True Crime, Exploitation, and Why I Love Emma Donoghue
True crime, as a genre, is kind of a mess. I have grounds to say this because I’ve been into true crime on and off since elementary school, when I watched my first Top Ten Unsolved Mysteries video on YouTube. And the truth is that Donoghue’s portrayal of the vulture culture (lol) surrounding Ma and Jack’s return is really not all that far off from reality. You have to imagine a good chunk of the flashing cameras belonging to the New York Post or Gawker, websites driven more by clicks than integrity.
Speaking as a fan of both true crime and journalism, I can say that a whole lot of true crime writing is exploitative- there’s more of a focus on killers than their victims, and when they attention do get is focused on the tragedy of their situation. They’re valued only for their trauma, and discarded if they don’t act the perfect victim. This isn’t universal -- there’s lots of really good true crime media that does interesting investigative work -- but it’s something anyone who’s looked up a case or two can confirm. People become their situations, a subheader in a monster's Wikipedia article.
However, Emma Donoghue not only avoids exploiting the situation, she seems to be very specifically subverting typical true crime tropes. I first noticed this in her portrayal of Old Nick- or rather, the lack thereof. Old Nick receives a total of maybe a few pages in the whole book, is shown only as an antagonistic, inhuman force, and gets not one word of sympathy or humanization. And that’s how it should be. I don’t care about Old Nick’s childhood trauma or how his mother who abandoned him looked like Ma or whatever other excuse another book might try and impose on his character in a desperate attempt to be “edgy” by introducing "both sides". Old Nick is a bad guy, and that’s all he is, because that's all he needs to be.
The choice to narrate through Jack also really helps, because he simply isn’t capable of rendering the events he’s going through in an exploitative way. While another book may go hard on the descriptions of Old Nick’s abuse of Ma, Room entrusts the reader to read between the lines- it’s subtle, and it’s horrifying, but it’s not exploitative.
Finally, Room is about more than their trauma. The entire second half is devoted to their recovery and re-integration into society. Their personhood has been tied to and controlled by Room for all of Jack’s life and nearly a third of Ma’s, so while it will undoubtedly always be a part of them, it is not all of them. By spending so much of the narrative on the recovery, Donoghue emphasizes this point. Further, while this half of the book has the characters out of imminent danger and removes the suspense that drove the first two sections, it still manages to be just as much of a page-turner-proving that the thing we all cared about was never the situation, or Old Nick, it was Ma and Jack.
I think Room is a really good example of how to tastefully cover difficult topics. While Donoghue is writing about something that happens in real life and is oftentimes reported on in an exploitative, harmful way, she does so with caution, awareness, and care.
Great post! I totally agree that Donoghue does a great job of telling a story about a traumatic experience without dehumanizing or exploiting the victims. Especially in the second half of the book, we focus on Ma and Jack as people and not the situation. My guess would be that Donoghue thought about this really consciously because of the way she depicts media attention around Ma and Jack. Jack sees himself presented as subhuman and reduced to something to be pitied and Ma is almost openly criticized in the interview she does, which makes me think that Donoghue not only wanted to avoid the problems of typical media coverage of crime but also set out to openly criticize them.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about this while reading! As Ma and Jack transition into society, it occurred to me how much they have to get used to and how far they have to go, but also how little we actually care about people like this after their initial appearance in the media about their experience. They're discarded after that, and I'd hope the majority of that reason is privacy, but it's true that we do make people into their experiences. Just look at the interview Ma gave! None of those questions were meaningful in any way, it was all about the experience and exploiting Ma for money. I know she wanted to get the right story out there, but she honestly didn't. I felt so bad for her -- working with the media is one of the toughest things to do, especially with a sensitive story like hers. They're going to twist it so they get views or clicks or whatever, but on top of that, they didn't even ask her substantial questions. The whole thing was horrible and I wish Ma had done something else instead. Thank God her lawyer was there to stick up for her and tell them not to ask about the things she told them not to ask about and to make sure Jack wasn't seen at all.
ReplyDeleteI love this. Room stands out among other stories like this by how it goes out of its way to not give Old Nick a voice or basically any page time. He's only portrayed as a monster who is violent and absolutely evil--that's it. There's no "Into the mind of a killer" or some tragic, unearthed backstory that explains and even justifies his actions portion of the story. We don't even learn his name because IT'S NOT IMPORTANT. What's important here is Jack and Ma and their experience as survivors through a horrific time, and Donoghue does such a good job of emphasizing that.
ReplyDeleteNice post, I totally agree. I would say also that Donaghue accomplishes a respectful portrayal by narrating Room as being not all bad (see Solo's post) through Jack's eyes - he sees it as a place of wonder, not squalor, and he shows us just how much he adores it in many ways. We know of course that his upbringing has been cruel, but we are not asked to put him in that context. We see him as a five year old growing up and learning about the world, not as a "Bonsai Boy."
ReplyDeleteYes! I love Room specifically for how KIND Donahue is to Ma and Jack. As another true crime stan, the community loves the detail--and often the most painful, traumatic ones. Furthermore, journalism, in part because of the sheer volume, another because of interest, tends to cover the grittiest most horrific crimes. Thus, when consuming true crime media, most people internalize the bias of their sources, often the desire for the horror. Donahue, however, actively undoes this rhetoric and rhythm by giving us such a long recovery and a non-partial narrator. Great post, Nath!
ReplyDeleteI think your point about how little information is actually given about Old Nick is really telling. It reminds me of the push recently for the media not to give the name of terrorists or mass shooters, in an attempt to tone down some of the glorification that happens in situations like that. We see this in Room as we never actually know Old Nick's real name. In this sense, it really focuses on Ma and Jack as the victims and getting the help that they need, and less of giving attention to Nick, as the media is so fond of doing.
ReplyDeleteComing from the perspective of us as a class reading and being somewhat fascinated with Jack's and Ma's story, analyzing it like those academics do, I think it helps our perspective that we only hear Jack's understanding of events and less the media's. I think we get a more complete story, and one which is crucially not real, there aren't any people who it could harm. Also, there is no implication in the story that Old Nick is someone with any amount of sympathetic characteristics, something even better true crime sometimes will do.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, True Crime. I hate to admit it, but I am semi-fan of the true crime genre. After having grown up watching shows like America's Most Wanted, it probably isn't terribly hard to imagine some of the videos I'd watch on YouTube or the links I'd gravitate towards on the internet. And yet, you cannot deny the fact that the genre is a bit of a mess at its core. Paparazzi and the media definitely don't do anything to help, often dramatizing the story or even poking fun at it at times.
ReplyDeleteBarely portraying the antagonistic villainous characters is something which the media attempted to do most recently with several shootings and is something which I think is a wonderful idea, as long as it is evenly spread.
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I think the points you make about how the media likes to focus on the criminal are really good. Something that pops into my head is the Netflix documentary on Ted Bundy. I think it is interesting how Donoghue manages to criticize that while also avoiding doing the same thing.
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