Day 27: Tabloid (2010)

I cannot tell a lie; the daily blog thing is starting to burn me out, just a little. It'd be wonderful to go a day without having to watch any films at all. Still, not long to go now.

In the meantime, yesterday I went for something of a palate cleanser in the form of Errol Morris' Tabloid. It's another documentary, but  a very different beast indeed from the likes of the two I've already covered. Instead, Tabloid does exactly what it says in the title, providing an hour and a half of cheap and dirty thrills for the price of a small sliver of your self-respect.

Back in 1977, the UK was cheerfully scandalised by coverage of the manacled Mormon. The story was media catnip - a former American beauty queen had kidnapped her Mormon ex from his mission and stolen him away to a cottage in darkest Devon, where she shackled him to a bed and apparently did her damnedest to get him to impregnate her, allegedly against his will.

Tabloid is the story of that beauty queen, told in her own words and backed up by interviews with newspapermen who covered the tale. It's a breezy, sleazy tale that delights me every time I watch, chiefly because of the singular charisma of its subject, one Joyce McKinney, who combines the eloquence of a born storyteller with a truly astonishing lack of self-awareness. In her eyes, she's very much the misunderstood heroine of her own life story, and she wants us all to know.

Where it starts getting complicated is that it would be easy to dismiss McKinney as an entertaining fruit loop. To do so, however, would be to label Tabloid a modern incarnation of the Victorian freak show  - conceivably, it might be, although that levels some fairly hefty accusations at both Morris and the viewing audience. When McKinney claims she was simply rescuing her lover from the dangerous cult that had brainwashed him, though, rational thought dictates that we have to have at least some sympathy with her plight. There can be no doubt, either, that she was treated appallingly by the British press, who were even more misogynistic forty years ago than they are now.

Just because somebody is deluded and self-serving, does this make it acceptable for us to point and laugh? I'm honestly not sure. Actually, no, that's untrue; I know the answer, it's just that to state it out loud would be to condemn myself - watching Tabloid as a sad expose of the exploitation of a damaged woman wouldn't be half so viscerally enjoyable.

Thought-provoking stuff...