cal kusiak

A frustrating watch, and not really in the way you'd hope it would be: 1) It fails to ask any questions about copaganda. Chris Hansen's new network is explicitly reactionary backlash to the BLM movement, but the film doesn't care to ask whether or not pedo-stings are ethical, just whether or not it's ethical to record them. 2) But then, it also never really reckons with it's premise of "should we be recording this". For something so rooted in the voyeurism of violence, the doc is not about the appropriateness of recording and publication of the committal of crimes. Rather, it tells us it's trying to figure out why pedos are pedos and is upset that TCAP never provided an answer. 3) Ultimately, the show asks us to sympathize with predators, and the only victim we're meant to sympathize with is the filmmaker, who posits himself as a voice for all victims. Whether or not that's the intent, the form of the documentary tells us that Hansen is a self-serving bad guy (which my be true) but does so at the cost of elevating predators to the levels of victims themselves. Sure, there's nuance with the 18yo who tried to meet up with a 15yo. But the film also asks us to empathize with a self-professed sex addict who gets all weepy and threatens to kill himself when he gets caught. The doc plays into oppression olympics and decides that pedos, especially the ones who are stung before they can actually harm a child, are higher on the pity hierarchy than presupposed scumbag journalists or profit-driven YouTubers. It can't just say "all of this has nuance" it HAS to ask us to pick a side. On top of that, I'm inclined to think that entertainment examining entertainment is inherently kind of boring. And I'm especially suspicious of documentaries where the documentarian puts themselves and their "search for answers" in the middle of the subject matter. It reeks of the kind of self-serious narcissistic navel-gazing that belongs on Substack, not in cinema (be a fool, not a eunuch) Anyway, it's a rich subject. There is a lot to critique about the way YouTube stingers profit off of violence as entertainment; and about whether or not that violence actually helps children/ victims; and about the fascist culture that declares guilty until proven innocent; and about the pleasure we take in seeing violence inflicted on real people (justly or unjustly); and about the boundaries between legal punishment and social punishment and whether humiliation or ostracization can (or should) fill the gaps that the justice system can't. But this doc isn't really about that, and draws into question what it is actually trying to say

sex as the culmination of desire, yearning, and love. here, pasolini synthesizes what he explores in *The Decameron *and *Canterbury Tales — “*sex as something worthy of farce” and “sex as something to be feared” — arriving at a climactic consummation of “sex as something to value and cherish”. unlike the other two parts of his trilogy, *Arabian Nights* is mellower, more restrained — and yet so much bigger and so much more serious. at times meditative and transcendent, at other times grounded and horny. it’s certainly the most mysterious of the three, and the most layered, and the least obvious. i can’t point to anything specific, but this also feels like the most personal of the three — the most sacred and vulnerable