Samantha Montgomery and Kutiman (Magnolia Pictures)

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s circular design for New York’s Guggenheim Museum was inspired by the ziggurat, a massive type of temple built in ancient Mesopotamia. In 2010, the Guggenheim’s exterior was projected with myriad YouTube videos. The documentary Presenting Princess Shaw opens with a well-meaning quote about the importance of a multitude of voices before showing the viewer this social media spectacle. But this kind of horrifying visual may say more than its filmmakers intend: if social media overwhelms even great cultural institutions, what is its effect on the individual?

It’s easy to root for an underdog, and the film’s subject is a perfectly sympathetic character. We meet 38-year old Samantha Montgomery at her job caring for the elderly at a New Orleans nursing home. As Princess Shaw, she sings original songs in a husky voice not unlike Amy Winehouse, and uploads them to a YouTube channel that typically earns a mere 23 hits. Meanwhile, Israeli musician and video remix artist Ophir Kutiel, aka Kutiman, seeks out musical hopefuls on YouTube. Without the artists’ knowledge, he adds his own musical accompaniment for video collages that go viral and are apparently good enough to show at the Guggenheim. He discovers Montgomery’s music from afar, and adds his spin on her acapella videos.

The filmmakers approached Montgomery under the auspices of making a documentary about musicians trying to make it on YouTube, and effectively set her up for a kind of Candid Camera amateur hour. A more appropriate title for Presenting Princess Shaw might be Kutiman Catches a Live One. The artist is described as a creator of “visual symphonies”— in that clip show at the Guggenheim, he assembled a performance of Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance No. 5” from dozens of YouTube musicians, sampled one measure at a time. YouTube may give everyone a chance at 15 seconds of fame, but as one of Kutiman’s friends tells him, she’d faint if somebody did to her what he does to others.

Shots of Kutiman seem to make his process outright patronizing. We see him watching a nature documentary about elephants and brief clips of a huge shirtless man playing guitar, followed by a dog that looks like it’s playing guitar. Is it social media that turns everyone into a zoo animal, or is that just the feeling we get from Kutiman?

Questionable documentary methods spoil an inspiring tale of discovery, and it’s not Montgomery’s fault that a film that is supposed to be about her in fact exploits her. We see not only the music she uploads to YouTube, but voyeuristic video confessionals in which she painfully tells the camera about her sexual abuse.

Montgomery reacts with surprise and joy when she learns that the videos Kutiman has built around her voice have gone viral. One wishes the best for her career, but the movie about her seems more interested in her as a curiosity. Which makes the title Presenting Princess Shaw appropriate after all.

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Presenting Princess Shaw
Written and directed by Ido Haar
With Samantha Montgomery and Ophir Kutiel
Not rated; contains a brief shot of a huge shirtless man playing guitar
83 minutes
Opens today at Landmark E Street Cinema