The Joy of Pain (19 page)

The site for the meeting has been rigged inside and out with as many as 17 hidden cameras and microphones. A young-looking actress, made to look like the girl or boy the man is expecting to meet, greets the man and invites him into a patio area or inside the house, typically the kitchen. After a brief conversation that ends with the decoy stepping out of the room for a moment, the man is surprised by the host of the show, Chris Hansen—who enters usually through the door that the decoy has just exited. Often, Hansen begins his conversation in an ironic way, as if his surprise presence is part of an
expected
flow of events. “What's going on?” he might say. Or, if the man has brought some food and drink for the anticipated meeting, Hansen might say, “Going to have some fun?” Hansen asks the man to take a seat, a request that is usually obeyed instantly, and then he begins questioning the man's reasons for being in the house. Viewers already know some basic details of the online conversation, and when the man almost invariably lies about his intentions, viewers follow along as Hansen confronts the lies. Hansen typically holds a copy of what appears to be the full transcript of the online chat the man has had with the decoy. He will read passages from the transcript that seem to contradict the man's claims while viewers watch the man hesitating and squirming as he tries to reconcile the transcript statements with his current claims. Once Hansen seems satisfied the conversation has run its course, he announces who he is and why he's there, using variants of this phrase:

“I have to tell you that I am Chris Hansen with
Dateline NBC
and we are doing a story about computer predators/adults who try to meet teens online for sex.”
¹⁷

As Hansen reveals his identity, two
Dateline
employees with large, shoulder-held TV cameras and others holding long boom mikes emerge through entryways and angle for close views of how these men react. Of course, these men have already grasped that things are not going according to plan. Most realize that they are in big trouble. Some even recognize Hansen from earlier episodes of the show. But it is when Hansen makes his announcement and the cameras appear that the full enormity of what is coming down usually hits them. Some men immediately try to exit the room, covering their faces with their hands or by pulling up their shirts. Some collapse to the floor. When a man makes it outside, he finds himself surrounded by a group of police officers with guns raised, shrieking commands, who usually shove the man to the ground, handcuff him from the back, and then lead him away to certain arrest and arraignment. These men—instant pariahs—are surely near the bottom of fortune's wheel. With their reputations obliterated, they have, to borrow from Shakespeare, lost the immortal part of themselves, and what remains is bestial.
¹⁸

While it aired new episodes, the show was a dependable sweeps-week draw for NBC. The reruns, some in more elaborated and less edited formats, continue to attract audiences. Chris Hansen has become an icon and a go-to expert on online predatory behavior—even testifying before Congress on the issue. The show is so well known that some of its repeated features have become part of popular culture, most notably the point in each exchange when the men realize they are to be humiliated on national TV, their lives wrecked in the most public of ways. The phrase, “I am Chris Hansen” is now recognized to the point of frequent parody, appearing in some form in shows ranging from
The Simpsons
to
30 Rock
.
¹⁹

As Steven Winn of
Slate Magazine
put it so aptly, the show has a “queasily transfixing” appeal.
²⁰
There are a number of reasons why. Clearly, some viewers enjoy learning about the dirty secrets of others. On the grand stage of the 21st-century public square, the show is gossip writ large. There is certainly a pornographic element in the details of the online chats between the men and the decoys.
²¹
Little is left to the imagination. And because this material is
presented in the context of what appears to be a highly
deserved
sting, many viewers can obscure their awareness of any voyeuristic and pornographic gratifications by being distracted by righteous disgust. Again, as I stressed in
Chapters 5
and
6
, deserved misfortunes create a direct route to
schadenfreude
. But, as with the appeal of watching William Hung and the other less talented
American Idol
contestants, we also know that a big part of the
comic
pleasure likely results from the satisfaction of downward comparisons, spiked with humiliation. And
Predator
seems to take this satisfaction to another level. How else could Jimmy Kimmel say this when introducing Chris Hansen as a guest for his late night TV show?

Our next guest is host of the funniest comedy on television. It's called
To Catch a Predator
. … If you've never seen it, it's like
Punk'd
for pedophiles. It's a great show. … Please say hello to Chris Hansen.
²²

Predator
may help us feel better about ourselves, but this is through another person's extreme humiliation. How is it that the producers of
Predator
are able to get away with humiliating someone so mercilessly on national TV, let alone serving up almost wall-to-wall opportunities for raw voyeuristic and pornographic fulfillment? How is it that they can trust that most people will find it agreeable to see these men brought down so low and exposed in such a vulgar, grubby glare—without being troubled by guilt?

The title of the show tells us a lot. Viewers watch with the operating assumption that the men who appear are “predators”—classified into a squalid category of humanity from the start. There are few labels held with deeper disgust, fear, and contempt than a “sexual predator” or “pedophile,” even though the actual category of behavior is broad and ranges in degree and in cure.
²³
Taking sexual advantage of a child ranks at or near the top of most cultures' lists of immoral behaviors. It is not only repugnant, but it also suggests an unalterable defect, a moral leprosy, a placing of the person outside the circle of humanity. Even among criminals, molesting a child is usually regarded with a singular disgust and probably boosts the self-esteem of the average inmate—“Yes, I killed a man, but I'm no pedophile.”
²⁴
Sex offenders are at special risk for physical
assault in prison as a result. Unlike even felons convicted of violent crimes, those convicted of child molestation are put on criminal registries and Web sites. Letters are sent out to neighbors when they move into a neighborhood, and they are often unable to live within 1,000 feet of schools.

Predator
does nothing to alter these perceptions. Douglas McCollam, an attorney and contributing writer for
Columbia Journalism Review
, argues that the label “predator” alone creates immediate images in many viewers' minds of a “drooling, trench-coated sex fiend hanging out at the local playground with a bag full of candy.”
²⁵
Because of high-profile examples of child abductions, such as the Polly Klaas case, people's fears are easily roused.
²⁶
These understandable worries grant the show considerable leeway. There seems little need to treat such people with the basic respect owed to human beings. Not only do they deserve humiliation, but they
must
be caught and then humiliated as a way of
deterring
this vile behavior. This must help explain why viewers find the humiliation of these men so pleasing—and entertaining. After all, these men, these
predators
, showed up with the clear intent to have sexual contact with young girls or boys. Where is the defense for this? Humiliation is a just start of their punishment, a fitting prelude to a jail sentence.

Gone are the days of public hangings, stocks, and pillories. Modern sensibilities lead us to resist the idea that we could deliberately take pleasure in seeing others humiliated—as least as official policy.
²⁷
Yet these sensibilities seem to remain inert in the case of people who molest children. This means that the producers of
Predator
have an effective firewall against easy criticism when the show humiliates these men, clearing all involved from guilty feelings for participating in this process. The crystalline sense of deservingness creates a clear path to
schadenfreude
free of moral clutter.

It is hard to overstate the contempt most people have for those who molest children. It is so deep and reflexive that showing any sympathy for these men risks contaminating the defender with a nasty stench. I feel this risk keenly. I have read many commentaries on
Predator
, and no writer fails to include a phrase emphasizing disgust over the category of behavior linked with these men, lest even implied criticism of those involved with the show be misconstrued. McCollam raises credible concerns about the ethics of the show, but even he notes, “Let's concede up front that this is an unsympathetic bunch of
would-be perverts.”
²⁸
Truly, “predators” are a reviled category of humanity—the idea of viewing them in less than damning terms has potentially tainting effects on one who would do so.

Even if viewers are inclined to doubt the full deservingness of the humiliations, the show does little to further these inclinations. Although it may seem that the evidence against these men is being provided in a fair and objective fashion, in fact, viewers get only an edited version of the online chat and of the interaction between Hansen and the men. The average episode contains about 10 interactions. Some of the chats extended for days; others for less than an hour. At best, viewers learn only a few exchanged lines of dialogue, and many of those selected are sexually charged.
Dateline
claims that the men always initiate the sexual material and suggest the initial meeting, but the development of this stage is rarely laid out in full. There is little room for fine distinctions here, and viewers have to trust the producers in these and other matters. And there is little in how the program evolves that disrupts this structure and causes one to distrust the narrative themes. The chat conversations, when they are described, are often typed on the screen as if they are happening live. These recreations may exaggerate the implications of the written content and heighten their effects on viewers. The material selected is usually so disgusting (and “titillating”) and incriminating on the face of it that anything else that might have been said that might allow viewers to see the men in a more positive light seems beside the point. Furthermore, Hansen always has a big ace up his sleeve: No matter what the apparent extenuating circumstances might be, no matter what excuses the men might have, the plain fact is that they showed up at a place expecting to have some sort of sexual contact with an underage person. There seems no cause to be distracted by trivial details that suggest a more nuanced view of the “predator's” intentions, responsibility, and blameworthiness.

Hansen has a huge advantage over these men as he steps into the room. Hansen knows what their apparent intentions are, as do viewers, and these men
do not know
that he knows (and they surely do not know that a national audience will also know). Hansen uses this advantage to make these men look foolish, ridiculous, or worse—dialing up the humiliation and the
schadenfreude.

There are many deft touches enhanced by the editing process that add to the potential for
schadenfreude
. One case involved a prominent doctor who carried himself in a refined way compared with most of the other men. The sting in this case was situated in the backyard patio of a house in a suburban neighborhood. The decoy appeared to have made a pitcher of crushed ice lemonade, and she suggested that he pour her a drink while she went to change clothes. As he slanted the pitcher, the ice held for a moment and then avalanched down, overloading the glass and splattering. The man tried to maintain his cool. This small comic moment at the doctor's expense added entertainment value to the bigger drama that began when the doctor looked around for a towel, only to spot
Dateline
's camera crew. He immediately turned, put on his sunglasses in a feckless instinctive move to hide his identity, and raced out of the patio. When he got to the driveway of the house, three police officers swarmed, guns drawn in his direction, directing him to the ground. He was pushed to the cement pavement and handcuffed behind his back.
²⁹

It was an extraordinary sequence with few unrecorded moments. In addition to the police officers, other people also came into view. One man held a large TV camera over his shoulder and moved within a few feet to the doctor's right. A second man moved in from the right. Why these extra cameras? After all, there were fixed, hidden cameras already covering every square inch of space (as the editing shows). Might not these added cameras cause viewers to start wondering whether law enforcement is getting too cozy with the entertainment goals of
Dateline
? However, if the point of the show and secret of its appeal are to humiliate for entertainment purposes, the host of cameras amplifies the sense of excruciating humiliation. With the next edited shot, there was a close-up of the doctor's reactions (some moments after he had been allowed to get back on his feet). This shot showed him protesting, “I wasn't doing anything … oh man, I wasn't doing anything!” From about two feet away, there was a shot of his face as he seems to be half crying. Then, there was a series of edited moments taking viewers through the process of the doctor being questioned by police. Hansen's voice provided steady commentary, at once clinically detached (“The police ask routine, personal questions but the doctor appears distracted”), sometimes expressing disbelief (“It's hard to believe that someone of his stature would show up to meet a girl who said she
was 13”), always with an air of moral superiority free of qualms about the tactics being used.
³⁰