Jonah Gate and the therapist-god-complex

hello harry

i really don’t give a shit about celebrity stuff BUT as a surfer, i have been called upon (like 2 ppl asked me) to comment on the jonah hill / sarah brady controversy.

my main takeaway is that we need to take men out of therapy. i’ve totally changed my tune on this since my trad awakening.

my second takeaway is that sarah is good at surfing

also stutz was boring i kept falling asleep while watching it even though i liked the cute little drawing parts.

ah yes…she jonah on my hill till I set a boundary

I wanna focus on the specific therapy guy angle of it all…I don’t have much to say about the actual implications of the texts, their relationship, abuse in relationships etc. It’s all obviously important, but I just don’t personally have much to say.

On specifically the Therapy-Guy of it all..I’m actually somewhat empathetic to Jonah’s plight. From personal experience, there is something very powerful about finding a therapist that seems to start loosening the gears for you. It’s almost a high. And I totally understand why. You’re someone whos been under the thumb of some type of mental illness for a long time, then along comes an old Jewish man who articulates a worldview that not only allows your mental illness to go away but actually allows it to empower you in certain ways. Of course, initially, you want to believe this can happen, and you’d prefer to live in a world where your new therapist is an all knowing god like dude, rather than just a competent professional. 

I saw a little bit of this in Stutz. I wouldn’t go as far to say that Stutz was like immoral or whatever, but I do think the notion of wanting to make a movie about your therapist does fall into that category of seeing them as somewhat godlike. 

Now whereas the whole Stutz fallout was at most a mid Netflix documentary, the stakes are a bit higher whan you’re using therapy speak to tell your girlfriend she can’t do her job…but I do find myself empathizing a bit with Jonah, not in his conflict with Sarah because he’s clearly wrong lol, but in his conflict with his own relationship to therapy. 

The inclination to view therapy is a silver bullet is soooo seductive, and its honesty so whack that it doens’t work like that lol. Whats even harder is that it is often marketed to people as a sort of silver bullet thing. If you’ve ever read the first chapter of a self-help book this because excruciatingly clear. But i do think the unfortunate reality is therapy, and boundaries, and talking about your feelings, and little post cards with fun tools on them sometimes work some of the time. Whats worse, sometimes they work, only at the expense of the other (think boundary discourse vs exposure therapy). 

So like, I think the Jonah texts are ugly, but in this specific way, I feel bad for him, or at least sort of know what he might be wrestling with. 

ok first of all…. bars………

and speaking of bars have you listened to ocean spray by moneybagg yo?

I did have one final thought….what if this is all a Netflix psy-op to boost viewership for Stutz………………………

Idle chatter