As I sat in the theater for Nathan Fielder and Noah Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything, one thought kept popping up: this could never be Black people.
So if you’re somehow unaware of the documentary sensation taking social media by storm, You Can See Everything follows disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Billy Evans in the 34 days before Holmes is sent to federal prison.
I’ve been a fan of Nathan Fielder since my college years, as I’d often watch Nathan for You after late-night shifts working at the movie theater. Fielder’s work has evolved in a fascinating fashion over the last 13 years. Nathan for You was both a comedy built on people’s willingness to say yes on camera and on how easy it is to pull off a business scam in America.
Fielder’s follow-up series, The Rehearsal, is all about the performative nature of being a person. Across its two seasons, it takes a laser focus on communication and how poor communication can lead to devastating, yet avoidable consequences.
All those interests collide spectacularly in You Can See Everything. The first half of the movie is the most straightforward, as Nathan is trying to understand Elizabeth and how she managed to scam all these notable people. Elizabeth Holmes is a weird, discomforting individual. I don’t know how so many people were taken in by her, because she seems devoid of charisma and social intelligence.
A woman who didn’t understand the gag of Who’s on First managed to scam investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. While You Can See Everything is a structurally fascinating, thematically bonkers ride, it also winds up being a fascinating portrait of how whiteness works.
Neither Billy nor Elizabeth feel like trustworthy people. While Elizabeth Holmes is the core subject of the film, one of the major subplots is Fielder trying to understand what Billy’s whole deal is. He’s incredulous at the fact that Billy chose not only to partner with Elizabeth, but to have two children with her while knowing the legal trouble she was facing. Fielder is in disbelief that Billy had zero issues trusting Elizabeth, given that her legal troubles come from telling massive lies, but also trying to understand why this situation is appealing to Billy.
When Elizabeth’s father says he trusts Billy, the only reason we can really surmise at this point is that he’s a white man with money. This trust in whiteness shows up in the documentary itself, as Billy and Elizabeth inexplicably let Nathan “Dumb Starbucks” Fielder make a documentary about them, and somehow thought this was going to make them look good.
In the days before Elizabeth is to be incarcerated, she and Billy are actively pitching investors on what is essentially Theranos 2.0. What’s crazy is that the people they’re talking to on the phone about this don’t immediately shut them down and seem to be intrigued by what they’re pitching.
This woman lost hundreds of millions of dollars by selling a lie to investors, military generals, and public officials, and it’s just kind of waved off. A Black person could never pull off what either Elizabeth or Billy are trying to pull off.
That’s not to say that Black people can’t scam; we’ve all heard Teejayx6’s 2019 opus “Dynamic Duo” and Yung Miami’s “Spend Dat.” But scams by those who are neither white nor rich are more often than not limited to those in their immediate surroundings.
If a Black person were to commit fraud at the level Elizabeth Holmes did, we would be thrown under the jail, and no one would be trying to work with that scammer again. We probably couldn’t even scam to that degree, as it can be a struggle for Black and brown folks to simply get approved for a housing loan.
By that same token, I’d also like to think that most of us can see through the BS that Elizabeth and Billy are pushing, by virtue of our inherent distrust of white folks, given, ya know, *points at hundreds of years of American history.*
Even though race isn’t at the forefront of what Fielder and Oppenheim are trying to accomplish in You Can See Everything, it’s impossible not to have it top of mind while watching it if you’re not white. There’s an inherent understanding that this is something that can only happen with white people.
Maybe, just maybe, if rich white folks were as discerning about each other as they are distrustful about those not rich and white, they wouldn’t find themselves defrauded by wide-eyed white women and orange-faced slum lords.
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