Traumatic Entertainment

The good, the bad, and the ugly of true-crime

Tweets and retweets. Instagram comments, likes, and shares. A plethora of Reddit threads with your hashtagged name plastered all over. Imagine waking up to every comment, click, and criticism rehashing the fallout of the worst day of your life. Ruthlessly dissecting and sensationalizing crimes often re-traps victims in the inescapable bubble of agony. 

Some crime producers create narratives for educational purposes, while many do so for journalistic and investigative reasons. Other people are in it for money. Dr. Kelli Boling, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who studies true-crime audiences, believes, “We live in a capitalistic society. If you’re doing it to make money, why wouldn’t you sensitize?” They want those clicks, shares, and tweets. They want people to be floored by the content. Hence, they overplay the drama and tension because “if it bleeds, it leads,” she concluded. This plays into the cultivation theory, instilling fear and “amplifying the idea that crime is inevitable,” reasons Professor Deborah Jaramillo, an associate professor in the Film and Television Studies Program at Boston University. 

Alongside, these graphics and melodramatic terrains could be offensive and ghastly for some viewers because they find it hard to stomach the gruesome imagery. Dr. Boling quotes one of her students, “People who watch true crime are just a bunch of people who have never experienced pain in their lives.”

While some other people find this macabre series of murders empowering. As a part of her research on domestic violence and its association with true-crime, Dr. Boling found that victims of domestic violence who consumed true crime found it healing. It developed a sense of community since they could “immerse themselves into a narrative very similar to their own, and they don’t feel alone.” Quoting one of her interviewees’ she highlights the positives of true crime, “One woman said to me, I cannot understand how my stepfather who said he loved us would do that.” Thus, true-crime hands out insights that these victims previously didn’t have. Allowing them to better understand criminals because they failed to comprehend them in their own life.

Now the bigger question is, does overconsumption of true-crime have the power to drive one to insanity or worse, murder? 

If someone has an anxious personality, true-crime can push them off the edge. But there is no research to corroborate the claim that too much crime can compel someone to kill unless they are dealing with an internal crisis.

True-crime documentary Paradise Lost opens up to three naked bodies of eight-year-olds, all tortured, raped, and killed mercilessly. A rather stomach-churning and horrifying visual. But more often than not, murder media junkies know what they’re getting into. As Professor Jaramillo put it, “If you go into true-crime, you know what you’re going to get, and that’s why there are people who watch true-crime and people who avoid true-crime. Because they know they cannot stomach it.”

However, “There’s always the lowest common denominator.” Some crime junkies out there consume true-crime for the diabolical delight of witnessing people suffer. Hence, Professor Jaramillo sums up, “I don’t think you can paint a broad brush and say it’s good, or bad.” That one person who was suffering from crippling anxiety may end up in an echo chamber of terror and depression or perhaps even murderous exploits, while another may not do so based on their life circumstances.

But irrespective of who consumes this content, true-crime producers have a minefield of conundrums facing them. Digging deeper into genuine tragedies and critically re-evaluating crimes is a subject that leaves true-crime producers straddling across the delicate thread of factually ethical storytelling and pleasurable narratives. The question arises, how to elucidate these stories without straying into traumatization for victims and viewers? 

The last episode of the documentary I’ll Be Gone In The Dark features a gathering of all the survivors a year after the assault and murder attacks. The gathered women and men dredged up the events of the past year, finding solace in one another. This shifted the viewers’ attention away from the crimes and rather towards how the victims and their families were moving on with their lives. Professor John Hall, a master lecturer in the Film and Television Studies Program at Boston University, calls it, “A kind of bonding experience.” He further adds, “So I think that’s kind of the model creators could follow to reframe the content.” The gathering sure acted as a closure and a healing event for victims and viewers alike.

Despite the stereotypes associated with true-crime, the genre is so much more than a morbid fascination. It is an emotional healer and an educational mechanism for communities if handled with respect, ethics, and sensitivity.