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In David Osit’s recent documentary film, “Predators,” the filmmaker presents a brief excerpt from a mid-aughts edition of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” where the then-current host—his free-speech battle with the Trump Administration, as of yet, a distant notion—is introducing newsman Chris Hansen to the viewing public. “Our next guest is the creator of the most hilarious program on TV. It’s known as ‘To Catch a Predator,’ ” Kimmel quips, as the studio audience’s guffaws resound in the background. “If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s akin to ‘Punk’d’ aimed at pedophiles.”
Kimmel’s portrayal of Hansen’s creation may have been playful, though it possessed a nugget of truth. “To Catch a Predator,” which was broadcasted from 2004 to 2007 as part of the “Dateline NBC” news-magazine series, was fundamentally a concealed-camera joke show. However, unlike Ashton Kutcher’s MTV venture, its focuses weren’t famous figures caught in humorous schemes, but, instead, everyday individuals enticed into a set-up under the pretense of engaging in sexual activity with a minor, portrayed by an adult-aged yet youthful-looking actor whom they had been connecting with online. Upon arrival, these males were confronted by Hansen and his camera team and subsequently taken into custody by local law enforcement. (The host’s commonly repeated promise—“you’re free to leave”—was contradicted by the prompt police apprehension of the offenders as they attempted to depart.)
None of this may come off as especially amusing, but what struck me as I viewed “Predators”—an insightful and unsettling documentary that employs a blend of archived clips, unedited material, and talking-head interviews to delve into the background and influence of “Catch”—was the manner in which humor constantly resurfaced, within and surrounding the program. It manifests in Oprah’s lively interaction with Hansen during his guest appearance on her show; it surfaces in the riotous reaction of a true-crime convention crowd as they watch segments of Hansen questioning a predator; it even exists in the scarcely disguised delight of a police lieutenant as she informs Hansen that one predator, whom the camera crew was about to record, had fatally shot himself upon encountering law enforcement.
The retribution drive certainly contributes to these joyous responses: as one female who has participated as a decoy in child molester-entrapment operations tells Osit frankly, “It is fucking hilarious when a reprehensible individual reaps what they sow.” Yet, the director’s emphasis on laughter also serves as a metaphor for a more profound critical argument that he is attempting to convey. Watching “Predators” is to comprehend that “Catch” operated principally as diversion, which considerably overshadowed its additional touted objectives—to administer justice, to probe the depths of sexual deviancy, to offer solace to abuse survivors—while simultaneously diminishing the essential humanity of the show’s figures, transforming troubled people’s deeds into a near-pornographic display intended for an audience’s prurient gratification.
“Catch” was a rigorously crafted program that depended on repetitive patterns to satiate its viewers, and one method in which Osit’s documentary initiates a loosening of that entrenched familiarity is through the inclusion of extended instances of raw footage captured across various shoots but excluded from the final cut. In these segments, we witness the predators, once confronted by Hansen or, subsequently, by law enforcement, weeping, repenting, begging for clemency and treatment—all of which the show, whose central aim is to elevate depravity and its consequence into a public spectacle, is both incapable and unwilling to grant them. (“I could tell you work as a therapist,” one of the men declares to Hansen, hopefully, to which the host responds, with some skepticism, “You believe I’m a therapist?”) Observing these men crumble is an uneasy situation, and Osit, himself a victim of childhood sexual abuse, isn’t attempting to suggest that they are somehow innocent or beyond reproach. (“I don’t believe it’s defendable,” he states, regarding the men’s predatory behavior.) Still, as the cultural anthropologist Mark de Rond remarks regarding the footage, “To depict these men as human beings, the show essentially falls apart. And perhaps that is why it didn’t make the broadcast cut.”
Transforming individuals into objects to be observed rather than understood wasn’t merely a hallmark of “Catch” but of popular culture more broadly during the show’s broadcast period. At one juncture in the documentary, Osit presents an archived MSNBC clip from the right-leaning news program “Scarborough Country,” which, directly following an interview with Hansen regarding “Catch,” proceeds to advertise an upcoming segment pertaining to Britney Spears’s mental-health difficulties. “Oops, she’s done it once more!” a voice-over booms in conjunction with clips of the singer, smiling and waving on the red carpet. “Britney’s second stint in rehab has concluded. So, is there anyone or anything capable of persuading her to seek the assistance she desperately requires?” Spears’s sexual objectification as an underage performer could scarcely be detached from the later ordeals for which she was publicly chastised, and, as I viewed the excerpt, it was challenging not to contemplate the ways in which “Catch,” too, handily sidestepped discussing how the predators the show exposed didn’t operate in complete isolation; the culture itself exhibited predatory traits.
It merits mentioning, moreover, that “Catch” didn’t materialize in a blank void. In the early to mid aughts, reality television was a comparatively nascent genre still establishing its framework, and the period was rife with programs whose sheer indecency extended the medium’s boundaries as far as conceivably attainable. Productions such as 2004’s “The Swan,” in which a cohort of women underwent comprehensive cosmetic surgery to attain conventional attractiveness across a season, or 2005’s “Who’s Your Daddy,” in which eight males contended for a payout of a hundred thousand dollars by each endeavoring to persuade an adopted woman that he was her biological parent, were emblematic of that era’s reality-TV common language. Like these programs, “Catch” was distinguished by a yearning not solely to document people’s suffering but to revel in and monetize it.
Furthermore, Osit’s documentary posits that despite the cancellation of Hansen’s show in 2007, “Catch” merely represented the initial installment in a protracted lineage of predatory entertainment centered on predators. In recent years, YouTube has been inundated with videos of men enacting crude vigilante justice on predators whom they successfully lure to public locations through online interactions, and at least one originator of such material, operating under the pseudonym Skeet Hansen, views “Catch” and its host as direct forerunners. (“Why shouldn’t I have the capacity to profit from capturing these individuals like the original show, and generating this content for people’s enjoyment?” he questions.) Osit tracks Skeet as he coaxes a predator to a motel unit with the aid of a decoy. Clad in a poorly fitting blazer over his T-shirt, and sounding reminiscent of Chris Pratt’s simpleminded Andy Dwyer impersonating F.B.I. agent Burt Macklin on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation,” Skeet informs the man that he is affiliated with the “Predatorial Investigation Unit.” (Explaining to Osit that indicating a police presence in a video is necessary to prevent its removal by YouTube, Skeet asserts that simply filming someone wearing a counterfeit badge is adequate to fulfill the platform’s stipulations.) All of this pretense enacted for the purpose of accruing clicks would be comical if it weren’t for the profoundly depressing depiction of a pervert seated in a dingy motel room, concealing his visage, sobbing, and suggesting the possibility of suicide. At one juncture, even Skeet appears disconcerted. “We’re going to pull some strings and determine whether we can, you know, connect you with someone with whom you can converse,” he informs the man, without any factual basis. For those acquainted with the genre, it is already apparent that no assistance will be forthcoming. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
