Shattered Glass

Alec Dea

Professor Datcher

14 February 2016

Shattered Glass

            Shattered Glass is a brilliantly constructed and provocative movie.  I think one of the director’s goals was to muddy the line between protagonist and villain.  Hayden Christensen portrays Stephen Glass as a bashful but charming journalist. Glass is a perfectionist with his work and he is an office favorite among the journalists at The New Republic.  He balances his popularity by staying out of the way.  He understands his high level of success but does not let it influence his behavior.  He is a pretty shy guy and over apologizes in an effort to appease his co-workers.  The secretary at The New Republic can’t get enough of his cheesy compliments.   In multiple scenes, Glass tells his co workers “its probably nothing” in an effort to shrug off the fact that a lot of major newspapers and magazines seek his audience.  During a short scene, he hosts a party and is seen cleaning up beer bottles while everyone else has fun.  These subtle actions make him out to be a people pleaser, an attribute that overshadows his confidence and success as a writer. 

            It was the combination of all these simple actions that made it feasible for Glass to hide behind all of his lies.  Nobody expects the shy, harmless, likeable journalist to be a pathological liar. 

            In addition to Glass’s easygoing personality, his colleagues enabled the continuation of his fraudulent work.  They found him to be very funny and consistently sought out his advice for their own work.  When Chuck Lane, a lesser journalist, was chosen as the new editor, much of The New Republic felt like Lane had his hand in the firing of Michael Kelly.  Also, many of them felt Glass should have received the promotion.  This made Lane seem like the bad guy at the office, furthering obscuring the truth behind Glass’s work.  Eventually, Lane had to handle the accusations of Glass’s lack of integrity.  People already felt he was not guilty, or had made an innocent mistake, because they did not trust Lane’s ability to handle the situation.  While Lane was dull and unfriendly, he maintained his integrity throughout the movie and dealt with him accordingly.  He gave him many opportunities to confess.  It took every last discovered lie to force Lane to fire the deceitful journalist.  However, Lane was made out to be the bad guy due to his “unfair” treatment of Glass. 

Stephen Glass is more clever and devious than he appears at first glance.  All of his actions were calculated.  He had to build the perfect persona in order to hide from his lies for as long as possible.  His favorite question “are you mad?” and his tendency to placate his colleagues forced them to take a step back and reevaluate the unlikelihood that Glass is a manipulative liar.   

The filmmakers did a masterful job in developing complicated characters and relationships to distort our ability to recognize the protagonists and villains.  When we strip the characters down to their bare essence, it is clear that Glass was a manipulative liar and Lane was the one doing his job with integrity.