What I like most about Primetime is that, unlike other biopics, it doesn’t try to offer a “neutral” narrative. A neutral biopic is hardly possible anyway: it either glorifies or condemns the person whose story it tells. Primetime doesn’t fall into this trap. Its aim is clear: to explore the dark sides of a man who acted with the noble purpose of catching pedophiles and who was loved by millions. These dark sides don’t change the fact that Chris Hansen did very valuable work in his time. But they remind us that Hansen is also only human, and that what he did was, after all, show business. Believing that his only motivation was to rid society of these filthy people isn’t very realistic either. No one is entirely good or entirely bad. This is a familiar truth, but at times Primetime approaches it in a way that edges toward a nihilism built on the idea that everyone is actually bad.
Another thing I like about the film is how successful it is at capturing the television aesthetic of the era. In a time when everything was artificial and sloppy in terms of production, it’s almost a relief to see such a carefully made production with such good cinematography. The film’s visual world goes beyond recreating the television aesthetic of the period; it also matches the artificiality of the story itself. After all, what we’re watching here isn’t just one man’s story, but also real people’s lives being turned into a spectacle watched in front of a television.
Primetime is based on Luke Dittrich’s article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die.” The film is based on a real case in which Bill Conradt, an assistant district attorney who had sexually explicit online chats with someone underage, was caught and subsequently killed himself. Unlike the targets in Chris Hansen’s similar cases, Conradt didn’t show up at the house for the meeting. Hansen and his team then broke their own rules and went to his home. The police operation that followed ended with Conradt shooting himself.
Of course, the issue here isn’t that such a person shot himself. The controversy and anger the film has generated stem from the idea that child abusers are being exonerated while the man who caught them is being demonized. But the issue runs a little deeper than that, and Primetime pursues exactly these questions. The real issue is that all of these events, that is, child abuse, have been turned into an entertainment show that people watch while eating popcorn in front of the TV. Personally, I have no problem with that. Exposing such people in public and humiliating them is one of the most fitting punishments for them. In fact, Hansen’s famous “pizza guy” episode is one of my favorites. But enjoying watching these programs and reflecting on the moral problems they raise are not mutually exclusive.
There is no single truth in the world. There aren’t only our truths, and the world isn’t made up of just black and white; there are shades of gray too. In fact, in the social media world we live in, where everyone voices rather wild opinions, we’re in an age where, beyond black, white and gray, we can hear everyone’s different thoughts like a rainbow. Even so, criticizing someone’s methods on a particular subject doesn’t mean defending the people they stand against. Questioning what Chris Hansen did doesn’t require defending child abusers, and acknowledging the valuable work he did over the years doesn’t mean exempting him from criticism. I think this is where Primetime’s real achievement lies. Instead of telling a story in which the audience can easily pick a side, the film asks us to question how even the things we believe to be right can turn into a spectacle.
If nothing else, Primetime asks difficult moral questions worth thinking about. It makes you angry, it makes you hate it. It offers enough to think about for hours. A film that manages to do all this is, to me, a true work of art.
I’ve said before that I don’t like biopics, because these films take a public figure and make up things about them that we don’t know to be true, and engage in speculation. Primetime does this too. But this time, it does something brilliant: it treats this public figure like a canvas and tells the story of the fractures he caused in society, and his effects on it, through him. Hansen here is not only a person whose story is being told; he is also a tool used to question society’s understanding of justice, morality and entertainment. That’s why evaluating Primetime merely as a biopic about Chris Hansen would miss the film’s real point. I think Chris Hansen should calm down about this film by now. But who can deny that the man is a true television man? Today, who else would watch a film about themselves in a theater and then make a show discussing it?
