How Aristotle helps us unpack the art of deception in Nathan Fielder’s ‘You Can See Everything’

This story contains a spoiler about ‘You Can See Everything.’ Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder’s runaway-hit documentary You Can See Everything reintroduces audiences to Silicon Valley founder Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted of fraud in 2022. Holmes maintains she is innocent. Through Fielder’s lens, the film prompts us to question her conduct anew by exploring the meaning of acting, drama, truth, lies and fiction. In the film, Holmes objects to a quote of hers reported by the New York Times. According to the Times, Holmes said of actors portraying her: “They’re not playing me. They’re playing a character I created.” In Fielder’s documentary, Holmes’s husband reads the quote and says it doesn’t sound like something she would say. He suggests Holmes said instead: “They’re playing a character they created,” and she agrees. Partly through the film’s interviews with Holmes and her husband, as well as commentary by Fielder, viewers are led to wonder: Has she been playing a character she created, intended to deceive others? Is she now playing a role? Does she even know? Playing a role If Holmes is deliberately playing a role, we are inclined to condemn her as a fraudulent deceiver, well-deserving of her punishment; if not, we may be more inclined to see her sympathetically — flawed, caught up in a scheme largely wrought by others. ‘You Can See Everything’ trailer. It might seem that, because each person knows what they’re doing, they’re the authority on whether they are playing a role. But Fielder’s film, and his previous work that straddles the line between awkward comedy and social inquiry, challenges where the boundaries lie. In his HBO docuseries The Rehearsal, Fielder plays himself as a director helping people prepare for difficult situations by staging elaborate rehearsals of how they might unfold. The series leads the audience to question the relationship between the rehearsals and the real situation they mean to influence. Actions, imitations One way to think about this is by examining the difference between doing things and acting as though we’re doing them — for the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, the difference between an action and an imitation. To frame this issue more carefully, we can turn to a distinction Aristotle drew between “action” and “production.” For Aristotle, the arts are particular kinds of know-how. A shoemaker, for instance, knows how to produce shoes. Drama, writes Aristotle, knows how to produce the imitation (mimēsis) of actions. The actor’s aim is to produce a compelling imitation of someone, say, making a shoe. That imitated action is the product of the art. When done well, the audience is convinced they have seen someone do the action, perhaps briefly forgetting it was only an imitation. Often, an actor playing a shoemaker does not go so far as to make a shoe. But what if they do? ‘The Fielder Method’ The fourth episode of The Rehearsal, “The Fielder Method,” sees Fielder describe a method to train people to perform on his show. Fielder invites actors to shadow a person, called their “primary,” to learn how to imitate them in the rehearsals. He goes so far as to have them work the job of their primary or even move into a similar living arrangement. Following this method, it very well may be the case that an actor playing a shoemaker makes a real shoe. “The Fielder Method” shows that the distinction between “imitated action” and “genuine action” is porous. Comedian Nathan Fielder poses for a photo to promote the show ‘Nathan for You’ in Toronto in 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Michelle Siu An audience, actor can get lost An effective imitation convinces audiences, temporarily, that we are witnessing the action, and we respond to it, at least in part, as a doing of that action. The audience can get lost in whether what they are seeing is an action or its imitation. An effective imitation, then, can be a powerful tool in the hands of someone intent on deception. Yet, as Fielder’s work also suggests, the actor can get caught up in their role. In The Rehearsal (“Pretend Daddy”), Fielder (playing himself) is rehearsing parenting a six-year old child. The child actor playing his child becomes attached to Fielder, calling him “daddy.” Fielder himself seemingly has real feelings for the child actor. If what an actor does as an imitation coincides with the actual deed so precisely that its outcome is indistinguishable from the real thing, its status hangs on what comes next: The actor’s stepping out of character and returning to “real life.” But what if the actor doesn’t step out of character? What if they leave “real life” behind? In The Rehearsal, Fielder becomes so committed to understanding pilots that he becomes one, flying a Boeing 737 from takeoff to landing. Is it plausible that Holmes, too, began intent on deception, playing a brilliant, Steve Jobs-like CEO, but then became lost in the role, increasingly unable to acknowledge distance between herself and the character she created? Or is this explanation a perfect hiding place to deny responsibility? ‘Why would I deceive you?’ A viral scene where Holmes asks Fielder, “Why would I deceive you?” is astonishing because there is such a clear reason for Holmes to deceive Fielder. In the film, partly through Fielder’s dialogue with actor Amanda Seyfried, who played Holmes in a miniseries, the film deals with how to understand Holmes. Their dialogue is interspersed with newly created scenes of Seyfried playing Holmes in Fielder’s documentary to study her, using the technique developed in The Rehearsal. One explanation could be that Holmes believes herself, or has become lost in her role. This would not excuse her crimes. But it might suggest that understanding her properly requires us to think about the role of imitation and art in our lives, just as Fielder’s works challenge us to do. On the other hand, what exactly have we seen? Commentators have raised ethical concerns around how Fielder’s relationship to his subject shapes what we do and importantly don’t see (such as the impacts of Holmes’s fraud) — or genre questions, including whether it really should be called a documentary. Read more: Can you see everything? Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes face off in You Can See Everything A compelling imitation, Aristotle tells us, is delightful because we love to learn, and imitation teaches us. This may be why scores of audiences are going to cinemas to watch an almost three-hour-long documentary. Drama can be deployed for deception, but as both Aristotle and Fielder show us, it can also be an essential vehicle for questioning our assumptions about reality.