True victims: men’s privilege, class, and violence against women in Making a Murderer and The Jinx

Abstract

ABSTRACT Portrayals of accused men in the true crime television (TV) documentary series Making a Murderer (2015) and The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015) mark a key historical moment for voiceless female murder victims. We mark this moment by considering how class politics plays out for Steven Avery and Robert Durst when it is part of the relative storytelling privilege they enjoy. Our study emphasises this privilege as an acute form of entitlement that is assured for men across the intersections of class, gender, and whiteness. To do this, we see Avery and Durst portrayed as underdogs in the American criminal justice system and observe their worlds-apart socioeconomic status coalescing with gendered justice. Our argument extends existing scholarship on the series, and true crime TV about men’s violence against women, by insisting that screen and social agency for accused men is a particular privilege afforded by mediated culture. Its creation of men as symbolic victims risks excusing violence against women by focusing on perpetrating men’s troubled lives as explanations for their crimes.