Crime, Popular Culture, and the Media in the Twenty-First Century
Lindsay Steenberg, Simon McFadden · 2024
This chapter analyses the most significant defining features of crime-based entertainment in the twenty-first century. The fictional crime genre remains a firm staple of popular literature (e.g. Richard Osmond), American television (e.g. Law and Order: Special Victims Unit [NBC, 1999–]), and Hollywood films (e.g. Death on the Nile [Branagh, 2022]). We argue that the most visible and significant mode of crime-based entertainment in the US popular media is true crime. True crime content is entrenched in wider celebrity culture, with infamy and notoriety circulating as desirable goals and fascinating generators of spectacle. True crime encourages participatory culture (in spaces where consumers of crime become producers of content and form active communities) and fluid movement across different media platforms. Furthermore, true crime has been a powerful driver of new media, including the rise of the podcast. True crime content generates an intense intersectional feminist response, sometimes echoed and encouraged by its female fans and creators. This chapter addresses three key effects of true crime: the so-called CSI Effect, dark tourism inspired by true crime, and the practice of dark fandom. Finally, the chapter concludes with an interrogation of the most notorious figure of contemporary popular culture, the serial murderer.