Albert Tawil’s essay on the documentary Capturing the Friedmans (2003) illustrates the value of asking just the right question. The film tells the story of Arnold and Jesse Friedman, who were accused of sexually molesting boys in the 1980s, and ends ambiguously, inviting viewers to ask if they were guilty or not guilty. Albert, however, pursues a more subtle and urgent question: Why did the Friedmans videotape themselves throughout their ordeal?
Drawing on Susan Sontag’s seminal book On Photography, Albert explores the complex and ultimately unstable relationship among camera, subject, and memory. He works from different angles, analyzing the Friedmans’ varying motivations rather than attempting to simplify their moral positions. Albert judiciously selects and interprets evidence from the film and, in a final act of intellectual balance, suggests that the Friedmans are no different from us: we are all chronic self-documenters, “creating a reality that otherwise would not have existed.”
— MARISA MILANESE