Gemma Flynn On How Crime Gets Framed
The criminology lecturer discusses the true crime genre and its effects on culture and new form of media.
I spoke to Dr Gemma Flynn about true crime content - podcasts, books, tv shows - a genre I reluctantly love. There are lots of questions about its ethics and what they say about our culture in general, considering the true crime industry is now massive and its output ubiquitous.
Gemma teaches Criminology and Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde. She is also the host of the ’Social Theory & Pop Culture’ series at the Glasgow Zine Library and a member of the Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research.
A little over ten years ago I was violently mugged. And since then my interest in true crime has skyrocketed. What do you think that is about? Is true crime a bit of a rehearsal of trauma?
That’s a big question in criminology. Why are people so interested in crime? Some people would say that it is a way of grappling with some of society’s darkest sides but in a safer way. The emerging data shows that a big part of the audience for true crime is made up of women, and a lot of them have talked about this being a result of a heightened fear of crime and an attempt to come to terms with that in some way. But that’s a big question and there are other responses to it. I also had a random act of violence happen to me a couple of years ago, and that made me completely shut down all the crime and violent content. I think it’s a bit different for everyone.
It feels like there’s a disservice to women and people of colour in a lot of the run-of-the-mill true crime podcasts out there. Does that resonate with what you’ve seen?
Oh god. Ok. Buckle in. There are the ‘murder of the week’ type podcasts that mostly focus on random acts of crime against women, which in truth are so unbelievably rare, but the storytelling around them really strongly contributes to women’s fear of crime. This over-the-top focus on serial killers… those are outliers and tell us very little about the real nature of offending. They end up sending a message to listeners that you can be attacked at any time, crime is imminent, criminals are really smart supervillains and are coming for you. There’s good stuff out there, like Serial, that is proper journalism. But because true crime is so popular there’s a lower end of the spectrum where a lot of it is very slapdash and even comedic.
Right, it’s the My Favourite Murder-type of podcast.
Yes. They have this catchphrase on that show ‘Stay Sexy, Don’t Get Murdered”... I understand it’s tongue in cheek but as a criminologist I’m always thinking about how crime gets framed in our society. If a catchphrase like this gets really popular and loses its nuance, then it’s just communicating a message of ‘you have to look after yourself’ and nothing about critiquing the State’s institutions and their failures. To me, the central problem is the framing of crime. Unfortunately we’re at a point where production companies know that true crime is cheap to make and very popular.
"There’s a lot of money in making the same thing again and again and again, because it’s been proven to make money. But what’s missing is some space for real radical stuff in there."
Do you think that the consumption of true crime can have a wider negative effect on society? I don’t wanna be too moral panic-y…
I think we’ve seen a democratisation of the new media space and at one point I was quite hopeful that this would mean more people would be heard, not just the Murdochs or big media people. But now those democratised spaces, like Twitter, have been taken over by people like Elon Musk. They didn’t end up being as radical as I imagined. Same with podcasts, when Serial came out I thought it was incredible and it helped understand what went wrong with the justice system in the case. But in capitalism, when something is that popular it’s distilled into lots of worse versions of it. The effect, again, is that we don’t see as much space for radical critique.
Can you explain to me why this is related to capitalism?
If anything is successful it’s then seen as a potential for people to make money. Take the Barbie movie for instance. It managed to discuss some feminism with a very broad audience, but now that model will get squeezed to death in several iterations. It’s the same with true crime. There’s a lot of money in making the same thing again and again and again, because it’s been proven to make money. But what’s missing is some space for real radical stuff in there.
I wonder what’s happening with the recent dramatisations of super recent events (Elizabeth Holmes, Fyre Festival, GameStop stock). It’s so common for a thing to happen then several movies, documentaries and tv shows to spiral out of that… I don’t know what that is all about but it feels like a strange consumption of the present.
I’ve been thinking about the Fyre Festival and the two documentaries that came out! It’s so interesting. In the Theranos story, there was a young guy [the nephew of one of Theranos’s investors] who has now seen his life portrayed in a book, a report, a podcast series, a tv show and a film coming soon. He’s been proven right in the story, so maybe he enjoys all this, but imagine having your life told by so many creators in so many ways… maybe some don’t match his taste, or misrepresent him… maybe that’s not a great experience. Again, it’s that urge to squeeze intellectual property because there’s money to be made there - that can be Marvel, Harry Potter, or someone’s actual life.
I keep thinking, what is it like to be Carole Baskin?
Yes! It might actually be a very violent experience.
One of the things I see true crime doing is building a picture of society as one where police are indispensable. The so-called Copaganda.
True crime content will often focus on a single narrative and map it over the types of narratives we are used to, which includes: heroes, villains, etc… This means criminals are painted as masterminds, victims are portrayed as pure and angelic and the police always come in to save the day. That’s an inherently uncritical model to take in week after week after week. It helps reinforce this big criminal infrastructure - failing prisons, failing police forces, etc… The cumulative effect is one of maintaining the status quo, and not critiquing the system.
What’s the way forward for true crime? Are there versions of it that work?
I don’t want to be a snob here. I just want standards and editorial responsibility. There’s loads of good genre-smashing true crime. Like Patrick Radden Keefe’s books. Capote’s In Cold Blood. I loved OJ: Made in America, The Jinx… I think as much as I hate the salacious nature of true crime, maybe that’s the doorway through which we get more interesting and experimental stuff being done.
So, let’s say I die tomorrow and leave this newsletter to you in my inheritance, who would you interview first?
The public intellectuals I’m really interested in right now are Nikole Hannah-Jones (behind The 1916 Project) and Ta-Nehisi Coates. They’ve set up this institute in the US where they are trying to develop journalistic practices and academic work about the Black experience in America. It’s being developed just now. They’re brilliant writers working at the highest level. Hannah-Jones received so much backlash, there were laws written against her book. Those are people who are writing about serious things and are trying to move in important ways between the knowledge and art world. They’re trying to understand the social world and how inequality operates.