Tabloid (2011) - Review in The Rumpus Today!

My review of Errol Morris' new documentary Tabloid (2011) went easier on the director and his latest film than I think my heart had in mind.  I walked out of the film totally irked by the fact that a male filmmaker devised a film about the nature of exploitation while exploiting his very own subject, who happens to be female.  It seemed unjust to me that the only one speaking on behalf of this woman was that woman herself.

Meanwhile, her story is contradicted by a number of tabloid journalists and a few male associates she knew in the past.  It seems way too easy to malign this woman who already seemed at a terrible disadvantage.  It's almost like Morris got joy out of labeling Joyce McKinney as the unseemly figure she was made out to be in 1977, when a stack of professional nude photographs emerged in the media.

Isn't there something innately tragic about a woman who falls back on the porn/nude modeling industry without the media and Morris bringing further insult to it?  Later, McKinney is splayed across tabloid covers with no regard for what perhaps brought her to such extreme measures (that's the real nature of tabloid journalism); and later still Morris profiles her with silly frivolity here in Tabloid.

Which is not to say the film isn't capably constructed.  Which is not to say the movie didn't move quickly and hold your attention at every turn.  Which is not to say I don't think Morris has an actual interest in McKinney and the business and nature of the tabloids.  I only find it offensive that his interest is framed in way that's so completely oblivious to his role as the dominant male dictating how this story about a woman plays out.  It's a movie to me that's contentedly ignorant of the boy's club it comes from.

My much gentler handling of this movie is here, at The Rumpus.