🍿 2022-10-23 02:25:00 – Paris/France.
Just take a cursory glance at the Netflix catalog to see its breadth. In recent years, series, films and documentaries belonging to the subgenre known as true crime – stories based on true crimes – have gained considerable prominence within the platform of Streaming.
And it's not just a supply issue. The success of this type of story is such that it is not surprising to find more than one of these titles competing for the first ten places of the world top. The most recent test came from the hand of two products inspired by the same case: the series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and the documentary series Conversations with a Killer: The Tapes of Jeffrey Dahmerboth based on the hard story of the American criminal nicknamed "the butcher of Milwaukee", for his habit of dismembering, dissecting and even eating the organs of his victims.
There is no shortage of examples. The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) Son of Sam: A Descent into Hell (2021)Sophie: Murder in Cork (2021)Le serpent (2021) I just killed my father (2022) Vigilant (2022) and national production 42 days in the dark (2022) –based on the case of the kidnapping and murder of Vivian Heager– These are some of the products based on real events that are available on the platform, which, in turn, represent only a small brushstroke of the total offer.
Beyond what the figures communicate, Several things can help clarify the question of why true crime stories fascinate us so much.. Carolina Valenzuela, forensic psychologist and director of the Master in Legal and Forensic Psychology at Diego Portales University, highlights a sensation produced at an unconscious level.
“These stories generate interest mainly because of the curiosity that involves knowing details that are otherwise difficult to access. As human beings, at an unconscious level, the suffering of others generates in us a certain calm and tranquility: that "evil" is outside and reaches others reaffirms the feeling of security and also reinforces the rational idea that, faced with the circumstances I live in, I would have acted differently, so it is difficult for this to happen to me (like thinking 'I wouldn't open the door to a stranger' or 'I wouldn't be so confident'),” says Valenzuela.
Ted Bundy, serial killer. Photograph by Getty Images
However, the psychologist specifies that this is a rationality that does not make sense “because it is difficult to judge the behavior of others in a situation of danger or vulnerability. These extreme situations are beyond our control and the cognitive patterns we have on how we should react, so it is complex to predict our behavior, although the analysis we can make of them when we see, read or listen to these stories gives peace of mind".
The psychologist, doctor of health sciences and coordinator of the Master in forensic mental health of the National University of La Plata, Elizabeth León Mayer, agrees with Valenzuela on the relevance of morbidity in the equation, this which is repeated in the same way with other genres such as war films. under his vision, the consumption of this type of stories is linked to the constant need of human beings to experience strong emotions.
“We don't just watch detective films. Also of fear, of love. It is the need to feel emotions. And watching detective films makes you feel strong emotions. It moves you, it gives you adrenaline and it's fun. It produces emotions in me and then I can forget about it. The traumatic component is not there,” explains León.
The Doctor adds that it is also an exercise free from social judgment. " It allows you to release emotions without there being a punitive component behind. On the contrary, you can shout, you can say 'that's awful', you can doodle when you look at it… You can say all that and there is no punitive element. »
Although much of his current success is reflected in audiovisual productions, the subgenre boom has been growing for years and on other platforms than the Streaming. For Christian Ramírez, critic and founder of the site Civilcinema, the fascination with true crime goes back a few centuries.
“The detective genre has been of interest to the potential reader or consumer of these stories for a long time. The emergence of crime stories dates back to the mid-19th century, so it's not very new. In a way, the current rise of these narratives has become a kind of continuation of this same formidable impulse that made so many writers popular in the XNUMXth century, and even more so in the XNUMXth century,” explains Ramírez.
The critic underlines that the difference with the current phenomenon lies in the fact that, from now on, "the accent is placed on the true crime, that is to say on what Truman Capote and in cold blood captured so well over 50 years ago: the idea of a crime story that references real events or is made up of real characters, real victims and real clues".
Rodrigo Munizaga, series critic for Cult, focuses on the last decade, looking in particular at what happened in the United States. " There's been a real crime boom over the past 10 years, and it's been especially trending with crime podcasts. This pushed the television channels and Streaming Americans to start ordering detective series for fiction or docuseries. It seems to me that the phenomenon is focused there, because in cinema the detective genre is something always, ”he points out.
« This fascination of the United States for true crime has made it reach Latin America, a fascination that in Chile can be likened to mea culpa: What was this program in the 90s that swept the ratings and still does today? Well, the morbidity, the fascination with fear, thinking what you see "could happen to me or someone I love", wanting to understand why a criminal does what he does. And, by the way, compassion for the victims, ”adds the critic.
So things, It is not surprising that Netflix, a company that has faced a leak of subscribers this year, is betting on producing this type of content.. "In a way, the subgenre has become more visited in that there's more archives, more access to this kind of research, but also in that it's cheaper than make a film and, ultimately, because it's more interesting. than making a fictional film,” comments Ramírez.
“Netflix is the Streaming most willing to produce “on demand” or based on metrics. True crime is what we see most in the United States and that is why so many series and documentaries are produced. It must be the country with the most crimes and murderers turned celebrities. And that gives them a huge number of possible cases to bring to the screen.adds Munizaga.
Both critics agree that the North American country sets the standard when it comes to producing certain types of content. “There is an absolute relationship, but It is also a matter of convenience on the part of this platform that takes the pulse of all these passing trends and fads. But the connection that the Anglo-Saxon consumer, and by extension the global consumer, has with the real kind of crime is profound.concludes Ramirez.
When one hears about a police case, it is quite common that the impulse to know all the details behind the fact arises. However, there is also enormous interest in knowing the most intimate profile of criminals.
On a psychological level, Valenzuela explains that this is due to the need to find a logical explanation for events that often seem to lack rationality.. “People need to understand violent behavior, find out why that person committed the most heinous crimes, and make sure there is no one in our environment who looks like them. Looking at his intimate side, we seek explanations for his actions, in his past, in his upbringing, in certain traumas, in certain pathologies, etc. Something has to trigger that behavior and as long as we know what we can attribute the cause of their behavior to, we feel we have control, in the sense of making potential exposure to these dangerous individuals predictable and avoidable, as if a violent behavior was the effect of a cause“, explains the university.
In recent times, the trend in true crime productions has been to focus stories on the development of the criminal as the central character of the story. " There's Hitchcock's classic and oft-repeated, but grudging, statement that for best villain, best movie or story, and I think in a way that's true.», emphasizes Ramírez, although he adds that the greater or lesser success of the recipe is in the hands of whoever acts as narrator.
« A kind of splitting emerged, of deviation and variation from victim to aggressor. It's also half old. It must be remembered that in in cold blood the murderers were characters as important or more important than the victims themselves, or than the reconstruction of the path traveled by the victim until the moment of his death”, affirms the critic. “Indeed, we are walking a path in this direction. Now the interesting thing is what will be the end of this path. It could be directly an adaptation of a criminal's memoir. »
Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood.
For its part, Munizaga adds that the formula works well as long as "some humanity is given to the bad guy", which is very controversial if it's a real fact and more likely to be aired if it's a story. a fictional villain.. A case is the series the fall, where a woman abuser and murderer was a charming guy, a good father and husband, but who led a double life. The more flaws the villain has, the more appeal he has with the public.
At this point, León Mayer explains that this attempt to understand the behavior of criminals through fiction does not always have a good result. He illustrates the case of Dahmer: “Any explanation given concerning what the murderer thinks, people accept it as such. They don't have to know if this explanation is good or bad. I saw Dahmer and I didn't like it. It bored me to death. They try to enter his brain, but they succeed. It's a strange mix of mental disorders, psychopathy with psychosis, trying to explain the inexplicable. There's also no in-depth investigation of Dahmer's story, as long as they want to show him as an abused child, which he wasn't. If they asked my opinion, I wouldn't give it to my students to analyze”.
Valenzuela agrees with the critics' point of view. "In general, series, as well as films and books, always explicitly or implicitly slip in the factors that made this subject a 'monster', which ceased to be a person. However, he adds that “The problem with that is that...
SOURCE: Reviews News
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