Content warning: This article 
discusses violent crimes.
IN AUGUST 2021, 22-year-old 
Gabby Petito — an aspiring social 
media influencer — went missing 
while on a cross-country road trip 
with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. 
As the details of her disappearance 
emerged, panic began to grow 
around the search for Gabby, until 
the case earned itself a torrent of 
media coverage, becoming social 
media’s latest “whodunit.” Online 
“detectives” began posting regular 
updates about the case, attempting to 
solve it themselves. One even helped 
to locate Petito’s remains.
Watching this all unfold, I was 
put off by the mounds of speculation 
over a person we knew nothing about 
and whose family was likely already 
experiencing 
intense 
emotional 
turmoil even without a whirlwind of 
media attention. My “For You” page 
was suddenly filled with case updates 
about Petito: Is she alive? Did her 
fiancé kill her? Is his family covering 
for him? I wondered whether any 
of this was really helping Petito 
or her family. Moreover, I was 
wondering whether it was helping 
us to hyperfixate on such a gruesome 
missing person case. 

Gabby Petito is just one example of 
a phenomenon that has been on the 
rise for years. The spinning of violent, 
real-life crimes into entertainment 
for the general public was once 
considered to be a niche form of 
media. Now, however, it has become 
a national obsession deserving of 
some serious unpacking.
Many credit the start of the 
obsession with true crime to the 2014 
podcast “Serial,” which has amassed 
over 300 million listeners and 
maintained its popularity through 
the years. However, humans have 
always had a collective yearning to 
understand morally transgressive 
behavior. Many wish to learn what 
drives people to commit violent 
crimes, or they appreciate the 
satisfaction that comes with seeing 
the “bad guy” get what he deserves. 
This pursuit of understanding has 
spurred the creation of TV channels, 
documentaries 
and 
countless 
podcasts dedicated to unpacking the 
thought processes and motivations 
of those who commit cold-blooded 
crimes. Social media only fuels the 
fire by offering true crime junkies 
the opportunity to participate in the 
solving of the mystery, as seen with 
the case of Gabby Petito. There are 
accounts on TikTok dedicated to 
highlighting 
especially 
gruesome 
murder cases, unsolved missing 
person cases and other heinous crimes 

— some of which have accumulated 
millions of followers.
In some ways, this is not entirely 
bad — true crime content allows 
concerned citizens to engage with 
our justice system and question the 
decisions of law enforcement officers, 
judges and juries — a vigilance that is 
crucial. Podcasts like “In the Dark” 
and “Undisclosed” offer a different 
take on true crime by investigating 
cases that were grossly mishandled, 
particularly 
those 
which 
may 
have been racially motivated. This 
awareness was visible in the Gabby 
Petito case, when many on social 
media began to question why Petito’s 
disappearance was being given so 
much attention, yet the hundreds 
of women of Color who go missing 
each year — particularly Indigenous 
women — do not even make the 
news, a phenomenon commonly 
referred to as “Missing White Woman 
Syndrome.” Of course, there is much 
work to be done, and this case was just 
one small step in the right direction, 
but it would not have been possible 
without repeated examinations of 
Petito’s case all throughout the media 
— in strong defense for the continued 
existence of true crime content. 
On 
top 
of 
increased 
civic 
engagement, exposure to true crime 
can have safety benefits, particularly 
for feminine presenting individuals, 
who are at a much higher risk of being 

victims of a violent crime. True crime 
media offers helpful information on 
situations to avoid and things to be 
wary of, an essential skill in a world 
where walking alone at night can be 
deadly.
However, this is where things get 
murky. Using true crime as a means 
for civic engagement or increasing 
awareness of possible dangers is not 
totally unhealthy, but it’s not the best 
idea either. Evidence has shown that 
rates of violent crime are decreasing 
— on top of that, studies reveal 
that constant exposure to violent 
television or video games can cause a 
person’s perception of how dangerous 
the world is to be misguided, and that 
same principle applies in the case 
of true crime. When anxiety levels 
are already higher than ever before, 
staying up late into the night to watch 
gruesome murder documentaries 
may only feed a person’s belief that 
the world is an inherently dangerous 
place and that they must stay vigilant 
at all times — a recipe for increased 
anxiety, fear and isolation.
Yet, this is still not the most 
concerning side effect of constant 
consumption of true crime. In a 
perfect world, this would go without 
saying, but any retelling of a violent 
crime that either dehumanizes the 
victim or glorifies the killer is not 
educational — it is dangerous in 
more ways than one. Most recently, 

we have seen this with “Monster: 
The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” the 
Netflix series released in September 
that quickly became a hit. The 
show follows infamous serial killer 
Jeffrey 
Dahmer 
(Evan 
Peters, 
“X-Men: Apocalypse” through the 
years, with a heavy focus on the 
internal and external factors that 
contributed to his multiple killings. 
However, far too much time was 
spent showing Dahmer picking 
apart human remains for it to be 
impactful in any way. What could 
have been an attempt at honoring 
the victims turned into a disturbing 
series that accomplished nothing 
more than garnering sympathy for 
Dahmer — who was portrayed as a 

lonely, misunderstood individual. A 
concerning number of TikTok edits 
have emerged sympathizing with 
Dahmer and even glorifying him 
as some kind of genius. There were 
even people who dressed up as him 
for Halloween, an act so absurd I 
do not think I can sum it up in a few 
words. Some of the victims’ families 
have spoken out about how the show 
has retraumatized them, but their 
comments have received little to no 
attention from Netflix or the media 
at large. Dahmer’s killings have 
instead been turned into a spectacle 
that only serves to inflict further pain 
on the victims. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts

Is it time to question our obsession with true crime?

 REBECCA SMITH
Daily Arts Writer

Following in the footsteps of The 
Michigan Daily Arts’ Music Talks, The 
Michigan Daily Arts section presents 
Arts Talks, a series where Daily 
Arts Writers gather to discuss their 
opinions on and reactions to the latest 
and major releases in the Arts world.
In this segment of Arts Talks, four 
Daily Arts Writers well versed in 
Selena Gomez lore discuss her new 
documentary, “Selena Gomez: My 
Mind & Me,” and her mental health 
journey starting from her “Revival 
Tour” up until the pandemic. Having 
been under media scrutiny since a 
very young age, Gomez retakes control 
of her story in a tell-all about the 
pressures she has faced in her personal 
and professional life.
This conversation has been edited 
and condensed for clarity and brevity.
WHAT SURPRISED YOU the 
most about this documentary?
Sabriya Imami, Managing Arts 
Editor: One thing that I wasn’t 
expecting — I didn’t think it was going 
to go back as far as 2016. I thought 
it was gonna be maybe from the 
pandemic on, but there were things 
from 2016, when (Selena Gomez) was 
24 and she looked so different. She 
looked really young. And it was so 
hard to see her at that age struggling 
in the way that she was. Even though 
most of the documentary was more 
recent, having it go back that far gave 
us a better understanding of who she 
was and how far she’s come.
Swara Ramaswamy, Daily Arts 
Writer: It was even more jarring 
because I feel like she was kind of a 
private person for most of that time. 
We knew she was going through 
something, but she wasn’t open 
about it. So this was the first time 
we actually saw what she was going 

through.
Hannah Carapellotti, Senior 
Arts Editor: I related a lot to the idea 
that she kept talking about being your 
own worst enemy. It was sad to think 
that she was so close in age to us, 
and was being hard on herself while 
having to deal with so much.
SR: I was thinking the entire time 
that if I was put in this position, I feel 
like I would deteriorate very quickly. 
So it was very commendable to see 
that she held up for as long as she did.
SI: And she’s been in the limelight 
since she was seven — that’s so 
much of her life. She’s just been here, 
and we’ve all borne witness to her 
actions and everything that she’s 
gone through. She was able to take 
the narrative back, in a way, and be 
like, “This is what I’m choosing to 
show you,” rather than “This is what 
people (who) are prying into my life 
without my consent (are showing 
you).”
HC: I remember when “Lose You 
to Love Me” first came out — they 
had all of that in the movie — and I 
remember my mom hearing it for 
the first time and just immediately 
being like, “Oh, this is about Justin 
(Bieber).” And so watching (the 
movie) back, I was like, “It’s not 
about Justin,” and here we are doing 
exactly what she did not want us 
to do. I was a little disappointed in 
myself when I saw that.
SI: You get to see her making the 
song and seeing how much it meant 
to her. It wasn’t, “Oh, I needed to lose 
Justin to love me.” It’s this whole idea 
of, “Despite what everybody thought 
about me and what I thought about 
me and all of these preconceived 
notions that surrounded me, I was 
still able to love myself.” So to have it 
be, “I needed to lose a part of me that 
was negative towards the rest of me,” 
that’s so much more impactful than it 
being about Justin Bieber.

SR: It’s really commendable 
how she was able to get out of that 
“everyone only talking about her 
in conjunction with Justin Bieber” 
phase because he has been in the 
limelight a lot more than she has. 
The fact that she was able to say, “You 
know what, I don’t want my name to 
be associated with him anymore,” 
and then she just did it — now she’s 
an independent artist and got out of 
it — that was good on her part.
HC: I felt the same way when she 
talked about wanting to be separate 
from Disney. I always thought of her 
as one of the few Disney stars who 
has actually gone on to be something 
successful outside of that umbrella.
SI: The Disney thing broke my 
heart a little bit, because when I 
watched Selena Gomez on Disney 
Channel when I was little, it never 
felt like that wasn’t who she actually 
was. Obviously, Alex is not Selena 
and Selena is not Alex, but to have her 
associate that whole experience with 
negativity made me feel so sorry for 
her. I always thought watching her 
was so fun when I was growing up, 
but it wasn’t that for her. That was 
hard to reconcile.
SR: Yeah, especially after that 
one interview that she was doing 
on promo, and she got really upset 
afterward. She was like, “It felt like 
being on Disney again; it felt like I 
had the wand.” She was so viscerally 
upset about it.
Considering 
how 
publicized 
Gomez’s life has been, what do you 
think about how the documentary 
addresses it?
SR: I think it’s obvious that, 
(considering) how the documentary 
was made, she had executive control. 
And it’s such a refreshing turn from 
the way the media portrays her.
SI: That was really evidenced 
by 
the 
diary 
entries 
(in 
the 
documentary) because those were so 

sad but very real, and I’m pretty sure 
(it was) her handwriting and her voice 
speaking those words. And watching 
those moments, I was like, this is the 
actual Selena Gomez, and to show 
that was obviously her decision. I 
felt like that with the scenes in 
Kenya too. And I’m sure people will 
be like, “Oh, she only showed that 
to look like a philanthropist.” But 
it was so not performative. There 
was this moment where you see her 
looking out the window in Kenya 
when they’re in the car, and she just 
looks so content. Then, when she 
gets back to London, there’s this 
juxtaposing moment where she’s 
looking out the window, and it’s just 
her own reflection that’s staring back 
at her, and she looks so sad and tired. 
How can you say that her activism 
is performative when Kenya was 
where she seemed the happiest in the 
entire documentary, hearing these 
stories? There’s a lot more to her 
that I think people would not have 
understood or even guessed if not for 
the documentary.
SR: I think the Kenya trip was 
really well handled because as soon 
as she mentioned that she was going 
there I was like, “Oh!” and then it 

actually happened. They covered it 
so gracefully and spent more time on 
the kids that she was talking to rather 
than herself, highlighting their 
stories, which was beautifully done.
HC: I liked that she was going 
to Kenya because she already had 
a connection with the place. That 
made it more genuine to me, that 
she had already donated to build the 
schools.
SI: She had been wanting to go, but 
the doctors wouldn’t let her because 
it was too soon after her surgery. 
This isn’t something that was just 
happening for the documentary. And 
I think there was nobody happier 
than her that she was able to do it.
Kristen Su, Daily Arts Writer: 
She talks a lot about connecting 
with people. It’s obvious that even 
(when she was giving a speech at 
the McLean Hospital) she was 
listening to others. Even though it’s 
not the same thing as what she was 
doing in Kenya, she was listening to 
other people’s stories, and she really 
wanted to connect with them and 
she was glad that her words had some 
sort of impact.
SI: None of that felt performative 
to me. These are things she has 

grappled with and now she’s using 
her platform to do something about 
it.
What do you make of the negative 
perception of Raquelle that fans have 
expressed on the internet?
SI: Everybody is dissing Raquelle 
Stevens, Gomez’s friend, and look, 
I am a huge fan of “Selena + Chef,” 
her HBO Max show. So (I feel like) 
I’ve known Raquelle since day one. 
She’s in all the episodes, she’s cooking 
alongside Gomez, they lived together. 
And I feel like all the Raquelle hate is 
so unwarranted because this is a girl 
who is not famous in her own right, 
but she also doesn’t need to be there. 
She chooses to stay. Raquelle is in 
some ways taking care of (Gomez) 
and is also, in a lot of ways, the 
only person being honest with her. 
That scene of them fighting was 
misleading in some ways. I think it 
wasn’t meant to show that Raquelle 
was a problem. I think it was meant 
to show that Selena does still struggle 
in maintaining these connections 
with the people that are closest to 
her. So it was a realistic portrayal 
of friendship: You do have fights. I 
don’t think many people would stick 
alongside a friend who is struggling 
so much. And I feel like if you don’t 
know Raquelle from “Selena + Chef,” 
you don’t know her.
HC: I hadn’t interpreted Raquelle 
as toxic or a bad friend in any way, 
so I had to look up BuzzFeed articles 
about it. This scene when they’re 
talking in Kenya about making 
it a quarterly trip and Raquelle is 
reminding Selena, “This isn’t reality 
for you,” everyone attacked her for 
being so blunt. But they’ve been 
friends for 10 years. Sometimes, you 
need a friend who can tell it to you 
straight. I think Raquelle was doing 
that.

Arts Talks: ‘Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me’

Design by Grace Fiblin

Wednesday, November 30, 2022 — 5

Sail into the abstract with ‘1899’

IF “DARK” WASN’T convoluted 
and mind-bending enough for you, 
Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar 
returned to their area of expertise 
with “1899.” “Dark” was Netflix’s 
first 
German-language 
original, 
making waves as it explored time 
travel, parallel universes and a host 
of twists and turns so confusing 
that Netflix created a website to 
assist viewers along the journey. As 
I began to trudge my way through 
the pair’s newest creation, I brought 
a sharp mind and my notebook. 
“1899” follows the passengers and 
crew of the Kerberos, an immigrant 
steamship on its way to America, 
when the captain gets a signal from 
another ship, the Prometheus, after 
it had been reported missing for four 
months. Upon finding the ship, those 
aboard the Kerberos are thrown 
into a puzzle of mind-bending 
proportions as they experience 
unexplainable 
phenomena 
that 
question the nature of their reality.
In the first few minutes, we meet 
our protagonist, Dr. Maura Franklin 

(Emily Beecham, “Cruella”), as she 
awakens in her cabin after what 
seems to be either a dream or a 
flashback. Astute viewers familiar 
with Friese and bo Odar’s style may 
have picked up on certain recurring 
symbols. We see an inverted triangle 
with a line through it and the 
numbers 1011 crop up in many of the 
opening scenes — a sign that some 
things are not what they seem. This 
pattern continues as viewers are 
introduced to some of the characters 
present in the first-class dining room 
with Maura. There’s the rich and 
mysterious Englishwoman Virginia 
(Rosalie Craig, “London Road”), the 
brooding honeymooning French 
couple Lucien (Jonas Bloquet, “The 
Nun”) and Clémence (Mathilde 
Ollivier, 
“Overlord”), 
suspicious-
looking Spanish brothers Ángel 
(Miguel Bernardeau, “Elite”) and 
Ramiro (José Pimentão, “Al Berto”) 
and the unhappy geisha Ling 
Yi (Isabella Wei, “Our 4℃ – Able 
World”). The sullen-looking captain 
of this doomed ship, Eyk (Andreas 
Pietschmann, “Dark”), also joins 
Maura in navigating the disasters 
ahead. Everyone seems to call a 
different place home, yet they’re 

all on the Kerberos for the same 
reason — they’re running away from 
something in their past in hopes of a 
better future. The aforementioned 
weird signs appear again in this 
dining room, as we hear unnaturally 
long diatribes on the size and 
capacity of the human brain, watch 
every passenger in the room sip their 
tea and return their cups to their 
saucers at the exact same tempo 
and listen to the score warble and 
readjust itself like a radio out of tune. 
The second-most outstanding 
part of these eight episodes (second 
only to the mind-bending sci-
fi involved in the plot) are the 
characters and their relationships to 
each other. While the protagonists of 
the show converse mainly in English, 
every other character maintains 
their native tongues, which include 
German, 
Danish, 
Norwegian, 
Swedish, Polish, Spanish, French, 
Cantonese and Portuguese. We 
watch 
these 
characters 
break 
through language and class barriers 
as the first-class passengers meet 
and 
befriend 
the 
middle-class 
passengers over the course of the 
show. It doesn’t matter if the Spanish 
man can’t understand the Danish 

man, or if the Chinese woman 
doesn’t understand the Polish man 
— in the catastrophic situations 
these passengers face, language is a 
trivial thing. Caring for one another 
and making sacrifices for each other 
— those are universal. “1899” tries 
to strip humanity all the way down, 
parsing through what exactly makes 
us tick the way we do. This show 
proves that no matter which reality 
we think we’re living in, our love 
for our fellow human is the most 
consistent thing we have.
And now we reach the monster 
in the room — the plot. I appreciate 
a good slow burn. I love having to 
hold certain details in the back of 
my mind and retrieve them later to 
put together a puzzle. However, I 
think “1899” pushes the slow burn 
premise a little bit over the edge. The 
season took far too long to get to the 
point — or at least what I think was 
the point. The worlds that Friese 
and bo Odar create are meant to 
be confusing, but I still didn’t quite 
know what was going on as I was 
starting episode seven. The upside 
to this incredibly slow pace was that 
we had more time to get to know 
some of our main characters. Each 

episode began with a flashback 
into a particular character’s life and 
Maura’s voice telling them to “wake 
up,” jolting the character awake in 
the present. These flashbacks did go 
a long way in providing background 
and further explanation to certain 
characters’ actions, though the 
plot development seemed to suffer 
because of it. It seemed as though the 
first six episodes served to stoke the 
flames of conspiracy theories, which 
ultimately left more questions than 
answers. Some of the questions still 
remaining in my notes are:
“What is lost will be found” — 
What’s lost? Where are we finding it?
What do the telegraph messages 
with the triangles mean?
Why are the compasses spinning?
What does Maura’s letter mean?
Did this girl just stop a bullet?
“May your coffee kick in before 
reality does” — I wish this for myself 
too
Are these people even real?
An 
extremely 
commendable 
aspect of Friese and bo Odar’s 
creations 
is 
their 
explanations 
of 
scientific 
theories. 
Though 
convoluted, 
“Dark” 
somehow 
managed to kind of solve the 

grandfather 
paradox, 
and 
the 
average viewer was able to grasp 
the overall explanations of time 
travel and parallel universes. At its 
base level, “1899” revolves around 
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and 
opens an effective discourse around 
the nature of reality and the human 
mind. Is reality just a bunch of 
neurons firing in our brains, or is 
it more? Does reality involve who 
we interact with and how we give 
meaning to experiences in our lives? 
More importantly, what is “real?” By 
exploring this area of sci-fi, “1899” 
risks rehashing the plots of “The 
Matrix” or “Inception” — although it 
has been only eight episodes.
Though “1899” is a bit slow to 
get off of the ground, the eighth 
episode left me feeling the same way 
I did after season one of “Dark” — 
wanting more. Though it’s still too 
early to tell whether the show will 
be getting a season two, the season 
finale suggests a plot that’s ready 
to expand further. The hope is that 
Friese and bo Odar will continue to 
churn out content that pushes the 
boundaries of what we know to be 
true. Until then, I’ll be waiting with 
my notebook.

 SWARA RAMASWAMY
Daily Arts Writer

Design by Iris Ding

 Read more at MichiganDaily.com

 Read more at MichiganDaily.com

DAILY ARTS WRITERS

