Media and the Murderer: Jack the Ripper, Steven Avery and an Enduring Formula for Notoriety by Rebecca Frost

Author:Rebecca Frost [Frost, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime, Murder, Serial Killers
ISBN: 9781476681528
Google: 5en5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: McFarland
Published: 2020-08-18T20:31:09.867486+00:00

Demands on the Audience

One of the consequences of the more recent, less formal narratives has been the ways in which authors address their readers. Indirect references are perhaps the more common, since they could also be used in more formal texts, but the direct addressing of comments to readers has begun to spring up. While indirect comments—the Dionysus Group, for example, indicating that “clear thinking people can accept that Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery are guilty”14 and thus indicating that any readers who disagree are therefore not ­clear-thinking—offer insight into authors’ ways of thinking about their audiences, the direct address positions readers as active participants instead of passive recipients of knowledge.

The fact that delving into the Jack the Ripper narrative means working through over a century of knowledge sets it apart from Making a Murderer. Most Ripper texts include an overview of the murders, more or less ­in-depth depending on what the author wishes to prove, and has to both introduce readers to credible information discovered since the crimes and dispel ­long-standing rumors. While some books are clearly written for those who already have a working knowledge of the case, the majority anticipate ­first-time readers who will need all of this background information already ­well-known to those in the field. The anticipated reader of a new Ripper text wants to learn who the “real” Ripper was, and thus the author is able to position him- or herself as an authority to the novice audience. Ripper authors do not frequently invite their readers to imagine themselves in the place of any of the people involved in their narrative, and are far more likely to limit the presentation of information so that their conclusion appears to be solid and incontrovertible.

Readers of texts about Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey are expected to have seen Making a Murderer and thus to already be aware of the fact that the narrative is not actually ­clear-cut. The rare reader who has picked up a book without watching the docuseries is often urged to do so before proceeding so that all parties, author and reader, are working from the same original text. Whether the author wishes to persuade the reader that Making a Murderer was right or wrong, the assumption is that all information presented in the docuseries—or at least in the season that had aired by the time the book went to publication—is already known to the reader, and therefore the reader is indeed able to form and defend opinions on their own.

The directives to the reader are clear orders: “If you still have any doubts, go to your television set.”15 While the author is himself making a clear case, it is one for which readers can find support in that shared text of the docuseries. When addressing a particularly difficult string of evidence, “read this as many times as necessary.”16 Making a Murderer may have simplified information, but the book will be as complex as possible, with the added benefit that a reader need not hit pause or rewind in order to review it.

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