When did representations of true crime creators in fiction start showing up?
A quick and dirty process post
The audience for these posts about my developing talk (and hopefully book proposal) on representations of true crime creators in fiction might be small, but it’s fun to share these ideas as they take shape!
Over the past few years I’ve been compiling a spreadsheet of where and how these characters show up, and so far, it’s everywhere in every way: novels, movies, podcasts, television series and bottle episodes, comedy specials, and even a true crime based game! This weekend, I organized the entries according to date of release, and started to notice some trends.
There was a big bump in media representation of true crime creators around 2018-19, which makes sense considering the juggernaut that was the debut of Serial season 1 in Fall of 2014. However, I see some experimentation with this idea as early as the ‘90s!
Tim O’Brien, an American author best known for The Things They Carried, his collection of linked stories about a platoon of soldiers in Vietnam, wrote a novel four years later about the disappearance of a Vietnam veteran’s wife. In the Lake of the Woods presents a series of hypotheses about what happened to her, none of which are confirmed. Some of these theories are presented as “evidence” through interview-style testimonies from characters who knew the couple. This profusion of voices, as well as the lack of a definitive resolution, preview the style and content of some of the most effective contemporary true crime podcasts. Similarly, Todd Haynes’s 1991 film Poison includes a narrative about an abusive father that cites the familiar conventions of tabloid television true crime.
These proto-examples are interesting for what they suggest about how writers and filmmakers can deploy conventions audiences are familiar with from true crime texts to add layers of versimilitude (O’Brien) or irony (Haynes) to their stories. But the meatiest example, from the year of our Lord 1996, comes to us in the person of one Gale Weathers: reporter, survivor, icon.
Scream is rightly celebrated as a glorious example of meta-horror, both lampooning and subverting the genre clichés of ‘70s and ‘80s slasher flicks. Gale, the only character who has appeared in all six of the franchise’s films, first appears as the nemesis of heroine Sydney Prescott because she WROTE A TRUE CRIME BOOK ABOUT THE DEATH OF SYDNEY’S MOTHER. The book, entitled Wrongly Accused: The Maureen Prescott Murder, is meant to expose the unjust conviction of Cotton Weary, and to argue for his release. Though Gale is depicted, especially in the first film, as a fame-seeking narcissist, her project is familiar to many a twenty-first century true crime podcast and docuseries property.
Gale Weathers is a fascinating example of the trope I’m investigating in that she seems to embody both a critique of true crime creators, and an endorsement of their ability to prompt rectifications of institutional injustices. She is, after all, (spoiler alert) right about Cotton.
Have I missed even earlier fictional representations of true crime creators? Let me know in the comments, and I will gratefully acknowledge you in my talk and written project!
I may well have misunderstood the aim here, so forgive me if so, but it strikes me that if we are considering writers who stand front and centre, as it were, in their own creations, there may be some change in looking at French literature. The earliest such book I know of is by Vidocq, who in some respects created a new genre. One might be able to draw a line from him to Jean Genet and thence to Henri Charriere. I may be totally misunderstanding, however.
Okay, I need help here too, like Jason and Aaron, whose work I greatly enjoy. Give me, as quickly as you can, Tracy, the true crime creator you are talking about. Is it Michelle McNamara? If my guess is close, you are then using her and her work as the narrator of fiction that uses the skill set and personal predilections of a creator to push the story along. Jason's mention of Vidocq interests me; as a character, the thief-turned-thiefcatcher, expresses the central idea of "To Catch a Thief....", a subgenre of the private detective story. Cary Grant was a great embodiment of the thief to Grace Kelly's ingenue. Steve McQueen played similar roles in Thomas Crown and even in Jim Thompson's Getaway film. He is Mr. Cool and his moll, Allie McGraw, is a sophisticated foil.
Cool is required for the thief, the knowing antihero, and the creator of a true crime podcast or similar content creation would probably be an ingenue (Google AI defines "ingenue" as "young, innocent and charming woman.") I am a male cisgender but as a crime writer, I sometimes come close to the character role by presenting myself as a naive country boy, raised in a closed community with little or no crime, who develops a fascination with the "real" world of cops and robbers, rapists and murderers. In creating content for a daily newspaper and then for books. My cop, intelligence agent and PI mentors are usually top-shelf investigators who exhibit sociopathic traits in solving crimes committed by psychopathic or near psychopathic professional criminals. One of them has tagged me and my character as "Rube," the name given by carnival workers to the yokels who show up on the Midway at a county fair.