Capote: Research Gone Awry?

This review was published originally on cinekklesia on March 4, 2005.

I'm almost sure that I won't watch the Academy Award ceremony tomorrow night. Besides serving as a long, inefficient medium for doling out cinematic awards, Oscar Night presents Hollywood at its worst: narcissistic, self-congratulatory, and shallow. As a movie buff, I actually find the Oscar ceremony a distraction from the art that it supposedly celebrates.

Still, I'm curious as to how Philip Seymour Hoffman will fare in the Best Actor category. Besides producing a virtually flawless performance in Bennett Miller's Capote (2005), Hoffman has been a long-standing "serious" actor in U.S. cinema, producing consistently convincing performances in a wide variety of roles. If you want to see the breadth of Hoffman's abilities, check out his acting in The Big Lebowski (where he plays a "Yes Man" personal assistant), Almost Famous (a music journalist from the Classic Rock era), and Owning Mahoney (a banker who manages to gamble away his clients' money in Vegas and Atlantic City).

Tomorrow night, however, the focus will be on Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote, a legend in Twentieth Century American letters and author of such fare as Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. (I have to confess, though, that I have not read any of his works.) The film analyzes his research for the latter, a story of the brutal killing of a rural Kansas family, the men who committed the crime, and the effect that the entire episode had on members of the community.

For the most part, the movie's portrayal of Capote is not at all flattering; the writer comes across as arrogant, narcissistic, and manipulative — in short, a largely unpleasant fellow who nevertheless managed to hold the general public under his charms and who maintained a long-standing friendship with To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee (an Oscar-nominated performance by Catherine Keener). Yet, despite the implication that Truman Capote comes across as a complete lout, Hoffman actually provides some nuance to the character; we see a man who is caught between his narcissistic desire to publish at all costs and his compassion (albeit inconsistent) for the convicted killers who are facing execution.

Beyond Hoffman's masterful performance, Capote pushes us to think about the ethics of research, writing, and how we treat the objects of our study. Capote worked under the rubric of journalism; thus, unlike academic anthropologists and sociologists, he did not have to submit to an Institutional Review Board, the entity that oversees both social and clinical research in order to ensure that "human subjects" are treated ethically. However, even within the looser constraints of journalism, Capote clearly acted outside the ethical bounds of his field, particularly when he lied to one of his main subjects in order to maintain rapport (and thus, to extract more information). There also is a strong sense that Capote became too involved in the subject matter, entangling himself in the plot (rather than "just" writing about it) and losing any sense of analytical distance.

This issue of distancing oneself from the subject of study (one's "objectivity," as some would prefer) still provokes intense debate within social science and journalism. On the one side are those who argue that to sympathize with the subject—or even to make any normative claims about the subject's condition—is to render one's analysis questionable. Social scientists and journalists, this side insists, merely should state "what is" without taking any side. Thus, a sociologist could report that 50 percent of the population of a certain county lived below the poverty line, but he/she could not say that such a condition was "wrong." (Perhaps the sociologist could report that others—e.g., local activists—considered the situation wrong, but he/she could not make that claim.)

On the other side are those who argue that eschewing normative claims is not only counterproductive but dishonest. Everybody looks at life from a particular normative perspective, and to deny that is simply to deceive oneself and others; 'tis better just to get one's perspective out in the open where it can be analyzed, challenged, or defended. In addition, the argument goes, what's so bad about normative claims anyway? Why can't one dig up a certain set of facts about the world and then claim that those facts represent a "bad" situation? Isn't it odd that while some demand "objectivity" from social scientists, those same people may not appreciate a completely detached medical researcher? After all, wouldn't we want an oncologist to consider cancer a "bad thing" and its eradication—or at least the effective treatment of its victims—a "good thing"?

While partisans on either side may not appreciate it, the solution to this conundrum seems to lie somewhere in the middle. Yes, both social scientists and journalists need to maintain a certain level of analytical distance and to avoid too much entanglement with the story; an overly emotional attachment to one's subject can cloud the researcher's vision to the detriment of accuracy. However, to deny one's perspective—or, more broadly, one's humanity—seems both naive and disingenuous; an acknowledgement of perspective actually may enhance one's work by providing a richer, more holistic context in which to study it.

The problem with Truman Capote was two-fold: he became too involved in the story, and his motives for doing so were almost completely self-serving. It would be one thing for him to make a normative claim about his subject's plight and to advocate on his behalf (which he briefly appears to do at the beginning of the movie); while the "detached" researcher would be critical of such a move, Capote at least would be acting out of a concern for the other. Instead, he becomes overly involved for the sake of his book (and the subsequent accolades that he needs to sustain his ego). For the most part (there are exceptions here-and-there), Capote does not act out of compassion or moral concern; he simply is looking out for "Number 1."

This brings us to the final, nagging question that Capote leaves in our minds. Does not all journalism and human subject research involve this danger of objectifying the other? Even if one is engaged in such noble pursuits as studying the causes of poverty or investigating new treatments for cancer, there nevertheless exists a self-serving aspect to the work (beyond just earning a salary). Don't the vast majority of academics want tenure? Wouldn't a reporter want to win a journalistic award for a "groundbreaking" or "courageous" series? While Capote's methods and motivations represent an extreme side of research gone awry, Bennett Miller's film nevertheless serves as a useful word of caution: if you look in the mirror and see Phillip Seymour Hoffman staring back at you, then you've gone too far.