It’s hard for me to believe, but as recently as seven years ago my career path looked different. There was a time when I was in college, on track to become a journalism major. It’s not that I ever expected to be the next Woodward & Bernstein. I was more designed like an entertainment beat writer, wanting to cover movie news and get a job at maybe Rolling Stone Magazine. The issue is that as the years went on and I failed to be a “good” student, I lost hope that this was for me, especially since I didn’t have the inquisitive mind to be a journalist. I didn’t like asking questions. It made me feel inadequate, even if I still stand by those ethics that they taught me.
I’m an English major now, but I will always have a fondness for those days when I was in journalism. I love the collaborative feel of things, the way that deadlines forced you to try that harder, work those longer hours. While I’ll still confess that I wasn’t charismatic on camera, I loved the construction of a web show, a podcast that actually connected me with like-minded individuals. It’s why I personally love films like Spotlight (2015) and The Post (2017), which respect the process so much that it almost fetishizes a newsroom. Even Nightcrawler (2014) has some charm, even if I’m personally not a fan of the “if it bleeds it leads” policy.
To the laymen out there, “if it bleeds it leads” is the concept that the most sensationalistic story deserves the most attention. In the hierarchy of importance, a human interest piece about a dairy farmer ranks low while a story about their barn burning down would be closer to the top. People want stories that put them on edge, scaring them into recognizing their own mortality. You can’t believe that the world is falling apart. It’s true that some examples of these are crucial to report, such as the ongoing pandemic, interstate fires, and political corruption, but in a tamer time, the idea that fear is more intriguing than warmth is a painful and cynical part of the deal. I get its value, but I also don’t know that I love it.
Which brings me to Christine (2016), which has one of the most sensationalized conclusions imaginable. It focuses on Christine Chubbuck, who may not seem like an exceptional person, but has one distinct honor. According to her, she is the first person to have an on-air suicide. It’s an abrupt moment, but one that should rattle you to your bones. The very act will catch viewers off-guard and I can only imagine how more shocking it was in 1970, watching this local news anchor lose her mind. You can’t help but want answers to this question because it’s so heartbreaking. How does watching a suicide not make you feel some form of fear inside of yourself?
I suppose that’s what director Antonio Campos wanted to explore in this film. As the accompanying documentary Kate Plays Christine (2016) reveals in greater detail, there are many internal secrets that she never shared with anyone. She had a journal where she tried to resolve her issues in any meaningful way. Actor Kate Lyn Sheil spends the entire running time trying to get into her headspace, only to realize that she’ll never fully understand Christine. She wasn’t exceptional. Sheil can’t bring herself to perform even a mock-suicide, realizing how uncomfortable this role is. It likely explains why Rebecca Hall got the role over her. Even then, as a piece of entertainment reflecting the actor’s process, it is a nice little side note.
That’s the thing about Christine as a character. You want to believe that you’re capable of understanding her on some basic level, and yet it never becomes totally clear. No matter how much substance Campos gives her, there is still enough ambiguity that you’re left watching the fate of a depressed woman, playing out before a small media market. All she wanted was a promotion, sacrificing what made her whole to appeal to the changing tides of journalism. It’s easy to understand how this was the inspiration for Paddy Chayefsky’s phenomenal screenplay for Network (1975), though what’s more telling is that he replaced this feeble woman with an old white man yelling, most famously, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
There has to be something to Christine, and I have been waiting a few years to watch “the complete picture.” To me, it was as important to watch Christine (Netflix) as it was Kate Plays Christine (Criterion Channel), believing that they complimented each other. While I think the dramatic read is far more satisfying, I can’t deny that interviews with real-life figures add something substantial to the vision. The effort to understand this woman is something that will haunt people who enter that newsroom for decades. As it stands, any mishap that happens is blamed on the ghost of Christine. That is how prominent this death has on the studio.
I don’t honestly know what people unfamiliar with the conclusion will think of this movie. I frankly don’t know if there’s a hook without it. The only bigger statement that I could personally make is that as a former journalism student, I just love stories set in a newsroom, where everything is moving at rapid speed, doing everything to present the truth with honesty and integrity. When I pop on Christine, I am presented with one of the most vivid 1970s newsrooms I’ve seen.
I love the tapestries, the colors that aren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing but nevertheless are photogenic on camera. It’s the way that everything feels fuzzy, from another time. The tape has these ripples of life as small blips appear, an image not entirely clear or lit properly. It’s so much a piece of another era that I could watch it for another half hour. Nothing special about it, just hearing these random stories of a country dealing with the outbreak of Watergate as Christine, this humble beat reporter, tries to make human interest stories that will uplift the nation.
This is how she’s introduced, with this warm smile walking up to a married couple, asking them if they want to be on the news. The intent is so pure and encouraging, no malice in her approach. You believe that she has a good heart, and it only adds a bittersweet layer to the subtext. The audience knows what will happen, so this grasp of sanity is something even more beautiful. She strikes me as one of those journalists who would be eaten alive today, unable to survive because she cares too much about the common man, who deserves to hear about something more local, more positive, than what’s going on federally.
Which is the issue. What makes Christine so compelling as a story is a collision of themes that are a tragic side effect of business. Christine works in a small market with the potential to be promoted to a major one, provided she can prove to a scouting agent that she has something substantial to offer. This is a story about economics, misogyny, mental health, and the all-holy policy of “if it bleeds, it leads.” When you’re someone who’d rather dish out hugs, the fourth may be a bigger obstacle than you’d think.
Gone are the human interest stories. Christine needs to focus on the miserable side of life, buying firearms, and giving in to her depression. What slowly becomes clear is how this opens up some obsession inside of her. It becomes about more than a story. It’s about allowing a woman with emotional issues to give in to her darkest impulses, to suggest that her only worth is to profit off of misery. When that is what’s clear, when that is the only way she can expect to get ahead in her career, suddenly a radical suicide begins to make sense.
You can use the familiar range of logic to describe the days leading up to the suicide. Rebecca Hall paints Christine as this quiet woman, an introvert more likely to observe a situation than get involved. She’s desperate for love and acceptance but doesn’t always know how to reach it. She isn’t some psychopath. She has no ill-will towards anyone. Any sadism in the story is tied to her own belief that it will better her career. It eats at her morally, and there is the sense that things as ominous as a discussion of suicide can inspire her to go darker.
Even if it’s not in the conventional sense, Christine is a victim of the “if it bleeds, it leads” policy. Frankly, I too would crumble under a regiment of needing to report on violence and abuse, seeing the world as nothing but this dark pit. When you have no comparison point, it’s easy to question your own worth, especially if your only contribution is to film disaster. It’s an economics story because this is what sells. It’s a misogyny story because, despite Christine being the smartest person in the room, she can’t succeed on gentility. It’s a mental health story because, as we all should feel as Christine pulls the trigger, not addressing the problem only makes it worse.
That may be the saddest piece of the puzzle. Christine was innocent. She started off the story with such potential to be a “good” reporter. But nobody wants a “good” reporter. It plays with your self-worth, your inability to be as bold as your best clients. Christine was never going to be a Woodward & Bernstein type. It’s the type of story that makes you believe that in a different time, when mental health care was more prominent, that she could’ve gotten the treatment she needed. Even then, the reality that most depressed people are experts at hiding their difficulties only proves how inscrutable this case would be in any situation.
Even if it shares a similar crux to Nightcrawler, this is something more effortful. There is this desire to push into Christine’s life and try to understand herself. This isn’t going to be sensationalized. If anything, it’s whittling on a piece of wood until nothing is left. It does an incredible job of finding ideas, of exploring a broader theme, but nobody can truly understand who Christine was. This is more of a sympathetic warning, a need to preach about mental health and that not everyone can handle dark, disturbing subject matter.
I may have left the journalism game behind, but I imagine how much more difficult it is in 2020 to have ethics. It is no longer just about “if it bleeds, it leads.” It’s also about a president who seeks to delegitimize anyone who disagrees with him, who lies as an act of “strength.” There’s the fear of journalists being murdered for one story, and the reality that everything is moving way too fast for any one story to be processed correctly. You don’t even need to be a journalist anymore to understand Christine’s woe. All you need is to spend two hours straight on Twitter and see a platform meant to connect totally divide ideologies.
In some ways, Christine is a simpler story from another time, and I love how nostalgic it makes me. I know that it sounds gross to say it about a movie featuring on-air suicide but it also shows when modern news was just a seedling. It was controllable then. Nobody was questioning the ramifications long term. If anything, Christine’s story is one that built the perfect cautionary tale of Network, and the fact that it continues to age like a fine wine only speaks to how bad things can be when sensationalism is prized over humanity. Even then, I look at Christine and I see a fascinating look at journalism that I don’t often see. It’s about the eagerness for a network to thrive, a woman to be respected in her field, for the profession to last another year. The only issue is that it all comes at a cost, and hopefully, people learned not to make the same mistake twice.
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