Louis Theroux: Surviving America’s Most Hated Family, review: a rare misstep from this normally pin-sharp documentarian
It’s not often one thinks of Louis Theroux and the word “dull” in the same sentence. But last night’s Louis Theroux: Surviving America’s Most Hated Family (BBC Two), in which he paid a return visit to the loathsome group that is the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, was deathly dull and felt like a misstep by this much-loved documentary maker.
Once the principal joy of Theroux films was that they took us to places and people whose attitudes were so out-on-the-edge, there was no other place to witness such stomach-heaving extremity. Sadly, in our new age of increasing political division, Twitter-trolling and unfiltered multimedia harangues, the novelty of seeing people of limited intelligence, narrow moral focus and unfathomable wells of hatred towards their fellow human beings has worn rather thin.
The issue was that there was really nothing new here. In two previous films Theroux had already highlighted the abhorrent hate-speech espoused by these raving religious fanatics whose sole purpose is to trudge around their home city with placards designed to horribly offend everyone on the planet except themselves – regularly even turning up at funerals to hurl abuse at the bereaved. So returning for a third bite at this rankest of cherries was not only unnecessary, it provided them with a platform to preach more hate.
Much of Theroux’s focus was on Megan Phelps, who had left the group since his last film and – via a TED Talk that went viral – is now one of their fiercest critics. Her experience offered strong evidence of how insularity and toxic bonds of loyalty enable such groups to exist. But even here, Theroux went wrong, withholding some potentially distressing news from her until a moment of maximum emotional impact, and lingering long on her shocked and tearful reaction. Admittedly, Theroux was transparent about the risk of crossing a line. But that awareness only made it look still more exploitative.
In the end, the dullness of this film was of the seen-it-all-before variety and a shoulder-sagging disappointment that the normally pin-sharp Theroux could believe there was anything – Megan Phelps excepted – interesting left to say about this bunch.
