Episode 006: Belief in Santa—Placebo Effect? Elf (2003) with Wind Goodfriend
Join Alex and Dr. Wind Goodfriend on discussion of the psychological concepts in Jon Favreau’s holiday classic Elf (2003), where we being the meme game in and discuss how the belief in Santa could just be a placebo effect of in holiday cheer.
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Episode Transcription
ALEX SWAN: It’s the Christmas episode of the CinemaPsych Podcast!
BUDDY: Who the heck are you?
ALEX: I’m the host.
BUDDY: You disgust me. How can you live with yourself?
ALEX: Well, hey, Buddy, I-I mean, I don’t think that’s really all that helpful.
BUDDY: You sit on a throne of lies…
ALEX: Well, it’s more like an office chair than a throne.
BUDDY: You smell like beef and cheese.
ALEX: Well that’s kind of rude.
<Upbeat Silent Night plays>
ALEX: Welcome everybody to the CinemaPsych Podcast! The podcast where psychology meets film. I am your host, Dr. Alex Swan, and I’m really excited for this Christmas-themed episode of the podcast. I don’t know if we’ll do this for every major holiday or even every year during the major holidays, but I feel like I wanted to do it this year. And I’m super excited to be talking about a really great film, as you may have guessed, today, we are going to talk about the seminal recent Christmas classic Elf, starring, of course, Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf, directed by Jon Favreau, you know, in one of his first directorial films and you think to yourself, this guy that starred in Swingers, what’s he doing directing a comedy like this? That’s crazy, that’s crazy! We’re going to have lots of fun though. And I’m super excited to bring back for the first time a guest host… Wind Goodfriend joins us again. Welcome back to the show, Wind, on our Christmas-themed episode! How’ve you been? Anything new to share with the listeners?
WIND GOODFRIEND: Thank you so much for having me back! It’s so fun to do this podcast… and I’m happy to share two things that have been happening in my world recently. First is, I’m super excited that there’s a new book out on psychology and pop culture on the Joker and I have a chapter in that book on the abusive relationship between the Joker and his girlfriend/servant, Harley Quinn. That’s a fun book that just came out in time to be released with the new movie. So that’s out on bookstore shelves today. And I also just signed a contract to co-edit a new academic book with Routledge Publishing on stigma interventions. So if any of your listeners do research on how to intervene and reduce stigma across a wide variety of marginalized groups, please have him contact me and I will be happy to consider them as a chapter-er-contributor in the new book.
ALEX: Well listeners you heard it there. That’s pretty awesome! And I love the comparison of Joker and Harley Quinn because honestly you don’t hear about those two in that coupling before because you know it’s Joker and Harley Quinn and they’re villains and most people are talking about the hero couplings like Superman and Lois–
WIND: Right.
ALEX: That sort of thing. That’s super awesome and exciting. Congratulations on the two books!
<jingle bells>
ALEX: And so Wind, as I mentioned I have decided–or you have decided–for us to discuss Elf. I emailed you and I said, “Wind do you want to discuss another episode?”
WIND: I said, “yes, please!”
ALEX: And I asked, “Christmas-themed–which one should we do?” and you said you came up with Elf! So what was your reasoning for choosing Elf?
WIND: Because smiling is my favorite!
GIMBEL’S MANAGER: Why you smiling like that?
BUDDY: I just like to smile! Smiling’s my favorite!
MANAGER: Make work your favorite. That’s your favorite, OK?
BUDDY: OK.
MANAGER: Work is your new favorite.
BUDDY: Fine.
ALEX: <laughs> Yes, yes–smiling is my favorite. Is that it?
WIND: <laughs> Well, I love this movie. I think it’s just fun and lighthearted. I think it-it puts me in the holiday spirit. And I-I just think anything with Will Ferrell is hilarious. He’s one of my favorite actors of all time.
ALEX: Same. Same. Honestly, same is all I can really say. So the movie came out in 20–20, heh, 2003 and so it’s 16 years old. And I think one it was an instant holiday classic because it’s just a good movie and then to 16 years later, it’s a holiday classic. Interestingly enough, the–one of the elves is the boy from A Christmas Story one of those other holiday classics–
WIND: What? I didn’t know that!
ALEX: Yeah, I think he plays Ming-Ming, or one of the head elves–
WIND: Huh, that’s so cool.
ALEX: –he had at the North Pole at the beginning of the film. I think it was a good get by Jon Favreau. Yeah… knowing that he did a fantastic job of–a good get let’s say.
WIND: Yeah, he knows what he’s doing.
ALEX: So we chose Elf for the holiday classic, but, you know, honestly it might not be the Christmas film that we choose when we think of psychology. So what were the aspects, Wind, of psych that you found in the film, Elf?
WIND: Well, I think that there are several aspects of the movie that can relate to psychological theory, but, I, of course, have a bias that I think every movie is about psychology–
ALEX: As we discussed in your first episode, yeap.
WIND: So if you–<laughs> Right! So I thought of a couple of things and I thought would be interesting to discuss and let’s just jump right in with the first thing that occurs to me is that Elf is really about different cultures meeting and how people can experience the clash of going to a new culture and having people not understand them and they don’t really understand the culture. And so, people think that they’re strange and that’s just because they’re doing what’s normal to them and it’s not normal to this new place or people.
ALEX: Yeah, I think that’s apparent when he heads over to New York and he’s out of place.
WIND: Right.
ALEX: But I also think that fits with him growing up in the North Pole, right, cuz he’s immediately a fish out of water.
WIND: Right. So I–do-do we have to explain a one-sentence summary of the movie for people who aren’t familiar with it? I don’t know if that’s necessary.
ALEX: Sure, go ahead… go ahead.
WIND: <laughs> So-so the whole movie is basically about Will Ferrell, who is adopted at–he’s a human–he’s adopted by an elf at the North Pole. He doesn’t know that he’s adopted until he is basically an adult and when he realizes that he is in fact a human and that his father lives in New York City, he decides to travel to New York to meet his father.
ALEX: Then hilarity ensues. And he meets a girl, which is almost the B-plot, I would say, but yeah, but yeah–
WIND: For sure.
ALEX: That was pretty good summary! I like that. Very good, very good. Well done.
WIND: Aw, thank you! <laughs>
ALEX: So he finds out he’s a human and he finds out in kind of the most movie way… he overhears some elves talking about it and he’s like, <in higher pitch voice> “what?!? <in regular voice> I’m a human? That doesn’t make any sense! How can I be a human? Papa Elf!”
WIND: But-but the reason they’re talking about him is because he’s not fitting into their-their culture, and that’s-that’s not so much at this point of the movie psychology as-as it is his physicality. He’s so much larger than the elves that he doesn’t fit into their beds. He doesn’t fit into their bathrooms and his, sort of, bigness makes it harder for him to work with the elf toy-making tools that they use. He can’t seem to keep up with their pace of work. So, you know, they make like 6,000 Etch-A-Sketches in a day and he makes 75. So part of his struggle is that the culture is set up for someone who’s not as physically large as he is and because of these difficulties, that’s when it’s revealed that the reason he doesn’t fit in is because he is in fact an adopted human.
ALEX: Right. And one of the things that I grasped onto in that moment was he had to find meaning in that situation, because we as humans have a high need for belonging. We have this need for affiliating, and it’s so powerful that we can die from loneliness. Studies have shown that the immune system gets knocked out-out of commission for extreme loneliness, and could ultimately kill us. So, you know… And, you know, a little bit of delusions by Papa Elf–
WIND: <laughs> Right.
ALEX: –during his development/growing up, but, you know, the truth eventually comes out. You know, Santa has a naughty list.
WIND: Yes he does.
ALEX: And a lot of people in this movie lie. They lie. And it’s not good.
WIND: Well that’s-that’s an interesting point, but I’m not sure that elves receive Christmas presents.
ALEX: OK. Well, that’s fair.
WIND: <laughs> So, you know, I think that they’re-they’re producing the toys. I’m not sure they’re ever receiving them. We don’t-we don’t ever really see that as part of the lore.
ALEX: Yeah that’s true. Santa comes in and says, “well, that was a very successful Christmas. It’s time for the next one!” I got to say–
WIND: Right.
ALEX: –Ed Asner as Santa… edge out Tim Allen as my favorite portrayal of Santa in this film.
WIND: Well I’m not a big fan of Tim Allen’s, so I’m going to agree with you, but that might be a biased opinion… but-but, just as a sidebar here–I think we could get back to cross-cultural psychology, but just as a sidebar–in-in terms of Santa’s treatment of the elves, I mean they all seem extremely happy–I think it’s a very collectivistic culture–but I’m not so sure that, you know, maybe a union wouldn’t be <laughs> a reasonable thing for them to consider. They don’t really seem to get any days off, you know, they definitely have quotas they are required to meet. I’m not sure that they have received a raise in quite a while.
ALEX: Right, yeah, he could be exploiting them.
WIND: They-they seem happy.
ALEX: Santa… well, yeah, but, right, that could be the nature of their collectivistic culture–
WIND: Right.
ALEX: –I guess we could call it that. But he could be exploiting him. Santa’s human–at least he looks more human than the elves do. He may be an authoritarian dictator, you know?
WIND: Absolutely.
ALEX: You don’t see Mrs. Claus… we only hear about her. And so maybe this is a dystopian society that we don’t want any part of.
WIND: That is definitely a spin on it. And so, part of the reason that they might be so happy is because I would argue that the North Pole has this collectivistic culture. So in psychology, we make the distinction between individualistic cultures, which is what we see in the movie in New York City and the collectivistic culture–
ALEX: I think the epitome, right?
WIND: Absolutely. So collectivistic, you know, you’re working on behalf of the collective, you’re working on behalf of the group, you’re making sacrifices for the group or for your family. And then of course, New York being the epitome of individualistic, which is about selfish needs and self-promotion and competition. And so we really see the individualism hitting the collectivism in-in both directions here in this movie and so I think that’s a really important psychological theme.
ALEX: Yeah, it’s a good “Fish-Out-of-Water” story, especially the ability to paint these broad cultural swaths across the landscape here and see the differences between individualism and collectivism. That’s a great find. As a not-social psychologist, I’m probably never going to spot that unless it’s literally smacked over my head while watching the film–like has to be super blaring in my face. Maybe more to the cultures that actually exist on Earth.
WIND: <laughs> Right, right.
ALEX: Instead of elf culture vs. I don’t know, human culture.
WIND: Well, you’ve never been to the North Pole. I assume, you’re not really sure, right?
ALEX: Yeah, that’s true! Maybe they exist and we will perhaps find out one day. <laughs>
WIND: That would be interesting.
ALEX: <laughs> OK. So let’s focus on buddy for a moment, because he’s the main character of the film and a lot of the film is driven by who he is and what he does. So you had a good find on this one. What could we apply to Buddy in this case?
WIND: Well, one of the most popular theories in developmental psych/social psych and, in fact, several other areas, is Attachment Theory. So this is a theory that’s been around. John Bowlby came up with it in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, and basically the idea is that your first relationship in life with your primary caregiver–so usually that would be a parent–that becomes an implicit template for you in all of your future relationships. So, if that first primary relationship was healthy and-and secure, you will be able to have healthy secure relationships as you grow up, and in particular a lot of research has focused on your adult romantic relationships. But also, you know, with other family members, and really anyone in your world. So that’s kind of an interesting theory to apply to Buddy, because he’s had a unique childhood.
ALEX: Oh yeah.
WIND: <laughs> So-so, for people who haven’t seen the film, or maybe if it’s been a while, you know that Buddy’s father is not even aware of his existence until Buddy goes to New York as an adult many years later. Buddy’s mother got pregnant and gave him up for adoption. He lived in an orphanage–a Catholic orphanage–with nuns who appear to be fairly kind and loving toward him. But of course, there would be a lot of children in the orphanage, so they might not give him a lot of attention. And then he crawls into Santa’s bag of toys one year and Santa takes him back to the North Pole unknowingly, and he is adopted by a character named Papa Elf.
ALEX: Yeah, Papa Elf, played by… why can’t I think of his name… Newhart…
WIND: Bob.
ALEX: Bob! Thanks… <laughs>
WIND: Yep!
ALEX: <laughs> I swear I know all these people, I swear.
WIND: It’s OK.
ALEX: Bob Newhart, yeah, in a really great role that I think doesn’t get a lot of credit for the amount of forced perspective that they had to do because Will Ferrell is so tall. You know, Bob Newhart’s a smaller guy, but he had to be a really small and he doesn’t get a lot of love for this movie, and I-and I think he did a fantastic job.
WIND: Oh he was great.
ALEX: But you bring up a good point about Papa Elf because he’s a great role model–though I did mention that he could be on the naughty list even though they might not get any toys, I get it, but he’s definitely a liar…
WIND: I-I think that’s–it’s a lie of omission, but, you know, it’s-I think it’s a difficult question to ask at what point do you reveal that a child is adopted? I think that’s an individual decision for every family. And you-you might argue in this case that Buddy doesn’t seem to show a lot of maturity and so maybe Papa Elf was waiting for him to-to grow up a little bit psychologically before that decision, so I’m going to give Papa Elf a break on this one.
ALEX: OK, that’s fair, that’s fair. But we do have to-we do have to examine Papa Elf’s motivations–
WIND: Absolutely.
ALEX: –for taking on Buddy because Santa says, “well, we have to give him back,” and in a roundabout kind of way he doesn’t really say it explicitly like that, but-but in the back, Papa Elf is the narrator at the time–he doesn’t narrate the rest of the movie but he narrates that part–and he says, “you know, some elves need some companionship.” He may be lonely–I’m paraphrasing–looking for some experience making t-other than making toys. But we find out later that he’s Santa’s sled master, of course. He wants something different. And I want to be clear that I’m using the word lonely. He doesn’t use the word lonely. He uses words that are more euphemistic for loneliness and so I thought to myself well if he’s capable of doing that, cuz he has some need for companionship, for legacy, whatever… But if he’s capable of doing that, then I think he’s capable of giving or providing a nurturing relationship with Buddy. He’s gonna-he’s going to secure that secure attachment.
WIND: Right. So I do think that he-he appears to be a very loving and supportive father.
ALEX: Right.
WIND: So in that case, you would expect that Buddy would grow to have what we would call a secure attachment, where he trusts other people. I think we see a lot of evidence of that in the film. He certainly wants close relationships. He-he searches for, you know, people who can serve those important roles in his life. And when he meets someone with whom he’s interested in romantically, he-he’s not shy about expressing those feelings. He might know quite how to do it, so you take some coaching from his-his new brother but he certainly happy to express that he appreciates her and that he’s interested in her. So those are all signs of the secure attachment that we would predict from someone who has grown up with a loving parent, even on this case, it was a little bit delayed. Most attachment theorists say that as long as you got the presence of someone before the age of two, you can establish that secure attachment.
ALEX: Yeah, and he does get away with some things… a lot of things, really, that anybody shouldn’t rightly get away with like you know hanging out with in the girls locker room, because he’s into Jovie–
WIND: Right, that’s-that’s definitely not OK. Like, don’t go into the girls’ locker room and spy on women when they’re in the shower. That’s gonna be a hard pass.
ALEX: Right. <laughs>
WIND: But, he also does show some signs of what we would call anxious attachment, as well. So, that could be because maybe he was in the orphanage longer than it seems in the movie. Maybe it took a while for him to bond with Papa Elf. We’re not sure, we can’t see that side of his life. But the anxious attachment is going to be people who feel a little bit insecure with their relationships.
<clip playing in Background says “Christmas gram”>
WIND: But you have had inconsistencies in childhood, so that also could be applied to Buddy and we see some of that coming out when he’s an adult because he seems to be really anxious about pleasing other people making sure that he’s acting according to their wishes as opposed to in accordance with his wishes. So he’s clearly doing a lot of things just to please his father even though they make him uncomfortable. When he first meets his father, he immediately says “I love you, I love you.”
BUDDY: Yeah, anything for you, Dad. <starts to sing off-key> I-I’m-I’m here with my dad… and we never met… and he wants me to sing him a song… and I was adopted but you didn’t know I was born… so I’m here now! I found you! Daddy! And guess what? I love you! I love you! I love you!
WIND: And that is, you know, for most people, that would be a probably too soon type of sharing.
ALEX: Yeah, on both ends right? Too soon to hear it, too soon to say it.
WIND: Right.
ALEX: And you’re right, under normal, under typical circumstances… So yeah, going back to what you said a few seconds ago with, that he does things to please his father. So even though it makes him uncomfortable when he has to go to work with Walter that one day and, you know, had to be wearing a suit and he was being obnoxious in the office, so Walter sends him down to the mail room and he creates fun. You know, somebody slips him some whiskey or bourbon, you know.
WIND: Yeah, he thought it was-he thought it was syrup. He didn’t know yet.
ALEX: Yeah, <in a sarcastic voice> syrup… air quotes over here. <laughs>
WIND: <laughs> Right.
ALEX: So yeah, it is a lot of things for Walter’s affection. For his approval. Because he honestly doesn’t have anything else.
ALEX: Right! And-and we see that when he makes the Christmas decorations overnight in Gimbel’s, right? So, he’s-he’s someone who was willing to sacrifice his own needs, his own sleep, to try to please other people and those are signs of a more anxious attachment style.
ALEX: Yeah, and let’s quickly mention his brother, because we can talk about another one of the attachment styles from the theory–his name is Michael, I believe–and I think you would say that his attachment style is opposite to one of the two that we’ve already talked about. So what is Michael’s attachment style?
WIND: Well, I would argue that Michael is more closely in alignment with the third attachment style and there are only three that Bowlby originally hypothesized. So it’s-it’s a nice way to finish out the discussion of the theory. The third one was called a fearful attachment style or avoidant attachment style and that really results from parents who are, kind of, consistently bad or consistently absent, and especially the latter, I think, applies to Michael’s relationship with their father, because it’s clear that their father is a workaholic. Clear that he doesn’t really spend any time with Michael, or know anything about his own son. They don’t really seem to have any of that kind of quality time. And so Michael has grown up–I think is his mother is certainly very supportive and so he could get the security from her–but when it comes to his father, he doesn’t trust his father, he doesn’t really believe that his father even really loves him, which we see coming out later in the movie, as well. So, in these cases, Michael shows the signs of fearful or avoidant attachment, because he’s-he’s built up his kind of wall or barrier in which he keeps people at bay a little bit because he doesn’t trust they’re going to be there when he really needs them.
ALEX: Yeah, and I think that’s most apparent in that scene where he runs over to the publishing company and Walter’s giving the pitch to the publisher and the board, I guess, and he immediately gives up his plea to go help Buddy after his dad’s like, you know, “get out, I’m doing something right now.” And-and Michael’s like, “alright, fine, whatever, I don’t know why I asked you.”
WIND: Right.
ALEX: And he only asked once but there’s kind of a back-and-forth between Walter and the publisher and the publisher’s like, “kid, go away we’re doing something important.” But he gives up… he gives up. And ultimately it’s a call back, a full call back… or maybe not a full call back–kind of a small call back to an earlier scene where Walter has two quote-unquote “work” for during dinner and so he grabs his plate and goes off to his office which leaves Michael in the room with his mom to just sit there and not have family time, you know.
WIND: Right. Which, in fact, when their dad says like, “oh, I-I got a bunch of work to do,” and he picks up his plate and goes into his office, he’s not actually working, he’s looking through his old yearbook for pictures of Buddy mom. So he’s again on the naughty list. <laughs>
ALEX: Yeah, very true. <laughs> Liar! Man, so many liars in this movie!
WIND: Yeah. It’s true.
ALEX: The only virtuous person in this movie is Buddy.
WIND: I agree.
ALEX: So, so blissfully virtuous. So I’ll focus on Buddy just a little bit more, because within this vein… we mention-we mention-kind of mentioned at the top about Buddy and being sort of the son to a mature Papa Elf and him being a decent-a decent caretaker–from what we can tell from the montage–it sort of just clips and… But, Buddy is very immature, right? He has the mind of a child. And the doctor, played by Jon Favreau, says this as much when he tells Walter that yeah you know I did a super quick paternity test…
DOCTOR: It’s a boy! Buddy’s your son.
WALTER: That’s very impossible. You saw the guy out there. He’s certifiably insane.
DOCTOR: He’s probably just reverting to state of childlike dependency…
ALEX: Not real.
WIND: <laughs> Right.
ALEX: Again, lying. “I did the super quick paternity test and he’s your son…” And so he’s got the mind of a child–though he may be sort of going to speculate in a sort of way–he’s just reverted or regressed to this childlike dependency state and he just needs some nurturing from you. Now that he knows you and now that he’s met you. And he’s gotten that information… just being part of your family for a little while and then maybe cut him loose after, you know, sort of sloughs off maybe, what we’ll say I guess here, that we’re alluding to that, maybe, it was all-all–sorry, all an act, OK?
WIND: Well, I’m not sure if they thought it was an act or thought it was some kind of Freudian regression where, because he-he’s never met his father he’s fixated in some kind of childhood state. And so, I think what the doctor was suggesting was spend a little time with him, acknowledge that he’s your son, and then he won’t need to be in this fixated stated anymore.
ALEX: OK, that’s fair, that’s fair. What I wanted to bring up about this was that I kind of got the sense of the dichotomy of growing up in our modern society, which is the importance of education, which much to everyone’s chagrin, will take away our innocence, right? It’s going to go away no matter what, because the more we know the more–the less we get to bask in the blissful ignorance of life, right?
WIND: Yeah…
ALEX: So–I mean that sounds cliché, but he doesn’t get an education in the montage at the beginning of the movie. We see part of a classroom but it’s essentially learning-learning how Christmas works. So there is no other-no other life skills or how many other things that you could know. But, you know…
WIND: Right, right. What are-what are the rules?
ALEX: Stay tuned listeners, because I do have something to say about survival skills that might be necessary in the North Pole. But, you know, maybe he’s-he’s at the innocence of a child and he has been essentially hanging out with elves his entire life. He-he grasps onto the innocence because he didn’t get an education.
WIND: I-I think in some ways that’s a really good point, because I don’t think they taught him, you know, math or literature, or geography, <laughs> you know. I don’t think he got any of the-the typical things that we would have in our education system. And so, in a lot of ways he is ignorant, right? In a lot of senses of the word, and so that could be one of the reasons that he seems so naïve. But I will say, you know, I kind of want to plug the positives of education, I guess <laughs>. I don’t want to–
ALEX: <sarcastically> No, no, it’s totally, totally negative, as an educator. Education is totally negative! <laughs>
WIND: If any college students are listening to this… <laughs> I would argue that there’s a lot of research that shows some humility in becoming educated i-if you can realize, you know, the more I know the more I realize I don’t know everything.
ALEX: Yeah, yeah.
WIND: So-so, there’s some of that. We can even go back to famous role models like Frederick Douglass, who’s saying, you know the key to-to freedom is education. So even though the more educated you are, you might become a bit more cynical, because you see the problems of the world and you do lose that childlike innocence. Recognizing those is the only way that we can really make progress.
ALEX: I think you bring up a good point about the cynical-cyna-cynical… what-what-what noun for…
WIND: Cynicism?
ALEX: Cyni-cynicism!
WIND: <laughs> See, if you were more educated, you would know words like that, Alex…
ALEX: Thank you, thank you, it’s been a long day. Yeah… I know…
WIND: <laughs> A doctorate’s not gonna do it!
ALEX: I realized that as I said it. You know, versus <chuckles> innocence is really important–
WIND: Naïvete, yeah.
ALEX: –because it’s-it’s expressed in the characters. We have Buddy vs Walter… that’s what I was trying to say. <laughs>
WIND: Right. Who’s clearly very educated, you know, presumably he’s got some kind of Master’s in business or children’s literature or something. <laughs> And, he’s definitely cynical.
ALEX: Yeah, I mean he didn’t care that the book was missing two pages that were essential to the plot. He’s like, “yeah, it doesn’t really matter that they’re… just do-just do the print… just–they’re not going to know… they’re dumb kids.”
WIND: Right, it’s just a kid’s book…
ALEX: 100% cynical! And so this plays into a great segue, of an aspect that wormed–of the movie–that wormed into my brain and wouldn’t let go after I watched this movie… to prepare for our-our chat here. So I watched it over the weekend and a couple of days later, this idea popped into my head. And I’ve been thinking about it for more than 48 hours, OK. So the psychological concept that poked me in the brain was the placebo effect, OK? Now hear me out; what are you talking about placebo effect? Well… well… belief in Santa, as expressed in the film, is just like how the placebo effect works! So if you’re not familiar with the placebo effect, the placebo effect is when a belief in the efficacy or the effectiveness of some treatment or intervention makes it work, OK? So you receive the outcome without the active intervention or treatment. Usually you see this with-with drug-drug studies, and so one group is given the active ingredient and another group is given a sugar pill that looks like the active pill. And what’s found is that sometimes with–especially antidepressant drugmakers, because depression is a hard nut to crack–the patients who received a placebo end up feeling as better in some of these more ineffective drugs that have never reached the market because, you know, they’re no better than a placebo. So yeah, I feel-I feel like this is a great-a great application of the placebo effect to something that’s not readily seen by-or-or in the classroom context of discussing the placebo effect. Because it is usually in the case of the drugs, OK. And so, you see this in how Santa sleigh works.
PAPA ELF: You’re going to help me make it fly.
BUDDY: I thought the magical reindeer made the sleigh fly?
PAPA ELF: And where do the reindeer get their magic from?
BUDDY: Christmas spirit, everybody knows that.
PAPA ELF: Well, as silly as it sounds, a lot of people down south don’t believe in Santa Claus.
BUDDY: What?! Who do they think puts all their toys under the tree?
PAPA ELF: Well, there’s a rumor floating around that the-that the parents do it.
BUDDY: That’s-that’s ridiculous! I mean, parents couldn’t do that all in one night! W-what about Santa’s cookies? I suppose parents eat them too?!
PAPA ELF: Yeah, I-I know, and every year less and less people believe in Santa Claus. I mean, we have a real energy crisis on our hands.
BUDDY: Oh.
ALEX: It works by Christmas spirit, OK. It’s essentially the belief in Santa Claus and thinking Christmas is a good holiday, you know, a-a family-centered good holiday. And this is a conversation that is had in the-in the beginning of the film between Buddy and Papa Elf, and because the Clausometer is so low, Papa Elf had to create a, you know, wonderful jet turbine to help the reindeer fly the sleigh. And it takes all of the 20 people that they find a New York City <chuckles> the end of the movie to-to get-to get the sleigh off the ground and they have to start singing “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” And of course the Four Horsemen of Central Park–nod to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, fun fact. Is the idea–and of course, Walter being the cynic he is, just doesn’t really believe in Santa Claus until Buddy comes into his life and finally he gets the true meaning of Christmas and there you go, boom, Bob’s your uncle, sleigh gets off the ground, and it can fly again purely on the basis of belief. The-the other thing I wanted to share about the placebo effect and this idea is sham knee treatments. This is another one of my favorite go-tos for placebo effect-placebo effect discussions. Is like, you can do placebo effect sham surgery. They go through the whole nine yards of putting people in the surgery–nothing was done to them–they were report having no knee pain afterward. It’s like, wait, what? No knee pain?! Nothing? There was nothing!
WIND: <laughs> So, I never would have thought of the placebo effect at the end of this movie. I think it’s a really brilliant connection. I definitely see what you’re saying, because it’s literally belief is what’s going to make my sleigh fly, right? So I think it’s a really good example of what I would argue is a placebo effect. Here’s what I’m going to argue as the upbeat lady that I am. So I have experienced what I think is a placebo effect. I get motion sickness and I take these like ginger pills when I fly–
ALEX: Sure.
WIND: And, you know, maybe ginger helps nausea. You know, when you’re a kid, you drink ginger ale and all that kind of stuff. But I take these ginger pills and they totally made me not get motion sickness. And I did it for like 3 years <laughs> and then one time I was in a hurry when I was packing and I got to the airport and the flight was already boarding and I was like, I’ll rush. And I get on the plane and an hour into the flight, I realized I totally forgot to take my ginger pills and I’m not sick at all. So <laughs> I realized at that point two things: number one, pretty sure these ginger pills are just a placebo effect, but number two thing I realized, which I think comes up comes back to the movie here, is the most important word in the placebo effect is “effect,” right?
ALEX: Yeah.
WIND: Like, it-it makes it work.
ALEX: Right.
WIND: So if I had horrible knee pain <laughs> and I could find a doctor to secretly give me fake surgery, I would rather have that than real surgery! That sounds great!
ALEX: Yeah, I wonder what the bills were on that.
WIND: Cuz I wouldn’t even know! So let’s focus on, in terms of the film. The point of this is basically like you have to believe in things to make them meaningful. You have to believe in the power of family, you have to believe in what’s really important in holidays, right? Like, again, it’s coming together as a family, showing appreciation and gratitude, spending quality time with each other. So if you believe in that aspect of whatever holiday is-it is that you celebrate, I think that’s one of the really important messages of this film and why I think anyone can love it even if you don’t celebrate Christmas or don’t particularly like Will Ferrell–might be harder to like the movie then–but if you can come away with it, with the idea that one of the main messages of a film is, you know, if you’re going to try something you have to believe in it, and you have to believe in yourself. I think that’s a really good message.
ALEX: Yeah, it is. I didn’t mean-I didn’t mean to say that the placebo effect is bad in the context of if believe in Santa Claus. Go ahead and continue believing in Santa Claus. I think there are healthier beliefs. But you know, go ahead and continue believing in Santa Claus…
WIND: I’m not saying that I believe in Santa Claus! <laughs>
ALEX: I say with my tongue firmly in my cheek. No, it’s immediately why I thought about it and haven’t stopped thinking about it for the, you know, past 48 hours–maybe even more than 48 hours–yeah, that’s what I want.
WIND: I can tell you now: every time that I watch Elf, I’m going to think about the placebo effect.
ALEX: So for anyone listening, that is exactly what I want and it’s just going to stick exactly.
WIND: Good job. You’re living rent-free in my head now.
ALEX: So Wind, any other final points that you want to bring up about the movie and psych concepts?
WIND: I think those are the major things that jumped out at me; certainly we could come up with lots of other things, but that’s true of any movie, so I would say those are the key points.
ALEX: Not bad, not bad. I did want to bring up last thing because I love it… because I thought it was so brilliant, OK? Super, super brilliant. So you know CinemaSins, the brilliant YouTube channel? They’ve been around for a while and they nitpick films and it’s amazing! The “Everything Wrong with [Insert Film Title Here]”. They recently did Elf, which I thought was kind of fun, because I think I had asked you before the episode of their show dropped on YouTube, and so, you, know we had already chosen the film Elf that we’re going to talk about, and we were going to prepare for Elf like we normally do. And so their episode dropped and I was like, oh, how pleasant! How coincidental!” So one of the points that I thought was hilarious and bears repeating potentially to a different audience, because a lot of the way that I watch the film is the way that they watch films. And so one of the things that you have to do for fantasy films is suspend your disbelief, OK? And Elf, even though it’s set in modern-day New York, is a fantasy film because of the Santa Claus/North Pole/Christmas elements. Sorry for true believers in Santa Claus there. And so a Christmas film, it fits a larger genre of fantasy. And so you have to suspend your disbelief about the North Pole and what that means for a human in the North Pole. But CinemaSins picked up a really funny idea. So Buddy goes and leaves the North Pole in just his elf costume, his elf clothes. And they look like super long-short leggings and super short-super thin leggings is what I mean. And maybe a coat… maybe a little bit of a coat. But nothing much, right? This is not survival gear. This is not cold weather gear. And so it seems rather thin. And so the idea is that he doesn’t get very far from Santa’s Village and the rest of the movie is a fever dream of a man who is dying of hypothermia. A fever dream, a man dying of hypothermia, because, you know, he’s in the North Pole and it’s freaking cold.
WIND: That’s kind of a bummer, man. <laughs>
ALEX: Yes.
WIND: <laughs> OK. Counterpoint: if-if we’re arguing that the unrealistic part of the movie is that he–we’ve already gone through the fact that Santa exists, there elves at the North Pole, he has been given up for adoption and has been taken to the North Pole and raised into adulthood by Papa Elf, and it is only when he decides to leave to go to New York that it becomes unrealistic? I feel like that’s a little bit of a shaky argument!
ALEX: I mean, sure, Santa could exist, accept-you know, accepting that one, but, you know, it’s very cold, very cold up there in the North Pole! And none of the classes that he took up there as an elf that we see is about survival, as I said earlier in the show.
WIND: True.
ALEX: So you know, how do we know he can survive in the-in the Arctic? Maybe he could survive in the North Pole and Santa’s Village because maybe they have excellent heating! Maybe they have excellent heating!
WIND: Maybe his costume is made out of magical fur, from the-from the reindeers, who have died of natural causes.
ALEX: I like the addition there: “who have died of natural causes”
WIND: <laughing> Right? They’ve lived really happy healthy whole reindeer lives.
ALEX: Exactly, yeah.
WIND: By the way, just–OK, my final point that I’ll make, and I have no idea this is scientifically accurate, but this is like what I heard one time and I love this fact, even if it’s not true. Because it’s sort of like feminist Santa–is that reindeer–the male reindeer shed their antlers every year and then grow new antlers in the spring–
ALEX: I did not know that. Yeah, wow!
WIND: –the female reindeer keep their antlers all year round.
ALEX: Huh!
WIND: If this is true, at Christmas, the only reindeer that would still have antlers are the females. So when we see the images of the reindeer with their big antlers, that means that all of the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh have to be lady reindeer.
ALEX: OK, so… <in sing-song voice> you know Dasher and Dancer and Donner and Blitzen. Connor and Cupid and–
WIND: Cupid.
ALEX: Vixen is the last one. Yeah, I just got Vixen.
WIND: Donner. I can’t remember the last two. Are you-are you arg–Vixen sounds pretty female.
ALEX: I’ll give you Vixen. I don’t know Connor… Connor maybe?
WIND: We’ve got-we’ve got female Taylors, we’ve got-we’ve got male Beverlys. You don’t know, there might not be a gender dichotomy in the North Pole.
ALEX: OK, maybe you’re right. Maybe it could be a gender-bending-gender-bending name… Dasher. Yeah, it’s true.
WIND: Yeah, there could be like a whole reindeer gender-bending culture that we never know about.
ALEX: Yeah… I don’t know… you don’t get-you don’t get to know a lot about the whole thing, and so you don’t get to know a lot about the reindeer like you do in the Santa Clause movies. It’s very true. I could–that could be, that could be. Right?
WIND: Thanks for-thanks for indulging me on this one. <laughs>
ALEX: <laughs> You bet! You bet! <laughs>
<jingle bells>
ALEX: All right, Wind! I want to thank you for joining me to discuss Elf for this Christmas-themed episode. Hey listener, if you could please show some love and maybe the Christmas spirit and subscribe, give us a like, give us a rating on wherever you get your podcasts. That would be excellent! Wind, do you have anything to plug before saying goodbye?
WIND: Oh, sure! You can buy the Joker psychology really at any book retailer. It’s available on book websites of which you might think. <laughs> The book that I am co-editing right now on stigma research and intervention, that’s not out yet but if there are any listeners who think that they might want to contribute a chapter to that because you yourself are doing research on stigma reduction, please email me. It’s just last name, goodfriend<at>bvu.edu. So that’s like Buena Vista University dot edu.
ALEX: Wind, thanks for joining me again. I really appreciate it. I had a lot of fun with this conversation.
WIND: I did too! I hope that I get to come back.
ALEX: That’s probably likely. Until the next episode… thanks for listening…
<Upbeat Silent Night plays again and fades out>