MAP Forum

The Dateline NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” which aired from 2004 to 2007, largely adhered to a straightforward formula: Hire an actor who looks younger than his or her age to lure an adult who is seeking a sexual encounter with a child. Then, when the would-be predator arrives at a house, have the show’s host, the reporter Chris Hansen, emerge to interview the man, who is suddenly made aware that he is on camera, and who will ultimately be arrested upon exiting.

But as David Osit’s probing, troubling documentary “Predators” demonstrates, the sociological implications of the show were (and are) anything but simple, beginning with what the series’ popularity suggests about the viewers who watched it. Mark de Rond, an ethnographer who is interviewed at length in the film, is fascinated by the moment in which Hansen confronts his subject: “What you’re seeing is effectively someone else’s life end,” de Rond says, “and they realize it.” Why is it that TV watchers are drawn to seeing a person, however horrible, humiliated in this way?

Jim Burton wrote: Thu Sep 18, 2025 4:00 pm https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/movi ... eview.html

The Dateline NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” which aired from 2004 to 2007, largely adhered to a straightforward formula: Hire an actor who looks younger than his or her age to lure an adult who is seeking a sexual encounter with a child. Then, when the would-be predator arrives at a house, have the show’s host, the reporter Chris Hansen, emerge to interview the man, who is suddenly made aware that he is on camera, and who will ultimately be arrested upon exiting.

But as David Osit’s probing, troubling documentary “Predators” demonstrates, the sociological implications of the show were (and are) anything but simple, beginning with what the series’ popularity suggests about the viewers who watched it. Mark de Rond, an ethnographer who is interviewed at length in the film, is fascinated by the moment in which Hansen confronts his subject: “What you’re seeing is effectively someone else’s life end,” de Rond says, “and they realize it.” Why is it that TV watchers are drawn to seeing a person, however horrible, humiliated in this way?