Tragedy Cravings

I’ve been watching a lot of true crime documentaries lately. It’s an uncomfortable fascination because I’m brutally aware that these are real people who met gruesome ends. There’s no way for me to explain it, but I’m still curious about the hold these stories have on me.

A humorous angle to it is the advertising. I’m cheap; I don’t pay for the deluxe ad-free streaming plans. My usual comfort shows are sitcoms or dramedies, and because of that, I get fed a lot of ads for products and services that allegedly guarantee domestic bliss. These kinds of ads – especially the cloyingly heartfelt jewelry ads – intensify towards the end of the year, and my nausea increases proportionally. Watching true crime offers a break from that, in a way. Instead of staged marriage proposals set to soft pop music, I get ads for antidepressants and healthcare plans. It’s almost like the algorithm is asking, “Are you okay, hon?”

It's a valid question. Am I okay? Why am I watching these stories of real-life tragedies when there are plenty of quality horror films available at the click of a mouse? Advertising aside, what is the actual pull of these stories?

I think it has something to do with escapism. I’m very selective about the horror fiction that I enjoy because if it’s too close to some of the gnarly crap that I’ve experienced in real life, it’s not escape. I’m reminded of a conversation that I had with my grandmother a while back about certain classical music composers. When I brought up one of my favorites, she visibly bristled. I asked her what was wrong with that composer’s work, and she said, “I grew up in anger. I grew up in war. Why would I want to listen to that in music?” And she had a point. I understand it more now.

If true crime appeals to me because it’s an escape from my own reality, then I maybe need to find better fiction. Otherwise it starts to feel like a weird mirror of the conclusions that people draw from disability stories: “My life might suck, but at least I’m not like that” – and to me, that’s a shitty way to think about real lives and real pain. It turns them into entertainment and does little to address real-life societal problems that leave the disabled in poverty and stigma and that cause seemingly ordinary people to take the lives of innocents.

I can put up with jewelry ads after all.