On Bingeing True Crime

I confess: I’m one of those tiresome bitches who constantly watches true crime shows–and not the highbrow offerings–a habit which has intensified after dating a man just long enough for him to install a TV in my apartment, the first I’ve ever had in my own home. 

(Much has been written about the boom in both production and consumption of this content, far more eloquently than I could manage, so this is simply a synopsis of my current experience.)

Part of the appeal lies in the predictability, knowing that explanations will be provided by the conclusion of the episode, a sense of satisfactory “closure”--to use a word homicide detectives are obsessed with–that real life doesn’t always offer. (Obviously, I don’t make a habit of watching Unsolved Mysteries.) When I was in nursing school, I took an extended sabbatical from extracurricular books. Once I [finally] passed the licensing exam, I wanted to return to them, but was very out of practice and struggled with my literary endurance. In order to ease my way back into recreational reading, I started by revisiting a handful of beloved Agatha Christie classics. The logic was that I’d be invested in reaching the finale for an answer to the whodunit–or why-done-it–and gain momentum to move to more challenging works, which proved an effective strategy. 

Although my library check-outs evolved, my television viewing remained a stagnant smattering of trashy rehashes of fatal crimes.

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In Sarah Weinman’s 2020 anthology Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit & Obsession, essayist Alice Bolin’s contribution delves into the attraction of true crime programming, as well as the contrasts between those deemed “sophisticated” (Serial, Making A Murderer) and those on the opposite end of the spectrum (just about everything made by Investigation Discovery). Bolin laments the fact “that so many resources are going to create slick, smart true crime that asks the wrong questions, focusing our energy on individual stories instead of the systemic problems they represent.” But she acknowledges that this is “probably a feature, not a bug” of the genre’s motivations. Bolin speculates that “the new true-crime obsession has something to do with the massive, terrifying problems we face as a society,” whose resolutions, “though not mysterious, are also not forthcoming.” Honing in on a single case, “bearing down on its minutiae and discovering who is to blame, serves as both an escape and a means of feeling in control, giving us an arena where justice is possible.”

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When I feel obligated to justify my excessive gorging on true crime–which is pretty much every time I indulge–I’ve come up with a few rationalizations. The first and most formidable stems from my inability to regularly engage in meaningful gratitude, a cornerstone of sobriety and general, mindful well-being. My endearing mother has religiously kept a gratitude journal every day for years, filling the lined pages from top to bottom and rarely repeating the exact same item more than once. For a while, on occasions like birthdays and Hanukkah, she not-so-subtly gifted dainty journals intended for use as my own documents of gratitude. Sadly, the habit never took hold for me, reflecting both a lack of cultivated appreciation and a pattern of failing to adhere to positive daily routines (as evidenced by the detritus from my numerous attempts to do “morning pages,” the only aspect of The Artist’s Way I could tolerate). 

The idea is that by continuously exposing myself to narratives of people–and, let’s face it, mostly women–whose oft-unremarkable lives end up defined by their tragic deaths, I will be inspired to more regularly, thoroughly honor the gifts the universe has bestowed upon me. In my downtime, I scrutinize women whose life goal is “to be a wife and a mother,” waiting for them to be slaughtered by a procession of male partners selected, ordinarily at a young age, in order to fulfill this aspiration. So, by direct and frequent comparison, shouldn’t I be deeply grateful for my own existence? (For [much] more on comparison, click here.)

Of course, the actual result is closer to a comprehensive desensitization than a magical enlightenment.

In Bolin’s own essay collection, Dead Girls: On Surviving An American Obsession, the author explores the morbid fascination with murdered women that has successfully ripped through our popular culture, yielding a seemingly infinite array of television shows, documentaries, and podcasts. Bolin expertly examines the phenomenon and its inextricable connection to domestic violence; the men perpetuating it “usually seem normal and even likable,” given that their female “partners become the focus of all their rage, so it rarely seeps into other areas of their lives.” There is a blatant blueprint. However, as Bolin writes, “It’s clear we love the Dead Girl, enough to rehash and reproduce her story, to kill her again and again, but not enough to see a pattern. She is always singular, an anomaly, the juicy new mystery.”

If she wasn’t, how would we be able to fill all the hours of programming, have the supply for the bottomless demand? 

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Lately, my viewing preference has been Snapped: Killer Couples, an 18-season series depicting the criminal misadventures of a different romantic pair every episode. There’s little to praise in terms of its structure and delivery. It doesn’t contain the [overly] dramatic reenactments I relish, and the stories it recaps tend to not be especially interesting, in the grand scheme of the genre. I find it to be one of those TV programs that typically requires only a fraction of my full attention, and is appropriate as background entertainment while engaged in other activities. However, as I have continued to binge, I’ve given more thought to the reasons behind my slogging through season after season. Although I’ve consumed many series with many overarching themes–Evil Stepmothers, Who Hired the Hitman?, A Body In the Basement–I have realized that the appeal of the murderous couple, for me, is deeply personal and reflective of my current station in life. Gleefully observing a parade of doomed duos committing felonies under the potent influence of True Love soothes my single, mid-30s soul. Sure, my fertility and youthful seductiveness may be slowly tapering off, but at least I’ve never been in a delusional dalliance yielding death and destruction that ruins my life, along with several others. 

‘Tis better to never have loved than to have “loved” and been locked up.

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But there is another side to the coital coin. The line in my dating app bios that I don’t think I’ll ever modify goes as follows: “if you are ethically non-monogamous, i am ethically non-interested.” The infestation of NYC by “relationship anarchists” (translation: “I desire to stick my dick into multiple women”) seeking “casual but consistent” dynamics (“I want to keep my options open for somebody better to come along”) has been chapping my hide for years now. We all know the true crime trope of a quiet, throwaway village being shattered by a horrific slaying, with the local cops exclaiming how they’ve “never seen anything like it” in their fill-in-the-blank number of years on the force. On a Killer Couples bender, witnessing these small-town lovebirds become embroiled in ill-conceived and inevitably bungled murder plots, I can’t help but evaluate the relationships by the metrics of big-city dating life. Whether the conflict is staunch parental disapproval or a pesky spouse preventing two lovers from being together, these couples go to whatever lengths necessary to eliminate the obstacle. Could I find a man willing to do that in a city swarming with beautiful, incredible women, always another waiting in the wings should the current one prove to be seeking–gasp!–respect and possibly even commitment? (Committing a crime not necessarily included.)

Unlikely.  

A Few Tidbits

Go figure, it took a month and a half for me to muster up the give-enough-of-a-fuck to make a second post. I have a few more fleshed-out writings in the works but for now, here are the general theses swirling around relentlessly in my mind:

1. I am still finding myself—despite years of what could nicely be called “humbling” experiences—engaging in the self-destructive pattern of a) hitting a painful, personal wall in my life that causes a meltdown, followed by b) resolving to make changes via setting creative goals, attempting to [re-]build friendships, and improving both my mental + physical health, only to c) be thrown comically off course and abandon all of these as soon as a Promising Man enters the picture. Then, when, unsurprisingly, that dalliance implodes, I find myself right back where I started, though worse for the wear because I’m furious I’ve allowed it to happen yet again. I really don’t like being That Bitch. (One positive thing I’ll mention is that I no longer automatically assume I did something “wrong” or am to blame for the dissolution of a situationship/relationship.)

2. Although there are very few things—in the grand, diverse scheme of life—that are actually, completely dependent on being a certain age, there are many that get punishingly harder the older one gets. Obviously, the longer we have been engaging in particular adaptive behaviors, the more difficult it is to un-learn and replace them once there’s recognition that they are no longer “serving” us. I’ve tried to break up the current amorphous aspirations I have re: my creative pursuits into digestible steps that don’t seem overwhelming. But even when trying to tackle the first rudimentary bullet point, I’m up against over 30 years of thoughts—and related avoidant actions—that seamlessly convince me it’s all pointless and hopeless. And I would be remiss to omit the importance of bodily capital, and the very not-just-in-my-head concept that women’s potential for success in creative realms (and beyond) rapidly declines as age increases.

3. I love to collage. It’s the only activity in which I can truly say I enter a “flow” state, and I do think I am talented, a declaration I take seriously since I have a pretty low opinion of my competence at most things. But maybe one of the only other areas in which I can confidently say I similarly excel is turning a positive into a negative, so here I go: I wish I were musically gifted instead. Sure, it’s apples + oranges, and they’re not mutually exclusive, and yes I rap every now + then, however, I don’t make the beats and the rhythm eludes me more often than not, blah blah blah. I absolutely have an appreciation for visual art, but the role that it occupies in my daily life is a far cry from the importance music holds. I’m rarely without a soundtrack, since music can coexist with most human tasks, while the accessibility and experience of visual art are typically relegated to a removed sphere. And I would say, without a moment’s hesitation, that music has impacted me much more deeply, in a manner that beholding a photo or painting or collage (or even film, for that matter) never has.

What's The Point?

If anyone were ever permitted to see inside my apartment, branding myself a “perfectionist” would seem like a huge joke.

But:

The overwhelming urge to acquire, along with its correlated underlying motivations, can easily be intertwined with a tendency toward perfectionism, as laid out in Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee. After all, perfectionism isn’t solely about a pristine, unassailable end result; it also speaks to a sense of wholeness and completion. Within the various case studies the authors present, several remarks illustrate this:

• “Also affecting Irene’s buying was her addiction to the idea of opportunity… ‘When I gaze at all the riches, I say to myself, ‘Look at all these newspapers and magazines. Somewhere in the midst of all that there may be a piece of information that could change my life; that could make me into the person I want to be. How can I walk away and let that opportunity pass?’”

• “Certainly, kleptomania and compulsive buying are related to the acquisition we see in hoarding. What may unite these disorders is a psychology of opportunity. Walking away from something that could be acquired means walking away from the potential benefits of ownership. Most of us learn that any action we take means pursuing one opportunity at the expense of another. For people afflicted with this problem, the fear of losing an opportunity is greater than the reward of taking advantage of one. Consequently, all opportunities are preserved, but none are pursued.”

• “She wanted to know the world, ‘to learn everything, to experience everything.’ As she got older, her collecting expanded to include travel, cooking, news and women’s magazines. There were always new magazines with more for her to learn. Before long, she was spending more time collecting than reading. As with many people who hoard, she planned to read them when she found time, but she couldn’t afford to miss what was coming her way…”

• “She possessed all the characteristics we had been observing in other hoarders: perfectionism, indecision, and powerful beliefs about and attachments to objects…things represented opportunity and a chance to experience all that life had to offer.”

I relate to this, as my hoarded belongings—specifically books/magazines and clothing—can be viewed as a [flimsy] stand-in for all the information and identities I can never hope to obtain or live out in reality.

And when it comes to attempting to address out-of-control clutter, many hoarders find it “easier to live with the mess than to experience the frustration of failing to create a perfect room.”

So… how is this relevant? I am a Girlboss™ of Great Beginnings, of making a resolution and taking the tiniest first step toward its achievement, almost always discouraged by a lack of immediate, colossal success. (This concept of “success” is invariably rather vague, all the better to convince myself I’ve failed to reach it, no matter what.) As such, in addition to the material objects I’ve compulsively amassed, I have also accumulated a treasure chest/dumpster fire of ideas and theses, introductory paragraphs, sonnet snippets, etc. It took me nearly a full fucking year to meticulously conclude On Envy, and that’s only because, eventually, I stopped myself from following the rest of the strands of thought that were percolating.

This blog—a 2-decades-later resurrection, if you will, or won’t, of my middle school Xanga, i _ am _ a _ loser _ baby—is intended as a place to experiment with less in-depth, more frequent writings. It is yet another facet of my recent efforts to [slowly, painstakingly] uncouple my creative products from the external validation I’ve convinced myself I need for any piece to feel finalized. Yes, I’m aware that I am still posting this to the Internet, but that stems from my perennial yearning for a sense of “community” I’ve never known…

Stay tuned for more on that, and other things.