The Odious Mr Theroux

We live in a world of platitudes. People think in regurgitated clickbate clichés and have given up on original thought so completely that they use words without really considering their meaning very much. It is, presumably, this phenomenon that has led the commenters on the Kremlin's pisspoor freesheet, The Evening Standard, to describe the unfathomably smug B-documentary maker Louis Theroux as "brave".

To be brave is to hold one's nerve in the face of real personal danger or risk. The soldier who puts his head above the parapet to lay down fire is brave. The speculator who holds his positions when they've taken a dip is brave. The journalist who risks his reputation, his livelihood and even his life to break a public interest story is brave. It is surprising that some people have not had their lights punched out yet, but that does not make them brave - it makes them arseholes.

Though perhaps this is an unfair line of criticism - Theroux does not claim to be brave himself. But he does revel in the dishonesty of his endeavours and he is, most definitely, an arsehole of the first rank.

Theroux's first notable appearance on our screens was in his documentary series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends. In this series, our intrepid host embeds himself with various off-beat American subcultures, including UFO hunters, pornographic performers, middle-aged swingers and evangelical Christians. The format of each episode is broadly the same. Theroux gains access to two or three different actors within each subculture and follows them around for a bit, feigning sincere interest, attempting to ingratiate himself, and pretending to absorb as much of their world as possible.

The episodes end with the presenter asking weak questions of his subjects, clearly with a view to making them as uncomfortable as possible. The nature of the participants in the documentaries means that he is questioning the tightly-held beliefs of people who don't quite function on our plain of reality. The end result is usually a thoroughly pissed off or insulted UFO hunter.

The fact that the views of his subjects are on the whole obviously bollocks means that his lines of questioning take on a sneering, hectoring tone. "Is it really?" is said a lot, to which the only possible answer from a true believer is a restatement of his beliefs. Yes, Louis, he really does believe he is fighting aliens and you will not change that by goading him.

The first thing that hits the viewer is the sheer nastiness of the exercise Theroux is undertaking. He is, of course, not making sincere human interest documentaries, but a series of freak-shows for him and his audience to laugh at. He walks around in front of the camera, with his sideways glances and knowing smiles, inviting us to sneer with him at the oddballs and outcasts. His documentaries are the modern equivalent of paying a shilling to laugh at the inmates of the local asylum - voyeuristic and snobbish.

Theroux described his aims in making Weird Weekends as:

"Setting out to discover the genuinely odd in the most ordinary setting. To me, it's almost a privilege to be welcomed into these communities and to shine a light on them and, maybe, through my enthusiasm, to get people to reveal more of themselves than they may have intended. The show is laughing at me, adrift in their world, as much as at them. I don't have to play up that stuff."

Read that a few times and let its unpleasantness sink in. Key words and phrases stand out. "...almost a privilege" struck me as particularly horrid. Why not an actual privilege?

I once attended a dinner party at the house of a highly eccentric acquaintance of mine. He lived in an enormous nightmare-gothic house in North London and was, of course, tremendously rich. He treated us to a delightful evening of the very best food, wine and company, punctuated by the amusing antics of his three pugs. After dinner, our host invited the men to his study, where he shared with us what was clearly a very important part of his personality - he was a Doctor Who superfan. This private male room was festooned with authentic and presumably valuable Doctor Who memorabilia - lifesize alien soldiers, costumed manikins, exotic stage weaponry - which he lovingly described to us in great and fascinating detail. Even for someone who knows next to nothing about Doctor Who, nor about science fiction generally, it was a very interesting half hour. A fan of the programme would have been in heaven. I left my host's study after this impromptu curation feeling honoured that this man would lay bare his quirks for our entertainment. How many of us would be so brave, I wonder, as to show a group of dinner guests our innermost, dorkiest interests in such an enthusiastic way? It was quite literally a privilege to be welcomed into this man's head. 

Now, with my anecdote in mind, read the second sentence again and picture someone like Theroux being shown around that study. Imagine Theroux's wry, patronising smile and fake enthusiasm as he is taken through the ins and outs of Doctor Who's universe and history, with props. Imagine the lie on which such an encounter might have been built. I don't know how Theroux sets up his subjects, but we can be certain that he isn't honest about his intentions - nobody enjoys being the object of sincere ridicule and nobody would consent to appear on his camera if they knew they would be. Theroux further has the brass neck to claim that the audience might be laughing at him as much as his subjects, despite being girded about with the thick armour of irony. 

Satire and mockery are mighty political tools, and Weird Weekends is a cruel misuse of them. Satire ought to be used on the powerful and wicked (or even just the powerful) as a way to counteract their power and make them seem ridiculous. One of the reasons fascism never took off in the UK is that we found it silly - the goose-stepping, the outrageous uniforms, the sheer pomposity of it all. Lampooning fascism when it was a real force was noble thing indeed. When Louis Met Adolf (1929) would have been a worthy use of Theroux's cinematic efforts. But, of course, Theroux doesn't choose powerful victims - he chooses losers and weirdos. He satirises the powerless and outcast. He mocks those who are already ridiculous and weak. His work is the televisual equivalent of kicking a toddler in the face. 

One of his subjects, a group of UFO hunters, makes for particularly uncomfortable watching. Theroux heads to the desert of south west America (where UFOs always seem to land) and states his intention is:

"to meet the people who meet ETs, and maybe even have a close encounter of my own."

His voice rises in pitch as he says the second clause, to make it perfectly clear (lest there be any doubt) that he is obviously not so utterly mad and stupid as to believe in UFOs and aliens. Gracious, no. Only the idiots he interviews would believe such nonsense. Now that's clear, we all get to laugh at the lunatics. Hooray!

Theroux's first lunatic is the curiously named Thor Templar, who is head of an impressive-sounding organisation called The Earth Protectorate. Mr Templar introduces himself as the Lord Commander of the North American Sector. It is unclear whether Lord Commander constitutes a rank or an appointment within The Earth Protectorate, but Mr Templar and his female companion clearly take it seriously. Theroux shakes the Lord Commander's hand and says "I'm Louis Theroux from BBC2". Theroux smiles at this point, obviously amused at the contrast between Thor Templar's grand-sounding title, and his own relatively workaday one. "Ah, but my title is real and meaningful" are the unspoken words behind his irritating grin.

The presenter then states that he isn't sure aliens exist, the intention of which is quite plainly to make Mr Templar spout nonsense, and frame him very clearly as the fantasist he is. Throughout his interaction with our fearless alien hunter, Theroux feigns credulity in really cruel way and goads his subject into making more and more outrageous and fantastic claims about himself, his activities and his accomplishments. The viewer is left with no doubt as to the extent of Thor Templar's delusion. 

The kind viewer, of course, realises in less than 5 minutes that Theroux himself is the only one doing any harm, here. Lord Commander Templar may be a quixotic fantasist, tilting at extra-terrestrial windmills, but his imaginary purposes are clearly noble. He genuinely believes that he is protecting Earth and mankind from hostile aliens. He is doing it free of charge and his obsessions have in all likelihood cost him friends and relationships, and have caused the ray gun of the BBC's finest young satirist to be trained on him. Now, we can argue over whether what he's doing is healthy, but it is certainly not wicked. Thor's activities certainly don't deserve to be sniggered at by millions of people. The freak show thankfully died a century ago. 

Three years after Weird Weekends, Theroux returned to our screens with a seemingly never-ending series of documentaries on American themes, which attempted to strike a more serious tone. In BBC-land, "serious tone" means left-wing boilerplate, of course. Prostitutes are sympathised with and generally approved of, Zionists are exposed as borderline genocidal bigots, hunters are portrayed as bloodthirsty trophy-grabbers with no care for conservation, and drug addicts and criminals are held no more responsible for their own circumstances than the hunters' trophies are for theirs. 

Watching the episode about White Nationalists, it becomes clear just how far out of his depth Theroux is in serious journalism. He meets Thomas Metzger, a fairly uncomplicated neo-Nazi skinhead and former Ku Klux Klansman, whose views are easily gauged by the fact that he runs a group called White Aryan Resistance (snappily abbreviated to WAR). Yet Theroux finds himself fazed by Metzger and his ludicrous views in a way that exposes both the documentarian's lack of journalistic talent and his personal weakness. Theroux seems genuinely surprised that a white supremacist is actually racist. Theroux is unable to process the fact that Metzger openly uses the word "nigger" for fully offensive purposes. He's thrown off-guard by this, as if someone had used the word in Broadcasting House rather than in a neo-Nazi's drawing room. He pathetically asks Metzger to refrain from using the word around him, such is the fear it inspires in the intrepid journalist. Needless to say, Metzger incredulously rebuffs Theroux's attempts to police his language in his own home. 

Theroux continues with various silly lines of questioning, such as asking the neo-Nazi whether he'd be comfortable with his daughter dating a Jew. When he gets his answer, he mumbles "it speaks of...kinda...a hatred...really." You don't say! Metzger replies clumsily that "I hate the people who cause me to hate" before going off on a vague rant about "them" (presumably black people) killing, raping, torturing and imprisoning his friends. Theroux interjects weakly with "that is such bull!", which causes Metzger to demand if Theroux reads "what blacks do in England...I do!" A stronger personality than our documentarian would have pushed back, and demanded to know exactly what blacks were doing in England, and perhaps countered any response with some solid facts. But Theroux just sat quietly, beaten by the force of Metzger's personality. The stupider man won without even raising his voice. 

Theroux's attempts to cover other serious issues - namely drug addiction and criminality - fall similarly flat. Perhaps predictably for a middle class BBC journalist, he is pathologically unable to think outside the usual left-wing platitudes and offer fresh perspectives. In The City Addicted to Crystal Meth, he visits Fresno, California - a city with a serious problem with drug addicts. Surely enough, he doesn't see the problem as being one of human agency.

The introductory leader features an interview with a man whose drug use has ruined his teeth and turned him into a nervous wreck. "Crystal meth, what happens is, it deteriorates your teeth, right?" "Crystal meth is acting up in my body." Crystal meth, on its own, does nothing. It's just a small shiny rock. A person has to decide to smoke or snort it for it to do any harm. At no point does the interviewee say "I did", "I took", "I smoked". He talks of drugs in the third person, as if they were an independent, animate actor, harming him through no fault of his own. The drug does not even damage the teeth directly. "Meth Mouth" is caused by lifestyle factors surrounding drug use (collapse in dental hygiene, frequent consumption of sugary drinks, etc). 

Theroux, having internalised the standard liberal line of drug addicts as victims of something other than their own stupidity and selfishness, doesn't possess the faculties to challenge the addict's passive narrative in a meaningful way. Travelling in a police car, Theroux and his policemen encounter a car full of drug users, one of whom is a thirtysomething mother of three. Theroux comes close to the correct way of thinking as he speaks to her, but being incapable of moral judgement, he doesn't hammer home the obvious line of questioning. He asks why she smokes drugs, to which she replies with surprising honesty "Because I want to, because I feel like it." Then the interviewer brings up the fact that she has three children and asks whether they know she is a drug addict, she predictably turns to selfish excuses - "I left [my grandparents'] house...to just come out here and do whatever I wanna do." The policeman asks her why, and she says "because my baby's dad frigging left me." You'll note she doesn't say 'husband'. "I couldn't stay in that house no more because the fact that it brought too many fucking memories inside my head." 

The drug addict then breaks down in tears, perhaps because she had reasoned herself past her own excuses, and realised she had no-one to blame but herself. Unsurprisingly, it is the jaded policeman who pushes her on the most obvious and serious aspect of her immorality - the fact that she is a mother and has a duty of towards her children. Her epiphany is short-lived, of course, as she embarks on a circular course of self-pitying reason - she smokes drugs because she wants to block out the painful fact that she is a useless, selfish, evil drug addict and a general failure as a mother and as a human being. The policeman, not the journalist, got to the raw truth - that inanimate drugs are not to blame; those who take them are. On the cusp of arrest (presumably not her first brush with the law) she tearfully claims she is about to reform. Theroux nods sagely, with a sad, sympathetic expression on his face. 

Our documentarian's visit to a large gaol is a similarly irritating delve into the mind of a safe, left-wing journalist. In the UK, gaol and prison are synonymous, but over the pond gaol is where those suspected criminals considered too dangerous to bail are sent to await trial. Thus, gaol houses many of America's gentle giants, regular churchgoers, loving fathers and talented athletes. 

Much like during his time with Thomas Metzger, Theroux is clearly nervous in an environment of raw, chaotic masculinity. In his first encounter with inmates of the notoriously violent 5th Floor of Miami's gaolhouse, he quizzes them about an inmate who was injured in their cell recently. "Snitches get stitches" is the reply, to which he asks one of his trademark stupid questions (accompanied by an equally stupid grin): "am I to infer from that that this man was a snitch?" The question didn't reveal to us anything that we didn't already know - that criminals are discouraged by their fellow criminals from cooperating with the authorities - but it did set the tone of the documentary rather well. Theroux asks his question with characteristically florid words, as if to demonstrate his own superior intelligence, yet he shies away from asking tricky and pertinent questions. He might have explored the idea that perhaps some criminals had no choice but to snitch, or that the authorities were not necessarily the criminal's die-hard enemy. But this is not the purpose of his documentaries - they are but comedy vehicles for his self-satisfied, ironic sense of detachment. 

Theroux's interviews with inmates are interspersed with various liberal howls at the apparent injustice of it all. After he had finished talking to a man accused of First Degree Murder (American legalese for a pre-planned, deliberate killing, or a murder committed in the course of some other crime), his voiceover laments the fact that the inhabitants of Miami Gaol were "technically innocent, and deprived of many of their rights". Quelle domage. Footage of the guards going about their work is cut with faux-poignant shots of American flags waving thought the bars, as if to juxtapose the Land of the Free with the lack of freedom inherent in the gaol system. Such cliché is profound only to idiots - it's the cinematic equivalent of Stephen Fry. 

Theroux's hackneyed attempts to make us sympathise with the inmates of Miami Gaol might be more successful were it not for the obvious evil of the men he interviews. His discussions with these animals usually involve a dishonest bait-and-switch. Some of the inmates are quite funny and charismatic, and Theroux allows them to exhibit these traits for some time before asking the important question, "what are you accused of?" The answer is always revolting (murder, violent robbery, etc), but by this point the ideal viewer (somewhat left wing, weak minded, "anti-judgmental") quite likes the inmate, and therefore thinks he is probably innocent, a victim of prejudice, a hashtag waiting to happen. 

Oddly, Theroux declines to use this cynical, manipulative tactic when he interviews the inmate with whom we are clearly meant to sympathise most, the diminutive and vulnerable Nianthony. Nianthony has been moved to Miami Central Gaol from another, cushier facility, allegedly because someone falsely accused him of trying to escape. We have only an accused criminal's word that this is true - Theroux did not bother asking a guard.

Nianthony is physically small and weak and wears glasses, giving him a cute, dorky and nervous appearance. He's also clearly intelligent (the prisoner makes a point of mentioning that he's university educated, as if to place the idea of gaol somewhere beneath him). In short, Nianthony is exactly the type of person you would not want to be if you were in prison. "I'm being watched by a lot of people so I don't want to say anything", he says, and continues in a whisper "[but gaol] is fucking awful." Nianthony later pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of his ex girlfriend and her new boyfriend, and is now serving a twenty five year sentence. Diddums. 

Later, we are introduced to a vile practice known as Gunning, which involves inmates masturbating in front of (and presumably aiming their effusion at) their female guards. Theroux naturally reacts with disgust, but again he fails to ask the pertinent question that naturally flows (if you'll pardon the pun) - what in the name of Christ are women doing working in an all-male gaol? Prison guards are unarmed, so they rely on physical strength and sheer numbers to control troublesome inmates. Could even several women deal with one strong man? What would happen to these women in the event of a riot or general breakdown in compliance doesn't bear thinking about. It of course does not even occur to Theroux, looking through his impeccably modern lens, to consider the absurdity and danger of women doing this job. 

Despite Theroux's inability to interview in a meaningful and probing way, it is striking just how large his personality looms in his documentaries. Like Michael Moore, Theroux has a tendency to make his films as much about himself as his subjects. Compare and contrast this with genuinely talented human interest documentarians, like Nick Broomfield and Werner Herzog, who only need to point the camera and poke gently, and their subjects open up. Theroux seems to get results out of his interviewees by annoying and insulting them, rather than through perceptive journalistic talent. Needless to say, he loses his mojo when attempting to mock people who might fight back. He fills the gaping voids in his films with his own clownery, which to be fair is humorous. But humour is a tool - how you use it is important. Jimmy Carr and Johnny Knoxville are funny too. Theroux doesn't go toe-to-toe with the mighty and evil, but smacks down the puny still further when lampooning, or offers nothing but tired left-wing cliché when being serious. He is nasty to the weak, and weak when he needs to be nasty. His films are entertaining, often funny, and well put together, but such misdirected talent is an aggravating factor to his badness, not a mitigating one.



Edit: the first publication of this post included a paragraph in which I claimed Theroux would not make a documentary about transgenderism, due to the political sensitivity of the issue. It has since been pointed out to me that he made a film entitled "Transgender Kids", in which he interviews transexual child patients at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center (UCSF Hospital). I regret the oversight and have removed the paragraph.