In the demonic comedy, Nightcrawler, Rene Russo’s character, Nina Romina, advises the budding nightcrawler, Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal): “Think of our newscast as, ‘Screaming Woman Running Down the Street with Her Throat Cut’”. Thus, the film Nightcrawler encapsulates how the modern day Roman Coliseum is alive and well. In Nietzsche’s writings, he offered that a feast was never a feast without bloodshed for entertainment, and what is TV without violence commodified into a consumable product? Bread and circus: the more things change, the more they stay the same. As Maynard James Keenan sings in the song “Vicarious,” on the Tool album, 10,000 Days: “That’s my kind of story. It’s no fun ‘til someone dies.” Keenan highlights in gory detail the need of everyday people to live vicariously through the very footage nightcrawlers capture for the network news, because most people don’t have the mettle to go out and live life. It’s much easier to watch it on TV.
The default position of most viewers is to loathe the character of Louis Bloom or the “evil” corporations that feed the unwashed masses what they most crave for a profit. This is much easier than seeing human nature for what it is. It allows the audience to position themselves in a sanctimonious position far removed from the realities of their own sick voyeurism. Most moviegoers probably viewed the film on their Daddy’s dime, anyway, and can never understand Louis Bloom’s situation of being reduced to fencing scrap metal and nightcrawling. This is the dark underbelly of the “American Dream,” which George Carlin said you have to be asleep to believe.
Nightcrawler is deeply misanthropic and dark, and as such it would make a fine addition to any Satanist’s DVD collection. Jake Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of Louis Bloom must have been deeply cathartic, at least from the standpoint of issuing a categorical “fuck you” to the American public.
—Satanist D.P.R.K.