This is the third entry in a series on the documentary You Can See Everything. The first post is “Nathan Fielder is the “You” who Can See Everything” the second post is “The Allegory of the Business Scam”, and the third post is “You Can See Everything is not the Territory or the Map”.
Being Real
I’m not that person. I can promise you that. I don’t have anything to deceive you on. Of course, I’m not deceiving you. I’m engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There’s no, there’s no reason for me to do that.
Okay. Alright. Okay. Good chat.—You’re being real right now?
I’m always being real.
For those already familiar with Elizabeth Holmes, the final answer of the teaser trailer for You Can See Everything appears to be a form of Liar’s Paradox. Obviously the woman who spent years imitating Steve Jobs wasn’t always being real; unless she is speaking from in terms of some subjective definition of real.
The teaser was presented without context, and as the first glimpse, many people assumed it was an introductory exchange, setting the stage for what would follow. But the conversation actually occurs over an hour into the film, during the final days before Elizabeth reports to prison. The greater context means that the character she created is already in dispute versus “a character they created”, which the couple admit only seems like something Liz would say. Also established in Holmes’ specific definition of a lie, “intentionally saying something you believe to be untrue”, her oddly specific use of the word can, and her insistence to Nathan, “You can see everything.”
Which means that when she says “I’m not deceiving you”, she may be speaking to the fact that she is not trying to intentionally deceive anyone, though perhaps she is only succeeding in not deceiving Fielder; certainly a backwards way of interpreting the turn of phrase, but one that resonates with the filmmaker’s unique capacity to create deceptions by leaning into the truth. Thirty days into filming, Fielder seems more suspicious of his suspicions than anything else.
Among the ongoing attempts to identify the particular nature of Holmes and the root of her deceptions, there is the notable lack of expertise based on internal experiences. No diagnosed narcissists, sociopaths, or other antisocial individuals have weighed in to affirm the traits they recognize from the inside in Holmes. Of course, one would have to question their own sincerity and motivations for telling the truth if they did. But considering the actual length of Fielder’s observation, rather than the 72 minutes presented to the audience, a pertinent example did come to mind, from Charles Colson, a former hatchet-man for the Nixon administration, and convicted felon turned Christian apologist:
“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world—and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”
Of course, Colson is speaking of the experience of a normal human being. If Holmes is a genuine psychopath or sociopath, she may have had no trouble maintaining a ruse for 34 days of filming. If that is the case, to quote Fielder, “she honestly might be the most manipulative person that’s ever lived.” But if so, why this deception? Failed inventor and entrepreneur turned housewife? The story contains too many holes.
The most charitable interpretation of Holmes requires us to view her as Errol Morris did; as a true believer. Someone fully convinced that her eventual success would retroactively vindicate all the stop-gap measures, hyperbolic speech and obfuscations that led to her downfall. The greatest evidence for her sincerity is Billy’s ongoing attempts to create a new diagnostic technology, currently aimed at use in animals. If the couple succeeds in their endeavor, they may succeed in rehabilitating the legacy of Holmes, and even Theranos. In a less-charitable interpretation, this effort would seem to suggest a motivation that is more narcissistic than sociopathic, as it reflects a deep concern that others affirm a particular self-image. If the inventor persona was merely a grift, it’s not cutting it anymore. But if that effort reflects a devotion to the truth, (however it is defined,) it’s about making good on stated promises, and that is something else entirely.
This is the precise motivation that drives the plot in a majority of Fielder’s escapades on Nathan For You. In almost every scheme, Fielder goes to great lengths to avoid lying. He typically finds a technical workaround that allows him to fulfill an explicit obligation while avoiding the implicit expectations of customers. The key detail is that these extra steps allow him to speak honestly, even if he is incredibly opaque in his communication.
Perhaps the most extreme example is The Anecdote, in which Nathan reveals his insecurities about promoting his show on late night television. The awkwardness of his previous appearances leads to a deep analysis of successful interviews, from which he derives a formula for creating the perfect talk show anecdote. The story he lands on involves an airline luggage mix-up, which forces him to wear a comically oversized suit to a wedding, but before he arrives, he gets pulled over by the police, who question him about a small bag filled with a white powder, discovered in the pocket of the stranger’s suit. The substance, which thankfully is not drugs, turns out to be the stranger’s mother’s ashes.
Fielder delivered his story on Jimmy Kimmel as if it was merely the natural result of a strange series of coincidences, but in reality, the entire series of events was carefully orchestrated. Fielder claims to have spent $350,000 to execute the events described in the most technically idiosyncratic way possible. He secured an invitation to a wedding by first finding a venue, and contacting a couple that was already booked, under the guise of research for his own nuptials. To find a suitable candidate for his luggage mix-up, Fielder placed an ad for “a large man with a cremated mother”. When the criteria proved too narrow, Fielder found a workaround by convincing the mother of the man whose suit was comically oversized to donate some hair and fingernail clippings that could be cremated to produce “real” mother’s ashes. To make sure no one was hurt when he broke the law by speeding, he arranged for a road to be closed down for shooting, while a police officer stood by, ready to pull him over as soon as his rental car went one mile over the speed limit.
Of course, the anecdote may never have come to light if Kimmel hadn’t given Fielder the perfect opening, by asking if he had gotten into any legal trouble for his business antics, which begs the question about the off-the-cuff nature of late night television interviews. The unstated assumption of the episode is that the majority of anecdotes shared by actors and comedians are false, or greatly exaggerated. But Fielder’s explanation for the necessary precaution was due to the fallout of Brian Williams, who falsely claimed that his helicopter came under attack during the Iraq war on David Letterman, which led to his suspension and removal from NBC Nightly News.
What is Truth?
By holding up the mirror of humor to expose the discrepancies of the broader culture, Fielder is continuing a conversation that has been ongoing for the last two millennia. When the most dangerous outcast of the Roman empire stated “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”, Pontius Pilate famously retorted “What is truth?” From his perspective, the technicality of truth was insignificant in comparison to the power he wielded, a point he proved by flaunting justice, releasing a criminal and executing the man he deemed without fault. He couldn’t have imagined that 2,000 years later another convicted criminal would be pointing to the difficulty of maintaining a deception as evidence of the truth of the resurrection, or that his own name would be preserved in infamy beyond the collapse of the empire.
We can’t discuss the broader story of Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, and Silicon Valley, without highlighting the slippery nature of truth as it is understood by the masses. In the HBO documentary The Inventor, Holmes is portrayed as an idealistic dreamer, and compared to Thomas Edison, who repeatedly exaggerated claims and shaped narratives to bolster his image as The Wizard of Menlo Park, a technological genius who made the impossible possible through sheer dedication to an unflinching vision. It is a stark contrast to the depiction of a sociopathic liar in John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, whereas The Dropout seems to split the difference. While You Can See Everything splits things further, Fielder’s talk show anecdote provides a key insight into how the truth is typically discerned.
Dr. John Vervaeke, philosopher, psychology professor, cognitive scientist, and author of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis provides a useful framework for discussing how we perceive truth via agents and arenas. Agents are the individuals whose speech and actions we evaluate, while the arena is the context in which we encounter the agent, through which we filter our understanding. Actors and comedians are agents of entertainment, and late night talk shows are their native arenas. Within that environment, the truth is most salient when conveyed via the expected modes of entertainment.
The purpose of the anecdote is the humanization of the celebrity, which conveys the genuine truth that actors and comedians are not so different from you and I. But there is a limit to the truth we can bear from our aspirational heroes. It would depress us to hear that their lives consist of the mundane details of feeding cats and boiling eggs, as Fielder’s does, but on the other hand, believing that everything is sunshine and roses would breed cynicism and resentment. Thus, the humanizing anecdote is the spot of black in the white half of their cheerful yang, the inverse of the brightest moments in shadiness of our normal yin. The occasional break from this pattern becomes the exception that proves the rule, as in the unusually sincere apology of Hugh Grant, whose solicitation of a prostitute was a stain too dark to diminish.
Nevertheless, the mismatch between the agent and the arena filters the response of the audience. The laughter still serves to lighten the severity of the moment, but it is awkward, as the experience of attending a television taping is expected to be a bright spot in the lives of everyday people who were unprepared to hear a sincere apology. Williams’ blunder represents an inverse error; while the embellishment of details to make a story more exciting might be the normal practice for a late night audience, as a journalist, he is expected to speak the unvarnished truth regardless of context.
The implications for Holmes and Fielder are less cut-and-dried. Documentaries are generally viewed as belonging to the arena of factual reporting, but they are clearly narrative vehicles, and when multiple films center on the same subject, as in the case of Holmes, the truths conveyed vary widely. Fielder’s role adds another layer of complication, as his background in comedy raises suspicions about the particular directorial choices he employed. But there are broader questions to be raised regarding Holmes’ agentic role as an inventor and entrepreneur, and the role of truth within the arena of Silicon Valley.
The comparison to Edison is salient, because an untimely investigation might have rendered a similar verdict to the one Holmes received, a point noted in the documentary by Joe LaChapelle, the engineer currently working to execute the vision of Evan’s new venture Haemanthus:
“I look at the Theranos endeavor as a wealth of information. Some things to do, and some things not to do. And as far as how it imploded, the claims that they made, I mean, let me just put it this way; entrepreneurs, even the best of them, you know, the Elon Musks, make claims that are not true at any given point in time, right? ‘We’re gonna have a self-driving car’—and people pay money for it.”
Of course, the difference that many people have noted between the ventures of Musk and Holmes is the health risk, and it may have been a genuine mistake to apply the Silicon Valley ethos to the realm of medicine. But the contributions made by Theranos are genuine to a certain extent, and still valued, as documented in the video below.
While there are some spurious claims regarding certain conspiratorial motives, the author deftly traces how Theranos’s crucial blood-testing patents and patient data were quietly preserved and transferred to major technology and investment firms like SoftBank and Oracle following the company’s collapse. This revelation supports the consistent characterization of Holmes in all but the most critical of sources, Carreyrou’s Bad Blood, of Holmes as the visionary dreamer, but more importantly, it highlights the disconnect between agent and arenas, by pointing us away from Holmes to look at the environment she occupied.
Holmes certainly fooled quite a few sincere investors. But perhaps not all of them. It is entirely possible that some of those tech moguls and government liaisons (or their handlers) valued her for that visionary sincerity that kept her focused on a future goal, while blinding her from the dystopian utility of the infrastructure that was actually being developed. In this reading, the dream of the Mini-lab might best be understood as an analogy for the quest for the Holy Grail, a fool’s errand, but one capable of mustering the forces needed to launch a crusade.
The Scapegoat
I was not the only one to walk away from You Can See Everything with a mythic interpretation, nor was the grail quest the only parallel that came to mind. In their Monitoring The Situation Podcast, Steve Skojec and Kale Zelden invoke the work of René Girard, whose scapegoat theory perfectly explains the downfall of Holmes:
