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ABSTRACT
The first season of Serial, to date the most popular podcast in the medium’s decade-long history, told the story of the conviction of 18-year-old Adnan Syed in 2000 for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. At the center of Serial, producer Sarah Koenig presented Syed’s voice, his take on the prosecution’s evidence, and his own contemporaneous experience. This essay examines the way Serial used Syed’s voice to challenge institutional truth claims from within the textual space of crime journalism. “Criminal biography,” as a genre affordance of true crime, offers a textual means to interrogate modes of truth production and representation.
Notes
1. David Remnick, Episode 12: Sarah Koenig on “Serial,” and a Resilient Poet, podcast audio, The New Yorker Radio Hour, http://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/episode-12-sarah-koenig-on-serial-and-a-resilient-poet (accessed January 8, 2016).
2. Jean Murley, The Rise of True Crime: Twentieth Century Murder and American Popular Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2008).
3. Joy Wiltenburg, “True Crime: The Origins of Modern Sensationalism,” The American Historical Review 109, no 5 (2004): 1377–404.
4. Andie Tucher, Froth & Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America's First Mass Medium (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
5. Murley, The Rise of True Crime.
6. Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interview and Other Writings, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980).
7. Stuart Hall, “Introduction,” in Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change, 1935–1965, ed. Anthony Charles H. Smith (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975), 16.
8. James Carey, “Afterword: The Culture in Question,” in James Carey: A Critical Reader, ed. Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 331.
9. Barbie Zelizer, “When Facts, Truth, and Reality are God-Terms: On Journalism's Uneasy Place in Cultural Studies,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 1, no. 1 (2004): 103.
10. Murley, The Rise of True Crime.
11. Anita Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law in True Crime Stories (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 15.
12. Remnick, Episode 12.
13. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law, 21–2.
14. Zelizer, “When Facts, Truth, and Reality are God-Terms,” 103.
15. Robert McChesney, The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008).
16. Ibid., 31.
17. Ray Surette, Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice: Images and Realities (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1992), 59.
18. Stuart Hall, Chas Critcher, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brian Roberts, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 68.
19. Surette, Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice, 60.
20. Hall et. al., Policing the Crisis, 68.
21. Ibid., 69.
22. Roy Lotz, Crime and the American Press (New York: Praeger, 1991), 61.
23. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law, 44.
24. Ibid., 16.
25. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” 93.
26. Ibid., 93.
27. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law, 36.
28. Wiltenburg, “True Crime,” 1395.
29. McChesney, The Political Economy of Media.
30. Hall et. al., Policing the Crisis.
31. See, for example, W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (Boston: Longman, 2012).
32. John Hartley, Understanding News (New York: Methuen, 1982), 83–6.
33. Wiltenburg, “True Crime,” 1383.
34. Murley, The Rise of True Crime.
35. Ibid., 11.
36. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law, 16.
37. Mark Seltzer, True Crime: Observations on Violence and Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2007), 37.
38. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law, 62.
39. Tucher, Froth & Scum.
40. Wiltenburg, “True Crime,” 1398.
41. Hartley, Understanding News, 83–6.
42. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” 81.
43. Ibid.
44. Murley, The Rise of True Crime, 1.
45. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law.
46. Murley, The Rise of True Crime.
47. Megan Sweeney, “Living to Read True Crime: Theorizations from Prison,” Discourse 25, no. 1 and 2 (2002): 59.
48. Surette, Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice, 64.
49. Seltzer, True Crime, 3.
50. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law, 38.
51. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 95.
52. Zelizer, “When Facts, Truth, and Reality are God-Terms,” 110.
53. John Hartley, A Short History of Cultural Studies (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2003), 137–8.
54. McChesney, The Political Economy of Media, 35.
55. Hall et. al., Policing the Crisis. 17.
56. Ibid., 16.
57. John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (London: Macmillan, 1988), 4.
58. Charles R. Acland, “‘Tall, Dark, and Lethal’: The Discourses of Sexual Transgression in the Preppy Murder,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 15, no. 2 (1991): 153.
59. Seltzer, True Crime, 73.
60. Hanna Rosin, “The Real Secret of Serial: Has Sarah Koenig Made Up Her Mind Yet?,” Slate, October 23, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/10/serial_podcast_and_storytelling_does_sarah_koenig_think_adnan_syed_is_innocent.html.
61. Murley, The Rise of True Crime.
62. Naomi Shavin, “Serial’s Greatest Strength was also its Greatest Weakness,” The New Republic, December 18, 2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/120602/serial-greatest-strength-also-greatest-weakness.
63. Rosin, “The Real Secret of Serial.”
64. Kathryn Schulz, “Dead Certainty: How “Making a Murderer” Goes Wrong,” The New Yorker, January 25, 2016, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/dead-certainty.
65. Naomi Shavin, “The Murder Plot Isn’t the Most Captivating Part of ‘Serial,’” The New Republic, November 7, 2014, https://newrepublic.com/article/120199/weirdness-journalist-subject-relationship-serial.
66. Surette, Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice.
67. Wiltenburg, “True Crime.”
68. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 01: The Alibi, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/1/the-alibi (accessed June 28, 2016).
69. Ibid.
70. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 05: Route Talk, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/5/route-talk (accessed June 28, 2016).
71. Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005), 12.
72. Ronald W. Langacker, Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008).
73. James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority,” Representations 2, no. 1 (1983): 134.
74. Hall et. al., Policing the Crisis, 75.
75. Acland, “Tall, Dark, and Lethal.”
76. Hall et. al., Policing the Crisis, 69.
77. Nick Couldry, Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism (London: SAGE Publications, 2010).
78. Langacker, Cognitive Grammar; Catherine Wong, “Collapse of Narrative: A Study of Narrative Distance in the Confessional Narrative in Kazuo Ishiguro's Work,” Procedia—Social and Behavioral Sciences 158 (2014): 57–64.
79. Langacker, Cognitive Grammar, 502.
80. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 04: Inconsistencies, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/4/inconsistencies (accessed June 28, 2016).
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. Langacker, Cognitive Grammar, 502.
85. Koenig, Snyder, and Chivvis, Episode 04.
86. Langacker, Cognitive Grammar, 502.
87. Koenig, Snyder, and Chivvis, Episode 04.
88. Paul Rabinow, “Representations are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Modernity in Anthropology,” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 246.
89. Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interview and Other Writings, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 121.
90. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” 81.
91. Hartley, Understanding News, 83.
92. Sarah Larson, “‘Serial’: The Podcast We’ve Been Waiting For,” The New Yorker, October 9, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/serial-podcast-weve-waiting.
93. Sarah Larson, “What ‘Serial’ Really Taught Us,” The New Yorker, December 18, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/serial-really-taught-us.
94. Koenig, Snyder, and Chivvis, Episode 01.
95. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 08: The Deal with Jay, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, accessed June 28, 2016, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/8/the-deal-with-jay.
96. Shavin, “The Murder Plot.”
97. Koenig, Snyder, and Chivvis, Episode 01.
98. Sweeney, “Living to Read True Crime,” 59.
99. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 02: The Breakup, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/2/the-breakup (accessed June 28, 2016).
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 11: Rumors, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/11/rumors (accessed June 28, 2016).
103. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Peregrine, 1975/1979), 252.
104. Michel Foucault, “Michel Foucault: An Interview by Stephen Riggins,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997).
105. Sweeney, “Living to Read True Crime,” 59.
106. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 09: To Be Suspected, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/9/to-be-suspected (accessed June 28, 2016).
107. Michel Foucault, ed., I, Pierre Riviére, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother: A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century, trans. Frank Jellinek (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982).
108. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 12: What We Know, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/12/what-we-know (accessed June 28, 2016).
109. Koenig, Snyder, and Chivvis, Episode 11.
110. Sarah Koenig, Julie Snyder, and Dana Chivvis, Episode 06: The Case Against Adnan, podcast audio, Serial: Season One, https://serialpodcast.org/season-one/6/the-case-against-adnan-syed (accessed June 28, 2016).
111. Ibid.
112. Foucault, “Michel Foucault.”
113. Sweeney, “Living to Read True Crime,” 59.
114. Zelizer, “When Facts, Truth, and Reality are God-Terms,” 103.
115. The Thin Blue Line. Directed by Errol Morris. United States: American Playhouse, 1988.
116. Murley, The Rise of True Crime, 99.
117. Justin Fenton, “‘Serial’ Case: Adnan Syed Hearing Wraps Up,” The Sun (Baltimore, MD), February 9, 2016.
118. Catherine Hawley, “Criminologist Says True Crime Shows are Having an Impact on Real Life,” WMAR Baltimore, February 3, 2016, http://www.abc2news.com/news/crime-checker/baltimore-city-crime/criminologist-says-true-crime-shows-are-having-an-impact-on-real-life.
119. Thomas Huddleston, Jr., “How True Crime Series are Exposing America’s Criminal Justice System,” Fortune, June 1, 2015, http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/true-crime-series-oj-murderer/.
120. Linda Williams, “Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary,” Film Quarterly 46, no. 3 (1993): 17.
121. Michel Foucault, “Practicing Criticism,” in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977–1984, ed. Lawrence Kritzman (New York: Routledge, 1981/1988), 154.
122. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).
123. Morris, The Thin Blue Line.
124. Lawrence Wright, Remembering Satan (New York: Knopf, 1994).
125. The Staircase, directed by Jean-Xavier De Lestrade (France: Maha Productions, 2004).
126. Biressi, Crime, Fear and The Law, 46.