To Understand a Predator

“To Catch a Predator” aired on NBC from 2004 to 2007, first as a segment for the network’s “Dateline” news program, and later as a stand-alone prime-time series. It wasn’t long into its run of 20 episodes that the show became a cultural phenomenon, creating a new subgenre of reality police programming in which the cops didn’t enter until the end. Most of the run time was dedicated to the interaction among nervous decoys, unsuspecting would-be pedophiles and the star of the show, interrogator-host Chris Hansen.  

The show’s faithful audience of millions included a number of survivors of child sexual abuse, for whom it promised some sense of closure and understanding. Among them was filmmaker David Osit, a veteran director of documentaries whose films have covered everything from the mayor of the West Bank city of Ramallah to Indonesian sulfur miners. Osit’s newest film, “Predators,” is his attempt to understand the controversial show’s appeal, its legacy and why it remains in our collective memory nearly two decades after its last episode. 

I spoke with him over Zoom before the film’s theatrical release on Sept. 19. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

Truthdig: What is it about “To Catch a Predator” that makes it such a cultural touchstone? 

David Osit: It’s hard to even compare it to anything. It was a show that aired under 20 times over the course of three years, and it’s still common knowledge for three generations of people walking down the street in the United States. Everyone knows what it is, even if they haven’t seen it. At its height, it was just the biggest cultural phenomenon, because no one had seen anything like it before, and in some ways, you haven’t seen anything like it since. But the model that it created has spun off into a thousand different directions, particularly the model of journalism and law enforcement creating entertainment together. It started with the show. They were able to do these things all in the name of journalism. They didn’t have to get release forms because it was journalistic intent, they didn’t have to really be subject to moral interrogation by a wider community, because it was for journalistic intent, and it was inside the wrapper of being under a legacy franchise news program with a very high threshold of plausible deniability.

You’ve said that you don’t think this show could be made again. Why?

The formula has endured and is now stronger than it ever was under the original show. More people watch the spinoffs of “To Catch a Predator” than ever watched the original show. But I think it couldn’t happen again, because — bear with me on this one — back then, the mainstream was accepting of this type of programming, and a small minority had to keep quiet about any dissent they might feel for fear of being labeled a defender of child predators. Nowadays, we have inverted that dialogue, where people can say, “Oh, the show is so messed up.” But then you have a minority of people who will keep quiet about the fact that they love the show. 

And I think this really was obviously on display in 2016 with [President Donald] Trump’s election, and continued to be on display that if you have a certain type of thinking, just keep it to the internet and to yourself. When the show was on TV, it was so easy to live in a siloed community on the internet and to be corroborated by everyone who agrees with you. Back then, the silo was just the monoculture where everybody was just like, “Oh yeah, like, the show’s great.” And you had to be quiet about your dissent of it. But now you don’t have to be quiet at all about your opinion in America. You can just find your community. 

The most interesting people in the film for me are the decoys, the child actors who have grown up to be adults. What was it like interacting with them?

It was fascinating. There’s parts of it that didn’t even make the film, because I wanted the film to hover around a sense of neutrality and give the audience permission to find their own center. I wanted to give people a kind of an even playing field of just the facts. But there are some things I heard that, I knew that if they were included in the film, would really just set you off in the wrong direction right away. Some of the decoys told me on camera that they’d never seen a photograph of male genitalia, or there were times when they were just in a chat room and they’re 18. They’re only two years older than the kids they’re playing. The line’s really quite fuzzy, and it gets fuzzier, as the film goes on, with regards to legality.

And they’ve all grown up to be very different people .…

The film shows how all the decoys had relatively different experiences in terms of what they gleaned from the show, or how they feel about their time on the show. It’s not a monolith, which was one of the reasons they were the first people I wanted to speak with, because I was imagining that they would have some of the more unique memories and recollections of their time on the show. We’re also the same age. I was their age watching the show when I watched it back as a teen. Little did I know at the time that I would end up, in some ways, being part of the film’s story. I think the fact that we were the same age was helpful to think about how to approach speaking to them about their time on the show.

Why do you think the show got so popular?

It’s why things like QAnon are so popular. It’s the idea that you can be involved in the true-crime story. The police, who you respect, aren’t doing enough to stop this issue, and civilians can do more. And we have phones in our pockets. We can do whatever we want. We can be involved in the world in a way that we never could before. Who needs democracy when you have the internet? You have all this access to power that people never had throughout history, it’s a great way to be empowered, for people who otherwise feel unempowered or disempowered. 

I guess it also creates this veneer of safety?

When you go to these true-crime conferences, you see the populations of people there, and it’s 90 to 95% female attendees. A lot of merch tables giving out rape whistles and survival equipment like hammers to break open a window if your car goes underwater. Everyone’s excited for being prepared, being in charge, being capable and being able to make sure you can protect yourself. And I think it’s because people fear and feel more and more afraid, not necessarily because of any political reason, but because we have an eroded social floor in this country that can’t catch people. We don’t have infrastructure to rescue people. We just have incarceration. So then we need these shows to feel like there’s some sort of social component to the malaise that we feel societally.

Were you ever concerned that there could be an argument made that this film is trying to protect or defend predators?

No, because I don’t feel that way. I don’t feel like the film’s about defending child predators. It’s not arguing for a defense of them, or even for excusing them. I think the film is actually more curious about how we treat people. How does someone become entertainment? How does someone’s life become entertainment? And how do we decide how to treat people in a society that we all share, how we decide some people aren’t worth humanity. 

When did you get Chris Hansen involved? How was interacting with him?

I spoke to him relatively early on in production, and we had great conversations over the course of a year or so. I respect a lot of things about him. I don’t agree with everything he does, and he doesn’t agree with everything I say and do, but he genuinely believes in what he’s doing. He works really hard. For me as a filmmaker, I have to spend time thinking about how I can relate to somebody and be curious about them rather than focusing on what I can’t relate to. I feel that way about everybody I film with. There’s things that Chris and I will disagree on forever, but are we that different? We both believe in what we’re doing. We’re both making film work and reportage. We’re both incentivized to make our films better, to get our audiences to watch, to make them entertaining. We both have maybe different bars about what is right and wrong. We both maybe have different bars about what we would do to the people that appear in the work that we make, and what’s acceptable to us. But ultimately, I’m not sure we’re that different. It’s just what stories we tell and what stories we choose not to tell. 

At the end of the film, someone in your crew asks, “Did you get everything you needed?” Did you?

I won’t tell you, because the point, I think, is the question, not the answer. I don’t accept that a documentary, or that any film, has to provide you with answers, and I think that’s partly why the film ends, literally, with a question. I think that a film’s job is not to imagine if I had the answer to how to solve child predation as a documentary filmmaker, that I’m just sitting on that knowledge for two years. That’s not my job. My job is to challenge an audience and to make them feel things that they wouldn’t feel otherwise, and to ask questions that I don’t think they get asked enough. Not to change your mind, but maybe change your soul.

Do you want them to feel a bit guilty about liking the show?

No, I don’t want them to feel anything specific. I just want them to feel. I crave the experience of people watching a film without their mind made up, who have to be challenged, and who then have to look at life a little bit differently when they leave the cinema or when they turn off the TV. And I think that this film has a lot of questions and a lot of provocations in it, and some will land for people and some won’t. But that’s on them, not me.