The Pleasures of Crime: Exploring Women's Consumption of and Engagement With True Crime Documentaries

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts major in Communication (Thesis Option)

First Advisor

Estelle Marie M. Ladrido, PhD

Abstract

The true crime genre continues to take the world by storm. From its emergence in the 16th century to its proliferation on online streaming platforms, this genre of film, television, book, and podcast has captured a prominent audience from all over the world. Published literature and popular culture have established the idea that women have a fixation with true crime content and, more commonly, the true crime documentaries. The problem recognized by the researcher within this context has to do with gendered expectations that surround the television viewing of women as well as the influence that domestic power relations have over their consumption of the documentaries.

This critical study focuses on the concept of pleasure, as well as the various parameters that frame women’s engagement with true crime documentaries. As this study was designed through the lens of the cultural studies scholarship, it was vital for the researcher to analyze how the interaction of the concepts of consumption, identification, and regulation, found in the Circuit of Culture model (1997) by Paul du Gay, Stuart Hall, Linda James, Hugh Mackay, and Keith Negus, and their intersection with the concept of pleasure construct the cultural practice.

This research confirms that pleasure is a complicated concept that emerges from the individual, cultural, and technological factors that intersect each other within the viewers’ consumption and engagement with true crime documentaries. Audience studies persists to be a vital area of research in cultural studies, and this study explicates that the audience needs to be critically examined to produce profound interpretations about such an intricate and complex entity.

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