The world of non-fiction filmmaking is used to being unpopular and little-viewed—Make a film about mere factual happenings, and chances are you will have a tough time finding an audience. That is, unless it’s about a subject they are already riled up about. Non-fiction films about politics and true crime, for instance, tend to outperform all others (aside from ones about cute animals); the serious ones do well enough, but the unserious ones do even better. These “satirical” documentaries or, “snarkumentaries” as I’ll be calling them, can be seen as originating with the intermingling of stand-up and journalism, with snarky liberal darlings like Michael Moore, Bill Maher, and Larry Charles. But in 2024, the most popular example of this form, Am I Racist? was made by conservative pundit, Matt Walsh. So what, exactly, is the nature of the snarkumentary?
Even acclaimed non-fiction pieces such as those of Ken Burns have a reputation for being boring and educational. The concept of edutainment is likely to have people’s eyes rolling. But part of why something like Ken Burns isn’t doing numbers at the box office is because it is trying so hard to be rational and objective. Is it possible to make something non-fiction that is just as compulsively watchable as a thriller or a comedy? A particular moment in ’90s and 2000s non-fiction filmmaking seemed to have the answer. Films like Fahrenheit 9/11, Religulous, and Expelled didn’t even attempt a coolly objective standpoint, instead they reveled in their biases. They assumed the position of their viewership, in some cases politically, in other cases religiously, and spent their runtimes presenting interviews in a deliberately skewed way, intercutting snarky montages and film references, and sometimes–quite frankly–making sh*t up. These documentaries were feature films, but they were feeding off the energy of methodologically similar television programs. Programming like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report gave the viewer the impression that they were staying informed, while simultaneously participating in the lampooning of the whole style of news television. It was called “political satire” but it resembled political cartoons more than it did Mark Twain.

The official categorization of these films is typically as “satirical documentaries”, as in they are using the documentary form to satirize individuals they oppose. But I prefer the term “snarkumentary”. In the world of the snarkumentary, arguments are not even “bad faith”, they don’t even assume the seriousness of their interviewee subjects. The essence of the snarkumentaries is a particular style of filming interviews, which is found in nearly all the examples I’ve cited so far. It’s the record scratch moment. Borrowed from fictional cinema conventions, record scratch moments allow the documentarian to either cut away from the interview temporarily to comment on it. It’s in Expelled, when Richard Dawkins casually floats the idea that human life may have been catalyzed by intelligent, extraterrestrial life. The interview stops, and Ben Stein’s voice kicks in, “wait—did he just say what I think he said?” It happens in Religulous plenty, too, like when Bill Maher is interviewing a religious trucker who says he used to deal drugs and sleep with women. We then cut to Bill Maher in a van saying, “and what’s wrong with that?!”
For a while, these films were incredibly popular. The formula seemed like a surefire way to get people to watch films on non-fictional subject that they normally would not. Fahrenheit 9/11 was the highest grossing documentary of all time at the time of its release in 2004.
But then something happened. The snarkumentaries died off. During Obama’s presidency there was some sort of sea change. Jon Stewart’s show ended in 2015, Micheal Moore’s documentary work became more serious, Bill Maher went on to host one of the least funny shows on television, and so on. The documentary world became more focused on serious presentations of subjects while the news became more focused on debating.
During this time in mainstream media, the internet got the hold of the snarkumentary. In many ways, it became one of the most popular forms of YouTube videos. The reaction video, where one ridicules their subject, from movie reviews to bashing liberals. The same record scratches, the mixture of clips from movies and shows, and the snarky tone, presuming that the viewer already agrees with you. And this has proven to be a highly effective format. The snarkumentary format has also influenced man-on-the-street style interviews, and one only needs to look at the “Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse” segment on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to see this.

Dailywire’s new film, Am I Racist?, represents the return of the snarkumentary in full form to the American cinemas. It is the highest grossing non-fiction film of 2024, yet many film critics won’t touch it or seriously engage with it. In it, conservative pundit Matt Walsh interviews various figures associated with the contemporary “anti-racist” movement, from random passer-bys to Robin D’Angelo, the author of White Fragility. Walsh makes his intentions clear from the get-go: he seeks to expose everyone associated with the movement as hucksters and scam artists.
The film presupposes that its viewers will have a conservative slant and this has spurred highly predictable reactions in its reviews. Liberal outlets don’t seriously engage with its content, and the conservatives get their laughs. In other words, nothing much is accomplished. The echo chambers continue to ring. But if we engage with Am I Racist? seriously, we can see that the film is actually making some reasonable points, but it is the methods it uses to get there that are entirely unreasonable.
In Matt Walsh’s film, he deceives interviewees in the tradition of Larry Charles (director of Borat and Religulous). He deliberately annoys and provokes people to show their lack of tolerance, and he employs editing that is highly favorable to him. Of course. Even though Matt Walsh’s political views differ from mine, I don’t actually disagree with his thesis. When a big social moment such as that of the Black Lives Matter movement occurs, there will be people exploiting and taking advantage. Several subjects in the film really do fit into the category of huckster. Services like Race2Dinner—which invites women of color to have dinner with you and chew you out for your microaggressions for a hefty fee—make for easy targets in film like this. It’s a subject so easy to critique, the film could’ve simply let the camera roll in order to make its point. Sadly, Walsh intrudes on this most clear of a scam by posing as a waiter and continuously dropping dishware in some of the most flaccid slapstick you’ll ever see. (What I’d give to see this same set up with Eric Andre in Walsh’s place!)
The big confrontation between Walsh and D’Angelo plays out much liken the Ben Stein and Dawkins interview from Expelled: in a total anti-climax. It’s clear the interviewer is totally uninterested with actually having a dialogue with the interviewee. It’s wasted potential—a genuine conversation between Walsh and D’Angelo would be a great artifact for our strange times.
But what is the real issue with this approach to filmmaking? I think it has something the French concept of “l’esprit d’escalier” or the spirit of the stairs. This term refers to the phenomenon of your mind running through responses to arguments after they have ended. The spirit of the stairs whispers the perfect comeback to you. The fact that you know what you could’ve said, and that you could’ve seen their stupid little face recoil in defeat and that you can’t do anything about it anymore… it drives you crazy. This is the power that the spirit of the stairs has. We’ve all experienced it before. Many would want nothing less to overcome this dilemma of “afterwit” (to use the Joycean term). But the strange truth may be that the gulf between the witticisms we’re capable of in a real-time conversation and the witticisms that generate when we can no longer deliver them is meant to be there. Perhaps the distinction was sacred, in the “supernatural” sense suggested by the French phrase, which would make the violation of it unnatural.
For us to witness dialogue through not only from the interviewer’s perspective, but that of their spirit-of-the-stairs’, is to abolish the interviewer-and-subject relationship. The sacred boundaries of authentic dialogue are instantly violated when one side gets to impose their clever after-the-fact comebacks and the other does not. Dialogue can only be authentic when the spirits stay out of frame, where they belong.