{"id":10610,"date":"2023-09-19T07:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T11:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10610"},"modified":"2023-10-04T07:42:14","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T11:42:14","slug":"is-peak-true-crime-in-the-rearview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10610","title":{"rendered":"Is Peak True Crime in the Rearview?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In 2014, the 13-episode podcast Serial<\/em> investigated the murder of a Maryland teenager and \u201celectrified group chats, provided rich loam for conspiracy theories, and turned hordes of millennials into experts on cell towers,\u201d says Katy Waldman, a New Yorker<\/em> staff writer. Somehow the genre convinces people, ordinary citizens, that they can<\/em> know what and who are behind a crime. As a result, in a number of recent cases, investigators have been swamped by amateur detectives and wild theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, Waldman reviewed a book<\/a> questioning the public\u2019s preoccupation with true crime\u2014podcasts, tv shows, movies, and books. Waldman\u2019s review centered on Rebecca Makkai\u2019s 2023 novel, I Have Some Questions for You<\/em><\/a>, primarily a murder mystery set at a prestigious boarding school, which also critiques true crime on three counts, \u201cexploiting real people for entertainment, chasing gore rather than studying systemic problems, and objectifying victims,\u201d especially young white women who are pretty and rich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the popularity of participatory and armchair crime investigation \u201cthe thrill of conjuring monsters to despise\u201d as Waldman suggests? Or another example of \u201cthe numbing, almost hallucinatory pervasiveness of violence against women,\u201d and \u201chow greedily such stories are consumed\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About a third<\/a> of podcast listeners listen to true crime, but only last week, in the Washington Post,<\/em> Hope Corrigan reported on people quitting the genre altogether. Corrigan opens her article with the story of a young woman who realized she was becoming overwhelmed by anxiety and paranoia, which she attributed to a \u201cnear constant consumption of true crime.\u201d Those who quit this preoccupation report improvements in their mental state and sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What seems to be changing now, Corrigan says, is how \u201csome fans, and even podcast hosts, grapple with heightened anxiety and qualms over exploitation of victims,\u201d and profiting from someone\u2019s murder. Families of victims are speaking against the shows. A victim of a non-fatal attack said she \u201cwould rather get stabbed again than have TikTok users descend like vultures on my social media.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not unexpectedly, the popularity of the genre has inspired some tasteless merch, including a doormat that reads, \u201cCrime Shows Have Taught Me Unexpected Visitors are Sketchy.\u201d That may have started out as a poor joke, but recent tragedies suggest quite a few people may actually feel that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True crime tales may be most valuable when they reveal problems in the system that can be corrected. In the hands of a \u201ccapable creator,\u201d stories of real crimes can reveal a lot about how the justice system works or doesn\u2019t work, can demonstrate how social class and race affect crime and punishment, and can give voice to the voiceless. In less skilled hands, negative effects may predominate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Jean Murley<\/a>, who studies the cultural impact of true crime, cites The Red Parts<\/em><\/a> by Maggie Nelson, as one of her favorite books in the genre. This memoir and meditation from 2007 deals with one of the Ann Arbor murders of 1967-69, which occurred when I was living there. I read Nelson\u2019s book several years ago and was surprised at how much of what I was sure I knew was simply wrong. Several novels I\u2019ve read in recent years have considered the impact on investigations of social media piling on\u2014notably New Zealand author Paul Cleave\u2019s The Quiet Ones<\/em><\/a> and The Pain Tourist<\/em><\/a>. Unfortunately, such fictional accounts reflect actual events in society, where social media \u201csuspects\u201d become targets of vigilantism<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2014, the 13-episode podcast Serial investigated the murder of a Maryland teenager and \u201celectrified group chats, provided rich loam for conspiracy theories, and turned hordes of millennials into experts on cell towers,\u201d says Katy Waldman, a New Yorker staff … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,1288,104,1596],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","category-the-morgue","category-true-crime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2L8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10612,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10610\/revisions\/10612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}