Loved ‘May December’? Here’s more films that skewer our obsession with scandal

Julianne Moore with a lisp, an actor from Riverdale giving us an Oscar-worthy performance, and a skewering of how obsessed we all are with scandals. With May December, director Todd Haynes basically amalgamates everything he hinted at in his prior works and delivers a tour de force satire of how we voraciously consume tabloids with little regard to the actual people affected. Real life scandals are mined by Hollywood to such an extent that nothing (apart from a trail of destruction) is left behind. But to weave an artful satire of the media’s tendency to do so is a whole different gravy. Basically, May December is so good that we were left wanting more. 

Network (1976)

When it comes to films that skewer how we interact with everything that’s on our screens, the 1976 film Network is arguably where it all began. When a veteran news anchor threatens to kill himself live on air and it turns out to be a hit with viewers, execs at the network decide to milk it for profit, making his tirades into a reoccurring, orchestrated slot. It’s a conceit borrowed by Charlie Brooker for the first ever episode of Black Mirror, and it’s at the heart of all those times that worse for wear celebs and public figures have been forced to soldier on and take a seat on the sofa of that chat show, or stumble out on stage. 

Far from Heaven (2002)

While May December has largely been a roaring success, some people online took issue with Marcelo Zarvos’ score: “The soundtrack is absolutely awful. Everytime that piano comes in, I’m cringing and feeling like I’m watching a Lifetime movie [sic]” said one user on Reddit. But that’s precisely the point, and there’s no better way to understand what Haynes is going for than by watching his 2002 film Far from Heaven. Following a 1950s housewife in the midst of a personal crisis, not only does Far from Heaven skewer the way scandal operates on a smaller scale — manifesting as whispers that spread through the suburbs where Cathy (Julianne Moore) resides — but it pays homage to the stylistic choices in the Douglas Sirk films that inspired it, their melodramatic scores included. May December does something similar, taking cues from the overwrought made-for-TV movies that it simultaneously takes a jab at. 

Maps to the Stars (2014)

David Cronenburg’s forgotten 2014 film is essentially a satire of everything that makes Hollywood so horribly morbid. Featuring Julianne Moore and a fresh off the Twilight set R-Pattz, Maps to the Stars follows a slew of fictitious celebs (and wannabe ones) as they navigate stardom. Like May December, its strength is that it asserts that the real-life subjects of the tabloids have more to them than these gossip rags would have you believe.

The Square (2017)

Ruben Östlund’s 2017 film The Square sets its sights on how we exploit personal tragedies not in film and TV, but in the world of art and advertising. In the Palme d’Or winning predecessor to the Triangle of Sadness, we follow the curator of a Stockholm art museum during a period of his life where, essentially, everything starts to go wrong. One particular thing that sets off this unfortunate sequence of events is a controversial ad campaign for the museum that features a homeless child being blown up. No, seriously. It’s this aspect of the film — The Square’s dissection of how shock factor sells — that’s earned it a place on this list.

Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring skewers a lot of things: consumerism, our obsession with celebrity, and just how much of these celebrities’ lives we think we’re owed. But a more overlooked aspect of The Bling Ring is how it depicts the aftermath of the burglaries that inspired the film, whereby the teens responsible become victim to the relentless nature of the tabloid press. Really, the existence of Coppola’s The Bling Ring is itself a testament to this too. As is the docuseries that came out only last year, over ten years after the crimes originally happened… Let it go! 

While the Argentinian director’s 2015 film doesn’t concern itself with the notion of scandal in the narrative sense, we’d argue that Noé actually went one step further with Love: he created a film so “scandalous” that it stirred up the very responses that prove we simply can’t get enough of being outraged. Following, in essence, the formation of a throuple, at the time of its release Love made the rounds because of its use of real sex scenes. We suggest you pop it on, let your jaw go slack, and start messaging your mates about how “weird” it is, just as Noé likely intended.