It’s fascinating how neatly the release of this film coincides with the unpleasantness in the tabloid industry that’s currently taking place on Knifecrime Island. In light of this perfect timing, one might expect Errol Morris’ latest film to be a thorough running down of the entire tabloid industry, with the director skewering the yellow press’ invasive practices and complete lack of ethics, and commenting on how this most unholy combination led to the terrible things that have landed Mr. Murdoch & Co. in such hot tepid water. Some folks, rightly incensed by the cynicism and banality of people like Rebekah Brooks, might go out to see Tabloid eager for a Michael Mooresque lambasting of the tabloid industry. They should probably know better. If they’re familiar at all with Morris, they’ll know he isn’t interested in condemning industries or making grand, exquisitely sound-byteable political statements with his films. Instead, as per usual, he fixates on the genuinely irreducible humanity behind one of the very first world-famous tabloid scandals.
Tabloid presents us with an unnerving story of delusion, kidnapping, hints of BDSM, religious fanaticism, and dog cloning. The main subject of the film is Joyce McKinney, a former beauty queen from South Carolina who fell in love with an “All-American” boy while living in Utah and chased him to England, igniting one of the most sensational tabloid news cycles in recorded history. McKinney supplies the brunt of Tabloid’s interviews, congenially and humorously recounting the scandal she caused by kidnapping and (possibly) raping a Mormon missionary and the unjust moderate infamy in which she’s lived ever since. As McKinney explains, Kirk Anderson (the desired object) fell madly in love with her and totally would’ve married her if it weren’t for his crone of a Mormon mother, who wanted him to marry some fat Mormon woman and have tons of fat Mormon kids. Really. Soon enough, Kirk was absconded with to London by a group of Mormon missionaries, and Joyce thought she would never see him again.
Realizing she could “never love another man,” Joyce hired bodyguards and a private pilot, and, along with her best friend Keith, tracked Kirk down in London, determined to counteract the brainwashing that Kirk had surely undergone at the hands of the nefarious Mormon cultists. A kidnapping, a weekend in a cottage in Devonshire that may or may not have included rape (but most definitely included bondage gear), a quick trip to jail on the part of McKinney, and the British press went absolutely nuts. This is the setup for subsequent interviews with some of the key figures from London tabloids The Daily Express and The Daily Mirror. The two papers essentially started a journalistic war, trying to outdo each other in the salaciousness of their front pages concerning Joyce McKinney and “The Manacled Mormon.” What unfolds is a curious meditation on the public’s need for sensationalism and the weirdly symbiotic relationship McKinney ended up forming with those publishers who she claimed to detest. Most recently (and famously), the heartbroken McKinney enlisted a South Korean doctor to clone a recently deceased rescue dog, reigniting the British press’ ravenous coverage of her lately humdrum life.
As a documentarian, Morris is a master of playing close to the vest, allowing the narrative of the true events he covers unfold in ways that keep even the most seemingly done-to-death stories fresh, insightful, and entertaining. The order in which he chooses to reveal critical details that either support or negate the truth of McKinney’s statements render Tabloid’s appeal perennial. McKinney’s cognitive dissonance draws us in so effectively because we all suffer from certain levels of the same delusion ourselves. Seen in comic proportions, our own neuroses become less scary than fascinating, less shameful than entertaining. What Morris shrewdly decides to leave out of the film is the obvious: the part where we’re supposed to hold a mirror and honestly ask ourselves if we’re any better than McKinney. Undoubtedly, the answer for most is going to be a resounding ‘duh,’ but it is to Morris’ credit that he can do what the tabloids refused to, namely, peering through the sensationalized image of his subject and brilliantly evincing her humanity with genuine humor and compassion.
