I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter
An H.B.O. Documentary
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| H.B.O.'s Haunting Documentary |
Director Erin Lee Carr
Quick Assessment: This is must see viewing.
A review by Kurt von Behrmann
On July 2014, 18-year-old Conrad Roy completed suicide. It took placed in his truck. The vehicle was
parked at a Kmart parking lot in Fairhaven, Mass. What happened afterwards would have sweeping
ramifications.
What transformed this tragedy into a media feeding frenzy was
a series of text messages exchanged between Conrad Roy and his girlfriend
Michelle Carter. In a series of
feverish, even hectoring, text messages, she was imploring him to kill
himself.
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| Two lives forever changed when thy met and began a constant stream of text messages. |
Director Erin Lee Carr has constructed a documentary that
delves into the critical details were missed in the wide spread media coverage. The narrative that was disseminated failed to
present the complexity of the events that ended one life and wrecked others.
The lingering question of was, and still is, was Michelle Carter in part, or
even wholly, responsible for Roy’s death.
This question sits at the center of controversy like an
immobile object that almost defies comprehension. As this documentary makes explicitly clear, there
are no easy answers.
The story commonly told painted Michelle Carter as a
callous, cruel, attention seeking adolescent anxious to become the grieving
girlfriend. She was also the arresting
looking model thin blonde who used her influence to send a young man to his death. The story was reduced to being a lured tale
of a heartless manipulative teenage girl with decidedly evil self-serving
intentions.
This documentary makes a compelling point that this tragedy
cannot be summed up so simply. The
complexities of Carter and Roy’s relationship and the elements surrounded their
lives add layer upon layer of nuance.
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| The Carter Family, stoic and forever silent. |
The underlying narrative of this suicide played to the fears
of men, and adults in general, wary of what teenage girls can do, and the
damage they can possibly inflict. This
played to deep-seated fears regarding female sexuality in general and male
vulnerability to it. This anxiety also obscured the reality of what was at the heart
of this case, and incidentally the brief life of Conrad Roy.
This documentary, which spans a scant two parts, manages to
use the running time timely wisely. The pacing is miraculous concise. It also
serves to keep things from becoming stagnant.
There are no resting moments in this documentary that propels itself
forward based on some compelling facts presented well.
Unfortunately, Director Erin Lee Carr was denied access to Michelle
Carter, or her family. To this day Carter and her family have avoided all media
requests for interviews. They remain to this day silent.
While this may have
been a serious liability, Carter, adroitly uses the text messages exchanged
between the troubled teenagers to
illustrate type of relationship they had, which was almost completely confined to text messages. They only met a few times, maybe five at the
most.
The bulk of Carter and Roy’s relationship was an epistolary
one carried out in cyberspace. The exchanges were personal, complicated, messy
and internalized. At the start, Carter
acturally tried to talk Roy out of killing himself. At this phase of their many exchanges, he is
sending images of guns and talking about suicide at great length. Then, as if persuaded by Roy, Carter begins
to support his desire to end his life.
This was a fact left out of all contemporary coverage of the trial. It is an important detail.
Carr works hard to create a somewhat more objective view of Carter, who is far from being the kind of person
that can draw sympathy. No matter what
the extenuating circumstances, it is difficult to get past the rigid façade of
a person who appears unmoved, silent almost sphinx like. She is an
indecipherable cipher at the center of a horrific storm.
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| Two lives changed. One ended tragically and the other facing an uncertain future. |
As hard as it is to see Carter as remotely likeable, which
she is not, the person that emerges is that of a lonely, emotionally needy, woman. It is easy to see hear as seriously mental ill, particularly when viewing
her past
Carter was struggling with bulimia, and had a history of
attempting suicide prior to meeting Roy.
As we discover, Roy had a long
history of mental illness with several hospitalizations prior to meeting Carter
as well.
Another fact over looked in the coverage of this case was
the violent home environment where Roy was raised. His mother and father had physical altercations. They eventually divorced. Roy’s father openly admits to striking is son,
and stated he would do it again in the documentary.
This openness is surprising as it is alarming given the outcome
of the events. At no point does Roy’s father make the connection that the
violence in the home may have been a contributing factor to his son’s
deteriorating mental health. The
documentary showed stills of Roy’s scarred face.
One of the big questions this trial raises is can a text
message be so powerful that it can cause death?
At no point was Carter physically near Roy when he died. Are the texts sent over time sufficient reason
enough to hold Carter liable? Is
Michelle Carter responsible for the death of Conrad Roy?
Given her serious mental health issues, was she in the same
predicament as Roy? Where they just two
teens drawn to each other because of their compromised state of mind? Was this inevitable?
The persistent question was that was overlooked was Carter’s
state of mind. There is the question of
how stable was she. She had a reputation
among friends for not being truthful. At one point she accused Roy of
rape. She also had a bizarre fixation on
Glee Star Lea Michele.
She frequently cited not only lines from the show, but
interviews Michele gave and used them as her own words. Further exchanges between Roy and Michelle
reveal a young woman playing out a fantasy that mirrored the reality of a
television star
Carr’s documentary feels like it could have continued for
more episodes. This engaging, fascinating case is told with precision,
imagination and a sense of tone that fits the mood of story that is horrific,
perplexing, frustrating and endlessly fascinating because of the numerous questions it raises.
Director Carr does not try to answer the multitude of
questions this trial raised. Which is a
good thing considering that there are so many, and limited time. Where this documentary succeeds best is when
it debunks the simplistic view of this case and the reality of two young lives
bound by mental illness and powerful medications that can distort perceptions
of reality.
Looking past the hype that sensational cases have, it is all
too easy to overlook that real lives are involved. As much as this case looked like a fictional television
crime drama, this is not fiction. This
is reality.
In the end, Carter is now serving a 15-month prison sentence.
She was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
Now the courts must negotiate how to deal with a digital
world for which there are no legal precedents.
Cyberspace was created without consideration of what the legal, ethical
and moral ramifications would be.
Texting, video chat and social media have created a new reality. It is one that we are still struggling to
fully understand and manage.
Michelle Carter’s conviction raises not only issues of
accountability, but issues related to free speech itself. Naturally, this is an extreme case, but it
does set up the idea that what you express in a text messages carries as much
weight as being present. This is not
about what you have done, this is about what you have said. While this case may seem simple, the issues
this case raises and Carters’ conviction complicate an already problematic arena
between personal liberty and accountability and responsibility.
The legal world has
yet to either embrace of understand the new digital reality. Now we are all left with questions and
confusion that a guilty verdict cannot neatly answer. We are also left with a
death and a grieving family.
One very important point this documentary raises is that the
systems that were designed to help young people like Michelle Carter and Conrad
Roy failed them. Those systems failed them miserably. We must now live with the truth that these
failures will continue to produce more
lives either prematurely ended or forever damaged.
Kurt von Behrmann is a writer and artist living in South Mountain Village, Phoenix, AZ
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