Arresting Narratives: True Crime mock/documentary and the performance of authenticity

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and the performance of authenticity

Lex Griffiths

Research Master Thesis

Department of Media Studies Universiteit Van Amsterdam

Completed 06/07/18 Supervisor: Toni Pape

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Introduction

Since the release of crime podcast Serial (2014) and HBO series The Jinx (2015) there has been an increasing prevalence of True Crime documentary in the cultural mainstream. As it has increased in popularity, there has recently also been an emergence of True Crime mockumentary and other satirical forms of media targeting these series. Some comment could certainly be made on why this development has happened now – for example how the move to a “quality television” (Alvey, 2004) format has impacted the popularity and in turn the critique of True Crime as a sub-genre. Certainly True Crime has roots in more sensationalist low-culture media (Biressi, 44) and the transition to a more culturally accepted media could lead to backlash, or a critical reconsideration of the tropes of the sub-genre. However, what I am primarily interested in is how this emergence and response is an instructive overview of the mechanism of documentary and mockumentary; how one emerges to be changed by the other. The forms have a complex structure; mockumentary exists purely based in the aesthetics of documentary, but is revealing of flaws within documentary that are not always typically reflected well by documentaries themselves. This recent transformation in True Crime means that both can be usefully examined as they emerge in a contemporary context.

In this thesis I intend to examine recent examples of True Crime series from both documentary and mockumentary. I am primarily interested in how the formats intersect in relation to authenticity, the structures through which they present a convincing representation of reality (Trilling, 93). This is a primary concern of documentary, the need to present truth is the essence of the form. As such the success of that authentic representation is of great interest, and a useful place to examine the interaction with mockumentary. Furthermore in a social moment increasingly moving towards “post-truth” (Keyes, 2004) it is useful to consider those forms of media and art that we consider to have some unique mandate to the truth and to authentic representation, and how that mandate is expressed.

Part of the argument of this thesis is that authenticity beyond being a construct of

representation, is also heavily aestheticised – as the documentary form has a mandate to the truth, so must its techniques come to possess a culturally understood quality of truthfulness. In adopting this

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aesthetic, mockumentary can expose the artifice of the style and question the associations of authenticity that these styles have. True Crime has been selected as a sub-genre in part due to the implications of the name – as a sub-genre it is incredibly interested in confirming for the audience that its content is true, and as such it has a particular focus on the aesthetic of authenticity. As mentioned above it is also useful as a gauge on the interaction between documentary and mockumentary due to its recent cultural relevance and subsequent mocking.

As such a case study has been selected for both documentary and mockumentary, to analyse how authenticity is constructed, and how mockumentary responds to documentary. The case studies have been selected for their responsiveness to one another – the mockumentary series is directly inspired by the documentary – and for their interest in the nature of authenticity and their methods of authentic depiction.

This interaction will be assessed largely through study into mockumentary by researchers Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight – they have provided perhaps the most comprehensive study into

mockumentary as a form to date and provide many useful tools through which to assess

mockumentary as a response to documentary. Their work on taxonomising mockumentary is a useful position from which to start any analysis and subsequently much of their understanding of the

functioning of mockumentary forms the basis for a theoretical understanding of the genre. I have also chosen to include documentary theory as it pertains to the construction of authenticity to better show the specific interaction between the two forms. In addition to examining the construction itself, analysis has been performed on the way authenticity is use within the case studies, what it contributes to the documentary and how its construction affects arguments made therein. As authenticity functions as an aesthetic choice, it is useful to see what purpose this aesthetic serves beyond a convincing representation of reality.

This study begins with a breakdown of the theoretical framework of documentary studies that is being used, as well as some insight into specific theoretical elements of True Crime documentary that have relevance to authenticity. After this theory chapter there is an in-depth case study of the series Making a Murderer (2016), with an interest in how it uses authenticity to frame a persuasive argument. This structure then follows on with mockumentary; beginning with a theoretical breakdown

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before moving into the second case study; the series American Vandal (2017). The final case study will look at how the various elements of authentic representation are responded to in mockumentary, and what critique it presents of the current True Crime zeitgeist.

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Chapter 1: Documentary – An Authentic Construction

and the Puzzle of ‘Truth’

A primary interest of this thesis are the specific ways in which authenticity affects documentary representation. The authentic takes on an extra layer of significance in the case of the True Crime documentary sub-genre – as the name suggests, the specific ‘truthfulness’ of the presented subject is a primary interest and repeated aesthetic motif. To begin I will provide an overview of the development of True Crime, before exploring the facets of documentary that work towards producing authenticity.

1.1.True Crime - Sensationalism and Investigation

True Crime is a sub-genre of documentary, focused on the criminal procedure. It has emerged from a tradition of public fascination in particularly gruesome crimes that have been committed. Anita Biressi traces a

“constellation of ‘beginnings’” (44) in her exploration of the literary form of the genre. While much of the tropes of True Crime documentary can be found in the literary form Biressi describes, the documentary movement also has roots in a “tradition of crime cinema” Matthew Sorrento outlines, drawing on noir cinema and other criminal narratives (245). Sorrento does discuss an adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966), which Biressi considers an “American landmark of True Crime”, suggesting some narrative link between the literary and filmed movements. Her history is comprehensive, drawing tangible links between

contemporary True Crime and 17th_{century broadsheets and news pamphlets (45).}

The subgenre often involves tracing police investigations into serial killers, or on occasion the attempts of the killers themselves to not be caught (Surette, 92). Importantly, True Crime follows real cases, typically with a sensational quality. Biressi’s history shows that there is a sensationalist aspect to the interest in crime and outlandish cases are often depicted with lurid detail given to the specifics of the crime, typically a rape or murder (45-6). Throughout the history of the genre much has been changed and reframed as societal

conceptions of crime change, but recurring themes include that element of the sensational and a relationship with the criminal justice system. For example in the 18th_{century editors of crime magazines considered} themselves as having an effect on the police and could call for improvements of the legal system (54). We can see parallels here with qualities from what Sorrento identifies as an “avenging narrative” in filmed True Crime documentary, where documentary filmmakers present themselves as investigators avenging an injustice, often in conflict with the judicial system or exposing weaknesses in the police that lead to unjust judgment (244).

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This quality of investigation is another crucially important element of True Crime. The subgenre is very interested in questions of truth – Biressi identifies that a running theme in literature and early recounting is an emphasis on the truthful nature of the recounting and Sorrento’s concept of the avenger casts a filmmaker as an investigator attempting to penetrate the truth of cases. So True Crime can be understood as a sub-genre with two motives in balance – pursuit of an authentic truth and a sensational recounting of crime.

1.2.Authenticity – How Documentary Depicts Reality

The notion of authenticity is important to documentary. This will be expanded on in the subsequent chapter, as it is a key juncture at which mockumentary stages its critical intervention, but a brief overview is necessary now to understand how it fits into the goals and aesthetics of documentary film making.

Simply put, authenticity is the method through which a work appears real or “true to life”. This is largely affectation and could be understood as constructed (see Chapter 2 “Mockumentary and Authenticity” (32)). In effect, many works take steps to appear “authentic” to an audience. This effort to appear more real has a number of effects – it can improve the public opinion of a work, it can give a work a convincing authority, and establish a recognizable world and atmosphere for a piece of media, as some examples.

In documentary authenticity is a part of the express goal of the project – to depict some level of truth, a piece of media that directly represents the “real world”. Documentaries have a varied and changing relationship with this goal and some more creative works (such as the subgenre

“docudramas”) eschew it – for example recent work Primas (2017) depicts the life of a teenaged girl after her brutal assault largely through emotional affect, with dreamlike sequences and seamless movements through different time periods and locations. However even in this instance there is some commitment to an emotional truth, and the film must still do work to present to the audience that the events are or were real, and did indeed happen.

So documentary in doing its work to appear real cultivates aesthetics of authenticity; it does this through a number of methods, using a mixture of representational styles and visual elements.

Primarily the different styles and visual elements of documentary can be summarised and understood through what Jane Chapman calls the authorial voice.

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1.3.‘Authorial Voice’ as a rhetorical strategy

The authorial voice of documentary is a complex mixture of its elements coming together to present the documentary’s “message”, the way it expresses its arguments and other facets of its content (Chapman, 113). Chapman discusses a number of features, including narration/voiceover, the “thickness” of a text using Corner’s aesthetic spectrum of thick versus thin – that is documentaries that have a greater focus on aesthetic beauty (‘thick’) or their documented contet (‘thin’) (Corner, 95) - use of interviews or the cinematic school from which the documentary is influenced. This concept is more nuanced than simply being the intended message of the filmmaker; rather than being a strict vision or argument Chapman argues “the message of a film depends on an unavoidable triangle of authorial intention and skills (both aesthetic and technical), subject matter, and audience

interpretation” (93). The voice then is a message not just as expressed by the creator but as received by audience. As a metaphor for how documentary functions it’s a useful one; a number of elements of documentary come together as a cohesive text or project to analyse.

As such authorial voice can be understood as a rhetorical strategy: the summation of the argument a documentary has made. ‘Argument’ here is a loose term used by Nichols and does not necessarily mean that a documentary is explicitly framing an argument (114). More, the authorial voice represents the overall statement of the documentary, explicit or implied, and how it is further translated by the audience. As such understanding it as an argument is useful regarding the broader ‘statement’ of the text – even if the argument is no more complex than a nature documentary illustrating the aesthetic beauty of the natural world.

It is through the authorial voice that authenticity is constructed. The different elements of the voice have different contributions to the authentic sense the documentary builds, and will be assessed in detail below. First, it is worth expanding documentary to better understand the elements of the authorial voice, through the styles documentary adopts. Chapman makes reference several times to the modes of representation outlined by Bill Nichols, which will now be discussed in some detail.

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1.4.Modes of Representation – How Documentary Frames the Authentic

What Bill Nichols calls “modes of representation” (32) can be considered a documentary framework, a set of aesthetic styles and film-making ideals that create a specific ‘mode’ of documentary as it depicts an authentic reality. Nichols observes that these modes are in dialogue with one another and in some cases work as a reaction to older styles. These modes are not prescriptive categories, Nichols has observed that “documentaries adopt no fixed inventory of techniques, address no one set of issues, display no single set of forms or styles” (21) – rather these modes of representation are loose categories of styles that fit into regular and recognisable patterns or historical movements – for example Cinema Verité is listed in his description of the observational mode but it is not the only style found within this mode.

What follows is a specific outlining of the different modes that Nichols identifies, as well as an outlining of how they present an authentic reality.

The expository mode is the oldest mode and commonly features direct address from a “voice of god” narrator, and is often likened to propaganda (34). It is a direct address to the audience and makes frequent use of location shooting of landscapes and large-scale imagery. A reasonable contemporary example is March of

the Penguins (2005), with vast polar expanses and entire colonies of penguins depicted under the soothing,

authoritative tones of Morgan Freeman. The expository mode depicts the authentic through a strong factual authority, the narrator declaring the reality of the subject matter with the imagery as evidence.

The observational mode is a more contemporary form and Nichols places Cinema Verité into this category, as documentary projects which emphasise the non-involvement of the filmmakers and act as a “fly on the wall” recording of subjects as they go about their daily lives (39). Also called direct cinema, the

observational mode is commonly thought of when using an example of documentary cultivation of authenticity. By taking a step back from the subjects and acting as a non-presence in their work, the filmmakers create a neutral atmosphere that suggests objectivity – more than any other mode of representation it presents its subjects as doing what they would do even if the camera was not present (Roscoe and Hight, 21). Furthermore they cultivate an authenticity of the personal – these documentaries are often smaller in scope, depicting the everyday lives of subjects and following individuals rather than documenting sweeping social issues. Examples include Hospital (1970) or the first case study of this thesis, Making a Murderer (2015) – though it is an odd example that will be discussed in more detail in chapter two. While objectivity is a complicated subject, it will not be a primary focus of this thesis, although it is a major topic of observational documentary. Instead, I would contend that in this case objectivity is one discursive strategy of documentary among many to construct

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authenticity. The observational mode in this case makes objectivity a primary focus of its authentic construction.

The interactive mode directly places the filmmakers within the project, often including themselves on screen and conducting actions relevant to the progress of the documentary, often emphasising the relationship between filmmaker and filmed subject (44). Here the filmmaker’s presence is a testament to the authentic reality of the documentary. By placing themselves into the frame of the camera they make both the physical locations and their own involvement real. These works can be investigative and play out with the filmmaker as a participant in finding out the truth that is being filmed, placing themselves alongside the audience in a quest for information, or they can have a more personal involvement in the process with other concerns as well as an investigation – for example in Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005), Herzog already knows the basics of the life and death of Timothy Treadwell and devotes as much time relating Treadwell’s obsessions to his own as he does taking the audience through Treadwell’s story.

The reflexive mode plays with the formal qualities of documentary on a self-conscious level. Nichols identifies this as a more recent genre transformation, an element of what Linda Williams calls postmodern documentary or “New Documentary” (Williams, 11). This mode often has a primary or secondary focus on the form of documentary film-making itself, as Nichols puts it, “the reflexive mode addresses the question of how we talk about [the documentary subject]” (57). Nichols cites works such as The Man With a Movie Camera (1929) and The Thin Blue Line (1988) which make the process of and ethical issues surrounding filming a documentary as much a subject of the film as the literal filmed subjects and events. Another modern example would be The Act of Killing (2012) which uses the premise of making a film as the lens through which the filmmaker encourages the subject to comprehend the violence he has enacted on others, returning frequently to the theme of the transformative power of cinema in building empathy. Authenticity is made complex here, as the functions and aesthetics of documentary are reconsidered within the text itself. Nichols contends that authenticity is more a talking point for reflexive documentaries – they are interested not only in how representation works, but the question of if a representation can be “adequate to that which it represents” (57).

A transformation Nichols identified later is the performative mode (1994: 93). The performative mode has a focus on aesthetics of production and what Nichols calls “the subjective aspects of classically objective discourse” (95), in Corner’s previously mentioned spectrum these could be considered thick text

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give the viewer an emotional understanding of what still nevertheless builds and indexical link to reality (99). The previously mentioned Primas would be a strong example.

1.5.Modes of Representation and True Crime

As discussed, Nichols’ modes are not prescriptive. When considering True Crime as a subgenre of documentary it can be understood through a number of ways – narrative, aesthetic and here, how it uses modes. Commonly True Crime makes use of the observational mode of documentary, unobtrusively documenting a criminal injustice for a viewer to observe, but the presentation of that injustice does set it apart from the daily life structure observed by Nichols. It has been suggested that True Crime, particularly on television, might be described as being part of an “investigative mode” of documentary (Hill, 45) – a negotiation between the observational and interactive modes as the filmmakers investigate a crime with varying levels of engagement.

This is illustrative of the changing nature of documentary – as the form negotiates different modes as ideals change, individual documentaries negotiate them as part of the development of their argument and the exploration of their subject matter.

It is also worth considering to what degree these modes can be performative. As Nichols styles them as movements they are all adopted consciously by filmmakers, even if a filmmaker doesn’t always refer to them as modes. Different filmic techniques give an impression of a mode – even if the motives are more complex. When I describe modes as performative I mean documentaries can convey the impression of a mode through its text, but this can be contradictory to the mode’s general intentions. With True Crime for instance, there is a question of how sincere their investigatory capacity is. We know that from the sub-genre’s origins the nature of much of the crime it depicts has been salubrious, and a breathless re-counting of the details of the criminal act is remarkably common. For example, Making a Murderer devotes much time to the specifics of a murder victim, repeating the details several times. Is this investigatory or is this sensational?

There is an intentional link to the performative mode of documentary here. As a mode of

representation it can be a common shift from other modes – there are weaknesses to the mode as identified by Nichols in its intentional “loss of referential emphasis” (95) but the shift to emotional affect from “objective” representation does have wide implications for the authorial voice of the documentary – an argument can change to an emotional one with different limitations and new responsibilities.

Beyond the filmed content, the style itself can be a performance – Corner’s theory of thick and thin texts suggest a conscious production of style can supersede the content of a work as the documentary’s role as a piece of aesthetic art becomes important (here we see one of those limitations of the performative mode).

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Referring back to True Crime’s recounting of criminal acts, the ways in which these details are reproduced – witness interviews to dramatic music, full reenactment with actors, CGI constructions of crime scenes – in some cases could be argued to be the end point in of themselves. Here the documentary modes are a style being reproduced for their own end, not necessarily with an interest in representation of reality. We can consider modes then to be element of documentary performance, and that True Crime shows a particular combination of motives in that performance. There is a tension between the supposed motives of a mode, such as the non-interference of the Observational mode, and the artistic intentions of the filmmakers.

1.6.Narrative Patterns and Authentic Reality

In Representing Reality Nichols prefers to avoid using the term narrative when describing documentary. His contention is that narrative conflates documentary too much with fiction and that there are crucial differences between the two; “at the heart of documentary is less a story and its imaginary world than an argument about the historical world.” (110). As such his preferred term is ‘argument’, he suggests that for documentary more important than a narrative framework (which he does agree exists) is the indexical link it makes to historical reality and arguments made about that reality, supported by factual and material evidence. He adds that he does not consider all documentaries to explicitly be making an argument, but rather uses the term to indicate that their choices of representation speak to the historical world. As such the ‘argument’ is that representation - “this is so, isn’t it?” (114).

I have no intention of conflating argument and narrative, but I do think that narrative is a useful phrase to understand the intersection between documentary and mockumentary. Furthermore as Keil has noted in writing on early factual and fictional cinema, “One can begin by stating that most films, fictional or not, possess a narrative structure, and that we can distinguish fiction films from nonfiction by the means of presentation rather than by content” (40). I consider this argument to mesh with Nichols, his primary example of the distinction highlights presentation – a film making an “argument” differs in how it presents its content and that presentation carries with it the implicit agreement with the audience that this content is a representation of the world we live in, however stylised or abstracted it may be (Nichols, 113).

Preferred terminology aside, it is clear that documentary does have a narrative and follows narrative patterns. Beyond the more experimental forms, most documentaries follow a path of increased knowledge and understanding of a subject, and follow a subject through a narrative structure. The degree to which narrative is important can vary – Corner has mentioned before that a “strong narrative” can be an indication of a thick text documentary (683), as the more explicitly it is telling a story, the more the focus on how the aesthetic and

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emotional delights of being told a story come to the forefront. This is another area of tension for documentary, following on from the risks of a thick text – the more “storylike” a narrative becomes, the more there is a risk of narrative bias and a movement into fictional patterns.

The presence of a narrative does not elude viewers and in fact, some argument could be made that the negotiation between narrative as a construct of fiction and the more factual style of presentation is part of the appeal. In analysis of factual television Annette Hill has suggested there is an element of uncertainty to the factual presentation of documentary that has links with the viewer’s acknowledgment of the often-fictional nature of Reality Television (104). This suggests that part of the negotiation of authenticity is conscious on behalf of viewers and part of the appeal – this is important to understand as games with authentic reality make up a large part of the style of mockumentary and how they entertain viewers while challenging documentary. Furthermore in the case of True Crime documentary it suggests that a focal point of the subject is often the nature of truth and authenticity, with a sub-textual implication of their own authenticity being an open topic. As previously discussed much of the work of True Crime is on investigation and here we can see a layered aesthetic of investigative work, following strands of police and other detectives, filmmakers after the fact and eventually the viewer, making sense of it all as they watch it. As filmmakers take on a role of investigator, so too does the viewer.

Sorrento brings this investigatory element into particular prominence with his work on the idea of the filmmaker-as-avenger (243). He contends that within True Crime documentary, there has emerged a style of film that presents the film as an investigation performed by the filmmakers. His argument is that this investigation follows the ethos and trends of crime cinema (with a special attention given to Noir), and the filmmaker takes on an archetypal narrative role of the investigator, while other subjects are cast as victims or criminals in the narrative framework of the documentary (244). In this instance the common theme of truth is an active pursuit of the investigator in the style of classic crime fiction, as they sift through contradictory evidence to get to the core of truth. Also common to this style of True Crime is a conflict between the

filmmaker and the police or judicial services. Victims Sorrento identifies have often already been judged by the state. Here the details of True Crime are less specifically focused on the grizzly, sensational details of the crime and more of the injustice suffered by victims at the hands of criminals, watched on by an unhelpful and often uncaring police force. This narrative doubling of investigators is a prime example of the uncertainty Hill discusses and avenging narratives generate authenticity through their uncertainty and through a similar mode to Hill’s suggestion of an investigatory mode somewhere between interactive and observational documentary styles. The filmmaker places either themselves or the text in a position of narrative inquiry that is also a

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testament to their presence and the authentic nature of the narrative. We can see an example of this in Serial – part of the compelling nature of the investigation is Sarah Koenig (and subsequently her public)’s need to approach the facts of the case critically, and the air of uncertainty surrounding the killing provides a motive force.

Continuing with the example of Serial, it also exemplifies what Sorrento identifies as a common victim in avenging narratives – not the murder victim herself, but her accused murderer. Avenging filmmakers often pursue cases where the judiciary has already made a decision regarding the guilt of its subject (244) and contend with false or unsympathetic accusations. The contention of Serial from the first episode is that its subject Adnan Syed may not be guilty, and has protested his innocence long past the point where it would win him any favours. Sorrento’s identification of falsely accused victims is usually less ambiguous, his primary example is Randall Dale Adams in The Thin Blue Line being falsely accused for a murder he provably didn’t commit. But regardless of the culmination of the narrative, there is a clear framework in place surrounding the concept of false accusations. By its nature this narrative plays with uncertainty as the case for prosecution is challenged and “official” stories are often called out as incorrect. The filmmaker challenges the police by disagreeing with their story and injecting doubt, and the victim narrative plays into this.

1.7.Audiovisual Strategies Towards Constructing Authenticity

Beyond the brief indications of how authenticity may be created outlined in the modes of

representation, common to all of them is a use of audio-visual language to construct an aesthetic of authenticity. Mockumentary adopts much of the same strategies and as such it is useful to assess them from both perspectives to see how documentary produces arguments before mockumentary in turn attempts to skewer them.

Common to many forms of documentary is the use of archival footage. The culturally assumed line, often attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, is that “the camera never lies” (Wood, 2014). If that is so, then archival or “found” footage can appear to possess a deeper level of truth. Like presenting an artifact or first-hand account in other forms of storytelling, this footage is often presented as “evidence” of the documentary’s narrative. This is often prevalent in forms of True Crime, Biressi observes that archival material’s “status as evidence and truth underwrites the sensational elements of the story, lending it ‘representational legitimacy’”(137), a phrase she borrows from Hamilton who argues “the apparent objectivity of the camera-produced image may help to fix the meaning of a given

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text” (87). There is a historical element to the authenticity archival images provide – if footage seems older, rougher, of lower quality, then it seems less likely to be fake. It provides a certain quality that allows it to build that indexical link to history. Creeber addresses this when discussing online footage; the raw quality of “ordinary people filmed in real time, in everyday habitats and viewed through aesthetically diminished images” makes the footage seem more intimate, more real (597).

Crucially to the argument being built by the filmmakers, archival footage can often be

presented as work that provides a voice not belonging to the filmmakers, an eye witness account that gives authority to their claims. It is also important to note that as an audiovisual strategy, the

aesthetic of archival footage is what provides the authenticity as much as the indexical links – the footage itself contains a visual component of the authentic. As such, it is an aesthetic component than can specifically be purposefully achieved or, as we will see in chapters 3 and 4, mimicked for the purposes of mockery and subversion.

Interviews are another common staple of documentary – interview subjects can act as protagonists, witnesses, suspects and exposition, among many other roles. Almost all the modes of representation discussed above make use of interviews – a common style is the ‘talking head’ of a static camera focusing on the upper quarter of a subject as they speak to the camera and often, by extension, the filmmaker. The link to authenticity here is in the subjects – providing ‘real’ people to speak of events better frames and places the reality of them. Interview subjects in effect can be used to give a viewer access to “the real world” of the documentary setting (Chapman, 104). There are a number of complexities to documentary interview and its relation to authenticity. Chiefly there is the question of accuracy or truthfulness – how reliable a witness is, for instance. Chapman suggests there is of a hierarchy to interviewed subjects; in her own writing she mentions that members of the public are often given a privileged status over “experts” in fields or public officials. In the context she is discussing this is mostly a matter of access – there are documentary styles that are focused on the stories of witnesses or the public in which case their voices are given the main focus and respect. She goes on to add “This is not always the case in documentaries about history, science and specialist issues, including current affairs television documentaries, but it is true that not all contributors who speak in documentaries have equal status” (105).

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There is a relevance here to the construction of authenticity and the pursuit of “truth” in True Crime. First, the matter of privileging voices speaks to how True Crime relates to authority. The challenge of the filmmaker against the judiciary in avenging narratives for instance resonates with privileging of witness voices – there are of course questions in True Crime about the reliability of subjects, as the above example of Serial illustrates, but there is also (and this is a criticism that is raised) a tendency in Serial to use “witnesses” - for instance Syed’s friends and family – as more reliable voices than the police story that lead to his conviction. Chapman discusses how the negotiation of reliability in interviews is an ongoing concern for documentary filmmakers that is resolved in a number of ways. For example, she outlines that different subjects have different qualities of reliability – members of the public can present an impression of the world, a sense of how “normal people” feel, so the contextual choice of interview subject can speak to the constructed authenticity of the interview. In other cases the recorded interview can be juxtaposed to dramatic re-enactment of their words or other subject matter to confirm or challenge their testimony. She also adds that some interview subjects are simply left untouched; no interviewer’s voice is heard and nothing is on-screen but their seemingly unedited soliloquy, which the audience must interpret themselves (106-7). Beyond the ethical need to frame a subject in context then, a filmmaker has a choice of authentic framing with each interview; whether to provide the qualities necessary to authenticate the

testimony, to challenge it to provide a sense of narrative complexity or to leave it uncommented upon to allow the audience to make judgements. All of these decisions in interview build authenticity of different qualities but ultimately all speak to a similar sense of a real person’s presence behind the camera; sometimes an unreliable one that must be interrogated, but a person whose comments speak to the authenticity of the work itself.

The presence of a narrator is another important contribution to authorial voice and to the construction of authenticity. There is a clear difference between a voice-over narration and the voice of interviewed subjects; where interviewees can provide a witness testimony, narrators almost always provide a sense of authority (Nichols, 48). The authority of the role will be unpacked in some more detail in Chapter 3, as the subversion of it in mockumentary is rather complex and has broader applications to the documentary project, but in brief a voiceover carries with it a sense of

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authoritative omniscience (Chapman, 107). A narrator often acts as a guiding presence in documentary, with this authority they can state more explicitly aspects of the documentary’s argument or make narrative connections for the viewer. This has advantages, in that it can remove possible misinterpretation of the text and clarify details about the documentary, but can also have the disadvantage of being an obvious piece of artifice.

In constructing authenticity, it is common in true crime documentary to either omit a narrator (as with Making a Murderer) or use the voiceover as part of the role of the filmmaker as an avenger, if they do not appear directly on screen their voice can provide a presence to the investigator’s role. It is important to acknowledge that a filmmaker’s presence is not however necessary for the true crime documentary to have an avenging quality – Sorrento’s preferred example of The Thin Blue Line had a complete absence its filmmaker. In this instance, the documentary text itself is the testimony of the filmmaker – the filmmaker serving as a “meta-avenger” in their filmed absence (245). Furthermore as the narrative of the Avenger is an aspect of a documentary’s authorial voice, it can still contain this narrative component without a literal narrator to provide it. As Chapman says; “No factual film can escape [the authorial voice], even if the filmmaker is consciously trying to subvert convention” (113). 1.8. Key Points

As we have seen authenticity is a complex structure – it is both a goal of documentary in its attempt to depict the ‘truth’ and an aesthetic strategy through which documentary expresses its authority

towards presenting that truth. Documentary takes many steps to construct authenticity, through use of different representational modes, a construction of its rhetorical ‘voice’ and specific aesthetic techniques. As a sub-genre, True Crime documentary makes authenticity a primary subject matter and engages with it in a discursive puzzle-like fashion as it places itself as one of a series of investigations in pursuit of the “real truth” of its chosen subject. We have also seen that True Crime has roots in sensational recounting of these injustices – there is a clear tension between its sensibilities towards the puzzle of truth and its sensationalist motives.

I will now examine this tension, and the specific construction of authenticity towards a rhetorical argument in the first case study of this thesis, Making a Murder.

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Chapter 2: Case Study – Making a Murderer

I think it’s great to have viewers engaged and to have people getting involved in the world. But our hope is the dialogue reaches beyond these cases or beyond Manitowoc County or Wisconsin, for that matter. This is an American story. – Moira

Demos, Co-creator of Making a Murderer (2015)

Making a Murderer (2015) simmers with a sense of injustice. It follows the story of a working class man from Wisconsin, tracing both a false conviction that placed him behind bars for 18 years, and his subsequent arrest and trial for an unrelated murder, four years after his release. The documentary’s subject, Steven Avery, is a sympathetic figure pulled into the criminal justice system by forces outside his control, to such an extent that it has defined his adult life. The filmmakers trace his new conviction, the murder, and the work of his defence team in trying to clear the charges. It also paints the world around Avery, with interviews from his family and partners well as local news coverage and comments from others involved in the trial, such as the victim’s family, presenting what appears to be a

comprehensive take on the murder and trial.

As a documentary it functions in both an investigatory capacity and a historical presentation: it was produced over a period of ten years, from the beginning of Avery’s trial for murder through to the present day, tracing the impact on his family. The length of production that went into the work makes it a fascinating study already – it functions as a retrospective investigation of the case while still presenting the information and narrative serially.

As a True Crime work investigating an injustice, it presents its case dramatically and with gloss. There is a complexity to this presentation, as it shows reflexive qualities that address some of the problematic elements of media discourse surrounding the reporting of crime, while perhaps

illustrating limits to reflexivity which mockumentary goes on to address. In terms of True Crime it fits many of the narrative elements identified in the previous chapter. It is focused on an injustice, the filmmakers conduct an investigation alongside the trial proceedings and it has a central focus on the psychology of its subject. It exhibits many of the investigative characteristics of True Crime and has a recognisable authorial voice, including an obvious adherence to Nichols’ identified modes. There is also a tension in its structure between its aesthetic interests and the content it presents – there is a push and pull between its status as a thick or a thin text. It’s an excellent study of how True Crime

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constructs authenticity, and of the tensions and limitations that make True Crime a target for mockumentary. Beyond its inspiration to the writers of American Vandal (which will be discussed in chapter four) it has a curious relationship with reflexivity and the sensational qualities of True Crime.

In this chapter I will explore what Making a Murder’s aesthetics and formal content do to create an authentic work, and how they potentially impact its argument – as well as interrogating the impact of the work. I will begin by discussing its creation of an authorial voice and formal qualities in relation to authentic construction. I will also discuss the media context surrounding the work, situating it within the lives of the filmed subjects, and examine how the text reflects on its own project and the aforementioned media context that surrounds it.

2.1. Aesthetic Style and Mode of Representation

Making a Murderer presents a chilly atmosphere. Its title screens use muted colours and gloomy lighting, and much of the location footage features buildings plastered with snow. This is a push towards authenticity through location similar to the location shooting of expository modes; it presents its Wisconsin setting in winter, setting a bleak tone and touching on common associations with the northern states of snow and rural Americana. The title sequence is evocative of industry and small-town America, with a focus on lonely roads and fields with rusting cars and water towers. In many ways it bears aesthetic resemblance to the opening titles of the first series of True Detective(2014), and touches on similar themes of modern Neo-Noir and Gothic traditions (Franck, 2016), and

collapsing industry. As an interesting aside, previously mentioned work Serial explicitly references True Detective as an inspirational material for the narrative framework of the series (Berry, 171); as

discussed in the previous chapter True Crime often makes reference to crime fiction (Sorrento, 243). In this way, Making a Murderer presents its narrative of injustice within the context of rural discontent and alienation within modern America, and that’s how it presents the central criminal case. Steven Avery is a simple, rural man from a family that becomes a target for the machinations of the government as he is drawn first into a genuine case of mistaken identity and later a prolonged and very public criminal trial.

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This presentation is created through a mix of low-fi and high-value production aesthetics fairly constantly. Much of the footage of the series is archival or interviews filmed near the beginning of the ten-year production. In contrast, the editing techniques, intro titles and much of the graphical

elements are glossy and high budget. This is in-keeping with the general tone of the show, which is clinical. The effect is something of a gilded frame – through its high editing standards the series provides a contrast to its low quality footage that emphasises that aspect of it, making it seem more raw, and similar to archival footage, this constructs authenticity as it draws on the codes we associate with lower quality footage being more ‘realistic’. This is an interesting result of the timeframe of the production. As the footage was shot in 2005 it is then-current footage that has been repackaged for contemporary viewing. It isn’t strictly archival footage but uses the same aesthetic codes of

authenticity, producing an explicit historical bond.

It is a documentary primarily performing the observational mode – the filmmakers are never present on camera, their questions unheard, their presence barely figures into the narrative at all. Instead we have tight, quiet interviews interspersed with footage from police interrogations, court hearings and news channels. The filmmakers present themselves as stepping back from the process of the film and leaving the viewer with the content, the evidence. This is also part of how it sells the authenticity of the footage and the narrative. It draws attention to the presentation style and

emphasises the aforementioned raw quality of the footage captured. As Biressi suggests, it provides a representational legitimacy to the content. As a result the footage is sued to create authenticity through an aesthetic strategy of looking objective – a discursive quality regularly associated with the observational mode (Chapter 1, 7). This shows that the series is interested in performing the

observational mode as a primary goal.

The series also consciously presents itself as a thin text (Corner, 94). The presentation is meant to provide a sense that it is just the viewer and the evidence that matter, and that from that evidence displayed they can draw judgment themselves. This is a tension within the work. As mentioned above, the production values or the series are fairly high, regardless of the quality of much of its content. It takes steps to create an aesthetic atmosphere drawing on Neo-Noir and moves slickly between intertitles, graphical maps and the old footage. From this, it can be understood that Making a

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Murderer makes use of the codes of thin text and observational documentary – neutrality, absence of filmmakers, ‘raw’ footage – but by mixing them with its other aesthetic interests it creates a feeling of thinness of text, the thinness is part of its aesthetic moves that go towards constructing the

authenticity of the work. This does create an aesthetic tension – much of its aspects are about trying to push away from the artifice an aesthetic suggests while still maintaining and evoking an aesthetic atmosphere. As such while producing the codes and qualities of observational thin-text

documentaries to make its case, the series paradoxically has qualities of thick text (and performative mode) documentary. This suggests a limitation to documentary – modes instead of conveying

information can be fetishized, aesthetics repeated to channel the style of documentary rather than necessarily delivering content. This is not to suggest Making a Murderer misrepresents its content completely but the tension is nevertheless present, and as we move into mockumentary in the following two chapters, the flaws are made more present.

2.2. Authorial Voice – and Audience

As discussed in chapter 1, the voice of a documentary is its rhetorical strategy as well as a combination how that rhetoric is received and executed. The ‘voice’ of the documentary is the most direct way through which it constructs an authentic representation of its content. It is the “argument” of the documentary (Nichols, 114).

Making a Murderer conveys its argument mostly through interviews and presentation of evidence. There is no voice-over narration throughout the entire series, but it makes use of inter-titles frequently. It is the presentation of its content and the tonal atmosphere set that convey the much of the text’s rhetoric. It does so while maintaining a ‘neutral’ Observational style. As the series adopts its gilded frame aesthetic, this shapes the authorial voice. As such the comments the series intends to make are largely drawn from choice of interview subject and framing.

A large part of the rhetoric of the show is about the injustice of Steven Avery’s convictions – his initial wrongful imprisonment and his later conviction for murder, for which his guilt is argued to be dubious by the filmmakers. Ultimately the tone of the piece suggests he is innocent, or that there is

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enough of that doubt that he should not have been imprisoned. It makes this argument through choice of framing and presentation of information.

The inter-titles the show uses are a key component of its voice. They primarily function as a transition element; providing context for the viewer as the episodes move from one piece of footage to the next. Here they functionally operate as a narrator – providing exposition on the content of the series, making narrative connections (Chapman, 107). They act as part of the frame of the series through which the footage is understood. In serving narrator-like functions, the inter-titles possess the authoritative quality of a narrator. By setting up and explaining pieces of footage the titles have the previously discussed sense of omniscience and act as an authoritative guide to the viewer’s

experience. They are also characteristic of the series’ observational aesthetic. No opinions are stated explicitly through the titles, they simply present information. The titles as such control the

construction authenticity, the juxtaposition of stripped-down titles with raw footage gives the viewer a sense of a neutral viewing experience. It is also through this authentic framing that the series voices its argument for Avery’s possible innocence, using the observational aesthetic as a reinforcing of the documentary’s authority. As such, the argument is made through suggestion – as mentioned above, as the events are presented “neutrally” without narration, much of the argument is made by what footage has been chosen and in what order it is presented.

For example, it suggests innocence through association. In the first half of the series, the documentary presents a police interrogation of Avery’s nephew, Brendan Dassey (episode 4). The interrogation is straightforwardly and obviously coercive. The detectives tease a story out of Brendan by repeatedly giving him leading prompts, and asking him again until he gives them an answer that fits their understanding of events. This is at its most egregious when, upon asked “what happened to [the victim Teresa Halbach’s] head”, Brendan says that he cut her hair, only shifting to agreeing with the police that he shot her after they specifically ask if he did. After the interrogation Brendan clearly shows little understanding of what he’s confessed to and asks about when he can get back to class. This entire sequence of events is an obvious miscarriage of justice, caught on camera. Tellingly, Dassey’s conviction was overturned the summer after the series’ release (Ansari, 2016). The event is also presented in the series as a complicating factor in Avery’s defence. This is the only episode that

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explores Brendan as a person, but his confession is mostly related to Avery’s case and his lawyers’ reactions to the information, as well as their unhappiness with the way the interview was conducted and the judge’s decision to allow it in court.

The way it is presented makes the case for Avery’s innocence in two key ways. First in terms of content, it is straightforwardly a hole in the prosecution’s story. With the way the series focuses on facts and evidence this is clearly a clue for the audience that strikes a heavy blow against the case for Avery’s guilt. It also makes a tonal case. The series is thematically straightforwardly about injustice. It opens with a retelling of Avery’s wrongful conviction and that sets the tone for the rest of the series. Brendan’s interrogation is another unambiguous case of a man being victimised by the police force, beyond the physical evidence of a hole this sequence presents, it makes a thematic argument by adding to the injustices of the case, and the Avery family’s thematic position as a poor family attacked by a judicial system set against them and convinced of their guilt. In this way, it works powerfully as an argument. As such the two elements of the use of footage work together to build the rhetorical position of the documentary – evidence from archival footage builds an authentic framework and through this authenticity an emotional assertion about the content is made. By presenting facts of the case in this manner the documentary creates an implied argument for Avery’s innocence.

The series also constructs its argument through choice of interview subject. Predominantly the subjects interviewed by the filmmakers are Avery’s family and associates or his defence team. The prosecution and the victim’s family are presented, but through their appearances in court and press conferences they gave. As such a lot of the information that the audience receives is from Avery’s perspective – this matches comments made by Sorrento in his unpacking of the avenging narrative in True Crime documentary, explored further in the next section. In terms of authorial voice, the

interviews are presented as a combination of expert opinion and emotive appeal – the primary subjects being Avery’s direct family and his two defence lawyers. The lawyers provide exposition on the development of the case – explaining how the process works, and discussing the evidence. Their position as experts is backed up by mixing the audio over images illustrating points they are making – for example a number of shots of Avery’s junkyard as they discuss the details of where a car relevant to the case was found. Avery’s family are presented much more emotionally, with his mother

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especially filmed in moments of emotional vulnerability and crying on camera. Here again we can see the series combination of authoritatively presented evidence combined with an emotional framing that constructs their argument and the voice of the series. This also shows once more the tensions in the series between the factual and the sensational – repeated emotive addresses from the family do provide exposition on the case but also an element of drama and a continuing narrative of the impact of the events on Avery’s family, often to the exclusion of other figures such as Teresa Halbach’s family. There is a clear perspective from which the series is coming from.

The audience response to the documentary also forms a part of the voice, as Chapman outlines. To be explicitly clear, some of that audience reaction has been highly problematic – for example the state prosecutor Stephen Kratz who was a central figure in the investigation has received a large number of death threats as a result of his case against Avery. He has subsequently condemned the documentary for bias and a misrepresentation of facts and published a book that presents his own case – the filmmakers have denied Kratz’ allegations and stated that he was given multiple

opportunities to provide his perspective for the series but turned them down (Holloway, 2015). This can be taken in contrast with experiences of Avery’s lawyers. In an interview, Dean Strang has commented that since the release of the series he and Avery’s family have received a lot of well-wishes and positive comments from the audience. He also mentions that at the time of the trial it was quite the opposite – as news reports followed the case he received hate mail and threats. But as he goes on to comment: “neither of them represent any particular reality other than what’s going on in fevered social media at the moment among a self-selected portion of the population” (Joyce 2015). As such we can see these reactions as a functional part of the authorial voice of the documentary – the conversations surrounding it form part of its argument. That Kratz and Strang have had such different and extreme reactions from the audience further enforces the perspective the series has on Avery’s guilt.

Ultimately then we can see an authorial voice that makes a suggested argument for Avery’s innocence through framing of evidence – the controversy surrounding Kratz’ perspective reveals how this is just a singular presentation of elements of the case – there are over 700 hours of footage from which the filmmakers created the series. With the audience reaction we can see how effective their

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presentation was towards constructing an authentic reality based on their perspective of the facts. This particular authentic framing shows how documentary presents just a singular interpretation of the facts it uses in its construction.

How those facts are selected and presented can often be a result of a documentary’s narrative framing, it is to that narrative that we now turn.

2.3. Making a Murderer and Criminal Narrative

Sorrento presents the filmmaker-as-avenger conducting an investigation as a response to the law, which “has already passed judgement”: here Sorrento suggests that the filmmaker investigating case in the True Crime style positions themselves in conflict with the judicial system. Furthermore the avenging filmmaker can be in direct conflict with the system as there are running themes of the police being incompetent or corrupt (244). True Crime documentary in the avenging framework typically has a big focus on victims and criminals – it “avenges” wronged parties but also misunderstood

perpetrators, exploring their psychology and building sympathy for them. As such the typical narrative framework pits the filmmakers against the police as they pursue a case for the accused, often through pursuing their own investigation and framing of events. Sorrento also details how another strategy of the style is providing a voice to the victims and the “case for the defence”, letting those sympathetic to the wronged party have their say on record – which as we have seen above is a practice Making a Murderer engages in throughout (257). As was explored in the previous chapter, this intersects with documentary’s goals of authenticity and exploration of truth complexly. “Official” stories are

questioned and put into a place of doubt. The filmmaker-as-avenger is determined, like investigators in crime fiction, to pursue the truth through concealing and confounding falsehoods and mysteries (255).

Making a Murderer follows much of what has been previously discussed as the crime

documentary narrative. Through the ongoing sequence of the episodes it carefully leads the viewer through an investigation, presenting evidence and questioning motives. All the major interviews conducted for the documentary are either Avery’s family or his defence team. In the filmmaker-as-avenger narrative proposed by Sorrento it is certainly highlighting an injustice that the police cannot

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correct, either through incompetence or corruption. Indeed, it argues for their complicity. This is perhaps the element of the series that is its most nuanced, and also often the source of its more problematic tendencies.

As an example, during a later episode one of Avery’s lawyers comments “No sane lawyer looks forward to presenting a defense that the police framed his client. No sane lawyer” (Episode 6). This serves its avenging narrative – while it acknowledges the difficult position of the case for Avery’s defence, it’s also presenting the defence as an underdog. No sane lawyer wants to suggest it because the police can and will come after you – this is an implication from the very first episode. In presenting the defence team as an underdog the series builds sympathy for their case as the viewer relates to their “passion and determination to succeed when the odds are against them” (Pahria and Keinen, 777). Beyond building sympathy, the underdog narrative also contributes to the emotional case for their argument – the ultimate guilty verdict of the case is no longer proof of Avery’s guilt in the mind of the audience due to his associations with a disadvantaged and sympathetic position.

While the series is largely presented as observational and neutral it’s very clear on where it stands in regards to this element. The opening episode is focused almost entirely on Avery’s false conviction in 1985 and presents a series of moments where he could have been released earlier but wasn’t, due to inaction or incompetence at the hands of the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department. By devoting this time to the injustices Avery has already faced at the hands of the American judicial system it hangs over the rest of the documentary and frames the viewer’s perception of the trial. The lawyers involved in the case present this trial as just another indignity an innocent man is facing at the hands of the police, and as previously discussed, the filmmaker’s presentation of events suggests this is correct.

This is not inherently problematic but the documentary framing that the filmmakers use adds a troubling element. The neutral observational style and thin-text-aesthetic suggest an objectivity to the material being filmed; but as we have seen this objectivity has been challenged by figures like Stephen Kratz.

Avery for his part presents an ambiguous blending of the typical figures that a filmmaker “avenges” in Sorrento’s work. He fits a number of narrative templates Sorrento identifies. Steven

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Avery has parallels with many of the documentary subjects identified in Sorrento’s chapter. Like Brother’s Keeper (1992), Avery is an unintelligent man from a rural community, his family in conflict with the “modern” America of the state government (255). Like the teenage boys that make up the primary focus of Paradise Lost Avery is already the victim of state prejudice and a wrongful conviction, and is even subject to state prejudice from prosecutors certain of his guilt (258). But unlike these subjects there is an ambiguity to Avery’s case. The boys of Paradise Lost were definitely innocent and the central figure Delbert Ward of Brother’s Keeper was definitely guilty, but sympathetic. Avery was declared guilty but the filmmakers inject doubt into the proceedings – they do not prove his

innocence with the series but they make his guilt a subject to be questioned. In doing so, the

filmmakers suggest his innocence. Through the framing of the observational mode and the narrative the avenging filmmaker, the documentary places Avery’s case in a position where by asking if he was guilty the unvoiced response is that he probably isn’t. As such it illustrates the subjective nature of authentic construction. While presenting itself as an authentic and neutral representation of the facts of the case it also guides the viewer from a specific biased viewpoint, couched in the narrative of their role as avengers.

2.4. Media ‘Complicity’ - Making a Murderer and News Media

Early in the series, outside a courtroom the filmmakers come face-to-face with a producer from the TV series Dateline. When asked about why she’s here, she responds with one of the most compelling quotes from the series: “It’s a story with a twist, it grabs people’s attention. [...] Right now murder is hot, that’s what everyone wants, that’s what the competition wants, and we’re trying to beat out the other networks to get that perfect murder story” (Episode 4).

This quote arguably defines how the documentary relates to news media, and is revealing of where it positions itself in the debate of ethical responsibility in representation. While in many ways journalists within the series play a chorus role, asking questions for the different legal teams to answer, they are also presented as driven by a need to entertain, to make murder into a consumable product. Dateline here is presented as ghoulish and exploitative. However this reflection does not extend to the documentary itself. This is not uncommon, as Nichols remarks, self-reflection can be

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curiously absent in reflexive documentary – while it is able to point the finger at problems of representation and bad documentary practice in other works it is uncommon that the accusations ever return to the text itself (59). It is for instance revealing that in an interview, when elaborating on their first trip to Manitowoc one of the filmmakers comments “it was really to test the waters and see if there was a story” (Murphy, 2015). By presenting the documentary from the perspective of a neutral observer, this parallel is absent within the series.

An immediate example of this lack of self-reflexivity is the representation of the murder victim Teresa Halbach. Beyond photographs, there is a single piece of archive footage of Halbach before her death, presented at the beginning to episode two: a home movie. In the movie Halbach discusses how her family should feel if she were to hypothetically die “let’s say I die tomorrow” she says, “I want the people I love to know that when I do die, that I was happy.” In the series’ stripped down aesthetically-neutral framing the inclusion of this footage has an element of ambiguity, but the context of Halbach as a murder victim makes the inclusion questionable and potentially exploitative.

In terms of True Crime narrative the stereotype of the murdered girl has been discussed frequently (Biressi, 120). Halbach is here presented as an innocent, certainly cut down before her time but reassuring her family that she had a happy life. Its inclusion at the beginning of the episode is also questionable. What follows is an investigation into Avery and his arrest, along with footage of Avery speaking to reporters about Halbach and not seeming to understand why he is under suspicion. This is an instance of the show’s dramatic intentions showing their hand – a dead woman’s testimony is hard to present neutrally, and it becomes a part of the series’ emotional framing. This could be read

similarly as exploitative as the series presents the prosecution giving a detailed breakdown of

Halbach’s body and the manner in which she died – showing a movement towards sensationalism as discussed by Biressi (45).

An interview with Avery’s defence attorney Dean Strang in part speaks to the reception of the documentary, as he discusses the filmmakers following him out to Avery’s junkyard in his legal work:

The filmmakers’ willingness to do that is why I cooperated with them and why I don’t

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from "Dateline" or "20/20" or wherever who tells us, “Murder’s hot right now!” That’s the much more common approach; it’s a one-off, a quick-hit, driven-by-viewership paradigm or some sort of simple theme and I try to avoid that as much as I possibly can (Joyce, 2015). A clear distinction is being drawn by Strang between the behaviour of the documentary filmmakers and journalists during the case, which is reflected in the documentary itself. The presentation of journalists throughout focuses on this “quick-hit” approach to storytelling. This presents a curious instance of that lack of reflexivity – Making a Murderer is directly engaging in the same things the journalists it condemns are doing. It has access to the same court sessions, the same subjects to interview, the same evidence, and as we have discussed shares at least some of the same qualities of interest in the spectacle of the killing. The difference in time and practice should not however be disregarded; Making a Murderer was released ten years after the fact while reporters were pursuing details in the immediate present. As such the consequences are different – there is no risk of the documentary biasing the trial for instance. The filmmakers have access to both time and depth – some of this is reflected in the difference in audience reactions discussed above, as the attitude towards Avery and his lawyers shows a distinct shift. This however makes the similarities to the news media it depicts more confounding. The difference in time and thoroughness has added additional context to the case but it nevertheless still possesses the criticised tendency towards a focus on sensational characteristics – as outlined above it devotes time both to dramatic recounting of Halbach’s murder, and frames the series through heavily a heavily emotive lens as it relates the case to the emotional impact Avery’s family has experienced.

As such the way it depicts journalists within the series contains a curious double-framing. While there are reflexive qualities on crime media, and justified critique of the motives of the

journalists involved, the documentary shows itself to have limitations and ultimately does not position itself within the crime media cycle.

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2.5. Closing Thoughts

Making a Murderer’s construction is a continual negotiation between different components. Its aesthetic is a movement between aestheticised editing and low-fi footage, the voice moves between objective observational and emotive argument. It carefully presents its footage through a classic True Crime narrative of injustice, much of it touching on recognisable themes of murdered women and misunderstood convicts. The work it puts into constructing authenticity carries a persuasive quality about the nature of the case, while this is a result of careful selection of archival footage. We have seen that there is a distinct tension in the process of documentary as these different elements are negotiated. While Making a Murderer remains an effective and compelling piece of film-making, ethical issues and representational challenges are distinctly present.

As we move now into the study of mockumentary we will begin to examine how these aspects of the authentic construction of documentary become twisted and questioned.