tions by turning fantasies into ‘reality’.
Looking at a fake backdrop of the Los Ange-
les skyline at the television station, Lou says
to Nina, “On TV it looks so real.” Gilroy’s
dialogue often cleverly insinuates this seep-
ing of fiction and fantasy into a world that
resembles them:
Lou: I’m focusing on framing. A proper frame
not only draws the eye into a picture but keeps
it there longer – dissolving the barrier between
the subject and the outside of the frame.Nina: Is that blood on your shirt?‘Framing’ is a central trope in Nightcrawler.
By invading the home of a family struck by
tragedy, and zooming in on a family photo
stuck to their fridge, Lou reframes the other-
wise common event into ‘good television’. He
quickly learns how the editors at the station
construct the story to maximum effect by
linking the intimate details he has recorded to
the loss they’ve suffered, thus turning anony-
mous victims into ‘relatable characters’.
Reporting Tragedy or Causing It?
But this is just a movie. How closely does this
fiction reflect the activities of real media
organisations? Dateline NBC’s To Catch a
Predator realityTV program provides a vivid
example of how a network blurred the line
between journalism and entertainment, and
between reporting events and causing them.
The show sought out online predators such
as paedophiles and lured them to meetings
that would end with their arrest. Its sting
operations caught dozens of people. The
irony, said critics, was that the network acted
in a predatory way itself. Its set-ups seemed
likely to have made criminals out of at least
some people who had merely flirted around
the edges of illegal activity until being
coaxed into actually committing illegal acts
by the show’s actors. Crime makes good
television; potential crime doesn’t.
In the most notorious case, the network
used an underage-looking actor to entrap a
small-town Texas Assistant District Attor-
ney called Bill Conradt. The network
involved the otherwise bored local police
force – a role they were apparently only too
excited to assume, since it gave them
national attention. With the cops function-
ing as its de facto actors, the network then
decided to do something unprecedented.
Since Conradt was no longer responding to
their actor’s online solicitations, the TV
crew persuaded local law enforcement to call
in a SWAT team! With NBC’s camera
rolling, the police broke into Conradt’s
home. Facing public shame and under theintense duress of the situation, Conradt put
a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
NBC, with all the sensitivity of a dentist’s
drill, broadcast the segment during prime
time. The presenter of To Catch a Predator
said Conradt’s suicide was something
“nobody can feel good about”, but expressed
no regrets about the overall handling of the
operation. Conradt’s family sued. Some of
the men caught in the show’s sting opera-
tions, however, admitted to previous crimi-
nal activity. In this way the show’s illusions
sometimes revealed realities. As in
Nightcrawler, illusion and reality alternated
in a fast, close dance.
Unlike the usual escapist offerings at the
cinema, Nightcrawler has an ‘alienating’ effect,
insofar as it forces us to think about the media
and the entire system within which it is made,
rather than just taking it for granted. In the
same sense that Bertolt Brecht’s epic plays are
revolutionary theatre, Nightcrawler is a truly
revolutionary film, for it provokes viewers to
question their social conditions and what it
means to consume media.
© TERRI MURRAY 2019
Terri Murray is the author of Feminist Film
Studies: A Teacher’s Guide. She earned her
BFA degree in Film & Television Studies from
NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and has taught
A-Level film studies for 15 years.50 Philosophy Now lAugust/September 2019
A cinematic vision of fake news,
including a mirror image of a fake city