Review Radio West Pier

THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY FEBUARY 2008

Dr Simon Pulverness, former collaborator of Professor Oliver Sachs, the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, begins a new series, Psychiatry on the Net, with the article, Radio West Pier: A Projection Explained?

If one were to take the pulse of Western culture's mental state, one could do no worse than to randomly select projections on the Internet. I use the term "projection" in both its metaphorical and literal sense. The reason that I have singled out Radio West Pier, an online comedy show that includes music and visual theatrics, is that virtually all manner of psychological phenomena are filtered through to cyberspace. Furthermore, there are insights to be gleaned from the viewpoint of all schools of psychiatry, from gestalt to object relations theory.

Let us start with the two frontmen, Jah Scooterman and Rico Mortis, whose relationship is constantly underlined by dominance and manipulation. Scooterman's inferiority complex manifests itself in the mundane, when Mortis is constantly sent on errands, to the more disturbing. An example of the latter occurs in Episode One when he insists on pulling out Mortis's nostril hair and twanging it for his own amusement. This Freudian violation of Mortis's orifice integrity, coupled with giving him literal marching orders, highlight his own underlying insecurity. Externalisation of this insecurity shows itself at the beginning of Episode Three, in Scooterman's naked handstand; exhibitionism intended to exceed the limits of his own ego boundaries. Again, hidden inadequacy is subconsciously projected at the end of the same episode by his artificially enlarged genitalia.

This leads to fantasized wish fulfilment, the most obvious example being the Evel Knievel "stunt", when Scooterman jumps over a line of toy trucks. Unsurprisingly, Mortis expresses his own desire for wish fulfilment in the dream sequence of the first episode, where the roles are reversed. Scooterman's ascent in the "swimousine" from the underwater radio shack to the surface suggests an emergence from id to super-ego. It is significant to note that above the surface he tries to control a newly uninhibited Mortis through radio; the violence of the West Pier's explosion is a consequence of actions that Scooterman cannot consciously acknowledge, and is in fact a projection of his own hostility.

Beside the master-slave dynamic there are a variety of cognitive conundrums. In the audio "Ghost" sketch, where only Scooterman is aware of the presence of the "guests", schizophrenic symptoms, i.e. hearing voices, are evident. In "Humour In The Natural World", where a guest speaker expounds on faculties of wit and humour in animal species, anthropomorphism is taken to delusional levels. However, in "The Bust" sketch, when a drug-induced metaphysical argument between the two revolves around the colour of a table, those of the 'existential' school of R.D.Laing could argue that both possess a hermeneutically valid internalisation of external reality. In conclusion, one can only concur that whatever psychiatric subjects are raised, Radio West Pier remains an enjoyable prism through which one can observe the whole cognitive spectrum of contemporary society.