According to The New Yorker, it’s a not-guilty pleasure. The allure of true crime is hard to define; finding entertainment in the darkest and most violent acts humans can commit shouldn’t be this easy. And yet, that darkness is compelling. When you bring true crime to the status of trash tabloid coverage, something new is born. It’s difficult to quantify exactly why the circus and chaos of tabloid crime is so luridly attractive. It’s hard to feel good about the fact that the death or harm of people is so freaking entertaining that you need popcorn or a drink and your cattiest friend to truly enjoy it.
And yet, it is. While tabloid crime has never been very far out of the public eye, it’s taken on a whole new life over the last few years. From I, Tonya’s legitimate bid at the Oscars to Ryan Murphy’s no-holds-barred American Crime Stories, tabloid trash crime is huge and claiming a foothold in media legitimacy.
How did we get here? Is it the way CNN has turned pearl clutching into an art form? Or has our collective love for the larger-than-life, screaming madness of tabloid reporting always been there, lurking in the background, allowing us to pretend we’re above that kind of low entertainment? Is it the cyclical nature of news and trend? Did we simply circle back around to the time when the ‘90s are back in style, in both the good and the bad?
“I, Tonya”
Who would have ever predicted Tonya Harding as a celebrated Golden Globes attendee? By the grace of Hollywood and Margot Robbie’s comedic timing, Tonya Harding is now a media darling. And let’s be honest: I, Tonya is so wickedly funny and deliciously trashy that it could revive the career of a dozen more one-hit (get it?) wonders.
It’s hard to tell what’s best about I, Tonya. From top to bottom, the actors are firing on all cylinders. There’s not enough praise in the world for Robbie as Tonya. Between the braces, the fistfights and the trailer trash attitude, her role is smart, delightful and sports a sideways in-the-know kind of wink. Allison Janney is a national treasure – I’d spend all day watching her drink and scold her pet bird. Even Paul Walter Hauser as the proto-neckbeard Shawn is so uncomfortable that he circles back around into entertaining. I, Tonya brazenly breaks the fourth wall in a way that provides additional context and laughs. Unlike the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, it’s flawlessly executed and well worth all the attention.
“American Crime Story”: The People vs. OJ Simpson
The perms. The Kardashians. Sterling K. Brown before This is Us made us cry every week (in the most genuine performance of the whole shebang). American Crime Story personified everything about true crime that makes it deliciously fun. It was the kind of melodrama that helps us forget two people died horribly and highlighted all of the absurdities that followed the case (like Marcia Clark’s embarrassing perm taking center stage) and confirmed our opinions about OJ’s legal team (that they are egomaniacal, self-important and completely unrelatable). While Cuba Gooding Jr’s OJ stayed in the center ring in this ridiculous legal circus, the lawyers were absolutely the best part of the show. Sarah Paulson’s uncanny knack for making absurd characters both more absurd and relatable (looking at you, AHS: Roanoke) makes her one of the best parts of this insanity.
If there’s one place where American Crime Story came out a true winner, it’s the spirit of ridiculousness packed into every episode. Sure, it had serious moments (like Ron Goldman’s parents lamenting how lost their son was in all of the celebrity insanity), but even the very real societal issues highlighted by the show (racial inequality, for example) are portrayed with cheek and humor. This is not a show that will make you feel better about yourself for having watched it, but it’s tawdry entertainment that’s almost too delicious to pass by.
“American Crime Story”: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
We’re only one episode in, and season two is already a worthy follow-up to the silly hysteria of season one. It kicks off with a bang – literally, as the opening is the murder itself. The first few minutes are heightened, operatic, and quickly crank the intensity from a starting hard 8 all the way up to 11. The pieces are all there for a phenomenal season: sex scandal, Donatella as our lady of dignified grief (whose main focus is the business, which in real life is an empire spanning clothing, fragrance, makeup and furnishings), and a serial killer who is disturbing and intriguing. The show is being accused by Versace’s family of playing fast and loose with the facts, which suits Darren Criss’s villain Andrew Cunanan, who treats facts as fluid and is presented as an unreliable narrator.
“Law & Order”
Remember the days when Law & Order was about two Irish New York cops doing the best they could and shedding a light on what real lawyers go through prosecuting a case. Once, it was a serious show, compelling in how it portrayed violence and class dynamics. Once, it was a glimpse into cops wading through an unmanageable force of crime to do as much good as they could in the world. Now it’s about upping the ante, week by week, on how shockingly perverse crime can get. Gone are the days of Lennie and Mike and their beat-up notebooks and black humor; now we have Mariska Hargitay and her giant smart monitor, tablets, and frenzied hysteria.
With the accolades of American Crime Story (and Law & Order’s love for stories “Ripped straight from the headlines”) it was only a matter of time before Law & Order branched out into true crime. Their first target: the Menendez brothers. It’s a heckuva pick; the Menendez brothers represented a lot of firsts for true crime reporting, including being broadcast live on Court TV. The timing period worked nicely with the OJ case (and even featured a jailhouse conversation with The Juice), and Leslie Abramson even sports a perm almost on par with Marcia Clark’s.
That perm, however, is a great analogy for the two shows. Law & Order almost gets it. Where American Crime Story plunges whole hog into the dirty, crazy, embarrassed-to-admit-you-watch-it fun, Law & Order is still trying to hang onto the idea that they’re a show of some dramatic standing (they aren’t. Those days are long gone). It’s an angle that I, Tonya has elevated into art (proven by the abundance of nominations and wins for major film awards).
So where do we go from here? What’s the next criminal offering to the gods of so-bad-it’s-good entertainment? American Crime Story originally toyed with unlawful activity around hurricane Katrina. True Crime showrunner Rene Balcer has shown interest in a show based on the Oklahoma City bombing. And while other famous criminals, like Amy Fisher and Lorena Bobbitt, seem tawdry enough to make the cut, my money is on Jonbenet Ramsey. Sure, Netflix tackled it with their weird, performance art-esque Casting Jonbenenet, but it could be much, much more.
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