Arrested Development and Philosophy (3 page)

Lindsay: “You Call Yourself an Environmentalist, Why Don’t You Go Club a Few Beavers?”

A stereotypical privileged daughter, Lindsay has not pursued a career. Instead, she devotes herself to maintaining her appearance and is a crusader for social justice. Unfortunately, Lindsay couldn’t care less about any of the causes she spends her time championing. She wastes food at a benefit for world hunger,
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opposes the war in Iraq because her hairdresser is being called to active duty (leaving her in need of a stylist), and is uncertain about what exactly she is supposed to be doing with the wetlands. “Dry them?” she guesses.
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Lindsay sees herself as a good mother, yet fails to recognize that her daughter is flunking out of school. Believing it to be an award, she has Maeby’s expulsion letter from the “new age feel-goodery” Openings framed. She also considers herself to be a good daughter, but only visits her father in prison three times, with each visit motivated by the frustrated desire for leers and cat calls from the inmates (in her distorted version of reality, this would be the ultimate self-esteem boost). Lindsay brags about being employed while everyone else loafs around, but all she ever managed was a job
offer
(anyone can get a job offer), and she is fired for sleeping through the job after celebrating the job (offer) with money that she had not yet earned. To be fair, she did work at a clothing store once, but she was so invested in her public image she lied about the job, preferring that everyone believe she was stealing.

Similarly, Lindsay brags about keeping the house clean, but the two times she claimed to clean it she actually tricked someone else into doing the job (Lupe the first time, and Tobias—Mrs. Featherbottom—the second). Whenever she begins to see the ugly truth of her life, Lindsay immediately descends deeper within the cave. When she and Tobias finally admit to each other that their marriage is not working, she quickly switches gears. After an admittedly delusional suggestion of Tobias’s (“it never works; these people somehow delude themselves into thinking that it might but—but it might work for us”), Lindsay proclaims their relationship an open marriage. She then happily engages in an imagined competition with Tobias over who will manage to have an affair first, even though neither of them do more than brag and scheme. Lindsay guards carefully against ever having to face her life for what it really is—and she’s happy because of it.

Tobias: “You Blow Hard.”

Tobias is perhaps the saddest member of the Bluth family, though he rarely recognizes this himself. He usually manages to glide along, deeply, happily self-deluded. Even more so than Gob, Tobias’s professional identification is simply in his mind. Like Gob, Tobias has no reason to believe that he’s any good at his chosen profession. After a few failed attempts to land work, Tobias is happy to spend most of his time on the couch. He blissfully wallows in his conception of himself as a misunderstood actor who strives for work, while actually watching bad TV and experimenting with his wife’s wildly overpriced beauty products.

Tobias twists every situation to better match what he takes himself to be (an actor) and what he takes himself to be doing (searching for his breakthrough role). Despite good evidence to the contrary, Tobias insists on understanding his gym buddy, Frank, as anything but what he really is. When it becomes clear that Frank is not interested in him sexually, Tobias hears “agent” and assumes it to mean “talent agent.” He misunderstands Frank as saying that he works for the CAA (Creative Arts Agency), when in fact he works for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). He interprets Frank’s request that he be a mole as Frank wanting him to don a giant mole suit and act out a role.
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Common sense tells us that we should understand ambiguous words in the most reasonable way, given the context, but Tobias’s single-minded desire for the world to conform to his dreams leads him to contort his understanding of simple information in such a way that his own delusions are not threatened.

Tobias’s sexual orientation is a running joke and a continuing mystery in the show. It isn’t clear whether or not Tobias is gay because Tobias himself doesn’t know. He’s a tragic character, because it’s clear that he does love his wife and daughter (this is undeniable when you remember that, after being kicked out of the house, he becomes Mrs. Featherbottom to spend more time with them).
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The fact that outing himself would result in the end of his marriage is compounded by Tobias’s deep sexual repression, of which his never-nude syndrome is one manifestation (it’s exactly what it sounds like, and there are literally dozens of them). His level of repression suggests that Tobias would find having a sexual relationship with a man just as challenging as with his wife. We’re also told that he and Lindsay do, on extremely rare occasions, manage to have enjoyable sex. So, while Tobias isn’t clearly gay, he’s certainly unaware of his own sexual nature.

Despite these extremely deep-rooted problems, Tobias has worked himself into such a high level of denial about his issues that he understands himself as actually being the person he would like to be. He proudly announces that he has sex with his wife (though her own level of sexual frustration tells us he doesn’t), he proclaims himself a fabulous actor, and he thinks of himself as a loving father who has a strong relationship with his daughter (everything she does tells us that she looks on him with embarrassment and contempt). While maintaining his self-deception, Tobias seems relatively happy, most of the time. Strangely, however, at times he manages to have moments of clarity when he realizes his life is really nothing like the dream world he works so hard to keep going. When this happens he succumbs to overwhelming despair, alone, in his cutoffs, weeping in the shower.

Arrested Development
follows the Bluths through several years of their lives, during which we watch Michael struggle for self-awareness yet find misery. We also watch the others maintain happiness in self-deception. So it looks like Socrates’s prediction about self-awareness leading to happiness doesn’t match up with the evidence. That means it’s time to consider another philosopher.

The Arresting of Happiness

In
The Conquest of Happiness,
the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) gives an account of the relation between happiness and self-knowledge that more clearly accords with
Arrested Development
. Russell saw the greatest cause of unhappiness as the desire for knowledge—obviously, this is bad news for us philosophers. Rather than appealing to a hypothetical example like Socrates’s cave, Russell uses his own life as his primary example. From a young age, he was an unhappy person for two reasons. First, he desired something essentially unobtainable—absolute certainty about the issues he most cared about. The only way to end this type of suffering was for Russell to change his desires to something short of absolute certainty, which is obtainable. The second reason for his unhappiness was his “preoccupation with himself.”
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Russell, like most philosophers, spent a lot of time thinking about himself, just as Socrates urged. He reflected on his behavior (judging some actions moral and others immoral) and his beliefs (judging some justified and others unjustified). This constant search for self-knowledge left Russell feeling inadequate and prevented him from finding much happiness in life. In time, he learned to be indifferent (his word) to himself and his shortcomings, and he found himself happier. Russell went so far as to say that “interest in oneself, on the contrary, leads to no activity of a progressive kind.”
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There are, according to Russell, three types of people who come to be unhappy through reflection: sinners, narcissists, and megalomaniacs. Sinners constantly find fault in themselves. No matter what a sinner wants, he’ll see it as something he shouldn’t want. As a result, he either does something he doesn’t want to do or does what he wants and disapproves of himself.
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George Michael fits this description. He’s infatuated with his cousin Maeby, but he knows that society at large (except maybe the French . . . he likes the way they think), and his family in particular, would disapprove of any sexual relationship the two of them might form. Rather than admit his desires to his cousin, he enters into a relationship with a boring girl, Annabell (I call her that because she’s shaped like a . . . she’s the belle of the ball!), with whom he’s got nothing in common. He spends a lot of time with her family praying (they are on Bethlehem time), which he hates, and he goes so far as to waste money on music just to burn at Ann’s Christian (pause) music bonfire. All the while he longs to be with his cousin, and goes out of his way to impress her, only to feel ashamed. When he and Maeby finally act on their feelings, he gets to second base (stealing it like Pete Rose), but the cost is that he is filled with so much self-loathing he can’t be in the same room with her. If George Michael would just admit to his taboo sexual desires (like his Gangee and Uncle Oscar), rather than suppressing them, he would probably be happier.

The narcissist is in many ways the opposite of the sinner. When a narcissist reflects on himself he sees his good qualities to the point of admiring himself. This leads to a desire to be admired by others, and when that doesn’t happen, suffering ensues.
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This seems to be the type of unhappiness that Michael suffers from. Just think of how many times Michael looks for recognition—from his father, sister, brother, son, employees, or girlfriends—that he is a good person. Even when he behaves badly, he wants to be seen as doing the bad thing in as good a way as he can (when he steals his brother’s girlfriend or sleeps with his son’s teacher). If Michael spent less time obsessing over his virtue and more time taking pleasure in the things he does, he would be better off. In other words, if Michael were more like Gob, or if he actually took the “stupid pills” that George Sr. often accused him of taking, he would be happier.

The last category of unhappy people is the megalomaniac. Russell says these people want to be powerful and feared in the way that a narcissist wants to be well-liked. But unhappiness results when these people recognize the great difference between the power they feel they deserve and the little they actually have.
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A case might be made for Gob exemplifying this type of person, but we have a better
Arrested
example in George Sr.’s secretary and mistress Kitty (the whore). Secretaries outside of the academic setting are fairly powerless. Michael saw the position as so unimportant he allowed Tobias, Lindsay, and Starla (the model Gob gave a firm offer to) to do it. As a mistress, Kitty saw herself as more important to George Sr. than his wife, so she felt she was entitled to at least as much power as Lucille. Nobody else, including George Sr., saw things this way. Instead they saw her as crazy (she was). If Kitty just accepted her powerlessness like Buster (who is perfectly content to let others shepherd him around), she could find happiness.

Russell also thought that there are external circumstances that, regardless of self-knowledge, prevent a person from being happy. You need to have a reasonable income that allows for food, shelter, and health care before happiness is an option. Yet, even with these things, certain personal traumas can prevent any chance at happiness. Chief among these, according to Russell, are the death of a child and public disgrace. Russell would think George Sr. extraordinarily lucky that, after being arrested by the SEC, he was able to do (and have) the time of his life in prison.
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While these observations might seem obvious, it’s worth noting that Socrates didn’t even see it as a possibility that external circumstances could affect happiness; he thought self-knowledge was necessary and sufficient for happiness.

This isn’t to say that Russell thought there was no benefit to some reflection, or that we ought never to reflect (you should see all the stuff this guy wrote!). Rather, he thought that in moderation, reflection could lead to additional happiness. Russell, himself a “deliciously witty” man, put it this way, “Perhaps the simplest way to describe the difference between the two sorts of happiness is to say that one sort is open to any human being, and the other only to those who can read and write.”
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What he meant by this was that the more knowledge you have, the more you are able to understand and accomplish, and reaching your goals brings a type of happiness that is not available to those who don’t have any goals.

There are many opportunities for happiness, and some of those opportunities are not available to those who don’t reflect. Doing little tricks (illusions; tricks are what a whore does for money . . . or cocaine) can lead to happiness, but if that’s all you can do, you may not be as happy as people who can do more. Learning more about the world and about yourself increases the number of places you can find pleasure. George Michael, for example, derives pleasure from getting As in class, a pleasure not open to Maeby.

Russell’s lesson is that self-reflection is more likely to hurt than to help. However, for those who desire a certain amount of self-reflection, it’s not necessarily something to be avoided. If Michael and George Michael can get it together and learn how to engage in a level of self-reflection that is not all-encompassing, they will have opportunities for happiness that are not available to their less-reflective family members. So, the unexamined life isn’t a huge mistake, but a touch of examination might not be a bad thing.

NOTES

1.
Episode 12.

2.
Episode 14.

3.
Episode 27.

4.
Plato,
Apology
, p. 29e.

5.
Plato,
Apology
, p. 38a.

6.
Plato,
Apology
, p. 28b.

7.
The story is probably Plato’s, though he puts it in the mouth of Socrates.