The second of my Marble Hornets pieces. Obviously spoilers follow for all three seasons of Marble Hornets.
Personally, I cannot stand it when a character is an idiot. And I am certain I’m not alone. There are few things more irritating in storytelling than watching a film, reading a book, or even playing a game with a fantastic, immersive story, only to be thrown out of it when a character makes an irredeemably idiotic move. Immersion is broken, heartfelt sympathy turns to cynicism. Why, then, is there a soft spot in my ideology for Jay Merrick of Marble Hornets? He is, objectively, an idiot. He breaks all rules of horror, entering random abandoned buildings alone, touching blood and other potentially dangerous and unknown substances, not covering his tracks and making loud noises in new locations, the list goes on. So why do we care about him? And why, at the conclusion of his story, do we – against all odds – feel for him?
In any piece of art, we start with the canvas, the format in which the tale is told. In the case of Marble Hornets, YouTube serves as the hosting site for 87 main channel found-footage entries with supplemental twitter posts and hidden codes. The channel, and Jay’s subsequent thrust into the spotlight by it, serves as an immediate pedestal, giving us an intimate, at times too-close, documentation of events from his eyes. This, foremostly, gives the audience an avenue for sympathy. The simple directorial choice of shooting Jay from this angle, as opposed to a more typical omnipotent camera observer, evokes sympathy and frustration primarily, other than ridicule. We see the story almost entirely in Jay’s point of view, likening him more to a friend or colleague than a character. Especially in a more modern context, with the existence of video blog YouTube channels and lifestyle influencers, we view Jay parasocially, intrinsically cheering for him instead of rushing to critique. In this sense, he feels more real, almost entirely due to us seeing through his eyes instead of those of a typically more critical hovering observer. As the story unfolds, we may not relate to his frustration and less-than-intelligent choices, but we are forced to examine his humanity.
The next step of this art piece is the sketching, the building of plot and character. A writing professor I truly admire once relayed a decently well-known storytelling analogy to me that I still keep in the forefront of my brain, perhaps just due to its snappiness. Step one, once you had a character, was to put them in a tree, high enough that they initially cannot get down on their own. Step two was to throw stones at them, to introduce conflict to their plotline and problem. Step three is a choice: either you help the character down, or you throw more stones. Jay Merrick, in this analogy, begins his story by willingly climbing into this tree, by choosing to begin filming and posting on the “Marble Hornets” YouTube channel. He, throughout the tale, climbs further and further into the branches, dooming himself to failure quite obviously, as the audience watches him stray further and further from attempting to be saved. Jay is not a smart man. But he isn’t dumb either. He’s deeply wrapped up in the web the narrative weaves for him – his actions lose even more rationality as the story continues, but they’re not unfounded, considering his status. He yearns, he requires sight from the top of that tree, and going back down into the barrage of stones feels less dangerous than pursuing the view from the highest branches. Jay refuses, at all costs, to be grounded.
When Jay begins filming for his YouTube channel, he is fueled by intrusive curiosity, a desire for knowledge that entirely consumes him. He needs to know what happened to his old friends, why the Operator is following Alex Kralie, and any number of further queries. He is less of a character at the start and more of what we are used to seeing in media – a camera. In the first season, his actions don’t quite verge on voyeuristic, unlike characters in similar situations (see: Vinny Everyman of EverymanHYBRID). He is almost akin to the audience, as his questioning mirrors our own. We watch him follow the character who, by all means seems the owner of the main plotline: Alex. Jay is almost devoid of characterization until Season Two which only helps the audience to form an attachment to what we see as our only “in” to the plot. In the following seasons, especially through Tim Wright’s later filming and influence (especially post-#72), we watch Jay become erratic, sloppy, and harsh, losing the charm that we found in his actions once we see him from a more typical third-person position. In “Entry #77,” we witness the most overt shift of POVs, watching Jay approach Tim with a knife in his own home, until Tim takes the camera from him, showing Jay to the audience, hands and legs in zip-ties on Tim’s floor. Tim’s interjection via title cards at the end of the entry (Fig. 1 - Fig. 2) displays in gentle but firm honesty the reality of the duo’s desperate predicament.
Jay’s actions, through this lens, begin to seem less and less reasonable, morphing from desperately preservative to erratically obsessive. As the story gains more traction-- the painting gains color, depth, value-- the mantle of protagonist shifts to Tim Wright, who initially began as a minor antagonist through a masked alter ego. Tim pleads with Jay, much as the audience has been, to get help, to seek professional aid and medication, causing even further alignment with Tim’s point-of-view. Impressively, even with the stalking, intrusion, and downright harm that Jay has put in motion throughout the second and third acts of Marble Hornets, we still feel sympathy for him, mostly because Tim still feels that sympathy. He is pained by Jay’s actions, hurt by his exposure of Tim’s personal information and platforming of his mental struggles, but he is still forgiving. Tim has more reason to be hurt than the audience does, and his immediate forgiveness and care for Jay’s well-being transcends the narrative and is mirrored in our reactions. Therefore, even though so many of Jay’s actions are dumb, hurtful, and irrational, we still care so deeply for him, seeing him through Tim’s eyes. The found footage element of this narrative cannot be overstated, as its use is a direct contributor to the success of the storytelling and characterization within.
Jay Merrick, again, is not a smart man. Even on a literal level, he abandons his personal safety, privacy, and eventually his life for the pursuit of knowledge that will do nothing but hurt him. He drags unsuspecting bystanders into the limelight, reworks old grievances and re-lights fires. However, his story is characterized by love, as saccharine as it sounds. Beneath it all, he cares deeply for knowledge, even to the point of danger, and the people around him care deeply for him. He is the foil of Alex, who is doing the wrong things for a more justifiable aim– Jay is doing vastly wrong things for the pursuit of community and understanding. He isn’t as frustrating as many “dumb” protagonists because he, like the audience, just wants to understand the story. He is unsatisfied with a buried lead, but becomes that which he sought to uncover. We may hate “dumb” characters, but Jay Merrick, and his surrounding community, do not feel like characters. The unfiction elements of Marble Hornets separate Jay from his story, creating a person more than a construction of traits. More than anything else, Jay is a flawed, deeply wrong, but somehow understandable person. Marble Hornets, in the end, creates a protagonist that the audience cares about by making him a friend, a camera, and a tragedy all at once.
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