Bat City Marquee: DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE

Bat City Marquee is a column where the Hyperreal Film Club editors check in on the wide world of new Austin-made videos and films. To submit a video for consideration, drop us a line at hq@hyperrealfilm.club 📼

In the Year of our Quar 2021, it is a surreal experience to witness a 12-minute piece of media present a contemporary story calmly.

The almost out-of-body experience is heightened when you account for the subject matter in Brad Abrahams short doc Do You See What I See: David Dees, Sesame Street/Disney/Coca-Cola commercial artist turned notorious conspiracy theorist/propagandist/discord fomenter. Our information age’s (open big air quotes) civil discourse (close big air quotes) is in many ways defined by an asymptotic increase in froth-mouthed or dead-eyed lunacy, smug pseudo-intellectual 140-character Hot Takes designed primarily for virality, condescending/patronizing irrelevancies, in-group-congratulatory batterings of straw men, and, just, angry or aggrieved screeching in endless torrents. And, look. We all partake. The past year and a half of therapy has certainly taught me that it can sometimes be nearly impossible to transfer the reins from your inner child to inner adult in a moment of extreme activation.

Which, I think, makes the actual, real live composure with which this doc presents its portrait of Dees all the more extraordinary. I won’t spoil it, but my jaw dropped at one particular moment in this doc where a personal and immediate confrontation is surfaced and, somehow, does not immediately devolve into a scorched-earth comments section. 

I think there’s some justifiable trepidation going into a media experience that purports to offer a “non-biased” — if there can be such a thing — portrait of a human being who, in many ways, is objectively harmful. Brad acknowledges as much in a recent Instagram post announcing the new film: “My M.O. has always been to present my subjects in a nonjudgmental way, regardless if I support their beliefs. Because of the darkness of his beliefs, David proved my most difficult and important challenge yet.” In a genuine feat of sincere storytelling and god-tier responsive listening, the whole thing is so deftly handled; there are no both-sides-isms or iotas of sympathy for the views that Dees’ holds, and yet there is a genuine and measured look at the man’s deep isolation and the ways that a relentless onslaught of frighteningly unhinged Internet input can carve up a mind and cook it in the inferno.

“If anybody gets upset, hey man, it’s my opinion,” David says as he defends his false flag take on Sandy Hook and fidgets. “I never consider myself an extremist.” I guess it’s a trope at this point, the edgelord humor or devil’s advocate backpedaling, but the way we see it here feels like more. David walks us through his meditation practices, we watch as he communes with a host of spirits around him, we follow him as he plays with his rabbits in the yard. We hear about his cadmium poisoning, to which he attributes the loss of his career and his inability to maintain close relationships. Nothing is explained away, but it is all there to see.

It’s hard to know what to do when you shut the browser window after playing this piece. I think with media that explores this sort of subject matter, we’re trained at this point to expect a call to action. This isn’t a call, exactly, to see the humanity of people with dangerous views. It’s certainly not an exhortation to hear their point of view, nor should it be. But it is a portrait of a human being who lived on this planet for a while and made a mark and interacted with other humans, and the evenness with which its shared lets it be that in a surprising way. Do you see what I see? No, but I see that you saw it.