My Favorite Murder (Lighthearted)
Dec. 15th, 2021 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI’m not really into true crime. Fantasy murder is fun, but real-life murder isn’t something that interests me. I used to listen to This American Life back in 2014 and was inadvertently sucked into the first season of Serial, and I watched a few episodes of Tiger King at the beginning of the pandemic last year, but that’s about it. Real-life murder is almost always sad, and the last thing I need is to be more depressed.
So last week one of my students recommended the podcast My Favorite Murder, and during the past few days I’ve managed to become obsessed with it. I started with Episode 169, "The Power Ranger Murders," and I haven’t stopped listening since then.
I think that, for me, what’s nice about this podcast is how supportive the hosts are of victims. There’s no bullshit about how a criminal had a mental illness or a tough childhood or was on the autism spectrum or whatever, just love and sympathy for the people who have had to deal with horrendous behavior. It’s the opposite of gaslighting, and I feel like a plant that’s sucking up water after a drought.
There’s just so much “victim blaming” social conditioning and “innocent until proven guilty” institutional mismanagement that allows disgusting people to get away with creepy and criminal behavior, and it’s such a relief to hear two intelligent older women champion people other than the guilty party.
They also blame the police! A common criticism of true crime narratives is that they glorify law enforcement, but there is none of that here. The stories presented on My Favorite Murder generally highlight the incompetence of law enforcement, and then one of the following usually happens: (a) a community comes together to identify a criminal, (b) a normal civilian just happens to be paying attention to the right things and ends up identifying a criminal, or (c) an intended victim is brave and clever and survives to identify the criminal.
I can’t overstate how incredibly validating it is to hear that trusting your intuition about creepy behavior is okay, and that there’s nothing wrong with you for finding certain behavior creepy in the first place.
I’m not sure how long I’ll keep listening to My Favorite Murder. The validation is nice, sure, but the murder is still sad. Like I said, fictional murder is fun, but I don’t like to hear that real people died in horrible ways.
The longer numbered episodes of the podcast recount documented criminal cases, but they’re interspersed with “minisodes” in which the hosts read and respond to stories submitted by listeners. For me, these minisode stories are much more palatable because, while the hosts take them seriously, I can treat them as something resembling fiction. These stories also tend not to be as heavy, and they often involve behavior that’s more “borderline” than criminal, which is much more of a concern in my everyday life.
Even though most of us are (hopefully) unlikely to be murdered, it’s statistically probable that we’ll have to deal with at least a few seriously unbalanced people in our lives, and it’s nice to feel less alone in having these experiences.
So last week one of my students recommended the podcast My Favorite Murder, and during the past few days I’ve managed to become obsessed with it. I started with Episode 169, "The Power Ranger Murders," and I haven’t stopped listening since then.
I think that, for me, what’s nice about this podcast is how supportive the hosts are of victims. There’s no bullshit about how a criminal had a mental illness or a tough childhood or was on the autism spectrum or whatever, just love and sympathy for the people who have had to deal with horrendous behavior. It’s the opposite of gaslighting, and I feel like a plant that’s sucking up water after a drought.
There’s just so much “victim blaming” social conditioning and “innocent until proven guilty” institutional mismanagement that allows disgusting people to get away with creepy and criminal behavior, and it’s such a relief to hear two intelligent older women champion people other than the guilty party.
They also blame the police! A common criticism of true crime narratives is that they glorify law enforcement, but there is none of that here. The stories presented on My Favorite Murder generally highlight the incompetence of law enforcement, and then one of the following usually happens: (a) a community comes together to identify a criminal, (b) a normal civilian just happens to be paying attention to the right things and ends up identifying a criminal, or (c) an intended victim is brave and clever and survives to identify the criminal.
I can’t overstate how incredibly validating it is to hear that trusting your intuition about creepy behavior is okay, and that there’s nothing wrong with you for finding certain behavior creepy in the first place.
I’m not sure how long I’ll keep listening to My Favorite Murder. The validation is nice, sure, but the murder is still sad. Like I said, fictional murder is fun, but I don’t like to hear that real people died in horrible ways.
The longer numbered episodes of the podcast recount documented criminal cases, but they’re interspersed with “minisodes” in which the hosts read and respond to stories submitted by listeners. For me, these minisode stories are much more palatable because, while the hosts take them seriously, I can treat them as something resembling fiction. These stories also tend not to be as heavy, and they often involve behavior that’s more “borderline” than criminal, which is much more of a concern in my everyday life.
Even though most of us are (hopefully) unlikely to be murdered, it’s statistically probable that we’ll have to deal with at least a few seriously unbalanced people in our lives, and it’s nice to feel less alone in having these experiences.
