From podcasts to documentaries to dramatized retellings of the stories, everyone knows someone who could talk about true crime for hours. However, this isn’t something that is up and coming. Crime has been told through stories for generations.
Some of the most popular retellings have been created and directed by Ryan Murphy, such as “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.” Both are seasons of a show that bred romanticization of the eras, with people dressing up as the men for Halloween and hyperfixating on the attractiveness of the actors by creating edits to showcase their looks rather than focusing on the violence and tragedy of their situations.
Sarah Witmer, a professor at the University of Iowa who studies the use of media in the pursuit of social justice, discussed the prevalence of crime in media dating back hundreds of years.
“It’s kind of a red herring that true crime has had a recent resurgence. Crime has always been popular. [People have been] talking about crime even before there was written language. These same stories of oral histories continued once we had the printing press, before journalism was even an industry. The number one thing being printed: crime.”
She said one of the reasons we’re seeing more true crime and tragic content is an inundation of media. Because there are so many ways to consume media, there is more true crime messaging than ever. Although these shows can be appealing entertainment, they often leave a path of destruction in their wake.
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“There are real victims, and then they have what we call secondary victims; that’s the family members. And then you also have the people they worked with, who knew them, who loved them, whose careers and lives are impacted by this tragedy. And so there’s still all these ripple effects,” Witmer said.
She mentioned the ethical implications of retelling tragedies repeatedly and the retraumatization of family members, friends, and victims of the event.
Reanna Robb, a fourth-year student at the UI, similarly discussed how dramatized versions of tragedies can lead to a slanting of facts within the media.
“When any journalistic piece trades accuracy for sensationalism, it can have negative effects as it skews the narrative to the public, rather than presenting the information and letting the public come to its own conclusion,” Robb said. “With [“Monster: the Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story”], I found a lot of my peers focused on what the best scenes were, rather than the reality of communities who still bear the pain of these crimes today.”
However, violence in the media doesn’t always breed unpleasant consequences. Not only is learning about true crime interesting, but it can lead to more protection under the law with policy change, or reassurance in a person’s mind.
“It helps us to protect ourselves, right?” Witmer said. “They’re able to play out different scenarios. What would they do? How could they avoid being the teenager who got lured from the internet to meet up with this man?”
Delaney Spizzirri, a third-year student at the UI, echoed these sentiments. She talked about the unethical nature of some crime media and the activism that it can spark. Similarly, she placed the responsibility of those producing true crime media to make an effort to catalyze change within a community.
“I like true crime because it can teach you how to navigate the world we live in, especially as a woman. True crime can be tricky; unfortunately, a lot of the existing media is exploitative and sometimes even glorifies violent people. I stay away from those types of true crime formats,” Spizzirri said.