Shut Up Little Man (2011)

An interesting exploration of pop culture and the moral ambivalence that it so often displays. If you've ever felt bad about laughing at some poor unsuspecting person being mocked on YouTube, this doco will do absolutely nothing to make you feel any better.

Interesting documentary follows the adventures by two young men recently settled in San Francisco and their hilarious and shocking encounters with their very loud next door neighbours Peter and Raymond. This doco follows what happened afterwards and how meme's were spread prior to the age of YouTube and social networking.

I found this film disturbing. One one hand I can understand the humour that comes from listening to people arguing and fighting. We all have a voyeuristic tendency to see what other people get up to in their homes. The disturbing bit is the licence to exploit the two men. Allowing their private life to become public and then become the source of great 'humour' all around the country is I think exploitation. Whilst people will always find reason to argue and fight in most households most of us would be mortified to find our conversations recorded and then made available for all and sundry. Peter and Raymond become de-personalised, objects of mirth, and it is not until we actually see them and hear from Peter later in his life that we realise these men, despite their faults, were human beings no matter how flawed they appear. We never hear from any family, did they have any? Its the removal of any dignity from the characters that most worried me.