…about Will and Harper, posted a couple of days ago on Facebook by Robert Hofler:

“I’m glad Josh Greebaum made the doc and I’m glad I watched it, but like a lot of reality TV, it’s a tad dishonest. Harper Steele is afraid how the middle-of-the-country types will treat her, and the doc makes clear that they are actually very accepting. Occasionally in the doc, Steele enters these establishments without companion/costar Will Ferrell, but there is always a camera present. Obviously.

“That camera presence, no doubt, inhibits people from expressing their real, deep-down opinion. Often in the doc restaurant servers and others call Steele ‘sir’, and she has to correct them. But if she weren’t sitting next to a movie star, how would these people react? The camera is too strong and unrecognized a force in this narrative. Then again, would I have read a memoir titled ‘Harper Steele’? No.

“The doc made me like Ferrell a lot. There’s a sadness, though, in how often he tells Harper that she is ‘pretty’ or ‘beautiful.’ Did he ever feel the need to tell the previous male version of Steele that he was ‘handsome?”