wfgodot
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Good article in The New Yorker I posted on the Berry-DeJesus-Knight general thread. (Caveat: when author Sasha Weiss discusses the Coetzee novel, the first quotation from it may be disturbing.) Weiss asks if the preponderance of information we learn when reading the grim details of true crime can in fact damage us.
In the excerpt from Natascha Kampusch's book about her eight year ordeal, she voices the same concerns, this time from the perspective of a victim of a kidnap/hostage victim. How much is too much? In terms of the victims, is there a point when should just we leave well enough alone?
After kidnap: Natascha Kampusch on being freed after 8 years in captivity (Guardian)
There's a certain voyeuristic quality when reading about any crime. I've read scores if not hundreds of true crime books, and more reports than I care to remember about crimes in the newspapers and magazines.
The question: how much do we, the public, have a right to know, and how much do we need to know? Is there a point in learning of the prurient details of what went on? At what point is that information too much information? At what point are both the victims, and the reader, damaged by the facts of what took place?
In the excerpt from Natascha Kampusch's book about her eight year ordeal, she voices the same concerns, this time from the perspective of a victim of a kidnap/hostage victim. How much is too much? In terms of the victims, is there a point when should just we leave well enough alone?
The Cleveland victims: Our hunger for the obscene details (New Yorker)---
If the public feels a certain possessiveness over the innocent victims, it also feels possessive over their abuse. There’s a sense that we have the right to know all about it. As soon as the victims are interviewed by the police, parts of their testimony are leaked out and are instantly canonized as emblems of evil and perversity. There are many more horrific moments and by now they’re widely known, so there’s no point in listing them here. The details themselves take on a stock quality, making it easy to imagine what went on inside the house on Seymour Avenue before we’re even told. But it doesn’t stop many people from continuing to ask questions and wanting to know more.
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I can’t help asking, for whom, and for what purpose, were these details publicized? Why do I need to know what I now know?
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After kidnap: Natascha Kampusch on being freed after 8 years in captivity (Guardian)
the rest at the links above---
Outside, a media feeding frenzy raged. Pictures of my dungeon appeared in the newspapers. The concrete door stood wide open. My precious few possessions – my diaries and the few items of clothing – had been uncaringly thrown around by the men in white protective suits. I was forced to watch as my tiny private world, locked away for so long, was splashed across the front pages. Everything I had managed to hide, even from the kidnapper, had now been dragged out into the public eye, which cobbled together its own version of the truth.
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But despite my openness, the media wouldn't let go. One headline followed the next, and more and more absurd speculations dominated the reports. It seemed as if the horrible truth by itself wouldn't be horrible enough, as if it had to be embellished above and beyond any bearable degree.
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There's a certain voyeuristic quality when reading about any crime. I've read scores if not hundreds of true crime books, and more reports than I care to remember about crimes in the newspapers and magazines.
The question: how much do we, the public, have a right to know, and how much do we need to know? Is there a point in learning of the prurient details of what went on? At what point is that information too much information? At what point are both the victims, and the reader, damaged by the facts of what took place?