Essay Questions

Lou Bloom is intended to be an anti-hero embarking on a crusade against capitalism. Do you see him this way?

Lou Bloom is very hard to like simply because what he is doing in order to make a living is hugely exploitative and in many ways manipulated by him as well. He is an anti-hero in the sense that he is the protagonist of the movie, but we are not really rooting for him, but he does not achieve true anti-hero status because it is hard to see what he is doing to truly protest the ethos of capitalism when in fact he is building a business of his own on the foundations of other people's tragedies. He is a criminal who has used his nefarious skills to make a living; he is a thief, and a menace to women, which also makes it hard to view him as a hero.

Is Nina morally bankrupt or merely giving the public what they want to see on television?

If you have ever driven past a bad car wreck, you will also have seen people gawking at the scene; we can't help looking. Nina is aware of this and after showing footage of accidents, shootings and crime in affluent, "safe" areas on the news, and seeing the associated jump in audience share, she realizes that the gawking does not limit itself to car wrecks one is driving by. The public have an insatiable appetite for salaciousness. She knows this, and as a woman trying to succeed in a male-dominated industry, she is using it in order to make sure that she and her news station stay ahead of the competition. Nina is not morally bankrupt, exactly, more morally oblivious; she is a mirror of the morality of the viewing public, who prefer blood, gore and sensationalism over actual reported news.