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I like murder. Wait, let me rephrase that. I mean that I love crime. Let's try again. Hello, I am a real obsessive crime. Have always been. "Fatal Vision" and "Helter Skelter" were my young beach readings. And that means I'm often unsure of my place in this uncomfortable space between honest curiosity and frightening prurience. But in recent weeks, the ethical issues surrounding the narration of true death have reached a new level.
First came the nomination last month at the Oscars of the short film "Detainment", based on the infamous murder of James Bulger. In 1993, the two-year-old British boy was lured away from his mother to a mall. He was tortured, killed and his body was thrown on a railway. The crime was all the more horrible as his killers were two ten year old boys. In their subsequent trial, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables became the youngest murder reported in the history of the United Kingdom.
Based on police interview transcripts and case footage, director and screenwriter Vincent Lambe's 30-minute film is a flawless reenactment of the investigation, with remarkable performances by his young stars. In his article in The Telegraph, critic Robbie Collin called the film "humanizing but not friendly" and the BFI called it "devastating."
Denise Fergus, James Bulger's mother, spoke out against the film, saying in an open letter to Lambe: "You did not consider yourself, or any member of my family, when you decided to make this film, you had had enough time to contact yourself and you've never bothered to even try to make contact to ask for permission … Not only did you not bother to contact us, you went from the front and used a young child to play my baby James, as if the last hours of James' life had brought him back and it hurt so much. " A Change.org petition to remove the Oscar nominated film has collected nearly 300,000 signatures.
Lambe, however, defended his actions by stating, "We wanted to make a fully factual film, we did not want to express an opinion about it, so we decided not to meet any of the families involved." Academy of Arts and Sciences of Cinema has presented its "condolences" to the family, but maintains that it "does not in any way influence the voting process".
At the same time, in a less prestige-driven controversy, Ted Bundy's upcoming biopic about Zac Efron, titled "Extremely Villainous, Shockingly Ugly and Ugly," has raised similar concerns about the sensitivity of victims and survivors . Although director Joe Berlinger is perhaps best known for the arresting and influential documentaries of "Paradise Lost" – he also directed the new Netflix Bundy documentary, "Conversations with a Killer: Ted Bundy's Tapes" – The Band – Announcement of his drama on "The most famous American film" serial killer "gives the impression that it is an exalted period piece," The Wolf of Wall Street ", with a number of deaths.
The critics who saw the film at the Sundance Film Festival last week found themselves misunderstood as to how to react to the brilliant story of a rapist responsible for the death of at least 30 women. Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair admitted that he was "disgustedly attracted", while Rodrigo Perez of The Playlist noted that the film "can not resist the idea of making Bundy a little rock star" . But Kathy Kleiner Rubin, who survived the Bundy attack in 1978, told TMZ this week that Bundy "glamor" was the man that her victims "wanted to see," adding, "J & # 39; ; hope. [the film] This will make women more aware of their environment and more cautious. "Who knows, perhaps unabashedly describing the charm and brutality of fools may even help reduce the volume of fan mail that murderers like Chris Watts can receive.
It's a pretty simple experience when our curiosity for the real people who have done monstrous things applies to individuals who conform to the image of monsters. Nobody is going to have much sympathy for John Wayne Gacy. But Ted Bundy was a handsome kid. Thompson and Venables were children. These killers were not ghosts. They looked like people we know. Their victims trusted them. Their stories ask us to understand why.
But it is difficult to do so with sensitivity and respect for the people whose lives they have destroyed – and there is no standardized model for achieving this target. I grunt podcasts where animators laugh at telling heinous crimes, but I know other people find that gallows humor is a release that reduces tension. I am uncomfortable when people say that they have "pet" cases, even though I have absolutely mine.
"Any journalist who works on crime stories must acknowledge his own moral guilt," says Sarah Weinman, author of "The Real Lolita: The Abduction of Sally Horner and the Novel That Shocked the World".
"We hope you try to tell these stores in the most honest and empathetic way possible," she said. "These are my goals: When survivors and family members become accessible, there is a kind of transmission of pain that provokes an emotional reaction, and I think survivors and family members to be more and more centered. "
Author Carolyn Murnick also understands the challenge of adapting history to victims and survivors. Her dissertation "The Hot One" of 2017 chronicled her childhood friendship with Ashley Ellerin and the murder of Ellerin at the hands of a serial killer at the time of his death. 22 years old. In a conference on TEDx in November, Murnick described "seeking the meaning of violence when there was none" and his challenge of "not to confuse violence with entertainment and the formula for truth".
Speaking with her recently, Murnick noted "how easy it is to fall into the trap that the crime story is one of men and murderers, which I think is much more moving and unique than ever before." 39, explore what is happening around the murder, and what stories the people who knew the victim tell, and how these stories change. "
The horror, whether it is real or fictitious, has traditionally relied on our identification with the victim. We consider ourselves Little Red Riding Hood, or perhaps the Black Dahlia, to play our worst fears with the security of the story. But over time, other types of stories have gained popularity. You can not read "In Cold Blood" without experiencing the terror of the Clutter family mbadacre – and the fascinating relationship Truman Capote had with Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
In the early 70's, movies like "Straw Dogs," "I spit on your grave," "Deliverance" and "Last House on the Left" popularized the revenge victim, allowing the characters to perpetrate a vivid violence while at the same time exonerating simultaneously. he. Then, in 1978, a film came to reverse the perspective again. In the first few minutes of John Carpenter's clbadic "Halloween", the viewer is the murderer, who lives the brutal death of Judith Meyers through the eyes of his killer. The murderer is then revealed – not yet as a wild killing machine from the rest of the film, but as a little boy with a soft face.
Which brings us back to movies like "Detention" and a schoolboy killer crying in his mother's arms. Does the "humanization" of individuals who have committed the unthinkable misguided our empathy? Or is it rather a scary reminder that psychopaths can look strangely like the rest of us? Weinman says, "What has been healthy, for lack of a better word, of the real renaissance of crime in recent years, is that he has favored more complex narratives and more uncomfortable that are not necessarily binary, there is a lot more nuance and complication. "
But, she adds, "I think it's helpful for everyone to remember that there are real human beings at the center of these stories – and real human violence."
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