TRANSCRIPT
I would like to explore the subject of consent. Nowadays, there’s a lot of talk about consent in the area of sexual interaction, and rightly so. I think about myself as a kid when I was being brought up by my parents. There was no ever, ever talk about consent. In fact, I got the opposite of consent in terms of lessons from my parents. I got a lot of violation. I got a lot of really terrible messages, also from the movies I saw, from the pornography that my parents allowed me to have. It was like consent was not something that I ever really thought about. I don’t even know if I knew what that word meant as a child. But I’m going to talk about consent beyond the areas of just sexuality.
So when I think about consent, what I really think about is someone being able to give permission for something to happen. For someone to actually have enough information at their disposal to know if they can give permission, to understand what they’re giving permission for. I think nowadays in our world, there’s a lot of fake consent that’s given. There’s a lot of [ __ ] consent. A lot of consent forms that we need to sign are just [ __ ]. I think about my bank is always sending me new information. Oh, we’re changing this policy, or PayPal is changing some policy, or Patreon is changing some policy. And they give me long, you know, 50 pages of little text, and you know, you just have to click on “yes, I agree with this,” or not even click on it at all. This is just a consent form to show you what changes are being made, and nobody reads that. And they know it. And they know that the more words they put in and the more legalistic terms they put in, the less likely someone’s going to be able to read it or even understand it or have any desire to make sense of it. And so that’s fake consent.
And then I think about when I made my first psychology documentary, “Take These Broken Wings.” I started shooting it in 2007, and I didn’t really think about consent forms. But I read in books when I was reading about how to make a documentary, they said you need to have a good consent form. And sometimes they said you should have many, many pages of consent forms. And I had been in a couple of documentaries already, just walking through the streets of New York, and there’d be somebody filming. Oh, do you want to be in this film? I’d say sure, went on. They’d had me sign a consent form before I ever even gave an interview, and it’d be like six pages long. And I’d say, who wants to read this? And I’d just sign it quickly and get it done with and just make the assumption that they were going to use my information in a proper way. That wasn’t really consent. That was fake consent. I have no idea what those things really said, and they didn’t want me to actually read all that fine print. They were just covering themselves legally.
Well, when I thought about it, when I started making my film, and especially when I was filming people who were talking about very, very personal things, I really wanted them to give consent. I didn’t want anyone to be misused in any way in my film. I didn’t want people to be harmed with how I used their words and their image. And so what I told people is, I have a consent form, but I don’t want you to sign it until after you’ve given your interview. But then they say, but how do I know what I’m going to be talking about if it’s fair, if I’m going to give consent? So you can read it beforehand. Feel free to read it beforehand. Please don’t sign it until after you’ve given the interview. And after you’ve given the interview, think about what you said and think about if you want to sign the consent form.
And I remember it was interesting. It put more stress on me because I realized I was maybe someone would say something great in an interview, and then afterward they’d get nervous and wouldn’t sign it. And interestingly, of all the people that I interviewed—and I interviewed over a hundred people for that first film—there was only one. I don’t even remember who that person was. I think actually the irony is she was someone I interviewed on the street, and I think she was a therapist. And I think she felt insecure about what she said, and she didn’t want to sign the consent form afterward. And she felt guilty about it. She said, well, I just don’t know how I feel about what I said. Maybe I don’t totally agree, or maybe I’m a little vulnerable, and maybe I’ll sound stupid. I don’t know how I feel about signing that form. And I remember what I said. I said, please don’t sign it then. Don’t.
Well, no, no, she’s maybe I… I said, no, no, no. Here’s my email. I can get you this consent form in a week or a month if you really change your mind. But as long as you’re sort of on the edge, it’s better that you not sign it because I don’t want someone in my film who doesn’t really want to be there, especially who doesn’t want what they’ve said edited in some way that they might like even less. I don’t want people who have insecurity to be in my work. And she said, okay. And I remember what I left feeling was I felt good about that. I felt like, okay, darn it, she did give a good interview, and I would have liked to have used that if she’d been really confident to be in my film. But she felt ambivalent about giving consent, giving her permission. She and I understood that, so it’s like better to have her not be in it. And I didn’t use that interview.
There was another example I had. It was in my second documentary, which I made three years later in 2010, where I interviewed someone who was in somewhat of an altered state in one of my films. And she gave me consent to be in the film. She said some very, very vulnerable things about her personal life, and it was a film about psychosis. And she was someone who had been, or maybe was even a little bit still in some degree of psychosis, had been much more extreme. And she signed a consent form. And I remember some people saying, how can you have someone who is in an altered state give consent? They’re in no position to give consent. And then I had other people who had been in altered states say, wait a second, so therefore she has no right to give consent? That’s disrespecting her. Someone who’s in an altered state to some degree can still give some degree of consent. They’re still an adult human being who can sign permission. They can understand certain things about whether they want to be used or not.
And I took both of these things, but it still bothered me. So I actually edited her into the film because she had signed the consent form. And I, by the way, made my consent forms very short, very clear, to the point. Not all sorts of legalistic stuff. Probably it could have harmed me a little bit because it wasn’t legalistic enough, but at least it was very clear. I own this footage. I can edit this footage. I will do my best to edit you so anything you say is related to the context in which you said it. I’m not going to manipulate it, but it will be my footage, my property, etc., etc. Standard consent form, but not six pages long, just boiled down to the basics so someone could actually read it and understand it. And I saw people really wanting to get it, and it made sense to them. And it was like, this is fair and square.
Well, three, four, five, six months later after I shot that interview with this woman, I realized I still wasn’t left feeling like she had given enough consent to know. So what I realized is I actually need to show her the film that I have edited to see if she really gives consent to be in it. And she was a key part of the film, and that really scared me because I thought, what if she changes her mind? Daniel, are you stupid? Don’t go and ask her if she really gives consent because if she…
Says, “No, you’re going to have to edit her out, and it’s going to really hurt or maybe even kill your lovely film.” But then there was a part of me that said, “If she really doesn’t like it, she needs to know, and she needs to have a right to have a say in this. This is her life, Daniel.” So I went back. I actually had to go back to her country, and I couldn’t find her. I didn’t have her telephone number, but I had people who were close with her who contacted her, and she got a message back to me. She said, “No, I 100% give consent. I knew what I was saying when I said it. I want you, I want to be in this film, and I want you to use my footage, and I trust you.” And I felt, “Okay, fine, that’s real consent.”
And then when I had the first screening of that film in her country, because I flew back there again to Sweden, she sat next to me when I screened it. I was terrified of what she would say. I mean, I was always nervous how people are going to react to how I edit them. An hour interview is going to be boiled down to they get seven minutes in the film. How are they going to feel about it? And she liked it. She said, “Good, I’m glad I gave consent. That is what I gave consent for you to do.” And I thought, “Oh, thank God,” because it’s a terrible thing to misuse somebody’s permission.
And then I think about consent in my life. Here’s a totally random example out of the blue from a different angle. I think about my grandmother. She was the first one who I remember this for in my life. She would say, “Daniel, there’s something I really want to share with you. You’re not going to want to hear it, but it’s okay if I tell you, right?” And then I realized at a certain point when she said this, and later on many other people, when they say, “I want to tell you something that you don’t want to hear,” okay? Question mark. That okay? Question mark was consent. “Do you give me consent to share this thing you don’t want to hear?”
And at one level, one might say, “Oh, she’s going to share something that will help me.” What I realized again and again is 99% of people who said, “I’m going to share something ugly. You’re not going to like it. You’re not going to want to hear this, but it’s important. It’s for your own good. Can I share it with you?” Okay? What I realized is I don’t want to hear it. It made me feel terrible. Usually, it was just a disguised attack on me.
So what I would say is I realized that along the way, I started saying, “No, no, I don’t give my permission for you to share that. You asked, I say no.” And what I realized again and again and again is those people were actually asking for false consent. It was a fake question. They weren’t really asking for my permission because what would happen is when I denied them permission, they would just say it anyway because really, really, they were just faking it. They wanted to just go at me, and they wanted to make me feel like I was part of the process of allowing myself to be attacked.
So nowadays when someone says it to me, especially someone I don’t trust entirely, when they say, “Okay, I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to want to hear, but okay,” and I say no, they’re shocked. They’re like, “Oh,” because they weren’t really asking for permission.
So I think about the opposite in interaction. I think about when I was a therapist, and I’m not talking about signing consent or asking for people to sign for consent. I’m talking about sometimes I would want to share something with someone that might be very difficult for them to hear, not easy to hear, and something that could make them upset. Perhaps some behavior pattern on their part, or let’s say something as simple as they have really bad breath, and they’re wondering why they’re having a lot of conflicts at their work. No one wants to sit near them. They can’t have any dating relationships that go on, and I know it would be very painful to them. It’d be very embarrassing.
I would ask people, and I do it in my personal life, not when I tell people things like this, but let’s just say for the example of someone with really bad breath, I say, “You know, there’s something I really feel I need to share. I think you’re paying me money. I feel like I want to tell you this. No one else probably in your life is telling you this. Is it okay?”
And sometimes people would say, “I’m not in a position to hear it. I can’t handle it.” I’d be like, “Okay, fine.” Then maybe two weeks later they say, “Okay, I’m feeling a little stronger. I’m ready to hear,” and I could share something like, or some especially some behavior pattern that they had that was, you know, kind of funky and negative and the kind of thing that, you know, drove people away or threw people away, got people out of their life, caused them to get rejected.
Sometimes it’s like, “You know, I really would want to ask for their consent to participate in hearing these painful things about themselves.” And I also think about asking people personal questions, and I’m talking outside of therapy. I think it’s okay for friends to ask each other very personal questions. I think that’s part of what a friendship allows, especially if it comes down to asking people personal questions for the sake of just being curious.
I think we’re allowed to ask each other questions in curiosity about each other, not to provoke growth in the other person. I don’t like it when friends of mine are trying to provoke my growth for my own good. I think that more belongs in a therapeutic relationship where that’s the job of one person to help the other person grow. But in a friendship, no, I’m not here to help my friends grow, and their job is not to help me grow. My job in my relationship with myself is to help me grow.
But I think of when I ask people personal questions, often I will preface it with a request for consent. For instance, “Is it okay if I ask you a personal question?” And sometimes people say no, or sometimes people say, “Well, conditionally yes,” depending on what is the area in which you will ask me a personal question. And I would say, “Well, it’s about your relationship with your parents,” or “It’s about your romantic history,” or something like that. And people can say no, and it’s like, it’s interesting for me because if I’m really fairly genuinely honestly asking for consent, when they say no, then subject is done.
If I notice I have a desire, “Oh, I feel rejected by them saying no, and I really want to ask it anyway,” then it was [ __ ] consent. I wasn’t really being honest. But I have had people say no, no, but more often than not when I ask for consent, people are very grateful. I’ve had people point it out. I remember some years ago someone said to me, “You know, I’ve noticed something about you, Daniel, in personal relationships. I hear you ask for permission a lot of times before you ask anything or many, many things.” And they admired that about me.
And I remember I was like, “Oh, I barely even noticed it,” because I think having been a therapist, I noticed I was asking for permission a lot with people, asking for consent about all sorts of things. And I realized it’s something that I grew to like about myself, and I like it with other people when they ask me for consent about all sorts of things that they might ask me personal questions. I don’t mind in my personal life being asked personal questions, but I certainly know that I like it even more when people, especially if they’re indulging their curiosity about me, they’re asking if it’s okay to ask me. It builds trust.
So that’s the main thing I think about asking for consent. It builds trust. Whether the person says yes or no, they learn, “Oh, this is someone who respects me more, someone who cares about my willingness to participate in whatever this interaction.”
Is, and I certainly know that I feel much safer to be open and to talk honestly when I trust the person that I’m talking with.