True Crime Stories are Popular
but there’s no getting around the ethical dilemmas involved. Whether news report, book, movie, podcast, documentary — or that most gray zone of media types, the docu-drama — works based on true crime have maintained popularity even as the method of consumption has moved from print to film and audio.
While consuming this content lets people indulge their fascination for the question: how could they? it also risks being exploitative and injurious to the victim(s) of the crime and their loved ones. I won’t go into the pro/con arguments for this type of work, beyond acknowledging that this is a complex topic.
Just do a quick internet search,
and you will find plenty of thoughts on the topic. Free speech vs. victims’ rights, sensationalism vs. privacy vs. accuracy, the ethics of appropriation–who really owns the story of something truthful? A recent article on the site Legal Cheek explores further aspects from a legal lens.
Today’s poem suggests that this fascination is probably here to stay.
Watching the True Crime Documentary
Weeds are still weeds, and weed itself still weed, and both stink like the skunk
in the dark near the curb, the one you can't see but know is right there
and still, you trip over it while they laugh, you scrape knees and palms and miraculously
perhaps due to a weedy flexibility unaccountable given your age
avoid a face plant. There's a chorus, a whole song in there
and somewhere a better alto than you'll ever be hums along leading
a whole troop: the unlit night filled with scavengers, frogs, sticky puddles of who knows what.
This is the future already, the one with a generation ship the size of a planet
hurling through space and dropping bits behind so fast sometimes
yesterday slaps you today in the face and people are still people. Who wants to know?
Well, people will be people, and the sad thing is that there’s always one bad apple, as the saying goes. The proliferation of true crime media makes it seem like there are more bad apples than ever, but I am not so sure that is true. It may be true, but also it may be that we are just noticing what is put in front of us. And the more we notice, the more some algorithm notices us noticing, so puts more in front of us. And so on, and so forth…
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