0:01

The Hard Shoulder with Kieran Coddie

0:03

with the MG Hybrid and

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Electric range on Newstalk. Brendan Kelly

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is with me, Professor of Psychiatry at

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Trinity College, Dublin consultant psychiatrist at Tally

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University Hospital to talk about murder she

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wrote 40 years young. Wow, yes, and

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it doesn't seem like younger than both

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of us, Brendan. A lot younger than

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me. I hate to admit. Anyway, it

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is younger than both of us. It

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is still old. So 40 years on

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our TV screens and it's got an

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enduring appeal. It does. It

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does. We love murder. You

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know, we love killing. We love murder.

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We watch TV programs about it, movies.

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We read about it in novels. We are

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curiously obsessed by it and yet most of

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us will not commit a murder in our

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lifetimes. Why are we so obsessed? Well,

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I mean, we

0:49

can go very deep here. I don't know

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if you're ready for a bit of deep

0:53

Sigmund Freud at this time. Let me. I

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always like to recline during my Sigmund Freud

0:58

moments. I think it's very good you do

1:00

so. So Freud wrote about the life instincts

1:02

and the death instincts, also known as Eros

1:04

and Thanatos. So at first he thought everything

1:07

we do is fueled by a desire

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for life to live longer, to reproduce,

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to love, to grow, to flourish. But

1:13

over time he began to notice that

1:15

there was a, we were drawn to

1:17

death in certain ways and that we

1:20

were interested in death, interested in killing

1:22

and murder. The great myths of old,

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they're all about terrible murders and killings

1:26

and maimings and things like this. And

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he came to see the human mind

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or the psyche as a balance between

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the interest in Eros, life, growth, flourishing,

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and death, Thanatos. And when you

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think about a lot of the murder

1:40

that we watch on TV, there can

1:43

be some romance in there as well.

1:45

And it's a perfect balance of these

1:47

two life forces or the instincts, the

1:49

Eros and the Thanatos. But is one

1:52

a consequence of the other? Is our

1:54

fascination with the Thanatos not because of

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the Eros? That it's the thing that

1:59

prevents life. life. Yes,

2:01

yes, no, it is. They're the same, you

2:03

know, they're two sides of the same coin.

2:05

You can't really have one without the other.

2:07

Now they're named after the Greek god of

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love, Eros, and then Thanatos was this figure

2:12

in Greek mythology who would carry you away

2:14

when you had died and take you into

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the underworld. And the interplay between these two

2:19

things is writ large in these TV programs

2:21

we watch. Now most of our lives will

2:23

have elements of both, but you know, heaven

2:25

bless. From day to day, our lives are

2:28

pretty banal. And is there

2:30

fascination with these shows with, you

2:32

know, in terms of the characters in them,

2:35

with the people who are doing the murdering

2:37

or the murdered? Ah,

2:39

well subconsciously we identify with both.

2:42

Probably more with the murderer and

2:44

we compare ourselves subconsciously. The question

2:47

being, if he or she does

2:49

that, could I possibly do that?

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And we look for differences between

2:54

the killer and ourselves, or

2:56

similarities. So we're hoping for differences.

2:59

But of course a good program will keep

3:01

you guessing and you'll be comparing yourself to

3:04

all the characters. You might

3:06

not know who the bad guy is

3:08

or who the bad person is. So

3:10

that element of suspense really supercharges the

3:12

interplay between the life and the death

3:14

instincts that they're toying with. It's

3:17

funny, I remember listening to a podcast

3:19

producer being interviewed about kind of true

3:21

crime and the proliferation of it. And

3:24

criticism was put to him that the focus

3:26

is always on the people committing these acts

3:28

and never on the victims. And he was

3:30

kind of just, you know, he

3:32

was quite unapologetic about it. He says nobody would

3:34

listen to the other episodes, you know, people's family

3:37

and friends of those impact it would. But the

3:39

great unwashed doesn't really have an it. They might

3:41

say they do. And they might text

3:43

in to a radio show and criticize the podcast producer

3:45

for not focusing on it. They

3:48

want to listen to the murderer episode. They

3:50

do. And that is a

3:52

real ethical tension for real life

3:55

murder podcasts, TV programs, series of

3:57

any sort, which is they don't

3:59

pay sufficient. attention to victims, victims'

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families, and the ripples of victimhood,

4:03

which is why it is probably,

4:05

if you like, ethically easier for

4:08

us to look at pure fiction,

4:10

because there isn't that concern. There's

4:12

also, of course, we're also attracted,

4:14

you know, we're hungry for emotions,

4:16

we're hungry for extreme emotions, like

4:19

those that are stimulated by murder,

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those by, you know, romance, and

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our day-to-day lives don't carry enough for

4:26

us, so we're keen to experience any

4:28

kind of emotion, and of course it's

4:30

best to experience them vicariously, like we

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couldn't all be party to a murder

4:35

every evening, but we'll happily watch it

4:37

on the TV, and some would say

4:39

this discharges vicariously our own murderous impulses,

4:41

that rather than being aggressive or difficult

4:44

or violent, we can watch it on

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the TV, and if that gives some

4:48

satiety to the unacceptable impulses in ourselves.

4:50

So for the great, great span of

4:52

human history, kind of, they lived in

4:55

much more violent times, much more death

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around them at any given moment, kind

5:00

of the sword of Damocles, as it were,

5:02

quite literally sometimes, maybe might fall on their

5:04

head, and we don't have that, most of

5:06

us. We don't. But we're still the same

5:09

creatures, is that it? Yeah, we

5:11

live very controlled lives for the most

5:13

part, and this serves us well. We

5:16

live longer than we ever did, we're

5:18

healthier, and fewer people getting killed. However,

5:21

we do like the idea

5:23

of losing control, and we can do

5:25

that in a very safe way by

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watching these out of control situations on

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TV, particularly, which is very vivid, and

5:32

it's in our homes, and we can

5:34

really get into it, and that can,

5:37

if you like, give us this feeling of loss

5:39

of control as these out of control things happen

5:41

on the very safe space of the TV screen,

5:43

and we can just pause it and make a

5:45

cup of tea whenever we want. So

5:48

there's a locus of control that moves there,

5:50

and we like that as well. How important

5:53

is it? We were talking about accountability in

5:55

the OPW earlier. How important is it with

5:57

these shows? I don't think anybody there has

5:59

killed someone. yet over the bike shed, as

6:02

far as I know. There's accountability

6:04

that someone's caught in the end.

6:06

ALICE Yeah. Usually, our sense of

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justice is fulfilled when

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we see somebody being caught, or

6:13

at least their identity being revealed.

6:15

But there's also this subtle thing

6:17

they do is make us sometimes

6:19

identify with the perpetrator, but

6:21

they're still revealed to us. We figure out

6:23

who it is, and even if they escape

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in the end, that is only to promise

6:27

us another episode, another series to keep us

6:29

hanging on. But a sense of control, a

6:32

sense of emotion, a sense of the

6:34

balance between life and death, and then of course

6:36

a sense of justice. So these

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programs are really well designed, and there's a reason

6:40

why they have lasted on

6:43

TV. They have evolved over time,

6:45

and they're great survivors. They're so

6:48

formulaic, and yet they survive in

6:51

the world of TV because they meet all

6:53

of these deep needs. The

6:55

reason we might identify with one murder, could

6:57

it be different from another? So say you're

6:59

Jeffrey Dahmer's or whatever it happens to be,

7:02

the classic kind of series of killing pets

7:05

when they're kids type thing. We kind

7:07

of like to imagine them as aberrations,

7:10

and then you've got the person who

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kills maybe in a fit of passion

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or because of financial pressure or something's

7:16

going on in their life. And there's

7:18

an attraction to both. Both are kind

7:20

of wildly popular in terms of cultural

7:22

entertainment, but is a kind of psychological

7:24

attraction to both different? I assume we

7:26

can see ourselves more in the latter

7:28

than the farmer. Yes, we

7:30

can, but we still compare ourselves

7:32

to both of them. And we

7:34

have a particular fascination with those

7:37

extreme figures, particularly these isolationist figures.

7:39

And the more salacious or the

7:41

more concerning, the more psychopathic one

7:43

might say, the details revealed are

7:45

the greater the thrill that people

7:47

physically feel watching the TV. And

7:49

we do need to remember this

7:51

is a very physical and emotional

7:55

experience. That's why we do it. We

7:57

get these feelings of anxiety in our

7:59

bodies. and we like that. We don't

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get enough of that in our days.

8:03

So it's not cognitive, the reasons we

8:05

don't think it through. This is something

8:07

we feel. And often the attraction of

8:09

this is not mediated by language. It's

8:11

the look of it. It's the physical

8:13

sensation of it, rather than the understanding

8:15

of it that keeps us watching every

8:17

week. Can you overdo it? Sure,

8:20

you can overdo it. But, you know, an

8:22

awful lot of what's presented now is really

8:25

quite sanitized, and the risks of overdoing it

8:27

aren't enormous. You just end up watching too

8:29

much telly. So let's not go around... Not

8:32

going to go looking for the real

8:34

Cabot Cove without slaughtering the residents. There's

8:36

no evidence of that whatsoever, much as

8:38

people might think. And watching too much

8:41

television, you know, is not a psychological

8:43

disorder of any particular kind. It's just

8:45

not especially healthy. And look, you could

8:47

be doing a lot worse things with

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your time. You could. Brendan, listen, it's

8:51

always a pleasure. Thanks to William for

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popping into us. Brendan Kelly, professor of

8:55

psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin consultant psychiatrist

8:57

at Tally University Hospital.