Mental images and emotive voices in true crime podcasts focused on female victims

Abstract

The rapid rise in true crime podcasts is a notable trend accompanying the widespread expansion of podcasting in the twenty-first century. Critics and scholars of true crime podcasts are particularly interested in reconciling the predominantly female listenership of these podcasts with content that often focuses on female victims. This chapter considers the presentation of murdered or missing women in a range of podcast series, with reference to questions of voice and the ways in which, even in an audio medium, stories of violence against women can be sensationalist and emotive forms of infotainment. I argue that forms of affective response – of being overwhelmed, of feeling affection for victims – may help to explain the appeal of such true crime podcasts to women. The podcasts chosen for discussion provide a range of production contexts and approaches to their presentation of female victims’ stories, including the American viral sensation Serial (2014), the Audible podcast West Cork (2018), which is set in Ireland and focuses on the unsolved murder of Frenchwoman Sophie Toscan du Plantier, and Missing and Murdered: Finding Cleo (2018), which was produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and explores the disappearance of a young Indigenous girl. After first considering how mental images of victims’ bodies are presented verbally, I examine aspects of the use of the voice in true crime podcasts.

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