Criminal justice in the middlebrow imagination: The punitive dimensions of Making a Murderer

Abstract

Popular documentary representations of crime and punishment have traditionally tended to fall into two camps: programs that are critical of law enforcement agencies and those that are sympathetic to them. In this article, we show how programs that present themselves as critical of legal authorities can nonetheless reinforce the “law and order punitivism” that underlay the ratcheting up of harsh punishment in the late 20th century. In a case study of the popular documentary miniseries Making a Murderer, we show how this can happen when texts fetishize the question of a criminal defendant’s innocence, adopt a “good versus evil” approach to players in the criminal justice system, and perpetuate a procedural rather than substantive vision of justice. Arguments are supported by a close reading of Making a Murderer and illustrated by a line of discussion it inspired in an internet forum.