Primetime
There are lots of vital jobs in this world that we’d rather not think about. We need the violently insane to be scooped up off our streets. What goes into housing them? Best not to dwell on that. When we flush our toilets, all that stuff goes somewhere… but we would prefer not to contemplate the wheres and the hows. We don’t want to know how the sausage gets made.
This brings us to the rather squicky subject of sexual predators — in particular, those who seek out children.
To Catch a Predator debuted in 2004 as part of the news magazine Dateline NBC, quickly becoming the most popular segment on the series. The formula was pretty simple. Operatives would pose as kids on internet message boards and lure their marks to a private meet with the promise of X-rated activity. Once the targets were inside a house (wired with cameras), the decoys would step aside, and host Chris Hansen would emerge to confront the miscreants, with law enforcement waiting right outside to make the collar. Rinse and repeat.
These sting operations would routinely nab upwards of a few dozen men over several days at the same location, before heading to a different town. Sunday school teachers, rabbis, firefighters, doctors, youth counselors — the net cast was very wide.
What goes into catching these people? Detective Alonzo Harris in Training Day said, “To protect the sheep, you gotta catch the wolf. And it takes a wolf to catch a wolf.” Well, to catch the seediest of criminals, you have to wallow in the mud yourself. Who signs up for this sort of lurid work? What happens when we sensationalize it? And why are we watching?
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Primetime is the sordid dramatization of To Catch a Predator. In the dog-eat-dog world of news media, it’s a race to the top… or perhaps more accurately, the bottom. Hansen’s (Robert Pattinson) desperation is palpable while eyeing “serious” journalism from star anchor Stone Phillips with a combination of longing and deep-seated malice. He knows what caste his program occupies. In fact, NBC executive Jeff Zucker (playing himself, the actual head honcho at the time) tells Hansen flat out, “I don’t really like your show. But America loves it.” So it gets slotted in prime time. It’s not the respect Hansen craves, but it is a push up the pyramid.
We largely see Predator through the eyes and ears of “Decoy” Dan (Skyler Gisondo), who certainly didn’t imagine this sort of gig when he arrived in Los Angeles with grand designs. The aspiring thespian is snapped up by producer Andie (Merritt Weaver) because he can pass for a 13-year-old with the right clothing and vocal adjustments (1), joining fellow decoy Del (singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers) and internet chat-room impersonator Xavier (Matthew Maher). It’s work, right? And an all-important acting credit. Is that enough to provide a sense of self-worth? (2)
Meanwhile, Hansen lives the life of a man in a vice that’s s-l-o-w-l-y being cranked tighter. He has a neglected wife and children at home. There’s an affair, which he ends, but not before the tabloids get wind and attempt to blackmail him. All the while, there’s the pressure for ratings, which will require going after bigger and bigger fish. A white whale, even.
Xavier gets one on the hook. And it appears to be a government official. A higher-up. But he’s reluctant. What happens if he won’t take the bait? Even professional anglers need to get creative…
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If you were wondering about the legalities of such a program, you’re not alone. For starters, how much of this would be considered entrapment? Apparently, it’s more of a gray area when done by private organizations as opposed to law enforcement, but some arrests have been tossed for this reason. Also, as you might imagine, communities are generally none too happy about a house in their quiet neighborhoods being converted to a pedophile magnet for a weekend, accompanied by a heavy police presence. Fair criticisms, or a bit of NIMBYism? "We want these folks off the streets… but could you do this someplace else?”
Then there’s the Scarlet Letter treatment. It’s not enough that many of them are shipped off to prison, but they have also had their faces plastered on national television, often accompanied by the unsavory details of what they had believed to be private chats. TV critic and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker wrote, “When a television show makes you feel sorry for potential child rapists, you know it's doing something wrong.”
I’m not sure I would go so far as to feel sorry for said individuals, but I did view Xavier, the online decoy, with something approaching sympathy and/or disgust. Out of all the principal players, he’s the one most buried in the weeds, embroiled in graphic conversations for hours on end in an internet cesspool. (One has to imagine that for every culprit he reels in, many more are lost in the ether.) In Primetime, though… he doesn’t seem terribly bothered by the world he inhabits? He’s the most excited out of everyone about the prospect of nabbing that whale in the final act. A bit too excited?
Pattinson isn’t asked to carry this tale, but he’s brilliantly cast here as a man with a short fuse, aware of both his own limitations and the sacrifices (both ethical and familial) he has to make in an attempt to claw up the ranks in a cutthroat industry. Haunted. His eyes are haunted. In that sense, he’s got a bit of middle-age Michael Douglas in him? Douglas was exceptional at playing characters who had the veneer of success but were morally compromised. (3)
Finally, the $64,000 question: why do we watch? (4) There’s no real suspense. We know these scoundrels will get caught. For sure, there is something deeply satisfying in seeing evil get punished in real time. Do we also get a visceral charge from witnessing their genuine horror when they realize that cameras are rolling? In some sense, does this make us, the viewers, seem superior?
Maybe it’s also the everyday nature of the culprits. This could be my next-door neighbor. My fellow churchgoer. A show set up to reel in drug dealers, for instance, wouldn’t generate that same sort of rush. “Eh, those are ‘other’ people, and that’s not something that happens in my neighborhood.” Dog bites man, not a story. But if it’s a schoolteacher? Man bites dog. We might feel a bit sleazy about it… but we’re tuning in.
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(1) This is the biggest stretch in the film. Bridgers could pass for a teenager. Gisondo most certainly cannot.
(2) Ditto for Andie, who vacillates on jumping ship at various points. But what’s her alternative? Another reality show?
(3) See: Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, Disclosure, The Game, A Perfect Murder, Solitary Man.
(4) And how much does this question apply to your humble film critic, who watched a movie about a reality crime show? Quite meta! Truth be told, I’ve never been particularly into true-crime television or podcasts, but Popular Crime by Bill James is one of my all-time favorite books. It’s about how high-profile crime cases have impacted American culture, and it transcends the medium.