human Relations. Lorraine Rowlands is a registered organisational psychologist. She is currently the general manager, organisational development and strategy at New Zealand Council for Educational Research. The research described in this article is based on her masters’ thesis, which investigated freelance film production workers’ subjective experiences of project-based labour.
Jocelyn Handy is a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at Massey University, New Zealand.
