“The Work” is a searing documentary about a program at Folsom Prison to get men imprisoned for violent crimes to face their deepest anxieties and grievances about their past, their absent fathers, brothers who betrayed them, and so on, in a kind of large psycho-therapy session moderated by social workers and joined by volunteers from the community, and largely led by the inmates themselves.
Filmed in 2009 but not released until 2017. Frighteningly raw at times– and not to everyone’s taste. You can see some of the volunteers hang back, then get drawn into the confessional style confrontations. Violent fathers. Absent fathers. Abusive fathers. Fathers who expected too much or too little.
Then one of the volunteers reluctantly recounts how his father was disappointed in him for fetching the wrong tool several times, and then sent him into the house. This is transformed by some of the inmates into some kind of traumatic thing that contaminated the volunteer’s relationship with his father, though it seems more likely it was and remained trivial. No, no, you’re concealing a deeper wound. It must come out. It was a strange sequence.
Other sequences are more intense, in which a person howls and thrashes his outrage while embraced tightly by the other men. One volunteer, Brian, says something condescending that really aggravates an inmate. He seems to actually believe he should be automatically respected by these men because he is smart and wise and together. They hate him. Later, he calls a native inmate, Dark Cloud, “gentle”, which he misinterprets as an insult. Dark Cloud lunges at him, prevented by the other inmates. Just how suitable was Brian for the experience? Didn’t they screen?
At times, searingly compelling. It is claimed that none of 40 men who went through the program returned to prison. I remain skeptical. I see some of this kind of programming as similar to faith healing and charismatic church services, speaking in tongues, and so on. It’s all very dramatic and full of lingo, but is there any real evidence that, 1) all of the experiences related by the participants are real or true, and, 2) that any of it is really therapeutic, at least, in the way the conveners think it is.
It is not difficult to imagine that the love and acceptance these men express towards each other doesn’t make them less dangerous to anyone outside of their artificially created circle of trust. Implicit in all of this is the suggestion that these men committed crimes primarily as a consequence of a deprived or abused childhood. If you are in this circle, you seem obligated to come up with something and to cry and to thrash and scream, and it would not be hard to imagine a deprived participant making something up, or exaggerating, in order to fit in.
I’m not sure it doesn’t work. Maybe, for it’s own reasons, it does.
When the volunteer relates about his dad’s frustration with his inability to find the right tool, he also adds that he feels guilt over bringing this relatively trivial issue up among men who have experienced genuine trauma, but the men will have none of it. They like him. They urge him on to confront his trauma-inducing father, to weep and thrash, and break through, and confront him (one of the inmates role-plays for him). It’s a moment in the film that is nearly comical and made me think of a potential SNL skit, which some might think disrespectful.
Yes, it is. But let’s be clear: in my mind, it doesn’t diminish the real emotions felt by the inmates, or their expressions of rage.
[whohit]The Scream[/whohit]