HBO's 'What Happened, Brittany Murphy?' is the worst kind of documentary

If you don't know how Brittany Murphy died, then this post contains spoilers.

Akin to the clickbait headlines and youtube video titles that we're now all so used to, a lot of documentary makers seem intent on 'baiting' the viewer with a story that appears to have an element of mystery about it. I don't blame them, the popularity of true crime podcasts show we like this kind of thing. And it's find to posit a crime/mystery/whodunnit element in a documentary...if there actually is one.

However, to do so when there is ZERO mystery involved is misleading and plain dishonest. This is bigtime the case in HBO's Brittany Murphy docu, which continuously throws theories and allegations at the wall to see what sticks. They blame the deaths on mold at one point (guess what? Coroner immediately debunks it), and on her own mother at another point (impossible to debunk this because there's literally zero evidence for it).

The docu throws these nonsensical allegations forward, and then about 5 minutes later quietly admits they're bullshit, and carries on.

If anyone remembers the really popular docu 'The Imposter', it did the same thing. It implied with zero evidence that the family had killed their own kid, when in reality the family had accepted the French kid as theirs due to being blinded by grief.

It's a pity really, because the downfall of Brittany is genuinely interesting. But it's interesting as a cautionary tale of the power of the media/paparazzi and how a person's self-esteem can be destroyed, and how someone with charming & dominating personality traits can so easily capture a person in a prison within their own mind.

It's a cautionary tale of the dangers of prescription drug addiction.

It's a lot of things, but it's not a mystery. Murphy had a destroyed immune system and anemia from her addiction and lifestyle, and a boyfriend who didn't care to get her medical help. She rather predictably died of pneumonia, and then the arsehole boyfriend died doped up exactly the same as Brittany, assumedly due to a combination of guilt & shame that made him unable to face reality.

No secret hitman, no daughtercide, no mold. The worst part of the documentary peddling nonsense is the use of these random social media influencer types who talk absolute shit (at one point directly contradicting the very knowledgeable coroner) while doing their make-up of all things? One of them in part II actually says "this is all hearsay of course". Yeah no shit it's hearsay lady, you're just spouting crap about people you literally don't know.

I think this annoys me so much because documentaries are inherently supposed to be about a true story, about real life. But some of them are filled with more fakery than a fiction film.

Submitted October 24, 2021 at 03:31AM by laurieislaurie https://ift.tt/3vFyKes