IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Humboldt State University Volume 3 ideaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Humboldt State Article 13 University 2019 True Injustice: Cultures of Violence and Stories of Resistance in the New True Crime Marcos A. Hernandez Humboldt State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/ideafest Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, and the Rhetoric Commons Recommended Citation Hernandez, Marcos A. (2019) "True Injustice: Cultures of Violence and Stories of Resistance in the New True Crime," IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Humboldt State University: Vol. 3 , Article 13. Available at: https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/ideafest/vol3/iss1/13 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Digital Commons @ Humboldt State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in IdeaFest: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works and Research from Humboldt State University by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Humboldt State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RHETORIC 77 True Injustice: Cultures of Violence and Stories of Resistance in the New True Crime Marcos A. Hernandez1* KEYWORDS—true crime, social justice | Warning: The content of this paper includes topics that may be difficult for some people to confront or discuss. | A brief perusal of media coverage on “true crime” to- *Corresponding Author: [email protected] day may well leave one convinced, as I was when I first 1Graduate Student dived deep into it in early 2018, that the genre has experi- Department of English Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521 enced something of a cultural renaissance in the last five years. On April 29th, 2019, Variety magazine published an Hernandez, M. A. 2019. True injustice: cultures of violence and stories of resistance in the new true crime. ideaFest Journal: Interdisciplinary Journal of Creative Works & article titled, “Inside the True Crime Boom Taking Over Research from Humboldt State University 3: 77–89. Prestige TV.” I mention this article not because it is par- ticularly convincing; the writer credits American Crime Story: OJ Simpson, the first season of Netflix’s true crime crime has become, in a word, respectable. For the lifelong anthology series which debuted in 2016, for the recent student of popular culture and occasional student of cul- rise of interest in true crime, even though the resurgence tural studies, three questions naturally arise: are we re- of the genre can be traced back at least to 2014’s Serial. ally in a true crime boom, is it really the case that true The article is, however, representative of the broader cul- crime has gone highbrow, and, if the answer to the first tural feeling about true crime shared by a great number two questions is yes, then why now? of readers and critics today. The title captures what many It would be hard to deny that true crime has experi- have perceived to be the two major developments in the enced a boom in recent years. The “post-Serial true crime genre’s recent history that together constitute its renais- boom” (as another common collocation has it) saw a re- sance. The first of these is the genre’s seemingly rapid rise vival of interest in the genre. True crime podcasts prolif- in popularity as of late, as illustrated by the writer’s ref- erated in the mid-2010s, from which emerged such fan fa- erence to the so-called “true crime boom,” a phrase that vorites as My Favorite Murder (2016–present) and S-Town has gained currency over the past few years in popular (2017). Streaming media services have shown no signs of writing about contemporary true crime. The second and slowing down their true crime output following the suc- arguably more contestable development, suggested by cess of 2015’s Making a Murderer and other true crime do- true crime’s alleged takeover of “prestige TV,” is the gen- cuseries, and why would they? A third-party poll found eral feeling among observers that true crime has become that more than 19 million viewers on average streamed more sophisticated in recent years and has itself acquired season one of Making a Murderer within thirty-five days a degree of prestige in contemporary society. In this view, of its December 2015 release (Adweek.com, 2016). Not sur- offerings such as 2014’s Serial and 2015’s Making a Mur- prisingly, Netflix is set to release four new true crime Net- derer have elevated a genre previously dismissed as “low- flix Original Documentaries in June 2019 alone (Shortlist. brow” and “popular” to the ranks of high culture. True com, 2019). With all the evidence out there, it is getting IDEAFEST ⚫ JOURNAL 78 HERNANDEZ 2019 harder and harder to maintain that true crime is not in said” by a society, while popular culture is made up of the midst of something resembling a boom (a moment, all works that have been deemed to lack the qualities maybe?). Even those who initially balked at the idea of a of high art. This division between high and low culture “true crime boom” have had to concede that something is used, mainly but not exclusively, by members of the noteworthy is happening. Writing for CrimeReads.com cultural elite to police boundaries between supposedly earlier this year, host of the podcast Criminal Broads and superior and inferior forms of cultural production. Such “Lady Killer” expert Tori Tefler admitted that although distinctions presume that the standards of cultural taste the true crime business has always “hummed,” “[w]e are are universal (stable across human experience) as well as clearly in the midst—or at the peak?—of a very specif- trans-historical (fixed for all time). One unfortunate lega- ic sort of true crime boom that was midwifed into being cy of this perspective was the exclusion of popular art as with “prestige” true crime like Serial and Making a Mur- a worthy site of cultural study. derer and The Jinx.” Here, again, the causal link is estab- Cultural critics such as Storey have long rejected the lished between the genre’s rise in popularity and its per- binary structure upon which the division between a high ceived newfound prestige. The underlying logic of this and low culture rests, insisting that the cultural tastes of argument seems to run as follows: True crime was previ- any day are socially constructed, locally and temporally ously a lowbrow form of popular art that fed the unedu- contingent, and, as a result, always open to contestation. cated public’s insatiable appetite for lurid and sensational Consequently, there can be no universal or trans-his- tales of violence, but recently the genre has become more torically fixed criteria by which to categorize cultural intellectually-engaging, sophisticated, and respectable in products as either good or bad or high or low. This crit- both content and form, and we are witnessing a rise in the ical perspective has had two lasting legacies. First, this genre’s popularity because of this change in overall quali- view rendered evaluation of cultural products based on ty. This view is problematic (not to mention contradicto- aesthetic quality a highly untenable task. How can you ry) for several reasons, not least because it assumes that definitively judge whether a work of art is good or bad a distinction between high and popular culture exists by or high or low when there are no legitimate grounds which cultural products such as the true crime story can upon which to base aesthetic judgements? With a void be categorized. left by the death of aesthetic judgement, cultural crit- In an essay titled “What is Popular Culture?,” cultur- ics now shifted their critical gaze to issues of ideology, al critic John Storey sketches out five conceptual under- representation, and the cultural production of meaning standings of the phrase “popular culture” in current gen- in the analysis of culture. Second, by rejecting low/high eral and critical usage. The current praise of “the rise of culture distinctions, cultural critics effectively legitimized highbrow true crime” seems to rest upon Storey’s second popular culture as a site worthy of critical and cultural definition, which views popular culture as occupying the inquiry. As Barker and Jane explain, “this stance had the subordinate position within a binary structure. In this great merit of opening up a whole new array of texts for definition, popular culture is legitimate discussion” (53). In the decades following the emergence of British cultural studies, scholars would take the culture which is left over after we have up popular art forms ranging from rock and roll to black- decided what is high culture … a residual face minstrelsy as legitimate objects of cultural concern. category, there to accommodate cultural texts When looking at contemporary true crime through a and practices which fail to meet the required cultural studies lens, it becomes clear that something is standards to qualify as high culture. In other different about the genre. I would argue that the quality words, it is a definition of popular culture as of true crime has changed, but not in the high culture, inferior culture. low culture sense which finds popular expression today 6 in readily available phrases such as “prestige true crime” Popular culture is thus defined in negative relation or “highbrow true crime.” Rather, some of the newer en- to high culture. In this Arnoldian tradition, high culture tries in the genre suggest that true crime is undergoing encompasses “all the best that has been thought and something more resembling an ideological shift towards IDEAFEST ⚫ JOURNAL TRUE INJUSTICE 79 the left.