Injustice narratives in a post-truth society: emotional discourses and social purpose in Southwest of Salem: the story of the San Antonio four

ABSTRACT

This article discusses Southwest of Salem: the story of the San Antonio four (2016, Deborah Esquinazi) as a feature-length example of the injustice narrative documentary. It studies links between its narrative strategies and emotional engagement using the principles of cognitive theory to explain the diverse ways such a film can be received by viewers. Despite its long history and popularity in journalism, literature, film and television, the true crime genre and its subcategories have rarely earned critical praise or value. The intention here is to discuss how we can value this documentary and others for the ways they encourage emotional engagement, not as a strategy designed merely for entertainment, but to encourage critical debate on the infallibilities of institutional discourses, especially the manipulation of emotion in the legal system. As a consequence, this article will argue injustice narrative documentaries are not simply cliched and voyeuristic sensationalism, but instead have a valid social purpose.

KEYWORDS:

• documentary
• true crime
• emotion
• storytelling
• cognitive theory

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Full titles are as follows: Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996), Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000) and West of Memphis (2012).

2 See for example D’Addario, D “The Hidden dangers of TV’s True Crime Obsession” Time Magazine, 2016, accessed 20 Feb, 2019, http://time.com/4170779/the-hidden-danger-of-tvs-true-crime-obsession/; Marsh, L “Murder They Wrote” in Dissent OnLine Magazine, 2016, accessed 20 Feb 2019, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/true- crime-serial-making-murderer-staircase-jinx

3 In reference to the oft cited idea that documentary is the ‘discourse of sobriety’ (Nichols 1991, 3).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George S. Larke-Walsh

George S. Larke-Walsh Ph.D is an Assistant Professor in the Media Arts department at the University of North Texas. Her scholarly focus is on the crime genre in fiction film, television and documentary. She is specifically interested in processes of audience engagement and has published journal articles on performativity, emotion, gender and genre, and a book on ‘Screening the Mafia’ in Hollywood cinema (2010). She has recently edited a new collection ‘A Companion to the Gangster Film' (2018).