The power of sappy movies

Did you catch the news about movies and relationships?

The New York Times reported recently on a study conducted at the University of Rochester and published in The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Some 174 couples were involved. One set of couples formed a control group, and it turns out their separation rate in the ensuing three-year period was 24 per cent. A second received therapy, using a counselling method designed to stress empathy and acceptance. A third received a different form of therapy, designed around issue resolution. A fourth just watched what the author of the article calls “sappy movies” (sometimes also known as ‘chick flicks’), without any formal therapy, except encouragement to discuss the movies afterwards. And, surprise, surprise, not only did the second and third group of couples enjoy a lower separation rate (about 11 per cent), but so also did the fourth group who watched the movies, but received no therapy.

In other words, it seems like the therapy of both types was useful compared with doing nothing, but just as useful was spending $5 to rent a movie and then talking about it afterwards. Talk about a study that might put professional therapists out of a job. As the lead author of the study stated, “it’s the depth of the discussions that follow each movie and how much effort and time and introspection couples put into those discussions that will predict how well they do.” Which, I suppose, is really just another way of saying that if you can communicate well with one another, you’ll probably work things out. And if you can figure out a trigger for communication that does not involve paying big bucks to a therapist, maybe you’ll come out ahead of the game. The study has been critized because the control group ( the group of couples who received neither therapy nor movies) was not randomized. But I see a far more significant flaw: the type of movies the couple watched were all of the sappy kind, the kind that the New York Times author notes “often leaves women in tears and men bored.” Therefore, how do they know that the sappy movie, as distinguished from, say, the earnest documentary, is actually the key to better communication? Doesn’t the question beg further study?

If, indeed, the type of movie in which the man is often bored is the basis for good communication, on a par with therapist-led communication, just think how well men might communicate if a couple is asked, instead, to watch a Sylvester Stallone flick, where one might predict that the woman might be relatively more bored but the man relatively more interested. Given that women are more intelligent than men, they would naturally be more able than men to contribute to reasoned discussion of something they had little inherent interest in—such as the statistical probability of the action hero actually being able to knock off as many bad guys as the movie depicts, without suffering an injury himself.

Or maybe the type of movie watched is of no more significance than that it requires the husband and wife to sit still in one another’s company for 90-plus minutes. To test out that theory, you could show them a Canadian content film starring William Shatner, Gordon Pinsent or Donald Sutherland (that is, any Canadian content film ever made) that has been so heavily subsidized by government agencies from top-to-bottom that you are virtually guaranteed that neither the wife nor the husband, nor the therapist or anyone else is going to like it? And if you really wanted to test the limits, you could put the husband and wife in front of, say, a Leafs game that goes into overtime and keeps them in one another’s company for up to three hours, and then discuss why the Leafs blew it. Or the husband and wife could sit through eight back-to-back episodes of Downton Abbey, then conduct a spirited debate about the female costumes.

Come to think of it, maybe the couples should be tested by just being asked to read the same book and talk about it. Or even just to talk—about anything. After all, if a husband knew it was either that or watch Love Story, and a wife knew it was either that or watch Dirty Harry, you might find each of them ready to be communicative. Very communicative.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca