Defending the almost indefensible

True crime buffs and true crime writers can be pretty defensive about their genre. Periodically, they set out to justify their interest in murder and mayhem.

The latest apologia appears over at Crime Rant, a blog run by two TC writers. It is a guest post by Laura James who runs her own TC blog.

In Defense of True Crime

In truth, the 500-year-old true crime genre is absolutely essential to an informed society. Crime impacts everyone. Politicians and the public respond with changes in our laws, policies, and budget priorities. Unless a full account of a high-impact case is developed, there is no complete factual basis on which to decide whether changes are necessary and what those changes should be.

Hard to argue with that. In fact, I agree. When I wrote this post about civilians and mass murders I relied heavily on two true crime books: Peter Hernon’s A Terrible Thunder and
A Sniper in the Tower by Gary M. Lavergne

Nonetheless, you cannot judge a genre by the role it might play. Nor can you judge it solely by its best esamples. Sometimes you have to look at what is typical.

It is hard to see any high-minded purpose behind the dreck that sits on the shelves at Wal-mart or in the true crime section at Waldenbooks. Writers with little talent or industry (and even less intellect) grind out shallow retellings of murder. Serial killers find a ready market; domestic murder has its devoted fans.

(True crime fans mirror Law and Order writers in their perception that murder in America is the exclusive preserve of middle class white people.)

This passage is just laughable:

A true crime author recently remarked that he thinks every young woman in America should read “The Stranger Beside Me” by Ann Rule, the classic crime story of Ted Bundy. Any woman who followed that advice and read the tale of the handsome, charming exterior that hid a sadistic predator would indeed be better armed for it, better able to recognize snakes in the grass like Bundy.

Rule was already an established crime writer when she met and was taken in by Bundy. If studying and writing about criminals did not prepare her, how can reading one book help other women? As I noted before:

What i find funny (in both a sick and in a 'ha-ha' kind of way) is that Rule gained her fame not because she was psychologically acute, but because she was obtuse. Her book on Ted Bundy was notable because she knew Bundy and never suspected him until he was arrested.

One of her blog hosts provides a similar example. In January, when the frame-up was plainly obvious, he provided this gem of wisdom on the Duke lacrosse case:

That all said, I am also for justice and a fair trial. And here’s the thing: looking at all the evidence that’s been made available and judging this thing as an outsider, I’d say some of it points to guilt.

When a lauded author in a genre can be so obtuse, what benefit comes from reading it?

Actually, we have a pretty good laboratory to see how TC fans put their “learning” to work. Court TV runs an active board that covers the full range of crime stories. Anyone who followed the Duke case there knows just how irrational and ill-informed the majority of long-time posters were. (CTV, for some reason, has deleted most of their threads on the case.)

James points to the Virginia Tech murders as an example where policy debates need to be informed by the knowledge that TC readers bring to the table. Yet, at CTV, the VT threads are almost dormant. TV fans are much more interested in (obsessed with might be more correct) Ana Nicole Smith, Scott Peterson, child predators in the bushes, the next Scott Peterson, and Natalie Holloway. Far from bringing critical insights to important matters, TC fans bicker among themselves about the trivial, the tabloid, and the anomalous.

Publishers print what the market supports. What readers want is freak porn in paperback.