I’m making this thread now, because I’m bubbling over with emotion; and it’s kind of too much to take.
As a casual public radio listener for about half my life, I’ve pretty used to stories of police misconduct, lazy frame jobs, and coerced testimonies. But seeing everything laid out so starkly with bountiful footage…
It’s just hard to take at times. I’m finding episode 4 particularly hard to just sit and watch, for reasons that will be obvious to those who watch it (hint: painful amounts of injustice).
I guess the obvious devil’s advocate thing to do here is to crow about how manipulative documentaries are and how this one clearly has an agenda. It is obvious that a case is being built throughout, and that there are moments when the documentary interprets an ambiguity for you. But the disclosed police evidence of their own manipulations really seems to supersede any manipulation possible on behalf of the documentarians.
Anyway, I’m not finished yet. Anyone else watch this already? If not…wanna watch it and then say “Holy shit,” back and forth to each other forever?
Wow. The inevitable Cuba post was way quicker than I expected.
Actually, I thought maybe you didn’t watch it because it was too close to home.
I do.
Sometimes I wonder what everyone wonders about being a defense attorney: is it hard if you think they might actually be guilty? Firstly, I assume that both prosecutor and defender see themselves as instruments of the overall system that must work to the best of their ability for the courts to have any meaning.
But then secondly I think, “Well, I already assume everyone’s innocent, and lots of people assume everyone’s guilty. So if you’re working in criminal law, and irrationally plodded through the agony involved in getting to that point, you probably already have the ability to look inside yourself and know which side you’re on.”
Anyway, for those who haven’t seen the show, there’s also the topic here of this new trend of high-profile Prestige True Crime.
Serial, The Jinx, and now Making a Murderer.
And I guess Thin Blue Line is the grandaddy of em all, with disparate episodes of This American Life holding the torch that Serial would take off and run with.
It’s interesting as a phenomenon. In one sense you could pin it as a politically liberal counterpart to the existing True Crime genre. The emphasis is on entertaining innocence, rather than guilt, and casting the system as flawed and possibly victimizing.
I wonder if it gets a boost from the current climate of distrust of police.
I think my problem with nu-true crime (what have I done) is that at the end of the day it’s just pretentious dateline
like yeah, I totally understand the value of highlighting systemic injustices done to people and talking about how weird intersectional things can completely skew things one way or the other, and I don’t doubt that the creators of these things are doing it because they truly believe that they’re highlighting these important things to talk about
and they are important to talk about!
but when I hear people talking about making a murderer and serial in the same tones that they would talk about dateline, trying to actually answer the question of who they think did what and bandying about “evidence” in efforts to state their cases, it makes me think that we actually might have just been better off with dateline instead, as problematic as that show and its ilk can be, because despite all the talk about the system and its ability to screw over disenfranchised folk, the conversation ends up the same anyway
to be fair, sarah koenig seems like she legitimately didn’t expect serial to take off the way it did, and to her credit, she’s pivoting away from true crime in serial’s second season, which I’m actually enjoying a lot more
yeah /r/serial is somewhat obnoxious, i’m not sure where the internet gets the idea that they’re more competent forensic scientists than the whole of the justice system
…
nu-crime is gripping to me because labyrinthine series of mistakes by humans scratches a neurotic itch somewhere in my head. I think these kinds of close examinations of due process are valuable in that they show the criminal justice process for what it is - run and staffed by people who are, on occasion, lazy or preoccupied. you know, humans doing a job just like everybody else.
New serial got way good when they started talking about BB the teenager. What a weirdo :3
serial is a super interesting thing in that it started with koenig being really interested in messing with form in audio-only media and it just accidentally happened to create a new mini-genre of entertainment by virtue of everyone remembering that true crime has always been entertaining
like serial is VERY MUCH from koenig’s point of view, and I think that’s what serial “is” to her, an examination of real-time reporting over a series of long-form podcasts from a single pov. which is honestly pretty awesome! and it got really popular, which is also awesome! but also everyone got caught up in the mystery and we are where we are
true crime these days does seem more interested in whydunit as opposed to whodunit, and it ultimately makes for more engaging material because when everyone can say that the “who” is “the system” it gets a little one-note for people
but I’m also wary of treading into these waters because I really really hate the idea of turning a person’s misfortune through questionable legal practices/assumptions made with stereotypes into entertainment, especially considering the climate around police racism and things like that
I definitely think that the people creating this kind of material go into it with the notion that it IS activism and not entertainment. I’m not doubting their intentions in that regard
but making a murderer was released as an exclusive on one of the biggest entertainment organizations, and as much as I’d like to believe that netflix is committed to highlighting the problems with the criminal justice system through a documentary series, it’s also an entertainment company that needs to make money
and I still think that the response to making a murderer is very indicative of this – for as much talk as I’ve heard about how screwed up the criminal justice system is, I’ve heard just as much if not more “I think he did it/I don’t think he did it and did you see this evidence that they missed look at this” talk, which says to me that it’s very clearly entertainment for a whole lot of people! and I think the format and platform that distributed it has a lot to do with this perception, intended or not
like I literally saw an article online where the first sentence of the work said something like “here are the pieces of evidence making a murderer missed so you can impress your friends at your next dinner party”
that stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere imo, and I think ultimately that response matters more than what the creators of making a murderer thought they were trying to do
this probably says more about the nature of viewing media online than it does about making a murderer itself tho
Gotta push back on this. I really disliked serial (season 1, haven’t listened to season 2) since it veered way too deep into This American Life: Junior Detectives. The makers of it from episode one tease you with finding out “what REALLY happened that day,” Near the end (when it’s clear they aren’t going to solve anything) they dance around with saying “well, I guess it is unsolvable, which represents the problems with our justice system” but don’t delve much deeper than some narrator monologuing.
I was just really turned off by how they clumsily sold the podcast as a way to “solve” a real life event like it’s some agatha christie novel. Even if that wasn’t their intention initially, they totally bought into their own hype within 2 or 3 episodes.
Making a Murderer has more gravitas and is far more compelling as a true crime documentary. However, I thought the way they depicted the victim’s brother to be despicable. His whole family didn’t want to be involved in this documentary and they return the favor by making him look like a culprit (and basically throw him to the internet vigilantes).
my memory was fuzzy on the first couple of episodes, so I went back to the first one and I’m listening to it right now
I don’t think I’m hearing quite the same level of conviction that you are with regards to “figuring it out”? like koenig spends the first 10 minutes of the episode emphasizing that it’s difficult to parse what actually happened because everyone has different versions of the same story, and koenig herself talks about how she’s not an expert in criminal justice, highlighting that she doesn’t even report on crime really
and even more than just the direct statements, koenig puts herself into the podcast really often! there’s a lot of “I talked to” and “I thought that” in there. it might read as self-indulgent, yeah, but to me it’s more a way to hammer home the idea that koenig herself is (or was) piecing it together herself AS she was reporting so that she could present herself as part of the audience, as it were
I think this is important – by putting herself into the investigation, she’s giving us a focal point from which to view everything else by, even if that focal point is the creator herself. it’s a really necessary distinction to make for the work, since it frames the content within as less of a completed work and more as a process. and by framing the whole thing as a process, koenig is trying to get away from the dateline-esque “we’re gonna tell you the TRUTH” type of storytelling
contrast this with making a murderer, where the creators reference their presence within the work very rarely. this makes the work itself more “complete”, even as the actual events that they reference are still occurring (petitions to get the averys a new trial, etc.). to me this always seems to create a power dynamic between the creators and the audience as one of omnipotence within the work itself, which is a very different dynamic when compared to the one presented in serial. even if koenig thought that she could solve the mystery, at the very least she put up the /pretense/ of not being able to, which is more than you can say for making a murderer
like this is doubly true for making a murderer as it is for serial imo, if only because of where the creators have situated themselves within the work
I think the fact that serial became the sensation it did and why people attempted to “solve” the mystery on their own speaks less to serial positioning itself as some arbiter of information and more to the compulsions that true crime works draw people in to. serial had the unfortunate honor of being the first popular work that did long form true crime in non-dateline style, and as a result, I think some of the more interesting things about it have been glossed over in favor of true crime stuff. that’s kind of what I was trying to get at earlier when I was talking about serial being an examination of form as opposed to a true crime genre piece. that people can experience serial or making a murderer and immediately go online and start petitions and affect things is another issue entirely (or is it )
serial was irritating as hell. it’s just listening to some white lady with no clue how murder investigations actually work rambling on forever about how an honor student couldn’t possibly murder his girlfriend, because the witness against him was a black kid who sold DRUGS really makes you think. they don’t even bother to present any kind of remotely reasonable alternative, just repeat some clip of her talking to him in prison and say “but see, he’s so nice when you talk to him” for ten hours straight. and the entire internet discussion about it was just like watching the people who come with insane tv show “theories” try to ply their craft at criminal justice. it’s put me off of watching this show or anything like it forever
I guess we’re gonna have to agree to disagree on this. I feel Koenig never should have put herself as a “character” in the podcast (and she is a character in the podcast, not a “real” person, as we are seeing an edited version of her recordings and pre-written monologues). I don’t tune into shows or podcasts to get a layman’s perspective of a topic since I already am a layman. I’d rather hear from an expert so I actually take something away from 10 hours of a person talking. Koenig knew very little about criminal investigations, had zero experience in running a “true crime” miniseries, gleefully encouraged fans online to treat this real life tragedy as a mystery novel, and basically fumbled her way through “piecing it together.” She should have had the insight beforehand to know she would never piece together a 15 year old case that basically came down to witness testimony. She also should have had the maturity to actually understand what the point of her show was before the first episode aired (after a year of preparations) rather than acting like its some crowdsourcing project that ends with her saying “i guess the legal system is pretty screwed up! also, maybe a serial killer did it.”
Making a Murderer obfuscates the role of the creators, but that’s the case in every mature documentary. Because the documentarians aren’t the subject. Of course it’s biased, everything is. There is no such thing as an objective documentary or Dateline show or newspaper article. You as an observer need to parse things out (or, if you want, take it as word of god, but it’s not the creators fault that their viewer is lazy).
Also, serial is not some new sensation or the first popular work of longform true crime. This is a prolific genre in both books, tv, and film. I also don’t think serial has much to say about the “form” of true crime beyond how easily a lazy person can buy into a murder mystery. And I don’t think it takes 10 hours to prove that.
see, I think this is where the misunderstanding is – I’m not arguing that serial is some amazing new true crime work and that it’s changing the genre or anything. I should have said this earlier, but I’m looking at serial from the perspective of someone who listens to a lot of public radio and podcasts, and THAT’S where I think koenig’s experimentation with form is interesting. serial was an experiment in long form radio/podcasts, and the fact that it started out with a true crime story was because koenig was already working on it before serial began, not because she was some criminology expert or anything. the case just happened to fit well with the kind of show serial was trying to be, as the situation was too complex for a ~1 hour radio broadcast/podcast. I’m pretty ambivalent about the first season of serial honestly! it was perfectly fine, but I didn’t LOVE it or anything, and I’m not defending it on the grounds that it’s some amazing true crime work
what I’m trying to get at is that I think serial wasn’t meant to usher in a wave of new true-crime works that examine the ways systems can unwittingly implicate disenfranchised people. it had a much narrower, niche goal, which was to examine the way a long form story can be told through an audio-only medium like radio or podcasts.
but somehow it became this enormous thing that everyone was talking about, and I don’t think that wasn’t because serial was particularly skilled at presenting this true crime work or that koenig is really good at getting to the truth of the matter – rather, I think it accidentally tapped into people’s propensity to treat these kinds of stories as entertainment, despite the fact that it happened to real people, which is what you’re saying too
I think koenig’s approach to the second season makes this clear as well – it began with almost an “open call” for new stories to take on, and it settled with a really high-profile military desertion (or is it) case, which is pretty far away from what the first season talked about (small-town murder mystery). it really pivoted away from true crime because koenig and company has been on the record as not wanting to be a true crime podcast. so I think that serial at least deserves credit for not doing the easy thing and picking another murder mystery to talk about
also, there’s a podcast called criminal that’s really good if you’re interested in more mundane criminal justice stuff:
People VS The Juice is basically a fun upper-lower-middle-brow* dramatization of Jeffrey Toobin’s 1997 account of the mess, not exactly doing great service to the many complicated issues involved, however being a rather fantastic accounting of the perfect storm of personalities whiched push it from Media Event all the way to Trial of the Century. I do not know the slighetest about accuracy but it clearly portrays a Story You Could Not Make Up. Recommended to try first couple episodes.
*so, like, 40-45% brow? which is more than most tv but allows for dracko
addendum: Second season The second season is in development, and will focus on Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Murphy explained the working plan is "to follow a group of six to eight people in an attempt to examine all sides of the tragedy, from the Superdome in New Orleans to the hospital to those who were put on buses and dropped off with babies who had to wear trash bags for multiple days." Production for the second season is expected to begin in fall 2016.[37]
well fuck. godspeed on that
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