Why our true crime obsession is bad for society

But these women, like all the victims of the killers who have become cause célèbre in our cultural mythos of toxic masculinity, have been largely erased from the story of their own deaths. Indeed, Durvasula cautions that when true crime stories focus so extensively on the perpetrators they devalue the victims, and, more broadly, “set a theme” that certain marginalized groups are “disposable.” After all, the murdered girl has become a kind of pop cultural Madonna, beatified in the moment of her oblivion — but even then, only a certain kind of murdered girl (i.e. thin and white and conventionally pretty) seems to matter at all. The family of Hae Min Lee, the teenage girl whose brutal murder catalyzes Season One of Serial, which begat the new wave of true crime podcasts, has described the show’s popularity as “[reopening] wounds few could imagine […] when so few are willing to speak up for Hae.” On Reddit, Hae’s brother guttingly criticized the podcast for turning his family’s tragedy into fodder for case theories du jour: “To you listeners, its [sic] another murder mystery, crime drama, another episode of CSI. You weren’t there to see your mom crying every night, having a heartattck [sic] when she got the new [sic] that the body was found. …”

My most significant qualm about the true crime zeal is that it lacks empathy for the victims, and that, all too often, it’s content to regard merely portraying horrific acts of violence as a meditation on why, exactly, that violence occurs. But I may be something of a fuddy-duddy; after all, true crime remains enduringly popular — especially among women. Karla S. Mastracchio, a cultural studies professor who specializes in gender and pop culture, isn’t surprised by this. “Women form communities around looking at serial killers (think My Favorite Murder meet-ups) because many women have felt the vulnerability that comes with being a woman in the world — and thanks to rape culture — collectively experience the kind of paranoia that comes with being vulnerable.”