'Predators' and the Hidden Cost of Emotional Catharsis

There’s a reason why we use “pedophile” as a synonym for “monster.” Even in crimes involving murder, we can sometimes try to see our way through to the larger context. But to prey on children and sexually exploit them has no mitigating circumstances. Certainly, in the case of the popular NBC series To Catch a Predator, which ran from 2004 to 2007, the societal value seems clear-cut. Adult men using the Internet to prey on those they believed to be minors doesn’t have a moral out. What makes David Osit’s brilliant documentary Predators so incisive is that he’s not trying to hedge on sexual predators. A victim of sexual abuse when he was a child, Osit turns the camera on To Catch a Predator and then society at large, asking if we’re looking for justice or easy emotional catharsis without considering the larger ramifications of turning law enforcement into entertainment.

Osit breaks his story down into three parts. The first part looks at the massive success of To Catch a Predator. For those unfamiliar with the show, NBC’s Dateline and reporter Chris Hansen worked with a group called Perverted-Justice and then with local law enforcement to lure out online predators and stage sting operations. The second part examines the copycat YouTubers who took the format and repeated it despite lacking the resources and connections that a major news program like Dateline provides. Finally, Osit comes back to Hansen, asking him to reexamine the show’s impact as well as his current work that attempts to replicate the “success” of To Catch a Predator.

What makes the documentary so effective throughout is that Osit doesn’t seek to do a simple takedown of To Catch a Predator or the larger trappings of reality TV masquerading as journalism. There’s a genuine concern to understand the appeal beyond the obvious: “That monster got what was coming to him.” If we want to look at that satisfaction, then we need to understand everything that goes into such an outcome. While the audience can get the thrill of seeing a pedophile publicly shamed and arrested, Osit inquires if this is truly justice. As one former district attorney notes, the participation of To Catch a Predator actually makes prosecution more difficult. Although the chat logs are incriminating enough to warrant an arrest, the televised sting element muddies the evidence. Hansen isn’t law enforcement. Telling someone they’re “free to leave” isn’t judicial process. If you confess something to a TV journalist, that’s not the same as confessing to a law enforcement officer who has read you your Miranda Rights. For the same reason we don’t let victims or their families serve on juries in their own cases, emotional satisfaction needs to take a backseat to the public interest. Osit understands the desire to say, “To hell with this guy’s civil rights,” but the only way a justice system works is if everyone is treated equally, not some singled out for the sake of entertainment.

Predators gets particularly dystopian in its second act as it follows YouTuber “Skeet Hansen,” who consciously emulates To Catch a Predator and Hansen’s TV persona. It’s extremely strange to see Skeet try to affect Hansen’s demeanor while saying the tagline, “You’ve just been skeeted.” If To Catch a Predator was seriously blurring the line between entertainment and justice, YouTubers like Skeet blow it up entirely. Even by his own admission, Skeet seems uninterested in any larger value beyond the entertainment provided. “He’s a journalist and I’m a YouTuber who does it for clicks,” Skeet says of his idol, Hansen. Skeet also outlines his various tricks for getting around YouTube’s filters of phony law enforcement, noting that just adding a red-and-blue siren effect is enough to create the illusion that this is officially sanctioned rather than elaborate public shaming.

Because YouTubers like Skeet strip away any remaining professionalism presented by To Catch a Predator, they also exaggerate the larger problem, which is that the audience is looking for emotional satisfaction in the moment rather than serving the public interest. Skeet can publicly shame someone who falls into his trap, but if the chances for prosecution under To Catch a Predator were dubious even when law enforcement was involved during production, they’re even less likely under the auspices of a YouTuber and his fictional task force. What we have here far more resembles frontier justice in a digital age rather than anything we would aspire to as a civilized society. And if we’re willing to throw out what’s civilized because it’s more satisfying to watch a pedophile weep in shame, then what is our relationship not only to justice but to victims? Do we want a society where kids are safer, or merely one where we can feel superior to society’s worst members?

Osit, who has every reason to feel emotional given his past, demands intellectualization from the audience, not as a matter of sympathizing with sexual predators, but asking what kind of society we want to have that’s driven by broadcast vigilante justice. To Catch a Predator wants the audience to believe that justice has been served, but the cameras stop rolling after the sting. The program isn’t interested in why these sexual predators exist or even their existence outside the narrow bounds of “stranger danger” online predation. In the documentary’s final section, Osit asks Hansen if his recurring question to predators, “Help me understand,” ever gets a satisfying answer. Hansen, despite asking that question to dozens of pedophiles, says their behavior still escapes his understanding. There’s nothing that can justify the act of preying on a child, and the societal explorations are beyond the scope of his narrow, televised sting largely conducted for entertainment purposes. So the question “Help me understand” isn’t meant as ga enuine inquiry but to draw a line between the predators and the rest of us.

The larger concern isn’t that society is enabling predators (although given America’s voting habits, maybe it is), but that it’s creating incentives where justice for victims becomes secondary to entertainment value. For those who defend these programs, they see it as an empowering way to live. But Osit, who understands the temptation of that feeling, asks what kind of power we really have if everyone is filming, everyone is under surveillance, and then justifying their actions after the fact. That’s not a society that’s concerned with protecting children. That’s a society of voyeurs looking for another cheap thrill.

Predators is now playing in limited release. Click here to see when it will come to a theater near you.