is true crime your pastime?
Is True Crime your pastime? How about crime drama? Netflix documentaries, podcasts? Police procedurals? Line of Duty? CSI?
Specifically, did you watch CSI Season 7: The Miniature Killer? If your institution subscribes to Box of Broadcasts, you can watch the whole episode at this link, or just the clip I describe below at this link.
Let me paint you a picture. Imagine creepy discordant music. Like a child’s jack in the box in a minor key. Uncanny objects pan by. Slowly revealing a shoe-box-sized crime scene in extreme close-up. Ken has been killed in his kitchen.
Helpfully, regular-sized fictional crime-fighters are here to point their torches and spell it out for us: here’s Ken in his tiny kitchen and here’s his life-sized (but dead) equivalent slumped over his breakfast.
Now, you don’t need me to tell you that the idea of a serial killer painstakingly crafting a model to represent each of her future crime scenes and give clues to her identity is frankly ridiculous. But let’s not be too snobby about CSI.
Because I really hate the class-distinctions and cosiness complex that come with true crime content. Have you ever noticed how reading Agatha Christie makes you cultured but watching Tiger King makes you uncouth? Only the weirdest of us are willing to admit to consuming some content or formats. After 9 years, Karen and Georgia of My Favorite Murder still think murderinos are in the minority and an apologetic explanation is required at the start of their live shows. For some people, crime fiction fandom is OK but not don’t get too enthusiastic about the factual stuff. British stuff is OK, but American is too sensational. Historical is safe, even cosy, but following current murder investigations too closely makes your mum worried and gives your date the ick. Crime on the News is OK but not Netflix. Discuss the science openly, but whisper the sensational bits when you’re talking about it in public. (These are examples of opinions, not my own, by the way.)
I say it’s all the same – one inspires the other, the lines between genres bleed and run. And all social classes have been interested in consuming crime stories for hundreds of years. That’s not to say that some of it is done unethically, but basically I’m giving you permission to enjoy murder stories because our ancestors sought them out too and they were fine!
True crime content, just like news media about crime and crime drama, can be inaccurate, unrepresentative, moralising, victim-blaming and bears responsibility for perpetuating cultures of violence and unequal stereotypes in a lot of instances... But can’t you say that about a lot of art? Is it even possible for true crime to be ethical? This is just one of the questions that preoccupies some of my research at the moment.
So Alexa, you may be asking, what is the connection between a fictional Vegas kitchen on CSI in 2007 and a former-Coastguard’s cottage on a shingle beach in East Sussex in 1924?
Tune into Part 3 and I’ll tell you!