Blog Post #8

Academic Sources for Wiki Article on True Crime Genre

1. Murder/Media/Modernity

This article defines true crime as a genre that 'reads like' or 'looks like' crime fiction. In other words, true crime acts as a bridge between reality and what society believes to be reality. Also highlighted in this article, is the idea that this genre focuses on the aftermath of crimes and returns to the initial scene of the crime to further evaluate/re-enact what events took place. What make 'true crime' a recognizable genre to its audience are the cliche words and images of violence and crime, such as the intensified turn of "interiors, bodies, and acts" committed.

2. True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism

The focus of this article is that the genre of true crime has a substantial emotional impact within its use. The article illustrates how true crime results in fears due to the perceptions people form of crime and how certain individuals may even base decisions like where to live, how to raise children, where to invest wealth, etc., on the fearful perception. It also states how representations of crime (tv, movies, books) influence people's perceptions and usually cause beliefs to be way out of proportion to the actual rates of criminal events.

3. Dystopian Romance: True Crime and the Female Reader

This article focuses on the impact of true crime on the human imagination, and more so on its impact on the female audience. Books of true crime usually discuss "long, violent narratives of actual murder and rape cases", and are a way of expressing violent feelings that tend to be hidden by femininity. This article also expresses how pictures within true crime books are a critical part of creating the "initial draw" of a reader's attention. A book of true crime can show things that cannot be shown in other places, such as real autopsy pictures that may not necessarily be viewable on television or in newspapers. True crime books focus heavily on detailed descriptions and analysis of the unfortunate events, rather than a well developed plot line.

4. Creating A True Crime Collection

This article describes true crime as a 'natural attention-getter'. It explains how most true crime media shows open with the "discovery of a body or crime scene, and the characters work their way through the physical evidence to come up with theories" and ideally discover who did the act, where and when it was done, and why it happened. Media following the true crime genre tends to involve forensic experts, evidence, suspects, and a culmination of "science, intuition, technology, and logic".

5. The Truth is In The Crime (web-page, not scholarly article)

I found this article in a google search and decided to include it in my sources because I thought it explained the genre clearly and effectively. This article describes how true crime incorporates "cultural studies, law and legal theories, politics, history, and other subjects that have to do with stereotypical stories and cases of murder and death". The author, Jordan Foster, explains how true crime guarantees the typical case 'ripped from the headlines', with a 'full photo spread' of the gore, and intriguing 'bloody details'. To Foster, true crime is the story of crime that has recently or more previously occurred.