Re: My Favorite Murder (Lighthearted)
Dec. 15th, 2021 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI also love that there's no gender essentialism on the podcast. It's not an issue because that type of discourse never even comes up. There's no "women are more intuitive" or "every woman knows xyz" bullshit, and I appreciate that.
And I think that, once you get to a stage where you can believe what women are saying without questioning their sanity, that's when you can get into legitimate "crazy" behavior. A "crazy" woman on this podcast is not someone who speaks a truth that doesn't fit into an accepted narrative. A "crazy" woman is not someone whose behavior seems slightly off-kilter because she's suffering from trauma. Rather, a "crazy" woman is someone who gets a license as an in-home caregiver in order to steal from elderly clients before killing them by setting their houses on fire, and is therefore wanted by the FBI. For example.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that, once you remove patriarchal prejudice from these stories, they have infinitely more nuance. And for me, this is groundbreaking because I've never heard stories like this told in this way. Never. Not even when they've happened to me.
I've read a fair share of criticism about true crime podcasts that uses My Favorite Murder as a scapegoat. I've only listened to a few episodes, but I don't think the source material justifies the vehemence of the critique. All things considered, it's actually fairly tame, and the hosts always take care to stay very far away from gory and ghoulish details. It's also not political, aside from a general leftist disdain for racism and corporate greed. If I had to guess, I'd say that what actually upsets people about this podcast is that its shift of the "true crime" narrative is so radical.
And I think that, once you get to a stage where you can believe what women are saying without questioning their sanity, that's when you can get into legitimate "crazy" behavior. A "crazy" woman on this podcast is not someone who speaks a truth that doesn't fit into an accepted narrative. A "crazy" woman is not someone whose behavior seems slightly off-kilter because she's suffering from trauma. Rather, a "crazy" woman is someone who gets a license as an in-home caregiver in order to steal from elderly clients before killing them by setting their houses on fire, and is therefore wanted by the FBI. For example.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that, once you remove patriarchal prejudice from these stories, they have infinitely more nuance. And for me, this is groundbreaking because I've never heard stories like this told in this way. Never. Not even when they've happened to me.
I've read a fair share of criticism about true crime podcasts that uses My Favorite Murder as a scapegoat. I've only listened to a few episodes, but I don't think the source material justifies the vehemence of the critique. All things considered, it's actually fairly tame, and the hosts always take care to stay very far away from gory and ghoulish details. It's also not political, aside from a general leftist disdain for racism and corporate greed. If I had to guess, I'd say that what actually upsets people about this podcast is that its shift of the "true crime" narrative is so radical.
