With podcasts, books, documentaries and Ryan Murphy-produced Netflix shows, the true crime genre seems to have become an integral part of the entertainment industry.
According to the Pew Research Center, in a 2022 survey, 34% of adult participants who listen to podcasts said they regularly listen to true crime podcasts.
Justin St.Germain, a creative writing professor at Oregon State University who teaches true crime literature classes, believes people have always been fascinated with the darker side of humanity.
“True crime has been popular for at least the last hundred years, so I’m not sure how much interest has risen, but it has changed a lot in that time. Its popularity seems to come in waves,” St. Germain said in an email.
As media has advanced and new listening platforms have developed, it has become easier for people to access these stories.
“I think it’s currently experiencing a peak because crime stories are being told through newer forms of media, especially podcasts, YouTube, and social media,” St. Germain said.
OSU film studies professor, Jon Lewis, who has written a book titled “Hard Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles,” which is about murders that occur in Hollywood, gave his takes on the popularity of the true crime genre.
“There’s just more media (now), so there’s more media on (true crime). I think podcasts especially, it seems true crime lends itself to that medium really well,” Lewis said.
St. Germain said the consumers’ fascination with the true crime genre could be due to a variety of reasons.
“True crime is a euphemism,” St. Germain said. “It’s not really about crime in general, it’s almost always about violent crime, especially murder. Americans have always been fascinated by murder. But whenever I ask my true crime classes that question, they have a lot of different answers.”
Lewis proposed that the interest in true crime may be related to our collective curiosity about death and dying.
“I think our fascination is just a fascination with this other side of life, I guess, the darker side of life,” Lewis said. “ Must be something about human nature.”
True crime tellers today are able to get away with more details than back in the 20th Century in order to keep their listeners captivated. The more details they can give the more invested the viewer will feel.
“ I think the quality of true crime in general is worse now than it was, say, ten years ago. But that’s natural when a genre gets popular and more people try to cash in on that popularity,” St. Germain said.
The interest in criminal cases goes back to decades. But with podcasts, content creators can disclose more of the gruesome details of murder cases to pull in audiences.
Lewis used the Black Dahlia killing in 1947 as an example of a gruesome murder that was on the front page of the newspaper for months.
“(In) the Black Dahlia killing, she was killed, drained of her blood, bisected and mutilated. I don’t know how much more gruesome a crime could be and that was carefully described in the newspapers. I guess today you can be less careful,” Lewis said.
Newspapers and media have covered crime stories for years but would publish limited information. Now, anybody can simply go on their phones and look up the genre and get hundreds of results and multiple different theories for each crime.
