Compliance Dramas in Alcoholic Anonymous Films: An Interactionist Reading of The Days of Wine and Roses

Abstract

Purpose – I extend the discourse regarding The Days of Wine and Roses (TDoWaR) as an Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) film in particular and analyses of A.A. films in general and provide a symbolic interactionist reading of TDoWaR as involving compliance dramas.

Design/methodology/approach – Borrowing from Norman Denzin's notion of a subversive reading of films, in which the author attends to the literal content of a text from a predefined perspective, I deal with the characters as if they create and maintain aligned and congruent actions that authors can analyze as conversational and interactional content. My main interest, drawing upon symbolic interactionist conceptualization and previous reviews of TDoWaR, involves the decisions made by characters to imbibe against their better judgment.

Findings – I detected four dramas (foreshadowed, evocative, profane, and complementary) that differed in interactional intensity and consequences. Each involves mutual decision making associated with self-definition and definition of the relationships. I also locate the dramas in the context of moral themes of an A. A. Film, specifically an epiphany, a categorical commitment to sobriety, an ongoing life cycle of recovery, and synchronicity.

Originality/value – Compliance dramas involve decisions to engage in ordinary activity (in this case, drinking) that becomes nonordinary, owing to semiotic, situational, historical, and interactional dynamics. The chapter can encourage thinking about alcoholism and alcoholic films as involving a moral career of a recovering alcoholic that sometimes must involve sacrifice of other prestigious moral careers (e.g., of a romantic relationship) in order to maintain the authenticity of the identity.

Citation

Katovich, M.A. (2012), "Compliance Dramas in Alcoholic Anonymous Films: An Interactionist Reading of The Days of Wine and Roses", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 39), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 171-190. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396(2012)0000039008