unless you've been living off the grid, you've probably been swept up by the
massive wave of true crime programming that has hit our favorite streaming and
podcast networks. In 2020 alone, we saw true crime hits like The Vow, Dirty
John and even Tiger King, which kind of defies all labels. So why our true
crime stories Filling up our feeds more than ever. Better question. Why are we
so obsessed with unsolved murders and the dark, secret lives of real people?
And what does that say about us? A lot goes into the evolution of this
fascinating form of nonfiction storytelling, but one little podcast in
particular helped boost true crime in the zeitgeist of American pop culture.
This is 2014 cereal.
Yeah, journalist and this American Life radio show producer Sarah Koenig set
out to investigate a 15 year old murder case of an 18 year old girl commonly in
Baltimore. And instead of dedicating one this American life episode to the
story, she decided to break it up into one serialized episode per week for 12
weeks. This was not the first weekly podcast, but it helped pave the way for
a ton of true crime and investigative podcast to follow. That's because
cereals popularity spread like wildfire. Within a few months of premiering, it
had been downloaded 68 million times. Sarah and her producers meticulously
traced the events leading up to and following the girl's death. And what
made the podcast particularly special with Sarah's long conversations with
Harmon's convicted killer, Adnan Sayed. Adnan was a charismatic, friendly guy
who 15 years later denied having anything to do with the death of his
former high school sweetheart, even though a jury believed otherwise and
sentenced him to life in prison at 19 years old. The podcast was especially
nostalgic to the older millennial audience, who were reminded of what
high school was like in the 19 nineties. At its core serial was Sarah said
herself about the basics love and death and justice and truth. And it was those
things that pulled the audience, inviting them to decide what really
happened the day Haman Lee went missing and who might have really killed her
cereal inspired many hours of theorizing, countless articles, social
media posts and a four part HBO documentary exploring more the case and
the role the podcast played in reopening it, not to mention it won a
Peabody Award, continued on for two more seasons and opened up a huge new
audience to podcasting. Before Serial, there was another major influential
true crime documentary, HBO's 1996 film Paradise Lost. The Child Murders of
Robin Hood Hills, which tells the story of the West Memphis three, a group of
teenage boys who were charged and convicted of mutilating and murdering
three little boys in rural Arkansas.
Yeah,
mm hmm. A Paradise and Adolescents loss to Satanic Panic. What made the film so
remarkable at the time was that filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce
Sinofsky had originally set out with the assumption the teens were guilty of
the murders. But as the trial and filming began, they realized they had a
much bigger story on their hands and through their use of trial and police
interrogation footage, first person interviews and reactions from the
victims and the accused families, the filmmakers allows the audience to make
up its own mind. Were these misfit teens who listen to Metallica and read
Stephen King books really disaffected sadistic Satanists or just scapegoats
coerced by the police of a conservative Christian town are filmmaking
philosophy was to treat the audience like a jury. You can come to your own
conclusion. It's a much more powerful and persuasive experience. It was such
a powerful experience. It became the most watched documentary on HBO at the
time and inspired two Sequels documentaries about the West. Memphis
three, with the final film, Paradise Lost Purgatory, following the trio's
released from prison in 2011 due to a plea bargain based on new D N. A
Evidence. Purgatory was also nominated for an Oscar and Emmy that year, and
multiple documentaries and adaptations followed. After that, Paradise Lost
would ripple through storytelling and pop culture for decades. It was the
first film Metallica ever lent its music, too, and it went on to inspire
hit docuseries like making a murderer and scripted shows like The Night of
and When They See Us in 2016. Hollywood fully embrace the true crime boom and
produce a bunch of award winning projects based on some of the darkest
cases in the 19 nineties.
Yeah,
the O. J. Simpson trial was one of the most memorable events of the decade,
and ESPN S. O. J made in America won an Oscar in 2000 and 17 for best
documentary and the scripted series American Crime Story. The People vs OJ
Simpson 19 Emmys in the same year. What was it about this story that hooked
viewers over 20 years after the 1995 trial? Well, nostalgia for one, though,
that might sound insensitive, considering the brutality of the crimes.
But people, if they were alive and old enough, remember where they were the
day the verdict was announced. It was a pivotal moment in modern history where
true crime, Hollywood and the sports world all collided into one sensational
and super long trial that captured the attention of the entire world. Reliving
that moment in time by binge watching, either or both the documentary and the
Ryan Murphy produced series transported the audience back to the mid nineties.
It was a time when Americans followed these heavily televised events,
including the trial of the young Menendez brothers who were found guilty
of murdering their wealthy parents in Beverly Hills, and the Violent Shootout,
an FBI raid of a religious sect in Waco, Texas, both which were made into a TV
series in 2000 and 17 and 2000 and 18, and Hollywood also hopped aboard the
nineties. True Crime Train with the Oscar nominated 2017 film I Tonya,
starring Margot Robbie as disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, whose ex
husband Jeff Gillooly, orchestrated an attack on her skating rival Nancy
Kerrigan, right before the 1994 Olympics. Jeff, who only served six
months of a two year prison sentence for racketeering, is played by actor
Sebastian Stan. Allison Janney won the Oscar for best supporting actress for
her role as Tonya's abusive mother, and the film swept through the 2018 awards
season. But what might be the most influential factor behind the current
true crime boom? Women? Yep, the female audiences, both producing and consuming
this genre of storytelling more than ever before.
Yeah,
yeah. One popular podcast called Wine and Crime reported back in 2018 that
out of the over half a million downloads, they get a month. 85% of
them are by women, another popular podcast, also hosted by women. My
favorite murder hit the number one spot on iTunes within five months of their
initial premiere in 2016. In fact, the vast majority of true crime podcasts
are hosted by women. So why are women so into these disturbing stories? Well,
some psychology experts, like Amanda Vickery at Illinois Wesleyan University,
believe that women of all ages are particularly into the genre because it
helps them understand how a crime is perpetuated. And while taking in these
stories of crime and violence, women are subconsciously absorbing ways to
cope with terrifying situations and figuring out signs of potential danger.
Basically, with this theory, the more they understand how criminals think and
act, the better women can protect themselves. Psychotherapist Raya Gandhi
explains in February 2020 interview with Vogue magazine that women are
often the victims and survivors rather than perpetrators. That sense of
justice we feel at the end of a true crime film or series reflects our
desire to be a part of social and legal systems that work tirelessly towards
women's safety and protection. Whatever reason, maybe for bingeing hours of the
horrifying 2017 docuseries, the keepers about the murder and cover up of a
young nun or the recent HBO Doc You series, I'll Be Gone in the dark about
the late writer Michelle McNamara's investigation into the Golden State
killer who is now serving 12 life sentences for murder. One thing is
clear. The female audience stands true. Crime hard at the end of the day,
whether it's a desire for justice, a morbid fascination with the criminal
minds or just an escape enjoyed from the safety of one's couch, the
explosion of true crime content proves that there is a huge audience out there,
anxiously awaiting for more mhm.