Yesterday, the Twitter Offenderati came out in full force against a harmless joke from Best Buy about the Serial podcast.
This triggered my own irrational outrage over the outrage. (Although really, I’m a recently unemployed white dude in his early 40s. I think that sitting around at home writing angry letters about stuff is what I’m supposed to be doing). After all, I saw Best Buy’s tweet when it was retweeted by the Serial podcast twitter account itself. Somebody there thought it was humorous, and they’re the ones who are actually more invested in the case than some internet rando. They’ve actually talked to the people involved, read the testimony, heard from the victim’s parents, spoken at length to the accused, and become attached enough to devote over a year of their lives to it.
That made me realize what annoys me so much about the response: it’s just a show of ghoulish self-importance. And the lack of self-importance is my favorite aspect of the Serial podcast.
Almost all of my exposure to “true crime” stories is from the A&E (and A&E-styled) documentaries like City Confidential and so on. A guaranteed 30 minutes a week — even more, when you include repeats and marathons — of lurid details of horrific crimes. Long pans across grainy photographs of the victim, over the constant synthesizer dirge that lets you know this is very serious. Bill Curtis’s grave voice-over stretching about 10 minutes’ worth of evidence into 22 minutes plus commercials. And after the commercial break: the one detail that would blow this case wide open.
It’s personal tragedies, packaged up, commodified, and repeated. All the cases run together. All the details intermingle. Every few minutes the dirge stops long enough for an ad for Applebee’s or Volkswagens. It’s all a show of how gravely serious and respectful these documentarians are being, when it’s anything but respectful. It’s the equivalent of the slow fade to black at the end of the Oscars “In Memoriam” segment: a worse-than-empty gesture, since it tosses the lives of a bunch of people into a crock pot and serves it up as commercial television.
Serial, on the other hand, seems absolutely devoted to remaining bullshit-free. Sarah Koenig isn’t a voice-over artist, nor is she a grieving family member. She’s a reporter. Her tone can come across as flippant until you actually listen to the podcast and realize it’s anything but. She’s not looking for drama; she’s looking for the truth, or at least as close to the truth as a podcast can get. And the truth is that sometimes, she doesn’t know what to believe. Sometimes she calls interview subjects on something that makes no sense, or something she doesn’t agree with, even though letting them finish would’ve made for a better sound bite. Sometimes she thinks she has incontrovertible proof; she’s found the Key Takeaway Moment of the entire story, and then realizes she doesn’t. Sometimes there’s a shrimp sale at the Crab Crib.
I’ve seen a few discussions about Koenig’s and the producers’ desire to remain objective. But I don’t think that’s their desire at all. “Objectivity” has been twisted to become a bizarre display of moral relativism, a way to say absolutely nothing by qualifying definitive statements with “allegedly” and “some say” and “according to.” On the podcast, Koenig isn’t objective but impartial. She calls a tragedy for what it is, and she acknowledges the grief of the families, but she doesn’t make empty, token gestures of false respect or deference. She’ll say exactly what she believes and doesn’t believe, and she’ll make it clear exactly to what degree she’s actually invested in the case. Which is as much as any reporter can be who’s spent that much time researching the violent death of a stranger. And which is definitely more than anybody lobbing sanctimonious recriminations on Twitter.
For a good illustration of the difference between objective, invested, and invested but impartial, check out Rabia Chaudry’s blog posts about the case and the podcast. She’s obviously not impartial (and makes no claims to be) and personally invested in the case. She’s still publishing facts, or at least her interpretation of them, mixed in with her impressions and memories. In fact, one of the recurring themes of the podcast, and likely the only definitive takeaway we’re going to get from the podcast, is exactly that lack of objectivity. The same facts, even if remembered correctly at all after 15 years, can be interpreted to mean opposite things.
And for a good example of why I don’t take at all seriously the outrage over Best Buy’s tweet (which didn’t at all make light of the murder, just the fact that the store doesn’t have a pay phone), check out the image above. One of America’s absolute worst people, Michelle Malkin, jumping on the outrage bandwagon like a cackling hyena. There’s nothing even remotely resembling respect or reverence for Hae Min Lee there. It’s all just a show.
I say let Best Buy crack harmless jokes, and let Mail Chimp take advantage of a meme while it still can. Both are at least genuine acknowledgements of the fact that we’re all wrapped up in accounts of the murder and life imprisonment of two strangers, using their tragedy for our own entertainment. And save the self-righteous indignation for a time when it’s at least a little bit less hypocritical.