The many reminiscences about To Catch a Predator—prompted by Primetime, opening in theatres this weekend, and last year’s documentary, Predators—position TCaP as an idiosyncratic product of and for its time. The way TCaP went beyond popularity into cultural sensation demonstrates that it both reflected and emerged from whatever American culture was between November 11, 2004, and December 28, 2007.
The Atlantic provides a perfect example. It sets TCaP in the context of “the excesses and cruelties of the George W. Bush era, particularly on television… [t]he overarching theme was exposure, followed by ensuing cycles of shame, recrimination, and (often) profit.” Describing her experience watching Predators, author Sophie Gilbert offers: “We’re led to wonder what it means to capture the worst day of someone’s life on camera, how banal the preparation is, and how guilty [Predators director David] Osit is himself in re-airing the show’s footage.”
Reading that, you’d think Gilbert hasn’t spend any time on social media, digital media, or even print media in the last 10 years—maybe not since TCaP itself went off the air. Even more so when, in the final paragraph, she writes that Predator’s “presumption that the footage will land very differently than it did in 2004 [seems] to suggest progress.” But no, she is aware of what’s been going on, because later in that same paragraph she muses if the woman on “Coldplay’s kiss cam might have a very different read on how far we’ve actually come.”
I humbly offer this site, 5–6 notebooks, a couple external drives, and about 10% of the contacts in my phone as rebuttal to the suggestion that we’ve progressed beyond excesses and cruelties; that ordinary people are no longer subjected to cycles of exposure, shame, and recrimination for profit; and that there is any wonder on any side about capturing the worst day of someone’s life and broadcasting it.
What’s changed since 2007 are the details, not the base phenomenon: the means, not the ends.
It’s almost too on-the-nose that TCaP aired its final episode in the closing days of the year in which the iPhone launched (six months to the day earlier, in fact) and Twitter had its breakthrough at South by Southwest.
Smartphones and social media democratized public humiliation rituals, just as they did most other media output. You no longer needed the resources of NBC and a recurring spot on a weekly news magazine to vest yourself as society’s purifier, nor did you need to wait until the next segment to gratify your righteous voyeurism.
Daniel LaChance and Paul Kaplan recognize the key context to understand To Catch a Predator:
“In the 1980s and early 1990s, statistically rare instances of strangers abducting white children from public spaces and murdering them became highly publicized. This helped fuel a moral panic about the vulnerability of children, particularly as mothers were increasingly working outside of the home.
“The emergence of the internet generated a new kind of stranger danger: Now, online predators could reach through fiber-optic cables and groom children in their own homes.”
I’ve written several times here and said countless times elsewhere that 2020 was the peak year for cancelations because there were three overlapping moral panics: COVID, Black Lives Matter, and MeToo. To Catch a Predator was a product of its time because it perfectly capitalized on the overlap between two eras of moral panic, as LaChance and Kaplan explain. But there is nothing unique about public humiliation rising to meet the dominant moral panic (or three). That’s just supply and demand.
The Americans who made TCaP a ratings hit and proto-viral phenomenon (back when virality meant having IRL conversations in the subsequent days) weren’t any more cruel, prone to excess, or pro-vigilantism than Americans in other eras. They were just playing their role in surrendering to a moral panic. TCaP filled the need.
The narrative structure of each TCaP segment was, well, a bit perverted.
The cinematic climax of each episode ostensibly was the “takedown” and arrest outside the house. But the dramatic climax of each episode occurred around the halfway point, when Hansen emerges and the target goes through a rapid-fire sequence of facial expressions and verbal responses. That’s when you can almost hear the big musical cue—bum ba ba baaaaaaaaaa—and the viewers at home nearly spill their drinks and popcorn as they lurch forward in their seats “Gotcha!” “Oh that dog is going down!!!”
But the story was already over at those points. The deed as soon as the camera put the face to the name of the target. That’s when it was over for the target—they just didn’t know it yet. Like little kids, the audience liked knowing something that the other person didn’t for a few minutes, but they absolutely reveled in gloating that they knew the secret all along. Hansen’s entrance provided all sorts of release.
The denouement on the driveway wasn’t there to bring closure to the story. Dateline provided it to salve the audience, to reassure them that they were amongst the good guys. It wasn’t really vigilantism-cum-voyeurism. Dateline and Hansen were just helping the Boys in Blue take a monster-freak off the streets.
Rather than the dramatic confrontation, a more honest show would have Hansen striding into the room bedecked in flair, with a casino’s worth of lights and sounds going off as he says with a Shatner-level of over-the-top stage presence “And now let’s meet our tribute.” Think Stanley Tucci in The Hunger Games.
But a more honest Hansen would channel Russell Crowe turning to the audience, sword in hand, demanding “Are you not entertained?”
Remember the context of that scene in Gladiator, not just the meme. Maximus gave the audience more than they were used to. He made it too clear, too honest, and for a few seconds, it was too much. He challenged them to confront what they were all there for, and they responded by taking the one easy way out: cheering more lustily than ever, and they made him a star.
Digital and social media has removed the gatekeepers and middlemen, but the showmanship and theatrics are still there. Legacy media produce staid pieces eliminating people in service of the current moral panic(s), as do NGOs with their watchlists and dossiers. Their blades are still sharp and swinging, but their gravitas makes them seem surgical rather than medieval.
The entertainment is front and center, though, for Hansen’s prolific offspring. I saw an example of that this week, as an influencer literally danced as he digitally assassinated a young athlete. The influencer looks nothing like Hansen, but I have trouble telling them apart. I won’t link to the video, but if you know a little about me you’ll probably be able to figure out the situation and find it. If you see it, look at the comments, interactions, and articles written about it and ask yourself: Are they not entertained?
Just of the cancelations I’ve tracked, I can list about a half-dozen suicides and about an equal number of deaths of despair. Then there are the men and women who came close, and the years taken off lives due to the physical and mental ill health as a result of public humiliation and exile.
To Catch a Predator resulted in one man’s suicide. NBC still aired that episode—as a two-parter, in fact. The scandal and the subsequent lawsuit by the target’s sister contributed to the show ending, but not for a full year. Ruling on a pretrial motion, US District Court Judge Denny Chin wrote: “NBC created a substantial risk of suicide or other harm, and that it engaged in conduct so outrageous and extreme that no civilized society should tolerate it.”
Since To Catch a Predator has gone off the air, our society has turned public humiliation vigilantism into a mass participation sport. If we’re looking for an era to compare ourselves to, the “excesses and cruelties” of the mid-00s are too civilized. We’d do better to look to the era of Maximus and Commodus. The show is less bloody, but it’s always on and the body count is comparable. Are we not entertained?