Mer Rouge (Part 59)

They were the last standing deputies of the Moorhouse Parish Sheriff’s Department. They saw the smoke rising above the treeline and leaned against the squad car. “What the hell is goin on?” one asked the other.

The other pulled a big nasty boog from his nose, looked at it, and then flicked it into the grass. “God knows,” he said. “I’m sure Frank and the boys have it taken care of.”

A faint roar echoed through the woods and down the gravel road. One deputy glanced in its direction and scratched his ass. “Reckon we outta call it in?” he wondered aloud. 

“Fuck it,” said the other.

Both deputies planted their ass against the squad car and let their own minds wonder. The sun hung high in the sky. One pushed back his Stetson and wiped sweat from his brow. When he did, the Honcho came tear assing down the dirt path. Neither budged. “Who the hell are these guys?”

The Honcho pulled up and Sheriff Fornier rolled down the window. “Howdy boys,” he greeted. “We’re here to see Sheriff Dirk.”

“And you are?”

“Oh come on. You know me. I’m the sheriff of West Carroll Parish.”

The deputy looked at the three men in the bed of the truck. One of them shot. “Does Dirk know yur comin?” he asked.

“Hell. I don’t need to make a reservation to meet a fellow Sheriff!”

“Well I don’t know if you noticed sir, but we’re kinda on lockdown.”

“Oh I noticed.”

“Okay, but we’re gonna need to see some identification first.”

“Sure thing buddy.”

Fornier climbed out of the Honcho and reached into the bed. “Now you fellas hold tight,” he told the deputies. He lifted out the flame thrower and strapped the canisters to his back. The officers did nothing but spit. 

“Is that your identification?” one asked.

“Sure.”

The sheriff finished strapping it on and turned the nozzle. A small flame puffed from the firing mechanism. “We just need to see your badge,” one deputy said disinterestedly. 

“Aw pig shit,” Fornier said. “Give me a second.”

“No worries sheriff. Take your time.”

“Do you boys mind stepping away from the squad car first?”

The two men shrugged and stepped towards the middle of the dirt road. Fornier pulled the trigger and unleashed a dazzling flame on the deputies. And as they were set ablaze, a puzzled look fell over their faces and they collapsed to the ground and were subsequently consumed by fire. Afterwards, Moses stood up in the bed still clutching to his bullet wound and shook his head. 

“Goddamn. Those guys were stupid,” he said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Attention Christopher Nolan

I went to see The Odyssey again. This time in the way that Christopher Nolan intended: on a 70mm IMAX screen. Thank god I watched it on a regular screen first. The 70mm version is loud as fuck. But I finally see what Nolan was trying to do. The Odyssey is like a spiritual sequel to Oppenheimer. The theme for both films is “man who sacrificed his soul and the future of humanity for temporary victory” or some shit like that. Presumably there will be a third installment to make a complete trilogy.

The question is what will the subject be of this hypothetical film. At this stage in Nolan’s career, he has carte blanche. There’s not a subject under the sun that he can’t make a film about. The only constraints are the ones that Nolan places on himself. So this third film will likely be about a historical or pseudo historical event. The theme has to be the same as the prior two films.

Oppenheimer was about the development of humanity’s most destructive weapon. The Odyssey was about placing the most important story in western literature within the context of the Bronze Age collapse. For the latter, Nolan clearly read Eric Cline’s 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Due to his research on this issue, Cline has reached the status of a celebrity scholar. Nolan knows all these pop scholars, whether they be in history or science. So the events of The Odyssey happened over 3000 years before Oppenheimer. Can anyone think of an event between 1177 BC and 1945 CE that would fit Nolan’s sensibilities?

If he doesn’t know him already, let me introduce the auteur to Bart D. Ehrman, the (retired) James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ehrman might be the most famous biblical scholar to have ever lived. He brought textual criticism of the Bible to the mainstream and no doubt every New Testament scholar granted a Ph.D in the last 25 years was influenced by him. But thanks to Ehrman, biblical studies is a hot HOT topic on YouTube, Reddit, etc. But as far as the New Testament goes, perhaps the biggest debate is the one regarding the “Synoptic Problem” which dissects how the first three gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are related to one another. It a subject that riles the passion of many scholars where having the wrong opinion might get you killed in some universities. And in part due to teaching skills and charisma of Ehrman, even armchair scholars like myself can explain their position on the Synoptic Problem in pedantic detail.

Not to say that Nolan should make a movie about the Synoptic Problem. But the contradicting details described by all the Gospels does sort of fit the director’s propensity for exploring time and memory. While another Jesus movie might not be worthwhile, even if it is directed by Nolan, the most interesting details about the development of early Christianity are the moments immediately after Jesus’s death. The “Christ” didn’t create Christianity. His followers did. And what the Gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, says is that none of Jesus’s followers understood his message.

This includes the apostle Peter, who many believe created the Church. Peter would be the main character in this hypothetical film. The story starts with him in hiding after the events of the crucifixion (which we only catch glimpses of through memory cuts). He wishes to live in obscurity before he’s dragged back into the mess by James, the brother of Jesus, who successfully kept “The Way” going in Jerusalem. We see the stoning of Stephen and the persecutions of Saul, played by Tom Hardy. Peter goes around “evangelizing” around Palestine before Saul reappears with a new “gospel” and the plot unfolds. Peter loses his way with James and the Jerusalem church and he finds himself in Rome with Saul where he experiences the great fire of 65 AD. Saul is mercifully beheaded. Peter is crucified in the garden of Nero. While on the cross, he remembers Jesus’s crucifixion and the “message” (whatever the fuck that is) becomes clear to him. The historical subtext is that even though “The Way” (Christianity) ultimately prevailed over Rome, it helped unleash religious hatred and persecution over the next 2000 years, which is (probably) antithetical to Jesus’s actual teachings.

Things like the resurrection and miracles of Jesus are handled with an air of indifference. Some people recall him performing them. Others like James say he was only doing good works. Only Saul (or Paul) believes in the total divinity of Jesus. During his “Road to Damascus” event (shown in quick memory cuts), Saul does seem to gain an inexplicable and mysterious insight into Peter which taps into his guilt over fleeing from Jerusalem during Jesus’s crucifixion. But unburdened by this guilt due to Saul’s “insights” and designation as an apostle, Peter feels “born anew” and is slowly torn from the Jerusalem church and towards Saul’s “gentile mission”.

Some say that this story would be too controversial for a studio to back. But I say if every one of your movies makes a billion dollars, then you have every right to make whatever the hell you want. And if Christopher Nolan wanted to make this story, he could. And should, goddamnit.

Is it over?

I guess word on the street is that Alex Kurtzman is out at Star Trek. I’ve been so checked out with the news and Star Trek that I hardly noticed.

Am I happy about it?

I dunno. I guess so.

Do I think Paramount will make improvements?

No. I’m not that delusional.

Star Trek is dead as a quality IP. I’ve said that time and time again. We’re living in an era where studios will keep rolling out these corpses and drawing every last bit of blood from them. We will thus never be granted the time to grieve over our favorite franchises like we would our dearly deceased loved ones because reality is just an episode of Black Mirror. For any Trekkie holding out hope, I have some advice: you’ve had enough Star Trek. It’s time to live and let go. Whatever iteration that comes next will be just as bad if not worse.

I’m sorry for your loss.

As much as we focus the blame on Kurtzman, I honestly feel like this is no one’s fault (unless you want to classify late stage capitalism as a person or persons). But it is wild to me that JJ Abrams played a hand in the death of not ONE iconic sci-fi franchise, but TWO. Star Wars, however, will recover. Kids still talk about it and love it. It only took them 50 years, but it seems like they’ve made progress in breaking away from the Skywalker saga. In my view, Star Wars will safely survive for another generation. But it’s unclear if Star Trek will. Despite being an expansive universe, its episodic and theatre-like presentation is out of step with modern storytelling. Star Trek favors the cerebral. Audiences—or, rather, studio executives—prefer the spectacle of emotion and explosion. Kurtzman tried it that way and failed to bring in a new audience and alienated the old one. (There’s an interesting article about this here)

Star Trek is dead and I’m fine with it. But let’s say Paramount does the unthinkable and resurrects this Lazarus. Again, this absolutely won’t happen but let’s say it does. How can it be done? Well, thankfully, we already have a template.

It’s called Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

“Isn’t that the boring one?” you might ask.

Yes, but let’s not focus on the execution. Instead I want to draw attention to the concept. TMP was a HUGE production. Everything naturally seemed larger than in the Original Series. But this is also one of the more cerebral productions in the official canon. Producers weren’t aiming to make Star Trek like Star Wars. They were aiming to make it more like 2001: A Space Odyssey. Obviously this led to a slower pace, but I don’t necessarily believe that’s what led to audience rejection. A rushed post-production did that. If you watch TMP in its final “director approved” form, it might actually be the best ST film. Space felt magical, dangerous, mysterious. Starfleet felt real, structured, and disciplined. It was a major break from the pulpy aesthetic of TOS. So just imagine if someone like, say, Denis Villeneuve had his hands on this material.

Sadly we don’t live in that world. Villeneuve will be handling the James Bond franchise for Amazon. And as much as I don’t wish it, the death of Star Trek is a harbinger of things to come for James Bond.

And the army goes rolling along (part 2)

On the descent into Charlotte Douglas International Airport, the plane hit an air pocket. Several passengers were flung from their seats and I hit my head on the overhead compartment. For a moment, the thought of death came as a relief. But to my chagrin, the Boeing 737 landed safely and I deboarded the plane with an hour to find my connection.

The subsequent flight into Columbia was short and deathly silent. Being a plane loaded with thirty-some fresh faced recruits, I somewhat expected to hit the ground running upon arrival. Instead we were greeted by a caricature I’d come across time and again: the mildly agitated Staff Sergeant disenchanted with military service. Unlike the Marines, where (according to the video) the training cadre are told to “hate” recruits, the Army treats theirs with a lack of interest. This was probably more of a reflection of the times, when it was becoming abundantly clear that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where many of the training cadre served, were going poorly. Active duty veterans were returning stateside either burned out or going untreated for PTSD. This particular Staff Sergeant was ready for bed. He reminded us that we don’t outrank him so it would be best if we simply shut the fuck up and do what he said. We sat in silence for ten minutes before the bus showed up. Everyone was carrying an obscene amount of luggage; duffle bags and mountains of paperwork. When we lined up to board the bus, I conveniently left my paperwork at the waiting area. Scared shitless, I quietly and calmly informed the sergeant that I needed to retrieve my folder.

Eyes forward, I can sense his glare. “Well go get it, dipshit,” he said. Basic training was off to a swell start.

The worst part about Army boot camp isn’t the ridiculous South Carolina humidity or the constant indignities military life puts you through. It’s Reception: that first week of processing BEFORE the official start of basic training. If you haven’t read Johnny Rico’s Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green, there’s a fantastic section on this. It is at reception where recruits are issued uniforms, given buzzcuts, and are treated as only one step above mere cattle. Fights among soldiers in the barracks aren’t uncommon. It’s to be expected. After all, it’s scared and confused 18 and 19 year olds who are occupying them. This is simply the state of affairs throughout boot camp but it’s at an elevated level in reception.

It was nearly midnight when we arrived. We were all shuffled into a large classroom and provided an introduction that I barely remember and then we were rushed upstairs and given a bunk and ordered to sleep. I didn’t rest a wink. Five hours later, we were awakened and told to shower. I had never been naked in front of other people before but at that point I didn’t care. Afterwards I had to shit. As I sat and cramped on the toilet, I looked up at the chicken scratch etched on the stall door. I never forgot it.

It read:

Here I sit, lonely hearted

Had to shit, but only farted

TO BE CONTINUED…

Tom Myers Rises

Off the rip I’m gonna say that I am pro-Tom Myers. I’m not saying this ironically. I’m not saying this in jest.

Myers might only be familiar to Cumtown fans and the terminally online, so here’s a brief introduction. Tom came up through the Baltimore-area standup scene at roughly the same time as Nick Mullen, Stavros Halkias, and Adam Friedland. The latter three would go on to form the very successful Cumtown podcast. And while all its hosts are comedians, essentially the other two were there simply to provide a setup and a laugh track for Mullen’s irreverent, absurd, and borderline problematic riffs. It was a work of genius. Much of Mullen’s rants were about his time as a struggling comic. That’s when audiences the world over were introduced to the name Tom Myers and thereafter the internet was never the same. Google “bong hit transplant” to see what I mean. Mullen and Myers thought little of each other, both as comics and as people, and because of Mullen’s sizable influence, many sided with him.

But Myers did something interesting here. Had I been in his shoes, I would have balled up in my closet and cried forever. Instead, Tom talked his shit and endeared himself to many Cumtown fans. It was a true David and Goliath situation. Some might claim him as the honorary fourth mike of Cumtown. Others might say he is Mullen’s arch-nemesis within the podcast’s extended universe. Either way, Myers etched his name into internet history and much digital ink has been spilled over it since.

The common perception of Tom, or at least the one often repeated by comedic “experts”, is that he makes structurally sound jokes but with nonsensical punchlines. Some say he has the potential to be a good comedian, but due to his pig headedness, he refuses to listen to the advice from his peers. And others often wonder if Tom is actually “in on the joke” and he’s performing some form of “anti-comedy”, a la Andy Kauffman. The internet will have you believe that he is either the best or worst comic off all time. My personal view is that the truth probably falls somewhere in between.

I’m not gonna dissect Tom Myers’ standup. Some jabroni years ago wrote an in-depth analysis of it, and it was trashed by Myers, Mullen, and the Cumtown community as a whole. Standup comedy isn’t my cup of tea anyway, even when it’s performed by people I genuinely find funny. Only two comedians, in my view, were ever “good” at it: Eddie Murphy and sex-pervert Louis CK. So “Bong hit transplant” and “Make America Innate Again” aside, I have—hand to god—laughed as much at Tom Myers’ latest standup as I have the standup of Nick Mullen and Stavros Halkias. Their talents lie in sitting down and riffing. I think they know this. And their standup tries to capture that magic. It doesn’t work (for me). Myers, to his credit—intentional or not—is doing something interesting. Through the prism of Cumtown, he is an enigmatic figure. Is he a “shitty” comedian or does he merely play one? I’ll just say that if the cardinal rule of comedy is to have the joke be on you, Tom Myers is a pretty amazing comic.

Yet even without Cumtown, if I had run into Tom Myers’ standup at some pizzeria in Havre de Grace, would I be confused? Probably. Would I think that he sucked? Eh. I’ve thought that about even the best comics sometimes. But to call him the “worst comic of all time” would be hyperbolic. I can genuinely say that he’s funnier and more entertaining than Joe Rogan, for example, who might be the richest “comedian” on the planet. Which leads us to a problem within the comedy industry, or I guess any industry really: success and critical acclaim being a crapshoot.

The rich and famous rarely get to where they are at based on their talent, looks, and big dick. Some get there by birth. Others get there by unwittingly making the right choices and the right friends at the right time. The latter is the case of Nick Mullen. To the annoyance of Cumtown fans, there would be no Cumtown without the success of Chapo Trap House. Those were choices. Tom Myers didn’t have a choice. He was thrusted into internet infamy based on the haphazard whims of Mullen. And instead of scrubbing his digital presence like a pussy (as I would have done), he amped up the shit talk and continues to do so till this day. Where others would have cowered, he turned into an opportunity.

Tom Myers is a proud Marylander. He appears to serve his community. Insofar as I can tell, he makes enough money to make a living doing what he loves. I cannot, and never will, begrudge a man for this. The internet wanted me to hate him. But goddamnit, I only have respect for Tom Myers.

and The army goes rolling along (Part 1)

2005.

Both fronts on the War on Terror are going poorly. Nations around the Indian Ocean are recovering from the worst tsunami on record. Coldplay is dominating the radio. Times were shit and they were only getting shittier.

I was 17 years old.

It was February.

While being a public menace in the local mall, I suddenly had a thought. Wouldn’t it be funny if I joined the Army? So that’s what I did. Not because of any sense of duty or patriotism. I simply thought it would be hilarious to dedicate the next few years of my youth to something I didn’t understand. There’s no other explanation.

Then came summer. June specifically. I was shipped to the cushiest boot camp that the US Army had to offer. Fort “Relaxin’” Jackson , South Carolina.

What follows is a recounting of that summer. Truth be told, I go days. Weeks. Months, even, without ever thinking of my Army days. It’s only come front and center thanks to this YouTube video

Some of this may be fictionalized. Some of it fact. The only thing that’s true is that can’t distinguish between the two.

But first things first: Getting sexually violated at MEPS. It’s a ritual all recruits must face. First you must show your butthole to the disinterested doctor. Then you must pull out pecker and piss into a cup in full view of a very annoyed (male) nurse. If that wasn’t bad enough, the man who takes your piss cup laughs at your thousand yard stare.

This is only the beginning of the humiliation process.

What follows is an even stranger ritual where a group of about five recruits strip down into their underwear and perform strange and nonsensical movements for a needlessly pissed off sergeant. I couldn’t tell you how long it lasted. It felt like hours.

Afterwards, you sit in a room for hours on end waiting to speak with an admin professional about your MOS, i.e your job in the military. Being me, I picked the easiest and least likely to get me killed. Human Resources.

For a lot of states, at least in 2005, there’s only one MEPS location per state. And they process recruits for all branches of the military. There, you will meet future marines, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and whatever you call people in the Coast Guard. Then they make you take an oath to uphold the constitution, the 10 commandments, Sharia law, the code of Hammurabi, blah blah blah. I was ready to go home by then. While MEPS isn’t physically demanding, it does give you a taste of the psychological warfare that will deployed against you in basic training.

Afterwards, all us recruits were driven back to our hotel. I had never felt so degraded in my life. But while all us young bloods were shootin the shit, I was shocked to learn that most of the recruits ENJOYED MEPS. All that kicking and jumping in your underwear? They found it “fun”!

Only the sexually deviant could have found something like that “fun”. It was clear that this wasn’t the life for me.

I should have backed out right then and there. I didn’t. Instead I boarded that plane to Columbia, South Carolina in June of 2005.

TO BE CONTINUED….

lonesone dove

Some shitty media site made a list of the top ten greatest western novels ever written and it ranked Lonesome Dove at number one, Blood Meridian at number two, and Butcher’s Crossing somewhere farther down the list. Obviously the list errored in not adding another McCarthy book and failing to place a Louis L’Amour at all. But it also fucked up by again comparing Butcher’s Crossing to Blood Meridian.

While both novels could be classified under the “anti-western” genre, the fact remains that these are two very VERY different books. Butcher’s Crossing, written by John Williams, is actually trying to tell a real story. Cormac McCarthy, meanwhile, is trying to haunt your dreams. Their goals are very different. William’s vision of the old west is very much grounded in reality. We also have something called “sympathy” for the main character. In Blood Meridian, every character is a piece of shit and they all deserve their horrible fates. One is telling you how the old west actually was. The other is using words to paint a picture of their nightmares.

And because McCarthy wrote the way he did, his books probably find broader appeal outside of the western genre. He’s a strange taste that a lot of readers have acquired. Which is why it’s not fair to compare Blood Meridian to Butcher’s Crossing. I’m not saying that John Williams was a lesser writer, but I am saying that he’s telling a much more straightforward story with Butcher’s Crossing while McCarthy was aiming more at the abstract and alien. So if you read and enjoyed one and get recommended the other, you’re probably gonna be confused or disappointed.

And now Lonesome Dove. I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t finish it. Larry McMurty’s style goes against everything I believe in as a writer. But clearly the problem is with me and not the book. It consistently ranks as the greatest western novel ever written. Yet I prefer a more focused approach to storytelling; excise unnecessary characters and plot lines; show, don’t tell by revealing the character’s emotions in the moment and not by describing their thoughts or past; every setup must have a payoff. McMurtry is a different writer than me, I get it. But does the book hold a special place because we all loved the mini-series?

Mer Rouge (Part 58)

The Honcho came to a complete stop at the property entrance. Rifle shots lit it up until DuPont and the others sprung up from the brush to return fire. They raced toward the Honcho unleashing bullet after bullet until their guns were depleted. Hutch carried Moses to the bed of the truck and climbed inside. Oren and the priest were close behind. The sheriff, with the chamber of his .38 empty, pulled out the .44 and fired. The sniper was in clear view. The bullet struck the sniper on his cheek, blowing it clean off and exposing his teeth, and he recoiled. DuPont climbed into the cab and ordered Chaz to step on it. It was probably three hundred yards from one side of the field to the other. The sniper attempted to readjust to hit his moving target but he gave himself up. Everyone in the bed of the truck saw him shift closer to the road. “I’m out of bullets!” Oren yelled.

Moses, struggling with his gun wound, saw the sniper and thought. “I can hit him,” he shouted. “Gimme something sharp!”

Oren looked past the mounds of dynamite and found a discarded harpoon. He didn’t know how it got there. “Here!” he said, handing it to Moses. 

Moses stood up in the bed and cocked his left arm with a harpoon in hand. The sniper swiftly shifted into a kneeled position and placed the scope squarely on Moses’ head. He was too late. As the Honcho sped past, Moses hurled the harpoon and speared the shooter right through the chest. The object hit him with such force that it blew him back several feet into the brush. 

“Goddamn old man!” praised the priest. “How did you learn that trick?”

“Just saw Apocalypse Now,” he said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 57)

Hutch grabbed his downed comrade and pulled him into safety. The others were all hidden behind the treeline. “I’m alright! I’m alright,” Moses reassured Hutch. 

“A rifle round went clean through your shoulder! I gotta stop the bleeding!”

“Don’t worry about it!”

Squatted behind a tree, the sheriff reached for his .44. He peeked out through the sweltering heat waves and scanned the flat grassland. “Did anyone see anything?!” he shouted.

“Man I didn’t see shit!” Hutch yelled. 

DuPont squinted harder and deduced that the shooter had to have been posted up in the treeline on the other side of the field. He shook his head and spat. “I should call in an airstrike,” he said.

“That’s not an option,” Oren told him. “Radio Chaz. Tell him we’re calling it off.”

“No!”

“Sheriff, between the explosion and rifle shots, they already know we’re here! We should abandon this route and find another way in!”

“There’s no time.”

“Sheriff,” the priest interjected. “He may be right. That rifle shot was from a Mauser SP66. There’s only one man I know of who uses that weapon.”

“The nine?” Oren asked.

“You betcha.”

“I don’t give a goddamn if it’s Lee Harvey Oswald up in them trees,” said the sheriff. “This is the only way in!”

DuPont poked back out from his position. Rifle rounds rained down on him kicking up mounds of dirt and grass. He swiftly took cover. “Fuck!” he yelled. 

“We appear to be trapped here, sheriff,” the priest said while gnawing on a carrot. 

“We ain’t trapped here!”

DuPont looked away from the direction of the sniper and towards the east just off of the judge’s property. He could see the cloud of dust barreling towards them with the beat up Honcho leading it. He had seconds to think. “When Chaz rounds the corner,” he said to the others, “fire every round you have towards that treeline.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

take a seat

After watching all 24,000 hours of Chris Hansen’s investigations into online predatory behavior (in one night) I’ve arrived at a radical conclusion: Chris Hansen is not a journalist. That’s a view for the simpletons. He’s something a little bit more.

He’s a provocateur. A performance artist.

I’m not throwing shade at Hansen necessarily. Indeed, if my interpretation of him is correct, he’s the greatest to ever do it. Unlike all the other firebrands, Hansen didn’t rise up through stand up comedy or cheap political punditry. He captured the public trust by doing legitimate investigative journalism. But as usual, the times make the man. And Hansen stumbled upon a subject matter that was alarming, darkly provocative, and timely. After the Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger era of the 80s and 90s, followed by the intense paranoia and entrenchment of the surveillance state during the early 2000s, Hansen invited us to take a seat and peek into the world of online predatory behavior towards children.

As mentioned in the video above, To Catch a Predator always had its controversies, specifically regarding the media’s relationship with law enforcement, entrapment, etc. Initially, the program dedicated time towards educating parents on how to protect their children online. So there was, in a sense, an educational component. But then the show kinda morphed into something else. Something a bit unsettling and much more difficult to put your finger on.

We all know the setup. After baiting a predator, a “decoy” (usually a paid actor playing an underage girl or boy) waits at a sting house for the individual to show up. The predator comes into the house, the decoy disappears, and out comes Chris Hansen asking the man to “take a seat”. What follows is an uncomfortable conversation where Hansen attempts to understand the predator’s motivations and intentions. The first few interviews, you’re like “hahaha fuck that guy.” But the more you watch, the sadder it becomes. Eventually you have to ask yourself: “what are we accomplishing with this?”. Even in the rare moments where the predator is calm and honest, we really don’t learn anything that we couldn’t have deduced ourselves. So the interviews are like watching a trapped animal. The predator spins their tires until the interviewer gets bored and says “I’m Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC”. The man panics and tries to leave until they are busted by a whole squad of cops. It’s the strangest and most unsettling bit of television you will ever see.

Sure they catch a predator. But Chris Hansen presents himself as a predator of a different beast. With his access to primetime television and absence of a court of law, Hansen becomes the judge, jury, and executioner. You and I, as viewers, are his co-conspirators.

But as with any good art, there’s an undercurrent of themes presented but left to the viewer to ponder on. Male loneliness. Declining social mobility. Mental health. Rarely, if ever, were these subjects outright discussed but were nonetheless screaming at us through the television. Moreover, the pretense of journalistic intent was addressed only in the most halfassed way. If Hansen was truly concerned with online sexual predators, more attention would have been paid to victims of it.

Instead, Chris Hansen chose to turn a disturbing subject into spectacle. That’s why it’s not fair to call his work in the subject “journalism”. Not to knock To Catch a Predator and its successors though. It not only provided spectacle but it also gave us insight into ourselves and our times.

That’s what good art is supposed to do.