The Most Hated Family In America ( Formative assessment (shared with Recording Reality students)

The Most Hated Family In America 

The documentary is about the Westboro Baptist Church located in Topecka Kansas, the head of which is Fred Phelps. The Westboro Baptist Church members are most famous for protesting at the funerals of American solders killed in action, holding signs like “God Hates Fags” and “ Thank God For Dead Soldiers ”.

When writing a documentary, Louis speaks to a few members of The Westboro Baptist Church. Shirley Phelps-Roper is the matriarch of the family. She is in charge of a family of 11 kids. She organizes all of the church’s protests and often appears in the news as a mouth piece. For example at the beginning of the documentary, we see a snippet of a recent studio interview she gave on a national news show. Louis interviews Shirley principally to find out what reasoning and arguments lie behind The Westboro Baptist Church’s actions.

In one particular segment of the documentary, Louis travels with the family across America in order to protest at a dead soldier’s funeral. Louis adopts quite a combative style with Shirley in order to force her to justify her actions and also to discover whether she is able to understand or accept any counter arguments to her own position, which she vehemently does not. This interview is then immediately contrasted with a press conference given by the dead soldier’s grief stricken mother. The structuring of the documentary thus juxtaposes Shirley’s cold responses to Louis’s combative questions with the deeply emotional responses of the dead soldier’s mother, highlighting the difference between the two women.

Louis also interviews Shirley’s daughter Megan Phelps-Roger, who is 21 years old  regarding her feelings to The Westboro Baptist Church and her upbringing. Instead of the more combative style he adopted with Shirley, Louis asks Megan open and suggestive questions. Louis wants to find out how Megan has been emotionally affected and how as a young woman her life has been limited by her family. Her role in the documentary is to provide an empathetic connection for the audience and to illustrate the detrimental cost of the family’s extreme beliefs in terms of the life of its own members. Louis’s style of questioning is therefore much softer, in the hope that Megan will open up emotionally. His questions to her are more personal and focus more on her feelings. He attempts to build a rapport with her and often adopts a light-hearted tone and approach.

In one of the final scenes in the documentary, Louis wanted to take Megan to have a cup of coffee in the shop however Megan is not told that she is not allowed to by her mother. Louis attempts to understand how she feels about this as a young twenty one year old woman. In the next scene, while Louis and Megan are travelling in the car he gets to her explain how isolated she feels and a little about her struggles being a member of the Phelps family. Louis’ attempt to build a relationship and rapport with her is clear in this scene, as when she accuses him of being a “scoffer and a mocker” of their beliefs, he says quite poignantly “I never scoffed at you”. This scene demonstrates that it many ways Megan represents the emotional heart of the documentary.

Fred Phelps is the patriarch of the Phelps family and the founder The Westboro Baptist Church . Fred was aggressive and did not want to give any answers to Louis’ questions whenever he got an opportunity to interview him. Louis however continues to repeat his provocative and combative questions, knowing full well that Fred will refuse to answer him or supply him with any further information. That is not Fred’s role in the documentary; Louis gains a firm understanding of the family’s belief system from his interviews with other family members, particularly Shirley. Instead Louis wants to demonstrate what kind of man Fred is, which his rude and angry responses demonstrate perfectly.