F*ck that documentary about Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel
I was already skeptical about the Netflix documentary series Crime Scene: Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel. Even the title tells you what you need to know. It’s the documentary of the crime scene, fetishizing conspiracy, and the excitement of true crime. It’s not about the victim, Elisa Lam*, the treatment of mental health, and the compassion and services needed for the homeless and recovering.
The film was made about the things that the filmmaker wanted it to be. That’s fine. But it’s part of a larger issue that I think about a lot: the trauma-tainment of true crime. As I constantly remind you in this, I am not condemning anyone who watches and enjoys true crime (I include myself). But they really did Elisa dirty. She was struggling with an episode that ended in her drowning, but let’s make it about the “haunted” Cecil hotel and the blights of Skid Row that surround it. The Cecil Hotel was home to criminals, but more than not, it was also home to people who were struggling and thrown away by society and had nowhere to turn.
The series tries to play the “we live in a society where…” angle where a man was trolled by people because internet sleuths pointed at him as the killer. His life fell apart, and I have empathy. But as he was crying, I was screaming WHAT ABOUT ELISA AND HER FAMILY?
I’ve been meaning to write something more about the true crime industrial complex, and its worst offender, Crime Con. Meanwhile, in my insomnia I fired up Canva and made this graphic, to be updated.
Is one quadrant bad? Do true crime properties owe anything to victims? Do these need to address social issues? Nobody needs to make anything and nobody needs to watch anything. But we can do better.
* I included this book in my roundup, but Gone at Midnight: The Tragic True Story Behind the Unsolved Internet Sensation (despite its title) is a thoughtful consideration of Elisa Lam and how she was caught in a fetishized mystery.
**I was also livid when I realized that this series was directed by Joe Berlinger, who, in fact, did make one of the best, and most thoughtful true crime documentaries, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills. I don’t know what happened, perhaps this is what he thought would sell more these days?
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