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See Related Article, NYU Suicides spurs wary student reaction, 9/23/05.
published on 09/30/05
Adario Strange, NYU Suicides director, reflects on media overexposure and student suicides
Freddy Deknatel 
Arts Editor
Responding to coverage and critique of his new documentary, The NYU Suicides, filmmaker Adario Strange spoke to The Miscellany News on what he saw as a neighborhood story and a way to actually investigate the endemic suicides at New York Univesity.
What was your inspiration for wanting to make this film?
Well, I live in Greenwich Village. NYU sits in the middle of Greenwich Village. I think sometimes people forget that [while] New York may be one of the most famous cities on the planet, there are still communities and for us, you know, we have our own neighborhood stories. And for me, it was like a neighborhood story.
Was your reaction to the suicides to see an instant trend, and is that what moved you to want to talk to university professors and take an academic view of the deaths?
We can't tell the difference between a reality TV star and people who...real life happens to them and they become a star by virtue of that. It just seems like we're getting to a point where we're so desensitized that the line between "hey, here are five kids living in a house, let's see how they interact" versus turning tragic news stories into—and for people who are maybe victims of tragic events—turning them into stars in an odd sort of way, it seems like that line is becoming blurred.
If you're expecting to see something like Kidz, you've come to the wrong movie. It's not to glorify or sensationalize a series of tragic deaths.
You can read a feature article in Rolling Stone about the student tripping on mushrooms when he killed himself, and that makes him into this sort of instant character. Are you trying to dispel the media circus around the deaths with the film?
I'm not saying these kids in the specific case of NYU became reality TV stars. What I'm saying is I think the media trend—whether you're talking about a television documentary, film documentary, a short form documentary, episodic—for the way you stylize or approach these kinds of topics is to make people stars…Who's the bad guy, who's the good guy, you know, put them at polar opposites, and create a drama around it. I've heard some documentarians come under criticism. People are starting to say, well, you know, what this guy did or what that guy did isn't really a documentary, it's really their opinion, their political stance, their sociological stance. I think documentaries are supposed to be basically investigative journalism, with moving pictures. And that's what the NYU Suicides was meant to be.
Do you think that The NYU Suicides, even if intended to be investigative journalism, still might contribute to the characterization of these suicides as this exotic media product?
No, I don't at all. I don't think it was an exotic subject matter to begin with. I think what happened was…there seemed to be all this kind of shock at what was going on coming out in the media. I wanted to try and contextualize what I saw happening and you know, I think each person had their own reasons. What I wanted to do was present the issue and use the incidents that happened surrounding them as a vehicle to talk about the issue of suicide and depression, as well as social disconnect.
Are you trying to affect certain change with the documentary?
...I don't know if I necessarily wanted to accomplish or find answers with the film—I think I wanted to ask the right questions. You had places being very vulgarly sarcastic about the incidents.
And by the way, that's why when I started making the film I had no worries about any protest or outrage because if it happened, the first thing I was going to say was, “Well, where were you when The Village Voice did ‘the best place to commit suicide,’ splashed in big bold letters in the paper?”
We're getting to this snarky, cynical, desensitized point, where even tragic things—because everything is reality entertainment—the tragic things are joke fodder. And that's just not the style I want to use.
The media attention and critiques do not seem to be at all in-line with what your intentions were.
If people want to see shocking, scary stuff, it's not the film for them. If they want to learn something and get some startling insight into some things that are kind of flying under the radar, it's something to see.
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Alumnae/i posters are strongly encouraged to include their class year with their name. The maximum length for comments is approximately 100 words; longer responses should be submitted as letters to the editor to misc@vassar.edu. More information about our letters policy can be found on our Policies page.
