The Internet is Turning its Back on True Crime
the time is 2:30 pm, saturday. location: playwright counseling services katie just told me that doc is almost done with his previous client and that i'll be let in soon. but i'm on edge. i saw katie step out for a cigarette break three minutes ago with some guy probably a boyfriend. probably a stalker. i've been watching the top of her head through the tiny door on the window waiting for her to drop, scream, show any sign of danger. but she's still there DOCTOR: Ah! M.Shanspeare! I didn't know you were out here, please come in didn't know i was out here? that can't be right katie said...and where is his previous patient?
where did we leave off on our last visit forgive me for being so scattered i haven't had the best morning. did you ever get around to watching the extremely online video i suggested huh oh yeah i--i enjoyed it. why does he look so nervous all of a sudden? why is his office in such disarray? could he have gotten into a struggle before i got here? yes and uh at the end of our last call you mentioned something about paranoia induced by viewing horrific images online? can you elaborate more on that? yes well i've been watching a lot of dateline...dear god is that blood on his shirt? i mean what else could it be? that other patient ah date line oh i got a little bit of ketchup on my sleeve i ate a sausage dog earlier for lunch but yeah dateline that's way beyond your-- your time. i used to watch that with my mom we were always so intrigued by what made a a killer tick... i-i heard there was another patient in here before me were they the cause of your off-putting morning oh no you--you're actually my first client for today. i didn't have any other um...MS: that nervous drawl
that sweat peppering his brow...he's hiding something. something heinous something murderous! doctor uh i have to go um i actually left my stove on. your stove? oh are you--are you sure? will you make it back before-- your appointment ends... doc ain't no killer. he's being investigated for malpractice in four states because he can't keep his yap close to his spouse about private client information but he ain't no killer. and that previous client? doc just didn't want to mention them because he's become paranoid about confidentiality. truth is the client did pass Shanspeare in that hallway
they just didn't see because they were too preoccupied with katie the receptionist not in the fun queer way either. M. Shanspeare is one of many preoccupied by the worst case scenario. they're convinced everyone is a killer because they watch so much media where everyone is indeed the killer. but this discussion is way more nuanced than armchair detectives and paranoia. this seems like the case for a video essayist
oh you meant me? hello, hello i'm shaniya but i go by shanspeare here on youtube here's my satirical contribution to the episode. i'm the romanticization of true crime because i look good but i probably just killed my husband or something. i don't know it came across better in the storyboard. the year is 1850. the place: paris, france. spectators line up outside what
seems to be a department store. clothes hang up high in the window, stiff mannequin-like bodies wait below. but no it's not a department store. it's a theater. the kids press their faces to the glass waiting to see the puppets dance. snack carts make their rounds among the families perched about
everyone is amiable, excited for the show that the tourist guide calls a 'great parisian attraction' but there's an anxiety hidden beneath the anticipation. they all fear the closing of the curtain. it's the only thing standing between them and their fun. but the curtain closes anyway after all, they have to rotate out the dead bodies and their respective clothing, for the fresh bodies and theirs. it's not a theater or a department store. it's the paris morgue. in "the paris morgue provided ghoulish entertainment," amelia soth explains how during the 1850s through 1900s a paris morgue infamously displayed corpses in its windows. initially, it was an attempt to utilize public knowledge in order to identify unknown corpses who were sometimes deceased factory workers. during the industrialization period in paris, prospective workers traveled far
from the countryside in need of income. they found it--quite unfortunately--in the factories located in the city. according to natalia bradshaw, the condition of these job sites were dehumanizing often leading impoverished employees to feel enslaved to the wealthier bourgeoisie "as surviving memoirs from french workers reveal, unskilled workers were paid poorly, abused by their employers, could barely afford to feed themselves, resided in crowded unsanitary conditions, and received minimal assistance from the government." it's in these conditions
that factory workers were injured and at times accidentally killed. because they were often migrant workers with families residing outside of the city, they were displayed in the morgue windows in hopes of being identified. but by the 1900s...well let's just say good intentions don't always breed good practice. people were drawn to the morbidity of the morgue windows, looking
upon the bodies that were suffocated, stabbed, or burnt. this fascination was backdropped by snack peddlers and street performers, peppered by jovial kids running back and forth between their friends and the gruesome display in the window. Léon Gozlan, a french playwright likened the display to a department store. "you go there to see the drowned as elsewhere you go to see the latest fashion." there was even a system at play between the morgue and the newspapers where you could read about these tragic deaths in the press and then "pop over to the morgue to view the victims bodies." or, soth suggests, you could have even gone to the paris wax museum, which often found itself in the business of recreating recent murders in wax. the stated aim of this
morbid display was to "create a living newspaper." in truth paris and their grim fascination with cadavers isn't uncommon in the united states. i mean it's the united states that's pretty self-explanatory. after all it was an american photographer, tom howard, who took what's known as the most famous tabloid photo of the 1920s. a photo of ruth snyder mid-execution ruth snyder ended the life of her husband, albert, using the help of her married lover henry judd gray. the picture of ruth's execution was front page news the next day, which matthew wills argues "forced the story into a pre-existing genre of tabloid journalism sexing it up." the idea of sexing up crime-- or, rather, sensationalizing it--began even earlier
than the 1928 picture of ruth snyder or even the 1850 paris morgue. in fact murder ballads and crime pamphlets were extremely popular throughout the 16th and 17th century. readers indulged in horrific details of recent murders, which were sometimes set in a narrative tone and in turn spoken from the killer's point of view. these narratives were usually coupled with woodcuts that illustrated gruesome crimes, "dismemberment, torture, and of course witchcraft" being among them. when
the penny press was introduced around the 1830s, these reports garnered a widespread audience due to their new accessibility. but perhaps none of these adventures are so infamous as the lizzie borden case, which made waves in the latter half of the century. scholars even posit that it was more popular than the 1995 o.j simpson trial...and we all know how that one went. the common ground shared
by these historical accounts of morbidity and our current obsession with true crime is the perceived entertainment value and possible condemnation they both receive. despite historical true crime being quite popular, especially with the artisan class who had the literacy, time, and money to spend on crime pamphlets and murder ballads, the artistic value of true crime was considered very low brow only the 'lowest of the low' could possibly find entertainment in viewing such inhumane, disasterly content. and despite the current popularity of true crime today, that sentiment still rings true in the minds of detractors. true crime creators are called insensitive or weird; true crime consumers often have their identity conflated with serial killer fans; video after video is made condemning the sensationalist nature of true crime today and i don't say any of that to say that these critiques aren't valid. some of them. as someone who watches a lot of true crime i know firsthand the many proper and improper ways it could be handled but i also feel that the criticism levied against sensationalist true crime is becoming sensational in its own way. we've talked about how extreme
onlineness manifests in call outs, how the level of distance and anonymity allowed by the internet leads to criticism without construction. i've ascribed to that in the past, definitely, but i don't think that's going to solve this problem. so just like most of my content, the purpose of this video is not to point fingers. some creators and true crime fans have their moments to critique definitely, but giving you a tool to be able to critically engage with this content is far more productive than giving you a target. and personally i feel that although we can point fingers and say 'these people should know better, they should be doing better' i also think the culture we have cultivated around true crime has led to this saturation of insensitive content we glamorize serial killers in the media, we give them cool names. we primarily center them in the conversations--when we have conversations about true crime in general. so i believe it is
the culture surrounding true crime, the culture that we have all cultivated over the course of centuries, that needs to be critiqued the most. therefore this video is an analysis of the machine not the part. the only question remaining is, is that machine salvageable? from the 90s to now, is they would always say 'this is this person's family' we listened to the family members as they talked about what happened. you got to know the people, you were like 'oh my gosh i'm so sorry that this happened to your family' i think about forensic files, that's how they did it. that's always been the formula. since youtube and podcasts, especially during 2020 in the pandemic, i've seen a lot more people be like 'oh yeah my favorite crime' or doing these things. and i have tried so much to get into mukbangers who were talking about murders and i couldn't because here's the thing. the people reporting on these crimes
one: either were not passionate about it because they didn't have all the facts. two: they were just like yeah this is what happened to this person's body anyway look at my eyelids are you f****** kidding me? the era of the crime pamphlet and the murder ballad may not be as far behind us as one assumes. our current preoccupation with true crime can best be described by the ever-growing number of podcasts and youtube videos on the subject which recount the details of recent and old murders alike. but phoebe lett, author of "is our true crime obsession doing more harm than good?" and michelle dean, author of "true crime addict: and the serious problem of internet sleuths," both mention that the catalyst for today's true crime obsession are 2014's serial podcast and the 1966 novel in cold blood by truman capote. although capote's novel is lauded as a work of art in the genre, it's also highly contested due to the possibility of fabricated or sensationalist details included throughout. jack olsen, who was an american crime
journalist and author, stated that capote's novel "made true crime an interesting, successful commercial genre, but it also began the process of tearing it down." to gauge the growing saturation of true crime content, i wanted to track the growth of true crime titles by utilizing imdb-- one of the largest databases for film, television, and streaming content. at the time of filming, they feature about 10 million titles of varying genres. so you know, not every single piece of media on the planet but close enough. please remember that i am an english alumni, not bill nye. none of this is
peer-reviewed, i'm a disgrace to the academic world, moving on. according to imdb, at least 55 true crime documentary titles were released or announced in 2017. this is specifically in reference to documentaries and docu-series. in 2018, the number was at least 74. 2019 and 2020 saw 83 and 93 titles respectively. so we can tell that the number is steadily rising over this three-year span. in
2017 we're receiving about four titles per month in a single year. in 2020 we're receiving around seven titles a month-- nearly double the amount of three years prior. but what happened in 2021 is quite drastic. according to an april 2021 report by parrot analytics (you know the actual professionals) documentaries became the largest growing genre on streaming platforms in 2020. in fact "between
january of 2018 and march of 2021, the number of documentary series soared by 63 percent while demand for them skyrocketed by 142 percent." this is somewhat reflected in the imdb database with the year 2021 showing an approximate total of 158 true crime documentaries released to the public that's around 13 titles per month, almost double the amount of the year prior. whereas it took three years to nearly double the number of 2017 titles, it only took one to nearly double 2020s. so what does that mean? it means that amidst this clamor for more true crime content, a community is growing--one that has been steadily growing for years. amongst the growth of the community is the
growing popularity of the genre itself. and among the growing popularity of the genre itself, is the rise of true crime content. although true crime content has been around for centuries by this point, there's been a recent debate around the morality of consuming and creating this content it's not necessarily a new debate, as we've seen earlier, but it's definitely one that tends to resurface on social media every fortnight. enter stage left: twitter. "someone could get brutally [law and order sound] and left to die in their own [law and order sound] and true crime youtubers will start the video off by taking an obnoxiously loud sip of their boba and going so here's the tea!" "people will talk about how crazy it is that people used to gather in the village square to watch executions but have no self-awareness about how insensitive and re-traumatizing true crime content can be to the victim's loved ones." other than the morality argument, there is the monetary argument people condemn content creators who make a profit off of these horrible crimes, especially when it comes to inserting sponsorships. "true crime podcaster: and after he got into her house you won't believe what happened. this is an ad for our sponsor key door, to boost your home security
enter code [law and order] for discount at checkout." even outside of youtube and content creation as a whole, commercialization has and continues to be a discomforting concern. naomi barnes explains that after the 19th century murders committed by jack the ripper, "the fascination with the identity of the mysterious killer never really ended." i mean with the way we talk about SK's in the media, it's really no surprise. why do we keep giving them chad names? like girl if you don't call that man bert the loser! belittle him! bruise his ego! F**k! in its heyday, window seats were ticketed and sold to those who wanted to overlook the places where bert the losers victims were found. although that sounds
like something we'd condemn today, it would be a little hypocritical if we did. "a brief search on the internet shows the abundance of walking tours, ghost tours, pub crawls, maps for self-guided tours and pages of articles dedicated to the new and much contested jack the ripper museum in london's east end." outside of that infamous case, further commercialization of tragedy can be found. "hangman tours offers a 90-minute walking tour of sites related to jeffrey dahmer's hunting grounds in milwaukee wisconsin," all for the low, low price of $25. for five dollars more, "seattle's private eye tours takes participants on a tour of several killing sites, including those of the Wah Mee massacre, the capitol hill massacre, and more." and these aren't desolate, fly infested haunts the way you may think. people go to these places. willingly. according to
barnes, hundreds of people sign up for these type of tours, with hundreds more traveling long distances to get to them. citing a source by gibson (2006), barnes notes that out of 140 criminal cases surveyed by gibson, "84 have some form of formalized tourism associated with it--cases excluding the number of mass murder." that means nearly 60 percent of gibson's sample has been turned into entertainment ventures. the interest we have in this genre, the unmistakable pull we have to all that is morbid and mysterious, reveals something about us--whether that be humanity's rotting moral compass or a revitalization of our empathy, we've yet to find out "the general audience of true crime is the average person who has a fascination with the psychology of people. it's not the brutal killings or assaults we enjoy but seeing what people are made of."
that is a quote pulled from one of my toe submissions and it reveals one of the main themes of true crime. the possible role psychology plays in the consumption of it is a very popular theory surrounding our fascination. people claim to want to know what makes a killer do what they do they want to know what leads to the crime sprees or the rampages as another subscriber states "as an individual on the spectrum, i tend to not inherently understand why people do what they do-- and it was doubly so for criminals. true crime helped me question the why and then by proxy begin to question people's actions in general." this view point of true crime as a way to understand others then may be what shahed ebesh calls true crimes inherent anthropological perspective. a great deal of the theories pertaining to true crimes popularity deals within this anthropological framework. there's the usual theory that consuming this
sort of content arms people--primarily women, who are the largest demographic of true crime viewers-- arms them with the means to defend themselves in case of violence. as isabel, a subscriber states "i believe it was princess weekes who made an excellent point in her video about true crime documentaries. about how, and i'm paraphrasing here, women are often drawn to this kind of content because we're all too aware of everything that can go wrong at the drop of a hat. so we watch and listen and read about these stories to try to be prepared in a way in case anything happens to us." there's also the more legal aspect of things. people argue that viewing true crime content helps viewers pinpoint the systemic injustices of the so-called justice system. though you can also argue
from the other side that true crime upholds a lot of systemic injustices, seeing as how a majority of popular cases covered are of white, abled, cis women. not that they don't deserve justice, because they certainly do. but it speaks to the inequality of coverage. there's even the possibility that true crime coverage helps certain cases. from obtaining evidence all the way to capturing fugitives. but above all, i believe it's eric g. wilson who explains true crime fascination the best and it's through the lens of morbid curiosity. in everyone loves a good train wreck: why we can't look away, wilson seeks to explain our preoccupation of suffering and the significance of death-- glaring at it through a lens of morbid curiosity. wilson opens the novel
with a personal recounting of his top "don't look moments" including the day the twin towers fell a car crash he happened to witness, and a school fight. despite the inherent 'don't lookness' of these moments, wilson was compelled to keep watching. he physically couldn't turn away. jack b haskins defines morbid curiosity as "an enduring and usually strong attraction to information about highly unpleasant events and objects that are irrelevant to the individual's life."
this morbid curiosity--at least in the ways we show it--is unique to the human experience according to psychologist colin beer. "nothing in the animal kingdom, not even the necromantic behavior of elephants quite adds up to human morbid curiosity in either content or intensity of preoccupation." within the specific theory of morbid curiosity that wilson proposes resides many smaller interconnected theories. think of morbid curiosity as the large mother wolf spider and the following presentation as its little babies scuttling about. just my hair. and if you have a spider phobia so do i and i regret evoking that image in my head
wilson cites edgar allen poe's the imp of the perverse as one reason behind our morbid curiosity. this is where we stand on the edge of an abyss and peer in despite growing sick and dizzy. even as we try to pull ourselves away from the abyss, to try to save ourselves from jumping, "there is no passion in nature so demonically impatient as that of him, who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge." there's also theories
regarding the morbid nature of horror movies and how they produce "a safe routinized way of playing with death, like going to a roller coaster or parachute jump at an amusement park." of course true crime isn't comparable to horror movies or amusement parks... if you want to seem less morally compromised, that is. true crime cases handle the trauma of real people with real lives who possibly still have real families seeing this content--all of whom we may never meet or have to explain our fascination to. as will h. rockett explains, morbid content like this is fascinating in the first place because of the "controlled trauma of the film experience."
though it's not necessarily fictional as most films tend to be, we often view true crime content through extensions of entertainment: television, youtube, and spotify podcasts. what's more is the fact that we're effectively distanced not from the ideas presented in the content--so we still get a thrill from it--but from the actions taking place within the content itself, meaning we aren't necessarily harmed by it. we read or listen to these horrible crimes knowing that they're just behind the screen. and this distance breeds comfort for us and for us only because the same cannot be said for those directly impacted by the crimes we listen to. it's an extremely selfish indulgence but still somehow human. wilson also posits theories of catharsis, empathy, and the idea of the sublime where scholars argue that death and morbidity is larger than life and therefore hypnotizing in its power. wilson also considers the possibility of our own mortality becoming easier to contend
with in the face of morbid content, as well as the idea of catharsis achieved through justice. wilson states "a notion of justice, the satisfaction--often moral--of seeing rampant evil officially captured and punished," is a big draw for true crime content. but what if all of the apparent benefits and theories surrounding true crime fascination is outweighed by the potential harm it may cause? what do we do if these arguments, as wilson fears, are just wishful thinking? that we use these theories to further support our quest to romanticize or even sensationalize death? in that case, perhaps it's not empathy or survival instincts that drive our growing consumption of true crime content. perhaps it's the unparalleled response it gives our body,
the subsequent desensitization we acquire in the face of increasingly gruesome demises, and the allure of the taboo that really drives us. through that lens, true crime is in the business of three deaths: the death of the original victim that we so flagrantly talk about, the death of their families who may be impacted by this content, and the death of our own critical engagement as all we begin to care about is yet another story, yet another thrill, and yet another way to gain notoriety. one of the biggest questions i have about true crime content--of both the consumption and the creation of it--is why? we've argued catharsis, we've argued survival instincts we've argued empathy and a quest for justice. these are all very valid concerns in my opinion. concerns that have the potential to be addressed within the realm of true crime content if true crime creators approach the subject from a place of respect and humility. but even
so, even if these aren't just wishful thinkings as wilson fears, how do we contend with the damage the genre causes? the damage that greatly depends upon what emily m. danforth, in her fictional novel plain bad heroines, refers to as "the call of the sensational mixed with a macabre." please don't misunderstand, there is a great deal of true crime that perhaps violently fights for the justice of victims. creators that donate a portion of their ad sense or sponsorship money to appropriate charities. creators that work closely with the families of victims to get their
loved one's story out there. and there are a great deal of families who want the exposure associated with true crime--who genuinely do feel that this sort of content is important for the continued second life of their loved one. but there is also a part, and i'm not sure how big that part is... is that a twilight reference? there's a part of true crime content that may very well eclipse the f*ck! some aspects of true crime have murky intentions. and i believe that if we continue to make excuses for it, if we refuse to critically engage with the content we watch or the reasons we watch that content, we're only being complicit in the harm the genre as a whole may cause. i've been trying to figure out what non-viewers of true crime content see
when they see the odd documentary or youtube video pop up in their recommendations. what is the most readily available theme apparent in this content that can't be explained by catharsis because they haven't watched the video yet or survival instincts--for the same reason. or even a quest for justice which sometimes doesn't exist? what is the most obvious aspect of true crime content today? the only way to gauge that other than asking my subscribers was to interact with content i've never seen before, to try and dislodge myself from the comfort of the genre and the rapport i've--parasocially, i admit--built with my favorite creators. first i see the language. it's often, but not always, salacious. it appeals to that deep sense of morbid curiosity, that desire to know more. "the wicked mother who killed her own child," "world's most evil killers," "the monster..." uh
in all caps..."the MONSTER dad who did the unthinkable." we use words like chilling, strange twisted, and shocking thumbnails that feature blood splatter, sometimes around a picture of the victim eye-catching phrases, large, red arrows or circles to draw in our attention. even if the only thing on the screen is the thing being circled...i'm not sure who would miss that. a youtuber named pinely made
a great video on the subject of true crime and morality, and he mentions how creators fine tune these thumbnails until they become clickable. as most creators on this hell site have to. but for true crime content creators, it's a double-edged sword because on one hand you can argue that these creators need these videos to be clickable so that the victim can get their rightful spotlight. it just so happens that in order to gain attention, in order for it to be clickable, true crime creators have to play by the rules of youtube's annoying ass algorithm. therefore they may end up making insensitive or sensational choices in their designing process. the same generally goes for these sort of gimmicks that come along with sensational true crime content--the mukbangs, the applying of makeup. we have to be entertaining at all times on this platform in order for
our content to even be viewed, in order for the algorithm to pick it up and show other people with all of this in mind, the goal of these videos doesn't seem to be catharsis or a quest for justice--and certainly not empathy or understanding for the victim. it seems like a grab for your money, for your attention, and for your engagement. this grab seems completely at odds with the stated purpose of true crime content. unless you start to think of the goal
being the grab itself. in "real people keep getting re-traumatized: the human cost of binge watching true crime series," melissa chan documents the realities of a select few families affected by true crime content. a bulk of the article discusses how it's not legally required for creators-- both independent ones on youtube and larger corporations like netflix--to reach out to families before making content about their deceased loved one. for example, mindy pendleton, the stepmother
of now deceased robert mast, notes how she and others in the family begged netflix to drop the episode they were producing about robert in 2019. writing to the producers mindy stated "as a parent a fellow human being, i beg you not to do this. please do not do this." refusing to heed her pleas, a year later netflix released the docu-series anyways opening it with robert's story or rather robert's killer story. chan notes how much of the episode is dedicated to painting his killer in a sympathetic light, often ignoring robert's side at all. netflix allegedly claimed that the goal of the series was to start social discourse around violent crime. they
also allegedly said that robert's family should essentially be grateful--this is not a direct quote, i'm paraphrasing. and i'm a little biased in that paraphrasing because netflix f***ing sucks--they allegedly implied that robert's family should understand that if they, netflix, didn't share robert's story another company would and there's no telling how sensational it would have been then. robert's stepmother mindy, however, disagrees. "i really don't feel that with the name 'i am a killer' you will be viewed by an audience wanting to seek social change and understand violent crime. they are just looking for gruesome details of murder." it calls back to mind my earlier argument, the salacious, clickable titles and thumbnails that pepper youtube. the grab seems to be the goal. in truth, there are many families that went through and continued to go
through what the pendleton family has gone through. the same has happened to rosalie clark who stumbled upon a book detailing the murders of her family in 2018 and teresa halbach's family who stated that they were "saddened to learn that individuals and corporations continue to create entertainment and to seek profit from their loss." i think the aspect of true crime that needs to be critically engaged with the most is the inherent entertainment value it seems to hold and how we completely ignore the reality behind it in favor of personal gain. kevin balfe, the founder of crime-con describes true crime content as "the interest is that most stories represent what all great stories have. there's a hero, there's a villain, there's usually a mystery, there's often
a traumatic event. there's usually a resolution." that's not a normal thing to say about victims of traumatic events. if anything it's closer to what fred murray stated when condemning a reporter seeking to make a book about his daughter's disappearance "what i think, he's trying to do is create characters for a screenplay." we have become so desensitized to this
content, so enamored by the narrative it presents that we've begun to completely detach humanity from everyone involved. from the victim, to their family, to ourselves. as eric g. wilson explains imagination can be used as a buffer between us and the morbid things we consume. but too much imagination can also cause harm. "the witness," in this case being the true crime consumer "becomes overly confident of his ability to understand an event, morbid or otherwise. his conceptual arrogance actually alienates him from the episode, puts him at too great a distance. he can't see the trees
because he's too engrossed in the forest." wilson goes on to say that this selfishness "is at work whenever we exploit the suffering of another for our own pleasure, turn a person's hurting into a commodity we consume for our pleasure." so what do we do with the state of the true crime community today? i was genuinely curious to know how my viewers would alter true crime content to make it the best tool it can be to aid in the justice of others and the respect for surviving loved ones. one subscriber states "i would love to see a true crime content creator discuss the history of mass incarceration, inmates on death row who are falsely accused, the forced sterilization of inmates and women's prisons, and the vast amount of research available about why people commit crimes in the first place. they can center victims in their content or at least reach out and ask permission to tell the stories they do. they can reach out to experts in
the criminal justice system like public defenders, the innocence project, or the southern poverty law center, in order to create better informed content. they can also talk about the individual rights a person has if they get arrested or the rights and role of a jury when someone is on trial true crime can be an incredibly important source of information for everyday people to understand an aspect of our society that is deliberately meant to be misunderstood." "the way that the perpetrators are often vilified um it presents this idea that, like, people who perpetuate violence are bad people and that we need the police to protect us from them and that those people got that way because of mental illness or something else that is presented as being totally divorced from social circumstances um and i think, you know, the true crime series really focus on really violent and dramatic crimes and the proliferation of this kind of media that focuses on these really heinous really dramatic and really violent crimes makes it seem as if all criminality is like that because that's the main media that we perceive that deals with with wrongdoing and violence. but the majority of people who are incarcerated are victims of violence themselves and they experience violence primarily in prisons and at the hands of police and other institutional structures like child protective services and things like that and that's not really discussed in true crime which i think is a real missed opportunity." ellis states "i think there are always going to be people who are going to fetishize and treat true crime as a game, so i guess maybe it doesn't need to be true? i don't know, i'm thinking back to wrestling here, where the point is that the violence is cleverly orchestrated to be as painless as possible and is all consensual, so maybe we just need to give crime fiction a comeback and let people indulge their wants for true crime in a safe environment."
and finally a subscriber named days says "the only way the true crime community would have a less negative perception is by genuinely detaching itself from fandom language or fandom behaviors. the way some people in the tcc engage with tc and discuss about it feels like a fandom. and that would be fine but there are actual lives getting hurt. i don't think it helps anyone in completely not talking about true crime, but more consideration and boundaries--legal and moral--should be implemented when partaking in the tcc as a creator and a consumer." some creators that i think are doing awesome work in the genre are kendall rae and danelle hallan. kendall does
a lot of close work with victim's families and she's also been known to reach out to families to see if they were comfortable with her making a video about their loved one. danelle has a more informational spin um with her videos. i learned about legislative efforts of affected families donation sites, laws regarding crime and things like that. if you just really want to take a step back from true crime but you like fictional crime, maybe murder mysteries, i also like stephanie soo's bam... i also like stephanie soo's bam podcast. she primarily talks about fictional murders in books or movies or even television and she presents them very well. in the end, i don't think the condemnation of the genre as a whole is entirely productive. despite the flaws
the true crime community has, i do think it could be a helpful tool utilized by families to spread awareness of legislation, systemic hindrances, and misconceptions about the justice system. it just has to be done in a very intentional way. we need to include the voices of marginalized people...more than we're doing now. disabled people, people of color, especially indigenous women, trans people, queer people, and so forth. we need to stop viewing them as story times or ghost stories or
entertainment ventures. we need to remind ourselves at every possible moment that these are real people. people who led lives like us, who probably went to school or hung out with their friends or fell in love. and i think we truly need to ask ourselves, creator and consumer, what if it was us? if the self is the only way we'll ever try to understand the other, what if it was our family members? if our loved one's story was circulated without our permission, without our desire for it to be? if we had to listen to the story of our loved ones being whispered about like gossip? if we saw our loved one's name alongside a click bait thumbnail, a sensationalized title? if people laughed or made lighthearted jokes surrounding the death of our family member, partner or friend? would we accept the claims of 'wanting to understand the killer's perspective' over 'wanting to know more and to advocate for the victim'? will we let people write off our discomfort as ruining the fun or being too critical? would we continue to uncritically consume this content, these large docu-series, these exploitative books if it was about someone we loved? i'm not asking for anyone to stop watching the content. i'm not even asking anyone to stop making the content. as ever
i'm only asking for you to be critical in your engagement and always lean toward teachability thank you for watching. let me know your thoughts down below, unless they're mean i probably won't read them anyways. if you want to check out all the cut scenes from this script including a deeper insight into my own opinions regarding some of the defensive theories, make sure to check out my patreon linked in the description. thank you to my romeo and juliet tier patrons for subscribing and thank you to everyone in general for your support. and i will see you two weeks from now with a video essay about video essays! we've gone meta. love you, bye
2022-07-26 17:23
