thin

there is a strange contradiction about the hbo documentary ‘thin’. the film follows the stories of the inmates of a rehab center for women with eating disorders in florida. it follows them into therapy sessions, group meetings, retching and binging sessions. it seems to know no boundary- or if it does – the lines seem very strange indeed as toilets, bedrooms –nothing is off limits. i found that to be very disturbing.

the stories follow the logic of a struggle overcome or lost with support from the staff. its pretty much a given narrative structure, but what was disturbing was that by focusing on the ‘human interest’ value of the women’s breakdowns and recoveries, the very strange position of the camera’s gaze and the images it produces was itself left unquestioned. after all it is in a very odd place.

if, like so many of the women said, it is the emaciated thin and sexy images of women in newspapers, magazines and advertisements that the patients were trying to emulate, can the camera that created these images be completely blameless? and what happens when that camera seems to crave their stories of self-destruction. the attention of the cameras gaze makes the women perform out what they think it expects, whether that is the tears of a repentant sinner or the helplessness of an addictive retcher. the complicity between the camera and the person to make good footage blurs the boundary between the real and the performed. nothing can be believed. the film makes no acknowledgement of this. it pretends that the gaze of the camera is objective and merely records. yet, while watching it was obvious that the stories were being script written by the unsaid codes that it is assumed make for gripping viewing.