Comment by fellowniusmonk
18 hours ago
Maybe it's just because I've been around a bunch of people in startup circles, seaking angel and vc, etc and myself raised and had exits and been deposed in highly contentious situations.
Holmes doesn't talk like any innocent person has ever talked. Period. Not even like a naive rube either.
She explicitly initiated this whole thing as a narrative exercise and she just had to stick to the script for what, 45 days? While letting herself feel the genuine self pity all these types of people feel when they are experiencing the consequences for their actions instead of being able to foist them onto someone else?
Her only path forward is to FULLY commit to the bit as a way of deceiving the credulous, even a moment of cynicism and the whole thing falls apart.
Now, did she in fact succeed in that or was it a choice to show no cracks in the facade because it made a more engaging movie?
News flash, I love his media but Nathan Fielder is a monster as well he's my favorite monster but let's not pretend. We can just hold both things to be true instead of engaging in cognitive dissonance.
Other than the children (and that one flatulent horse) everyone involved in this is a monster, and the only way to hide that fact is to ensure the ending is ambiguous, otherwise it just feels like non-transcendent tabloid pap profiting off of bad behavior.
There is goodness, and people attempting to increase goodness and it looks and talks nothing like any of these people.
It really sounds like you would consider most people to be monsters. That is, the vast majority of us participate in exploitation to some degree and rationalize that exploitation as necessary, acceptable, minimal or merely something we cannot change.
That's an arguable position, but the problem with it is that it lacks any kind of gradient. Is the person who stole someone else's lunch from the fridge at work (an unfathomable act, to me) a monster in the same way that any person in federal prison is?
The film is relevant: initially, Amanda felt like a proxy for us, the viewers, someone to point out the abnormality in what we have seen. But then, she showed her unwillingness to even confront the possibility the miniseries was exploitative. She displayed a voyeuristic enthusiasm for more information and involvement. She blended into the film at that point, no longer our proxy as unsullied observer. But, can we really not think of a time we reacted defensively instead of with considered reason? Can we not think of a time we dove into a lurid topic that was fully irrelevant to our lives?
There are a number of cases where people involved in monstrous gang violence appear to show genuine rehabilitation. They devote significant effort toward encouraging others to avoid the mistakes they made. Do they do that because they are no longer monsters, or do they do it because it's one of the few acceptable choices available to someone in their position? I'm not sure we can reliably know.
The idea that anyone in this film has a lived experience close to those who grew up embedded in gang violence is a laughable comparison. The idea that anyone involved in this project has demonstrated, through proof of work, even .5% of what's involved in a person who has engaged in gang member reform is absurd. This is extreme category error.
Are you going to pretend that anyone in this film can be rightly considered a representation of the average persons lived experience?
I agree that Amanda Seyfried is an audience proxy in this movie initially. Are you going to assert that her lived experience and her role and place in society is representative of the norm? In this case is it reasonable to accept the films implicit presentation of her as a audience proxy? How is that reasonable? We do not have to accept or enter into the frame the film wishes us to, we do not have to allow it to anchor our starting point in how we engage with the piece of media.
Humans are the only monsters that actually exist, it doesn't make them less human and it doesn't mean they can't change their lived behavior.
You are responding to things I did not say.
I did not suggest anyone in the film had done a single shred of work towards redemption. Not one person in the film recognizes or admits doing anything wrong, which is a usual first step. Nathan never second-guesses his personal rationalization for making a documentary that financially benefits a subject against his own values. Successfully emerging with clean hands in the end does not fully resolve that.
I did not equate anyone in the film with the lived experience of a gang member. When talking about the categorization of people as good or bad or monster, examples where the dichotomy is extreme are relevant.
And yes, of course, Amanda not having our lived experience is part of why she blends into the film. That's no accident. We are shown her farm, horses and a picture perfect fireside setting. Nathan doesn't need to narrate that "Amanda is comfortable and rich with a farm in the Catskills and a pied-à-terre in Manhattan at one of those buildings where you regularly peek into the courtyard you aren't allowed to enter while you walk past" for the film to make that point.
Whether or not the average person has a different lived experience is still a different question from whether or not the average person is classified as a monster by your measure. And the lived experience of the average HN poster could be closer in relative terms of privilege to that of Nathan and Amanda than to that of the much less privileged, even in the so-called developed world.
I do not believe that the average person would agree with your classification of Nathan and Amanda as monsters. That doesn't invalidate your argument, but it does suggest very broad boundaries, and it becomes unclear what, if anything, prevents a plurality or majority of people being defined as a monster by your worldview. My question was about the utility of the binary classification if it ends up being that overarching.
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Why does the audience need a proxy?
Bringing Amanda Seyfried in as a primary character was unnecessary as was the entire third hour of this movie.
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What actions make Nathan and Amanda monstrous to you?
> Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction learns - when the article or book appears - his hard lesson.
- The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm
Amanda, I don't know about, for her it could all be in the editing.