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.