Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Jawline’ On Hulu, A Documentary About Teen Boys Doing Live Broadcasting To Improve Their Lives

So you think that you’re up to date on all the ways people try to get famous on social media? If you think it’s just Snapchat and Instastories, you’re hopelessly behind. Did you know about live broadcasting on sites like YouNow, or lip synching on TikTok? No? Well, buckle your seat belts, milennials and older; the documentary Jawline will show you a world you may have not known existed before.

JAWLINE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Austyn Tester is a 16-year old living in rural Tennessee. He’s an up-and-comer as a relatively new type of social media freelancer; he live-broadcasts on a website called YouNow, where he does live video chats with an audience that’s grown to a few thousand other teens — mostly girls — who get flustered when he brings them on as a “guest” onto his live chat. He does all the other requisite social media other teens do, like Snapchat, Instastories and lip-synching videos on Musical.ly (now TikTok).

He generally imparts positive messages in his videos and live chats, and he has gone all in when it comes to the pursuit of likes and fans. He knows that it’s a fast track out of his boring life at home, where he shares a bed with his brother Donovan; the two of them live with their sister and single mother, who divorced their dad after years of abuse. He wants fame, he wants attention, but he also just wants to impart some positivity in the world given his family history.

Cut to Los Angeles. Michael Weist, owner of Good Times Entertainment, manages a bunch of teen boys who are live-broadcasting superstars, with hundreds of thousands of followers on multiple platforms, and an engagement rate that’s through the roof. He takes these teens on tour, where they’re surrounded by screaming preteen and teen girls, many of whom have fallen between the social cracks at their schools. They’re either bullied or otherwise isolated, and the interactions they have with these boys feel very personal and positive to them, so they sob when they meet these boys like they’re meeting Taylor Swift after a concert.

Back in Tennessee, Austyn attracts the attention of a Huston-based manager of social influencers who sends him on tour as the opening act for more popular broadcasters, like twins Julian and Jovani Jara. The twins become fast friends with Austyn, but after they go back to their lives raking in likes and money, Austyn goes back to his little house in Tennessee, getting an earful from his mother about his declining interest in school. The tour doesn’t net Austyn any money and his engagement declines when he decides to get an actual job and go back to school.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Jawline is the latest in a new genre of documentary about social media influencers and how lucrative and fleeting that life can be. The American Meme is the closest we can think of to this film, as it shows the ups and downs and pressures on individuals to keep up their “brand”.

Performance Worth Watching: Austyn Tester seems like a good kid; he has a good sense of what people want and, at least at first, the dedication needed to build his brand in the live broadcasting space. But we couldn’t keep our eyes off his brother Donovan; not only are the two of them the closest of friends, but Donovan gives his brother a certain brand of mush-mouthed philosophy that sounds uninformed at first but makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Like when Austyn struggles to lip sync to a song on Musical.ly, Donovan says, “For now, do a song you know by heart.” Makes sense to us, Donovan.

Memorable Dialogue: Weist is proud of his participation in this film, but director Liza Mandelup doesn’t show him in the best light, constantly yelling and cursing at his clients — who live in his house — and having bitchy arguments with them over the content of their Instastories. At the beginning of the film, he brags that “not everyone can talk to Marnie, the COO of Instagram, one of the most secretive and prestigious of platforms.” He then also brags that he can make a request to verify someone on Facebook right from his account, a portal not everyone has. And he’s proud of that.

Sex and Skin: Besides seeing the boys posing for shirtless selfies, much of this phenomenon is stunningly innocent in nature.

Our Take: Jawline is Mandelup’s first feature-length documentary, and some of her inexperience shows during the film, as it pings back and forth between showing Austyn’s story and the story of Weist and his seemingly successful management enterprise. First of all, she needs to identify who is who, rather than just showing their names during the credits. We had no idea what Weist’s name was until we Googled “Good Times management,” the name of his company. And the boys that tour are so similar looking, with their pompadours and generic good looks, it was hard to figure out who any of them were.

Maybe that’s the point; being an influencer in the live-broadcast space is such an ephemeral thing, the churn is incredible. Weist admits at the end of the film that when the teen girls stop liking your stuff, you’re done and easily replaceable. But what Mandelup doesn’t quite get a handle on is what this new way to become famous does to the kids who strive to become “brands”. Remember, these are mostly teenagers, who basically decide to ditch formal schooling and hit the road. Does the fame get to them? Does being berated by their manager on an hourly basis piss them off? Do they wish they never went down this road? We really don’t hear much from the more famous live broadcasters; we only get a lot of details from Austyn, who’s struggling to make headway despite what anyone would think is a large number of followers.

It would have been nice to see a postscript to show what Austyn is doing now, and what’s going on with Weist. For example, Good Times filed for Chapter 7 and went out of business in October 2018. But, as far as Mandelup wants us to know, things with him are status quo. Guess those ins with Facebook and Instagram didn’t exactly help Weist stay in business, huh?

Where Jawline comes alive is when Mandelup shifts the focus from the influencers to the followers. It may seem crazy to olds like us that these girls sob when one of these boys hugs them at a show on tour or when Austyn brings a girl onto his live broadcast as a guest. But when we hear some of these girls talk about how marginalized they feel in their towns and schools, and how the interactions they have with these boys helps their feelings of positivity and self-confidence, then it doesn’t seem so crazy. It takes this documentary from an eye-rolling examination of our society’s obsession with fame to a place where the story is grounded in some sort of real, human emotion.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Jawline will likely be your first exposure to the niche of live broadcasting — we certainly had never heard of YouNow before this film. Despite the film’s flaws, it will be a good primer for parents to show them what their kids might be doing on their phones and laptops, and it’s yet another example of how there’s a very low bar to fame these days.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Jawline on Hulu