Medi The Negative Effects Of True Crime Media

Creating too much of a certain type of true crime can be detrimental to the victims, their families, and the consumers of that kind of media. True crime is a nonfiction literary, podcast, and film genre in which the author examines a crime and details the actions of people associated with and affected by criminal events. The crimes most commonly include murder; about 40 percent focus on tales of serial killers. While creating and consuming True Crime media can be beneficial on a surface level, overconsumption of it will lead to the neglect and disrespect of the victims and their loved ones, the natural biases toward certain groups of people, and the perception of real people being viewed as a vector for other people’s entertainment.

True Crime

“The Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome, in terms of hybristophilia, seems to be a moniker placed upon any publicized incident of criminal behavior involving a male offender and a female offender that are romantically involved with each other. The term, perhaps because of its potentially glamorizing connotation, is seen repeatedly within media reports and news stories of crimes meeting the above criteria, such as in the 2015 CBS news report of Dalton Hayes and Cheyenne Phillips’s capture in Florida after a multi-state crime spree, where the couple is repeatedly referred to as Bonnie and Clyde (Matuszak). This evidence shows that a lot of True Crime media romanticizes serial killers and causes people to become enamored/sympathize with them. Some people may say that hybristophilia and other related concepts are mental diseases that would exist without the help of true crime media. “Other potential correlations within the population, as expressed by Cooper (2000) and Gurian (2013), fall in line with commonly used defense strategies within criminal trials for female defendants, including low self-esteem, social isolation, and low levels of education” (Matuszak). But what these people fail to realize is that most of the True Crime genre infantilizes murders (especially if they are white) and makes it far more accessible for hybristophilia to be more

“In the United States, white people have long told both overt and veiled narratives of the purported danger and criminality of people of color. Sometimes known as ‘danger narratives,’ these gruesome accounts often depict the kidnapping, assault, and murder of white women at the hands of men of color. These narratives have been used to promote and justify enslavement, lynching, mass incarceration, and a host of other methods and institutions of white supremacy and racial control.” (Web). This evidence shows that True Crime poses a dangerous narrative about people of color almost always being the perpetrators of violent crimes and white people almost always being the victims. Some people like to claim this point to be untrue because True Crime largely focuses on white serial killers. “The genre has and continues to carelessly describe and exploit violence in order to maintain this whiteness. In this way, the true crime genre needs to reconcile with a long and exclusive legacy in order to serve victims and their families in times of absolute terror and grief. Luckily, brilliant creators of Color are paving the way for this reconciliation.” (Quistorff). However, these people fail to realize that the genre largely focuses on most of the victims being white women and are shown making excuses or infantilizing white