Film Schooled: True crime genre fails to represent marginalized groups

At some point or another during the week, I check my email. Instead of the job offers I so desperately need, the Medium Daily Digest waits patiently in my inbox, ready for a quick scroll-through. Under “today’s highlights” is a top story that the algorithm decided I should read: “The Horrifying Murder of Marion Parker.” 

During the weekend, it’s nice to take a load off and catch up on some TV. Sitting in the top-10 U.S. watching rankings this past weekend was “Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer.” 

Jesus, well, how about Twitter? I thank God and Jack Dorsey every day for blessing us with the merciless repetition of whatever “discourse” seems to be on people’s minds that day. This weekend was “women — get a gun.”

I thought this was a line either by the NRA, The Well Armed Woman publication or even from the writers of “Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide” (yes, you might remember Karen and Georgia from their true crime podcast, “My Favorite Murder”).

The deluge of true crime media comes as well-timed as a manifestation. A lot of the marketing to engage with the content, either emphasizing female hosts or inviting you to grab a glass of wine while you listen, is geared toward women. This is unsurprising after Kelli Boling and Kevin Hull of the University of South Carolina found that in 2018, 73% of the audience of true crime podcasts, perhaps the genre’s medium soulmate, are women. 

While being ingested, with hands clutching a blanket and eyes darting around the room, true crime media can start to feel like an addiction. Horror researcher Mathias Clasen argues that the need to feed this fascination can come from dealing with trauma and facing a fear in a safe environment, hell, some survivors of the crimes the genre covers return to it, but is true crime made to accommodate those needs?

“Night Stalker” is the perfect case: I didn’t want to watch the show, but for the column I thought it would help situate my thoughts. I didn’t need to watch more than five seconds to support my argument. 

Instead of a trigger, content or graphic violence warning, “Night Stalker” tries to hook its teeth into you with an old ’80s VCR tape from none other than the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Homicide detective Gil Carrillo, seemingly without interest, recites a warning about a series of home invasions-turned-sexual assaults and murders. He goes into more detail than necessary about how the perpetrator is maiming or killing his victims, but that’s what the people want isn’t it?

The sound of his voice sharpens into the tone of an unrelenting, callous intrusive thought. The video pushes in on his gaze, as if we were supposed to see some hope of humanity in his eyes. 

This is where the imagination comes into conflict with real life. “Night Stalker” goes on to inundate you with crime scene photos, the most graphic I’ve ever seen in a show like this. The detectives and police reviewing the case with evidence or memory at best seem haunted, and at worst, disaffected. The crimes they review tug at the sanctity of your stomach, and a wince rests on your face as the details drag on through as it pleases. 

Either the episode ends or your laptop is slammed shut, and you’re back in your room. While it is very likely that the depiction of Richard Ramirez’s terror tour across California will stay with you through the night, you might feel placated by one of Clasen’s inferences to why you watched. You’re safe, and Karen and Georgia are proud. 

But are you safe? It depends on who you are or what you do. 

Between 1970 and 2009, 22% of confirmed victims of serial killers in the United States were sex workers. In the 2010s, it was 43%. Sex workers make up 0.3% of the population, and take up an enormous part of police indifference and disdain. 

Marginalized groups are also overrepresented in serial killer-victim statistics and case ignorance. Around 13% of the U.S. population is Black, 17% is Latinx, and respectively they comprise 24% and 7% of these victims. In 2019, the Dallas Police Department declined to entertain the LGBTQ+ community’s real fear of a serial killer after the murders of five Black trans women in four years, even while asking the FBI for assistance on the cases. 

The point is, true crime as a whole, as a genre, as an exponentially expanding content industry, has not addressed these points. The stories are generally about white, middle-class women, chosen for the percepted “innocence” and because many true crime media creators are of this socioeconomic status. 

It’s not a representation issue in the way we come to discuss other forms of media. These are real stories of violence, some of which are passed off as parts of a whole because their race, their gender, their orientation are viewed as “others” in a genre about … the most horrific experiences somes humans have ever experienced or witnessed.

It’s also not a solution to say that flooding the already saturated true crime market with specific-to-underrepresented-groups cases will fix this disparity. True crime leans on the accounts of the police and the otherwise apathetic public to push their gore to astounding heights of capital. It needs to hold these same groups accountable for the people they have left and continue to leave behind. 

Lauren Mattice is a senior writing about film culture. She is also the digital managing editor at the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Film Schooled,” runs every other Wednesday.