The eight-foot Black Angel statue imposes its shroud over the Oakland Cemetery. A staple of Iowa City folklore, The Black Angel’s history has been twisted over time to spawn rumors and myths.
This distortion is quite similar to how true cases of murder and tragedy become kings on Netflix’s streaming charts.
“I think a lot of true crime can be like that, sort of an urban legend that runs wild. There’s this question about how much truth are we stretching or exaggerating,” University of Iowa graduate and author Rebecca McKanna said.
McKanna formed her opinions on the true crime genre while writing her first book, “Don’t Forget the Girl.” While the book examines loved ones who are left behind in true crime narratives, she used it as a chance to critique the culture surrounding these stories.
As she dove deeper into the genre, she noticed a significant number of lines being crossed. In recent years, TV has become the destination to adapt cases, the most notable being Netflix’s “Monster” series.
The first season explored Jeffrey Dahmer to much controversy, as the families of Dahmer’s victims were not informed of the show’s release. They only learned when they saw several scenes depicting the trial, where many saw interpretations of themselves on screen.
McKanna refused to watch the first season, as she had seen the victims’ families come out against it. But with less backlash, she decided to try the second season, and she thought there were still moments where ethics were not upheld.
“I think that probably any kind of nonfiction or docuseries is going to have these questions of perspective and questions about whose truth, whose viewpoint are we taking,” McKanna said.
While many shows and movies are made without the family’s consent, McKanna brought up one that did have permission. “Family Secrets: The Disappearance of Alissa Turney” investigates Alissa Turney, who went missing in 2001. It follows her younger sister Sarah as she gives more insight into their past and her suspicions that her father murdered Alissa.
This series proves that there are ways to present true crime cases in the media without exacerbating victims’ trauma.
The description of McKanna’s book reads, “We never remember the dead girls. We never forget the killers.” This can be seen in many documentaries, especially the ones Netflix continues to release that are the tapes of serial killers themselves.
In 2019, Netflix began its collection “Conversations with a Killer.” Only three have been released, but each consists of official tapes of interviews with serial killers. The first one released was with Ted Bundy, who was diagnosed as a malignant narcissist, connecting his crimes with his need for power over others.
“I just hate that because they are the most unreliable narrators about themselves in the first place,” McKanna said. “And it just gives a person like that exactly what they want: more attention and very little to the victims.”
When thinking of true crime, the recent boom in television and podcasts tends to come to mind. But there is a history of true crime in media that can’t be ignored.
“I think it’s important to question what the ‘true’ in true crime is at any given moment,” Zachariah Anderson, a UI assistant professor, said. “Films, whether they are fiction or documentaries, create truth claims through very specific conventions that change over time. So, what we think of as true crime today is not going to be what we think of as true crime in the future.”
Anderson is involved in Iowa’s cinema program and will teach an undergraduate seminar in crime and policing in films next semester.
The class will examine police and crime media through a historical lens, taking note of how attitudes toward crime media have changed over the years. It will also explore how filmmakers are shaping and being shaped by their own social contexts and historical understandings of what crime and policing look like.
“A problematic representation of crime today is obviously radically different than in the context of, say, the Cold War period,” Anderson said.
Anderson said there is something distinct about the streaming era and how true crime is portrayed in present-day shows and podcasts.
UI second-year student Karlee Mathena mainly enjoys listening to true crime podcasts, including the ongoing “Morbid” podcast, which examines different real-life crime cases through the experiences of the people involved.
“When [Morbid] first started, they would go into more detail about serial killers when they talked about each crime,” Mathena said. “But now they focus more on the victims of crimes and will go through the victims’ entire life stories.”
“Morbid” began in 2018, and its change of focus coincides with a larger societal shift that has taken place over the past few years.
“There may have been a shift in viewing victims differently,” Mathena said. “The stories are not about the criminal, and we should focus more on the victims and hear their stories, rather than hearing the criminals’ stories.”
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While “Morbid” still releases episodes focused on criminals, the podcast hosts rarely talk about them without at least mentioning the victims and their lives.
Second-year UI student Hannah Rechlicz grew up watching one such show, “Dateline,” alongside her mom.
“My mom would put ‘Dateline’ on Friday nights, and after dinner, I would just sit down there and watch it with her,” Rechlicz said.
Rechlicz’s experience of growing up watching true crime television is not unique. In fact, several college-aged students also got into watching the genre through a parent — specifically their mothers.
This continues a trend that women are more likely than men to consume true crime content. Overall viewership of these shows is at an all-time high, with a new YouGov poll reporting that 57 percent of Americans say they watch true crime content.
“I decided one day that I was going to sit down with my mom, and we were just going to watch a show together — ‘The First 48,’” Madison Meerdo said. “It may be morbid, but I enjoy this content. It’s very informative and true crime has been so popular, especially over the last few years.”
Meerdo studies forensic psychology at Slippery Rock University and finds herself drawn to true crime content naturally.
Throughout her time in school, she has gained information about different crimes from both her studies and the true crime content she consumes. As long as crime mediums take the time to be both accurate and informative, she finds herself naturally drawn to true crime content.
“When I search for shows and podcasts, I want to learn the psychology and forensics behind cases,” Meerdo said. “I want to learn, ‘Why did they do that? How did this happen? Or how did that happen instead of this outcome?’” she said.
Most of her favorite TV shows have a lot of suspense and vivid scenes where the actors portray what happened.
“Even if you don’t have a very good imagination or you can’t really put actions to a scene in your head, if they [the showrunners] show it to you then you can see what happens,” Meerdo said. “Showing real parts or reenacted parts of the crime is what really makes a show so much more impactful.”
While creators can’t use visual elements to tell stories in podcasts, they can use features such as sound effects or even the way that they talk to get certain points or story beats across.
Meerdo cites Evan Peters’ portrayal of Jeffery Dahmer in Netflix’s “Monsters: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” as an example of how to depict serial killers in the modern media.
“Everything about the show just made me feel so uncomfortable, it felt so personal and just tickled your skin a little bit because of how uncomfortable it made you. [The directors] did that on purpose to portray how evil he was,” Meerdo said.
Crime can be a contentious social topic, which, when seen through the lens of modern-day media, can reflect the cultural conversation surrounding these controversial figures. This is especially true in the digital age when a multitude of media content is at anyone’s fingertips.
“We can explore all these big social questions through the movies. At the same time we can explore the movies through social topics and debates,” Anderson said.