Portraying the Alcoholic: Images of Intoxication and Addiction in American Alcoholism Movies, 1931–1962

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THE AUTHORS

Robin Room, PhD, is a sociologist who has directed alcohol and drug research centers in the United States, Canada, and Sweden, and now in Australia, his native country. He is a professor at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne and at the Centre for Social Research on Alcohol and Drugs at Stockholm University, and the Director of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre in Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia. He has received awards for scientific contributions in the United States, Sweden, and Australia, including the premier international award in alcohol studies, the Jellinek Memorial Award for Alcohol Studies. Professor Room's research is on social, cultural, and epidemiological studies of alcohol, drugs, and gambling behavior and problems, and studies of social responses to alcohol and drug problems and of the effects of policy changes. Recent books on which he is a co-author include Cannabis Policy: Moving Beyond Stalemate; Drug Policy and the Public Good, and the 2nd edition of Alcohol –No Ordinary Commodity, all published by Oxford University Press.

GLOSSARY

• Addiction concept: The conceptualization of recurrent heavy alcohol or other drug use as being the result of a mysterious impulse or force, and thus being out of the control of the user. The concept is now applied also to recurrent heavy gambling and other behavioral problems.

• Alcoholic: A recurrently intoxicated person unable to control his or her drinking and thus his or her life; a term applying the addiction concept specifically to the alcohol consumer.

• Alcoholism movement: Starting in the 1940s in the USA, a loose assemblage of academics, nongovernmental organizations and recovered alcoholics campaigning for better societal treatment of alcoholics, including governmental provision of treatment for alcohol problems. Though there were ideological connections and some shared membership with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), the alcoholism movement was always distinct from AA, which remained non- political.

• Alcoholism movie: A film with the portrayal of an alcoholic's condition, fall and sometimes redemption as a central theme.

• Delirium tremens (DTs): an acute episode of delirium touched off by discontinuation of heavy drinking, and the associated withdrawal symptoms. Symptoms of DTs may include nightmares; agitation; global confusion and disorientation; visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations; fever; and signs of autonomic hyperactivity such as fast heart rate and high blood pressure. As Ritson (1979) noted, DTs have often been overdramatized in alcoholism movies.

• Temperance melodrama: A play or novel portraying the rise and fall of a main character whose drinking causes harm to the drinker and those around him or her. The storyline is often resolved by abstinence and recovery with the help of a wife or family. Such melodramas were a mainstay of persuasional campaigns by the temperance movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.