From Will Knowles to Alan O’Leary – March 2026

Letters to Fragments is a space for reflection and comments – write to a maker, the editors, other viewers, or even a fragment itself! If you’d like to send us a letter you can email it to editorial@fragments.video

Dear Alan,

My first experience with Men Shouting came a couple of years ago during my undergraduate degree. Entering the field of videographic research as a relatively unfamiliar territory, out of the many examples discussed, Men Shouting had the most profound impact on me. The piece entirely changed my theoretical understanding of how video essays can engage with filmic text. Thusly I’m grateful for the chance to send my thoughts and rewatch the fragment within the context of its outtakes.
Before watching Men Shouting, the 2008 financial crash and the resultant films about it were topics I had limited knowledge on, The Big Short (2015) being the only example I had seen at that point. Therefore, what I found most profound on that initial watch was the methodology and aesthetic translation of that into a videographic context. Men Shouting, to me, was broadly about the intersection of masculinity and class: each episode’s distinct audiovisual techniques deconstructed form to yield an alternate viewing experience that culminated with a beautifully executed coda that subverted the androcentric arrangements of the original texts.

Episode 7 stands as my personal favourite: the unique constraint of an epigraph, while building off the prior deformative experiments and spectatorship, elevates the essay to an emotive height I could not see possible in more traditional written analysis. Techniques such as multiscreen in Episode 1 or audible glossary montage in Episode 5 expertly reconfigure form to generate hyper-masculinised contesting soundscapes and visuals, emphasising the video essay’s overarching themes of male bravado, which provides further weight to Episode 7’s argument about viewing pleasure. Countless written essays and articles have been published regarding spectatorship towards the representation of male aggression and wealth in media, but to sensually experience the nuance of these representations provides a comprehension of the role film form rarely discussed otherwise.

If the video essay is to be defined at the most basic level as scholarship constructed with audiovisual materials and techniques, then Men Shouting is the perfect example of how this newfound approach can exist outside conventional film studies. Going through your initial commentary, it’s impossible for me to not project my own experiences with Keathley and Mittell’s exercises. While my own efforts to this point have not been to the same heights of precision as in Men Shouting, they have strived to follow in its footsteps, tying a reconstruction of form to an overarching argument.

Yet, now with the new insight from the outtakes and revelation of a cut fourth film, 99 Homes (2014), I’ve found an even deeper appreciation for the methodology and structure in the final edit.

As smaller standalone experiments, I think each fragment is particularly interesting for many of the same reasons I’ve always been so intrigued by Men Shouting. What I found most fascinating in my response to these outtakes is how they expanded upon the use of language in these original texts. While Fragment 3 is the most overt example of this, I found Fragment 2 to be the most fascinating, largely for how it challenges Anglocentrism, like how the coda questions androcentrism. Within the wider discussion of masculinity, not just in 99 Homes and The Big Short but in global cinema, the intersection of race with gender is arguably just as significant as with class. Across those two as well as Margin Call (2011) and Too Big to Fail (2011), I think it’s beneficial to not just deconstruct the terminology and tone the predominantly white male casts use but also the codes they’re presented in, ergo also the spectators who even have the possibility of receiving them.

Returning a final time to my personal projections upon Men Shouting, the video essay I produced loosely inspired by it was about Happy Together (1997), a Cantonese-language film. Witnessing a specific parameter like language dubs, all I can do is recollect the unexpected hurdles I found operating within a text whose narration I was mostly a stranger to. It’s easy to overlook just how language influences spectatorship, so I think within this fragment exploring alienation through a disconnected language was a powerful tool and an idea I hadn’t fully considered until seeing the fragment.
Fragments 1 and 4 are also intriguing, and I think you have summarised possible issues succinctly with your commentary. Whilst 2 and 3 expanded upon what I as a viewer gathered from the full video essay, 1 and 4 more so cemented those initial thoughts. While a palindrome of sorts carries risks, I think the idea alongside characters that demonstrate such extremities yet similarities in dialogue and beliefs makes it worth exploring in an independent test.
Regardless of my interpretations of all four, I do ultimately understand why 99 Homes was abandoned, especially with a project as broad in scope as Men Shouting. My main readings, while still related to the core crux of the video essay, have enough potential for an entirely separate yet possibly connected project. I think it’s incredible that Fragments readers will have the chance to get a glimpse at the process as a testament to the joys of experimentation behind all videographic criticism. I eagerly await any possible further continuations!

Thank you,
Will

Will Knowles is an MA Film student at Liverpool John Moores University. He’s been researching and practicing with videographic criticism since his undergraduate degree. Currently, for his Master’s final project he is working on an audiovisual piece examining the relationships between consumer attitudes towards artificial intelligence and their representations in the science-fiction genre.