Stolen Stories from Stolen Lives

KNEW THE MOON

Megan Tesch

It’s dark, twisted, and not for the faint of heart; a new form of the cautionary tale. While still based on the historical, it is less so centred around what value a piece of entertainment media may bring to the audience, and instead to the producers. True crime is a genre built upon the precipice of having a victim. If there is no death to exploit, there is no story — and if there is no story, there is no money for the producers to reap.

Shock factor is a key offender in the success of true crime. Some of North America’s worst felonies are displayed in a digestible format that removes the sense of reality from the hideous injustices. With each new horrific story we consume, the shock factor decreases. To keep up with demand, entertainment production companies begin their search for a far-grosser horror. Meanwhile, you bear no burden as a witness to the digital screen. You have not been inflicted with pain in the same way the victim has, nor have you been brought to your knees in grief like their families. The only details we learn about the victims are graphic retellings of their death. The villain of the story, on the other hand, the audience comes to know quite well.

Entertainment companies including Netflix and Prime Video are producing expensive works without the consent of those they portray. Evan Peters’ negligence towards the victims of Dahmer and their families in his 2023 Golden Globes acceptance speech for “Best Actor in a Limited Series” is an indication of how far from reality the industry is. These families are the very same ones that Netflix and creators Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan failed to adequately consult and contain consent from for Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022). According to Screen Rant, Zach Efron joined the long list of nine actors to have portrayed Ted Bundy on screen in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019), a film

written by Michael Werwie, directed by Joe Berlinger,

and streaming on the same site as Monster. Countless individuals at the forefront of the audiovisual entertainment industry, from podcasts to the big screen, have turned depictions of brutal murders into profit.

True crime podcast hosts Sarah Koenig from Serial (2014) and Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark of My Favourite Murder (2016) discuss brutal tragedies like the conversation is typical highschool gossip. The hour-long podcast episodes are consistently interrupted by sponsorships and advertisements for unrelated services. Under the influence of high-profile, self-identified detectives, masses have taken to the internet to reinvestigate cases that have long been put to rest. In many instances, family and friends of the murdered who vocalize their wishes for the story not to be shared in such a way are met with blind eyes and deaf ears.

The public’s attention is pulled to falsified productions that sensationalize stolen stories, yet there are high rates of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls on this land that receive little attention. A report from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police released in early 2021 attempted to outline how many First Nations, Inuit, or Métis women and girls have gone missing, reporting that 105 Indigenous women and girls remain actively missing as of November 2013. The very same report states that 1,017 women and girls identified as Indigenous were murdered between 1980 and 2012, however, the Native Women’s Association of Canada estimates the number to be near 4,000. These women and girls have yet to receive their award-winner miniseries or biopic, nor have their cases reached a level of international concern. We often recognize the names of serial killers before theirs. Hordes of people online aren’t trying to find their whereabouts, in the same way those often much more privileged are being searched for.

Depictions of crime offer an accessible format to spread knowledge and information, yet we often become desensitized to the disgusting reality of the crime. They can spread messages of warning while bringing light to cold cases, however, some of the genre’s worst moments come when the production humanizes and romanticizes someone who brutally robbed another human’s life. While crime is public record, true crime media raises the debate on whether tragic events should be brought into the conversation to create entertainment and personal gain, despite little to no consent being given by the victims and their families.

Our attention must be shifted away from sensationalized true crime, and instead towards the injustices occurring on our land that are going ignored. We ought to engage with media that is compiled with accuracy and sensitivity, and remember that there are real people behind the stories we’re hearing. Compassion and commiseration should always be practiced when discussing the unimaginably gruesome ways real people have lost their lives because when we support true crime entertainment media, we are supporting the creation of profit off of stolen lives.