In Consideration of Serial Violence: the Perils of Repetition and Routine in ‘True Crime’ Documentaries

This chapter suggests that twenty-first-century 'true crime' documentaries provide a useful way into thinking about the cultural tendency to replay violent events. Based on an in-depth reading of The Staircase (De Lestrade 2004-2018) and Season One of the podcast Serial (Koenig, 2014), the chapter draws upon theoretical work on seriality and hauntology to explore the use of reenactment, doubling, rediscovery, and reinvestigation. I argue that 'true crime' documentaries tell us much about the perils of repetition and everyday routine, in particular the tendency to miss what's in plain sight (especially when we've looked and looked again) and the problems that arise when we assume that replaying an event can in itself yield the truth of the matter. In exploring these ideas, 'true crime' documentaries distil twenty-first-century cultural anxieties about the limits of empirical knowledge and the challenges that come with remembering past harms.