Philosophy Now-Aug-Sept 2019

48 Philosophy Now lAugust/September 2019

N

ightcrawler (2014) belongs in the

canon of classic films about the

power of representation and the

insidious effects of the media,

alongside such prescient movies as Network,

Medium Cool, They Shoot Horses Don’t They?,

Putney Swope, Ace in the Hole, Man Bites Dog,

Wag the Dog, Face in the Crowd and Death of a

President. The medium is the message in this

dark satire about how abysmally low the

media will stoop for a scoop. The viewer is

made to reflect upon the forces driving the

‘infotainment’ industry that has all but

replaced serious journalism. Let’s take a look.

The Presentation of Self & World

Director/writer Dan Gilroy’s screenplay is

genius, and Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo

are at their best as sleazy, compromised

anti-heroes.

If you emerge from the cinema wanting to

reflect further on Gyllenhaal’s character

Louis Bloom, may I recommend the work of

Canadian-American sociologist Erving

Goffman (1922–82)? I’m thinking particu-

larly of his account of people not as ‘inner

selves’, but as performers in social situations.

Goffman’s key concern was not ‘authentic-

ity’, but how our various performances

promote our social survival, or not. In his

1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday

Life, Goffman suggested that image manage-

ment forms the basis of our behaviour. He

divides life into ‘on stage’ and ‘back stage’

moments, and sees people as actors. The self

is dependent on its ‘dramaturgical’ relation-

ship to the social nexus of institutions,

through roles that will be credited or

discredited. As such, our self is a result of the

façades we erect for different audiences. It is

an effect, not a cause, arising from the scenes

of our lives. This way of thinking about the

self is reflected in Nightcrawler.

Lou Bloom is a hustler who makes his

living from deceptive self-promotion. His

primary skill, and the key to his success, is

persuading people that he already possesses

abilities which in reality he will gain only if

they believe him and invest in him. He sells

them an illusion; but in doing so the illusion

becomes real. And just as Lou constructs a

self from the fictional persona he pushes, he

also brings into being a set of real effects

from the media illusion he sells.

Transformation by means of self-fulfill-

ing prophecy is a leitmotifhumming beneath

all the events depicted, including Lou selling

himself as a roaming reporter/cameraman (a

‘stringer’) to Nina (Russo), the News Editor

at KWLA, and his ‘I run a successful TV

news business’ spiel when hiring his assistant

Rick (Riz Ahmed). Lou needs the assistant to

make his business successful, and by convinc-

ing him that his business is already successful,

he gets the outcome he wants: the youngster

takes the job. Lou isn’t the only one at it; his

competitor offers to bring him in to a

company that doesn’t yet exist – but would if

he could get Lou on his team.

It’s all image. In each case the pretence of

some situation being better than it is in real-

ity is used to bring the better situation into

reality. If this works for aspirations and

ambitions, then it also works for fears and

nightmares. Goffman’s emphasis on the

‘façade self’ has its parallel in the view of

contemporary culture as a world full of

images and simulations. Lou needs sensa-

tional and gruesome footage to get the

ratings, so he invents it. At first he merely

uses clever editing to heighten the viewer’s

sense of personal tragedy and loss, giving

the content more emotive appeal. Later he

actually interferes with the world he’s

supposed to only be recording, by posing

and even moving corpses for better camera

angles and more dramatic effect.

What’s most disturbing about Lou’s

behaviour is that he chooses to exploit

victims of crime when he could put down his

camera and help them. Instead, he trans-

forms their suffering and misfortune into a

cash cow, thus feeding on other peoples’

misfortune, prolonging it, expanding it, and

intensifying it. This worsens the victim’s

situation, perverts and demeans Lou’s own

humanity, and creates an appetite for bad

news and schadenfreude in his viewers. The

sheer volume of human misery and violence

he serves up probably desensitises the public

to suffering as much as it has done to Lou

himself. Not only does the subject change

in front of the camera like a gory version of

quantum observation changing reality, the

cameraman is also transformed, into a blood

junkie hankering after an ever more potent

fix. In all these ways the production of

broadcast news by reporters obsessed with

violence and tragedy results in an altered

reality – a culture fashioned in the image of

Film

Terri Murray watches the disappearance of reality

into images, in the name of news.

NIGHT

CRAW

LER