Do other countries have murder shows? Because this one surely does. Channels of them. I know that murder is as old as the species, and fascination with it is slightly older than that. The propensity of humans (mostly men) to murder other humans (often women) is a theme that has run throughout literature since the first AP English class at Cro-Magnon High. So surely murder documentaries are among the fare of other countries. But are they a cash cow?
I'm not saying I don't watch them. I never choose them, but I don't have to because they get chosen for me. But as I'm usually messing around on my phone while I'm sitting there and they don't demand more attention than I have for them, they frequently fit the bill perfectly. They first became a thing in my Nielsen household -- I'm thinking sometime in the Cheney era-- when weekly news shows which used to occasionally actually cover stories in the news, started to focus exclusively on True Crime-- i.e., old news. An occasional notable true crime documentary done well had always been suitable entertainment, but in that first decade of the new millennium, the stories became less and less about the crimes you were already aware of and that you perhaps wondered about*, and more and more about the worst things that ever happened in the lives of people you had no other reason to know about. And they were horrible gruesome things. It felt voyeuristic and exploitative to me. Would I want my tragedy, my sorrow, my shame made into fodder for the prurient interest of strangers? The commercial aspect of it, the trafficking of other people's pain-- made my complicity in watching it particularly troublesome and I would sometimes object-- usually too late for changing the channel to be an option. After countless hours of passive intake of the shows, I've become inured to it.
Watch enough of them and tropes and conventions will start to emerge. The husband / boyfriend / weirdo neighbor did it. Whoever is identified by name in the first police interrogation is probably the one who will wind up guilty even if he did not immediately implicate himself. Look for the parties whose stories change with helpful theories about the crime, and memories that are conjured at convenient times. As for the narrative of the tale, any detail that would give it away if revealed too soon is withheld until a sufficient number of commercial breaks have transpired. You can predict when they'll break out the results of the luminol test. Families of the victims are generally reluctant to change theories even after an early suspect is cleared. It's almost unheard of for a victim's family not to insist on the death penalty for the convicted-- so much so that you could be forgiven for thinking that the prevalence of these shows is to make you think that murder is rampant in this country and that capital punishment is the only fitting response to it.† Moreover, if you watch enough of these (and I have), you start to think about everything out of place in your experience-- the sight of someone walking by herself down a quiet road at dusk; a couple arguing a bit too loud in public; a van that hasn't moved for days-- in terms of the likelihood that it could become part of a future episode of Dateline.
I intend to avoid an appearance on a murder show myself, which I like to think shouldn't be too hard to do. I maintain an image of myself as someone not worth the hassle of murdering and intend to keep things that way. As for committing the act, I recognize that as a presumed human, murder is in the toolkit and must be vigilantly warded against as a recourse in conflicts that arise, but I don't think it's unrealistic of me to promise never to do it. I understand that some people lack any empathy for others, and for some of them murder might be a fetish or a compulsion or more likely just no big thing and therefore wouldn't automatically be ruled out as an option to help cover up a crime. Killing people is not my jam, but given the multi-textured, variously shadowed fabric of humanity I can imagine that some folks will be like this. Other than that, I suppose I can see how someone who feels threatened by someone might react in a panic in a way that puts that threat to an end. As for crimes of passion, I've experienced rage a few times in my life, usually toward someone on the other end of a telephone conversation (probably sitting in a debt collection office or a customer service center or in the boardrooms that make those wonderful kinds of interactions possible), but while it's never occurred to me to terminate that person's life when I can just hang up on them and get on with my life, I suppose I can stretch my imagination just enough to see how murder in the heat of the moment is a thing. In short, while I would never consider uncontrollable murder an optimal response, I can still see how given the sloppiness of human nature it sometimes occurs.
The ones I really struggle to understand are the one offs. The premeditateds. The schemers. I do have empathy for creatures other than myself. I say "Sorry" to people who bump into me. If I accidentally nudge someone I am traumatized. Murder is a whole other level of inconvenience that I feel I would be too mortified to perpetrate on someone else. Aside from that, the presumed nasty messiness and effort involved in the act are prohibitive in themselves. Never mind the prospect of having your life permanently, irreversibly sidetracked by forced atonement for your bad decision when you're found out. So I can't get into the head of the person who looks at someone in their life and thinks, "I need you dead, and I need me to get away with it."
If you are such a person, you need a better plan. Don't worry about me; I'll find something else to watch.
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* The Iraq War or the corporate sector shenanigans paving the way to the impending financial meltdown for instance.
† In truth of course, the actual state of murder in the country is not reflected in the demographics, race, gender of victims in cases selected for murder shows-- not even close.
