True victims: men’s privilege, class, and violence against women in Making a Murderer and The Jinx

ABSTRACT

Portrayals of accused men in the true crime television (TV) documentary series Making a Murderer (2015) and The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015) mark a key historical moment for voiceless female murder victims. We mark this moment by considering how class politics plays out for Steven Avery and Robert Durst when it is part of the relative storytelling privilege they enjoy. Our study emphasises this privilege as an acute form of entitlement that is assured for men across the intersections of class, gender, and whiteness. To do this, we see Avery and Durst portrayed as underdogs in the American criminal justice system and observe their worlds-apart socioeconomic status coalescing with gendered justice. Our argument extends existing scholarship on the series, and true crime TV about men’s violence against women, by insisting that screen and social agency for accused men is a particular privilege afforded by mediated culture. Its creation of men as symbolic victims risks excusing violence against women by focusing on perpetrating men’s troubled lives as explanations for their crimes.

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous peer reviewers for engaging with this work and offering helpful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The clipped scene is available at https://youtu.be/GjPCk494e5Q.

2. Morris Black is the overlooked victim in The Jinx. The invisibility of male murder victims is a consequence of a gendered spectatorial domination of women victim’s bodies proliferating in true crime texts.

3. Durst’s conviction for murdering Susan Berman is reported by The Guardian, September 202021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/17/robert-durst-found-guilty-of-first-degree-in-susan-berman-trial. Its report of his November 2021 indictment for Kathie McCormack Durst’s murder appears here,

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/01/robert-durst-indicted-murder-accusation-kathie-durstandhttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-11-01/robert-durst-indicted-in-new-york-in-death-of-his-first-wife-kathie.

4. As Durst was also charged with Kathie McCormack Durst’s murder some 39years after her death the public interest contribution of The Jinx, and true crime docuseries generally, is not disputed as we make our points about gendered justice and men’s privilege. However, Durst died on 10 January 2022, meaning that his conviction for Susan Berman’s murder is vacated. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/10/robert-durst-convicted-murderer-disgraced-heir-dies-78#:~:text=He%20was%2078.,killing%20of%20his%20first%20wife.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalia Vedric

Natalia Vedric completed a dissertation on victims in true crime, graduating with First Class Honours. She is preparing to start her PhD program on media and cultural analysis of Conspiracy Theories. She is based in Croatia.

Janine Little

Janine Little is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at Deakin University, Australia, and supervised Natalia’s Honours dissertation. She is published extensively on media and cultural analysis of gender, class, and race. Her current work is about screen, literary and news media genre depictions of men’s violence against women and children.