Louis Theroux’s latest documentary on alcoholism confirms the fact that he has become an interesting broadcaster. He has grown up. This was already clear from his last couple of films from America, on a secure mental hospital, and on transgender children. This might sound excessive, but he has become capable of expressing a more nuanced humanity than the average television journalist.
In his callow youth he was fun to watch, but overdid the sneering ironic act. He kept a straight face in order to allow idiots to expose themselves. Such an approach is tainted by a sort of self-righteousness: let’s look down on these ridiculous human specimens.
Then he began to focus on fairly ordinary people with interesting struggles. And he paid attention, gave them space. And so a powerful ambiguity crept in. This is the flippant sneery presenter, patiently attending to some human suffering, as if he deeply cares. So is he inviting us to sneer at this crack-addicted single mum, or is he inviting us to care about her? He keeps the question open: his manner in talking to these people is half-ironic. Look, I’m doing my careful concerned face, he says. Look, now I’m doing fake jollity, pretending to have a good laugh with this man who killed his parents. And, strangely, there is more humanity in this ambiguity than in a straight journalistic persona. Why? Because he represents us, whose motives are mixed: we are moved by our fellow humans’ suffering, but our hearts are not pure. We are, to some extent, faking it – privately thinking what freaks they are.
So Theroux has learned to dramatise, to externalise, the liberal mind, which is moved by human suffering, but also has to admit that total compassion is impossible, that caring is a sort of act. This is not cynical; it’s the honest face of humanism.
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