Ten years ago, a viral phenomenon hit YouTube. Such was the success of the video that it currently accumulates more than 8 million views (without taking into account remixes, memes and various parodies). In it, a hitchhiker who had just saved a girl from the attempted assault by the driver with a clean ax made the entire United States know the phrase “Smash! Smash! Su-mash!”.
Since then, Came a scavenger fame that he did not want and that he ended up, three months later, with his bones in jail and accused of murder. ‘The backpacker with the axe’ You could investigate and analyze what happened, but instead you decide to take the worst path possible in a true crime: believe and follow the official version to the letter.
True Kai
In the first bars of the documentary you think you know where it’s going to go, because it’s not wrong: The reporter who discovered him talks about how Kai became a phenomenon and was practically forced to appear on Jimmy Kimmel (almost, in fact, to star in his own reality show), even though the hitchhiker just wanted to get high on the beach and be a free soul “Okay,” you think, “this is a story about how online fame and the pressure of the media are not easy to assimilate for someone who hasn’t even considered being famous.” But no.
Later, the plot takes a turn to talk about the distance that Kai has with his family and how he wanders the streets asking for alcohol in exchange for repeating “his” phrase and a selfie. it made him an irascible and unpredictable individual. “Okay,” you realize at that moment, “actually the documentary is about the romanticization of fame and how memes last five minutes on the Internet but they can ruin a whole life.” But neither.
The problem with ‘The backpacker with the ax’ is that He does not have a thesis nor does he want to tell anything in particular. What’s more, his portrayal of Kai as someone violent and reckless is just a preparation to later enjoy and revel in the morbidity of the murder he supposedly committed. The problem is that the pathetic portrayal that the documentary has made of the main character of her tries to serve as excuse for not investigating the causes that could lead to a person who proclaimed phrases of love and friendship to murder a 73-year-old man. And it’s downright disappointing.
Cobra Kai
The job of a true crime is not simply to expose facts that anyone can read on Wikipedia: must investigate further, draw conclusions, launch various versions of what happened, try to explain it. But in ‘The backpacker with the ax’ they are not even willing to talk to Kai to tell him what he has experienced: the mockery and scolding towards him throughout the footage is such that when they reach the end, they believe that enough with the official version, a couple of testimonies from the victim’s neighbors and close the blind.
Luckily, a large part of the viewers has not believed the twisted version of Netflix and They have done on social networks the work that the documentary team should have done: look for the whys, the whos and the hows of this case. It is still surprising that those who brought us ‘Making a murderer’ collaborate with an official version full of half-truths in which there are more questions than certainties, starting with the very reason for the murderwhich remains blurred and in the field of the gray, believing that the inexplicable serves as motivation.
And it’s a shame, because until his final turn all the cards seem lined up for turn against the bait of the media and the pressure for online fame and for the authenticity of a person whose greatest sin (until murder, at least) was living on the fringes of American society. so focused on success at all costs that she is capable of perverting everything to unimaginable limits.
Journalism, wink, wink
The need to release a new true crime every week, the more gruesome the better, it makes the quality of them drop sharply. They continue to give an audience at very little cost, yes, but for every ‘The girl in the photo’ or ‘Don’t even touch the cats’ we have twenty documentaries where six interviews and following the police report prevent documentary filmmakers from taking any kind of risk to the time to draw conclusions. In ‘El mochilero del hacha’ we have a simple exposition of facts that instead of being a journalistic work is content to do the minimum, a copy of Wikipedia in your own words for the teacher to give you a bare five.
‘The backpacker with the axe’ is the bottom of the barrel of true crimes, from where you can no longer scratch, condemning a kid who from the beginning is opposed to everything that is not living his life with absolute freedom. Netflix is wrong not to give Kai a voice to tell his version of events, and instead tell the story from the journalist who found him and who moved earth and air to get an exclusive interview with him with the sole intention of improving his career at the expense of the integrity of the backpacker in question.
Documentaries about murders and real crimes are (or should be) something more than a television redoubt for the morbid: They talk about the society that we are, about the glorification of violence, the ephemeral fame, mental health treatment or an unfair judicial system. What cannot, under any circumstances, is become the witch’s train, a tour of the record of a crime as a simple old scare without any kind of background. But as long as they continue to have an audience, the degradation of the format will, sadly, continue.