What makes something an “American” crime? It’s a question that’s inadvertently surfaced in true crime entertainment lately.
The trend started with the twin pillars of O.J. Simpson television projects in 2016 — American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, Ryan Murphy’s fictionalized account of the 1995 trial, and the documentary series O.J.: Made in America. Since then, we’ve seen a number of true crime shows — most docuseries, but scripted ones too — being given the title “American [X].”
Netflix has been especially keen on the naming trend recently. There’s 2023’s Waco: American Apocalypse, about the deadly Branch Davidian siege in Texas in 1993. Last year’s American Conspiracy delved into a gnarly conspiracy theory linked to the death of a freelance journalist in West Virginia in the early ’90s. American Nightmare told the horrific story of a woman’s encounter with cops who refused to believe her abduction had been real.
In addition to American Crime Story, which also aired seasons about the murder of Gianni Versace and the Clinton impeachment scandal, there are the other “American” series. American Murder has so far covered the killings of three different women (Shanann Watts, Laci Peterson, and Gabby Petito), while American Manhunt has looked at the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, O.J. Simpson from Bronco chase to trial, and the quest to track down Osama bin Laden.
The trend shows no sign of stopping: Hulu will soon air Good American Family, a dramatization of the convoluted story of Natalia Grace.
Brand strategist and linguist Laurel Sutton suggests that the phenomenon grew out of American Psycho, in which novelist Bret Easton Ellis consciously used the title as a critique of the country’s culture and values that helped create a monster. These true crime shows, similarly, are “attempting to identify something that is specifically American about the kinds of crimes or criminals that they’re profiling,” she says. What that something is, though, is in the eye of the beholder.
“Branding anything with ‘America’ is designed to have all these different resonances for all these different people,” Sutton explains. That’s partly why the word is effective from a marketing perspective, “because it applies to so many different things depending on who you’re talking to.” It’s also a uniquely American trend: “You don’t see that branding in other places. You don’t see German Crime or Dutch Housewives.”
In a 2016 piece on the trend of “American” shows in that era, a branding expert put forth that the word America “codes for a multiplicity of perspectives and outlooks, which is why the word is so common in anthology series, yet also points to a larger collective experience, which is why the word accompanies so many shows that explore race and gender.”
Cristina Mislán teaches media history at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and she points out that the true crime genre acts as “something of a black mirror” to the nation itself, with its history of violence and current precarious status. To call these shows American, she suggests, “says something about what this country is” — with all its contradictions and complications on full display.
One way to think about this bumper crop of true crime titles is that they’re intended to be read ironically, to make you aware that there’s some lie at the heart of what’s being examined.
For example, each of the victims profiled in the American Murder series has been a middle-class white woman supposedly living out a heteronormative version of the “American dream.” For the Peterson and Watts families, that package included marriage, children, and financial prosperity; for Gabby Petito, it included traveling the country with her boyfriend in an idealized #vanlife. All three women projected a positive, upbeat public image, but all three had partners who ultimately murdered them.
The American Murder series takes pains to highlight the ways in which the murders evince larger social themes, including domestic violence, the pressures of parenthood, and, in Petito’s case, the inadequate protections of law enforcement. The series also makes sure you understand it’s aware of the problem it’s perpetuating: “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” wherein the stories of white women who vanish consume far more public interest than those of people of color.
Sutton suggests the irony is part of the appeal; both she and Mislán spoke of a kind of catharsis that can come from seeing this uneasy juxtaposition onscreen. “I think a lot of Americans do have this ironic awareness,” Sutton said. “You want to watch something to see yourself get taken down a little bit. As an American, we’re gonna find out how horrible Americans really are, and I know this in my soul, but it’s nice to hear somebody else say it.”
At the same time, that irony only goes so far when true crime shows inherently peddle what they critique. While American Murder takes pains to demonstrate Shanann Watts’s intense focus on presenting the “perfect” family image for her social media audience, it’s hard not to see such shows as examples of the voyeurism they condemn.
True crime’s fixation on mining individual cases for storytelling may also be part of the problem. “We often want to place everything on individual stories because this is a country of individualism,” Mislán points out. “Part of Americanness and American exceptionalism is this idea of rugged individualism.”
Take American Nightmare, which makes a compelling argument that systemic misogyny undergirded the police response to victim Denise Huskins when she was abducted from her home in 2015. It is both a valiant attempt by the documentarians and all too easy for the audience to zero in on the singular crime at hand regardless. Mislán argues that we have an easier time focusing on the discrete stories of drama, tragedy, and occasional triumph offered by true crime — but a much harder time thinking about the structures that make them possible.
“We tend to not be able to think systemically,” she said, pointing specifically to the impact of policing and the crime beat on American criminal justice.“We get some catharsis, but we never actually hold the system to account at the end of the day.”
Still, there are so many basic aspects of American society that get interrogated through true crime that it remains, for many people, a useful lens through which to think about larger issues. “Crime is a place where everything is heightened,” Sutton says. That pulls us in, and creates an opportunity for us to contemplate how, under the right circumstances, we too could end up in a story like this.
Even these series’ attempts at rectifying narratives that have long been sensationalized imply something about American identity. As Mislán points out, sensationalism is the point: our insatiable appetite for true crime, and the willingness of the media to capitalize on that, is the reason there’s even a narrative to begin with.
To look at the current crop of “American” true crime, then, is to come up with a portrait of America that’s illuminating: clearly flawed, built on broken systems and cultural beliefs that need interrogating — but perhaps, striving for something better.
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