The visual and media arts program at Emerson College can be considered an infamous one—stereotype-ridden and absolutely insular, with students living out the Hollywood wannabe mindset in a real-time campus bubble. From hopping from one film set to the next, to jotting down their scene ideas, to finding the most obscure music for their next soundtrack, to talking during movies, the Emerson VMA dynamic is like no other.
Hollywood represents the most extreme version of this, as seen in movies like “Babylon” where the film industry is portrayed as a chaotic and adrenaline-filled experience with drugs empowering individuals to experience the most wild situations, resulting in a creative masterpiece as a result.
Otto Pressler, a sophomore VMA major at Emerson, views the film industry’s degeneracy as appealing.
“The idea is interesting to me, the lifestyle of traveling all the time, working twelve hours, getting fucked up with everyone and then going back on set,” he said. “There’s something almost appealing about doing that in my twenties that I would kind of like to experience.”
He added that there’s definitely a stereotype about drug use among filmmakers, citing the example of Quentin Taratino, the director of “Pulp Fiction,” “Reservoir Dogs,” and many other iconic films. He stated that many non-filmmakers think aspiring filmmakers are all huge fans of Tarantino, who has many stories about him doing piles of cocaine and writing great movies at the same time. Even if these rumors aren’t based in fact, they support the perception that major movie directors like Tarantino do use drugs.
“I think that is the idea of the amateur filmmaker, someone who just smokes a lot of cigarettes, does a lot of drugs, doesn’t sleep very much, and makes art. But I think that’s with any artist, you know, it’s kind of the romanticization of unhealthy living,” Pressler said.
But what if drugs aren’t actually a source of creativity? What if it’s instead the result of a very complicated social, academic, and creative space to be in, with drugs acting as a coping mechanism? Individuals tend to use drugs to unwind and relax, breaking away from reality.
Pressler agrees, and said VMA majors feel “stretched to [the] limit, and the only thing you can really do afterwards is decompress. And whether that’s through drugs or another outlet—that’s up to the individual.”
Nora Gibbons, a sophomore VMA major at Emerson, thinks that smoking and other drug use tends to be celebrated as a creative path, when it can be more harmful than beneficial.
“It can be harmful to reduce your creative practice to that and to rely on something to spark your creative flow,” she said, adding that drug use is something that can feel natural for people in the creative field, as those individuals can experience high levels of stress and feel the need to reach for something more in order to help them relax. “I think it’s because we’re all ‘on’ all the time, basically.”
Drugs will always be present in society—they’re too mesmerizingly unknown and magical to disappear. And it makes sense that some communities turn to drugs as a way to unwind and to also emphasize the cathartic and chaotic experience of being an artist. Trying to create what has never been created before is an overwhelming and intense task. Why not take a psychedelic or hallucinogen to boost your imagination? Why not take a break from the stress of innovation by smoking some weed and drifting off into euphoria?
Drugs, when used as intended, can be a moment of tranquility for some, and a way to reboot from a creative block. Using everything in moderation will protect us from being consumed by substance usage.