No sacred cows / Louis Theroux needs to make a positive case for masculinity |
I’ve always had a soft spot for Louis Theroux. I wouldn’t call him a friend, exactly, but I’ve known him for about 40 years. We started our journalistic careers at the same time and would frequently bump into each other at parties. He’s intelligent and funny and, in person, doesn’t answer every question with a question or pretend to be puzzled when he’s evidently long made up his mind. The passive–aggressive ‘just asking questions’ routine is, thankfully, confined to his TV appearances. By this I mean he has no hesitation in telling me I’m being ‘unbelievably stupid’ – which, because we disagree about politics, is quite often. But he’s a QPR fan so I can forgive these outbursts.
His latest documentary, Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, is an entertaining and at times disturbing watch. His diffident approach to drawing out these male social-media stars seems to throw them off balance. They sense he’s out to ‘rip’ them, not least because his reputation precedes him, but can’t work out how. They’re used to direct confrontation, expecting him to ‘come at them’, rather than to ask apparently innocent questions about their relationship with their mothers. They don’t realise he’s giving them an opportunity to condemn themselves out of........