Social Work Action Flick

The makings for greatness were there. The movie’s main character was a social worker. It is an action movie in which said social worker (SW) is going to be a bad ass. It had some great actors including consummate dysfunctional role players like Brue Dern and Fran Grillo.

It could have been a good movie.

It wasn’t.

With many other of the ingredients being on point, it begs the question about if what screwed it up was trying to make the SW out to be sparkplug of action.

For the most part; when SWs show up in films, they are either too heartless (“Nothing you can say or do will stop me from ruining your family”) or to heartful/self-important (“Your life will be perfect because I am going to raise you as my own” or “I am saving you”).

Real social work shouldn’t happen on either of those extreme ends. Sometimes it does. The results are typically some kind of disastrous.

As a result of the common role SWs hold in movies, I was genuinely excited to see Gateway.

I tried not to look for accuracies or inaccuracies as it went along; but I couldn’t help myself. SW drove a nice Monte Carlo SS to complete his field work, false. SW had a maladaptive way of coping with the stressors of the job; truer than I’d like it to be.

For Parker (“Badge number 2261” *eyeroll), alcohol and drugs were how he dealt with the emotions of his chosen field. I wanted to call out the to TV, “Parker! You can’t do some blow in your Monte Carlo before you go in and talk to a family about the importance of sobriety!”

Parker seemed to have forgotten that he chose social work. While there are associated feelings with the work; acting caught off guard about it would be like the bridge builder crumbling at the thought that his job includes building bridges.

Get your shit together Parker. Go to the gym or buy something shiny to deal with your feelings like the rest of us. It’s call pro-social activity, figure it out.

Some of Parker’s interactions tracked pretty well to SW. He was well intended. He wanted safe families and absence of trauma for kids. His desk was a fucking disaster. He had a chi vampire co-worker. And like many of us child welfare social workers, he’d had a pro boxing career before signing on to social services. (*eyeroll again)

Maybe it was his incredible passion for his purpose, or maybe it was his dysfunctional upbringing; but Parker was broken.

(Not sure if anyone intends on watching this “movie”; but there’s spoilers coming)

One night while Parker was social working his heart out in what he called the projects. His car was broken in to and he saw two young men run away with his stereo. Later, Parker takes himself a little bump of cocaine off his hand while sitting in his car at the gas station. He then hops out of that car pointing a gun at those same men. They ask him if he’s a cop. “I’m your worst nightmare! I’m a social worker with a gun!” (*MEGA eyeroll!)

Yup. That is a nightmare. As was the movie. It brought me to the point of checking the run time on it, 91 minutes, short enough to justify watching all of it to make sure I could effectively complain about every second of it. There was a death scene that made me long for some side character to just come over and shoot the dude again to get it over with.

Nevertheless, I’ll keep watching SW movies and hoping for one that captures the task as I see it. But I recognize that may not happen. There’d have to be slow motion capture of filing, or hype music as the sternly worded email is written.

Even though I’m ready to lend my expertise to the actress who’d play me (probably Scarlett Johansson bwah ha!), she wouldn’t get it. She’d try to overact the role. There’s not likely to be a movie with a strong SW lead, because SWs aren’t leads in the stories we’re a part of. The families are responsible for their glorious successes or for their other outcomes. We are just there to try to help.

My SW friends and I probably won’t be involved in shootouts with cartel members we’ve accidentally stolen drugs from; at least I fucking hope not. But we will have the chance to think about the work we are doing. Continue to make decisions based on if they further your goal of helping the kid or family. Ask yourself if the work you’re doing “feeds the bulldog.” If it does, you’re doing the work of the greatest movie that will never be made.

Thanks for reading!