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