Chelsea Alexandra
Have you ever been so hypnotized by something so unnerving that you wanted to look away but you couldn’t? You are unsure if you are supposed to feel this uncomfortable, this awkward, this tense, but you need to keep looking. It’s like a magnetic force. No matter how hard you try to break away and settle that uncomfortable anxiety that sits in the pit of your stomach, you continue to watch. That is more or less the feeling I felt watching the trailer for Nathan Fielder’s latest work in collaboration with Lance Oppenheim, You Can See Everything. You Can See Everything brings Fielder and his crew into the home of infamous Theranos scammer Elizabeth Holmes thirty-four days prior to her stay.
For those unfamiliar, Holmes founded Theranos. Theranos was promised to revolutionize blood testing. Using a device called Edison, It promised to run hundreds of complex medical tests from just a tiny drop of blood obtained via a simple fingerprick. It would be able to detect diabetes and different types of cancers. Holmes and her technology were a hot topic in Silicon Valley, and she was on the verge of being one of the youngest self-made billionaires. However, two former employees, Tyler Shultz and Erika Cheung, became the key whistleblowers and exposed Holmes as a fraud. Both Shultz and Cheung revealed the quality control issues, Edison’s unreliable testing data, and the data manipulation that was happening at Theranos. All the information helped convict Holmes of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy for deceiving the investors of her company.
When the teaser dropped initially, it threw the internet into an uproar. I was lying in bed, minding my own business, doing my nightly routine of doomscrolling, and suddenly You Can See Everything was all I saw. I had been following the Holmes story since I watched the 2019 documentary, The Inventor. I had also watched the Amanda Seyfried mini-series that was released on Hulu, The Dropout. I wouldn’t say I am an expert by any means, but Holmes is one of these people, similar to Fielder, who really messes with your head. They are able to manipulate reality in a way that keeps you drawn in. Where Fielder does it for the sake of art, Holmes feels more sinister. The trailer features Holmes shedding one single tear. The tear itself feels forced, as if she is trying to prove she is a human being. My feelings on Holmes’ humanity are conflicting. When I look into her eyes, it is as if I am looking into nothing.
One other takeaway from the trailer that I am intrigued to see play out is the relationship between Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans. Fielder asks Evans in the trailer if he ever felt as if Holmes was also trying to scam him. A fair question to ask, given all of the speculation around their union and the birth of their only child being another manipulation tactic Holmes used to persuade him that she had humanity in her.
As a fan of Fielder’s work specifically, The Rehearsal and The Curse, this feels like the love child of both projects. I am not sure what to expect or to have any real questions about Holmes and her ability to have empathy will be answered here. In a weird way, I am not really sure what I would want from Holmes or Fielder from this project but I do know I am sat. I am there as soon as the doors open. To have both Fielder and Holmes locked in a room together trying to decipher what is authentic and what is manipulation from one another is more appealing than any horror movie this year could ever entice me.
