Born Queer, Made Evil? Examining ‘Discovery’ and ‘Construction’ as Competing Methodologies of True Crime

Abstract

In this essay, we argue for the need to go beyond considerations of representation when conceptualising the true crime genre’s relationship to queerness and breach fundamental questions about the form of true crime. We ask: how can true crime works retrace history in a way that problematises rather than reinforces established definitions of ‘deviance,’ and this category’s historical relationship to queerness? To answer these questions, this paper outlines two competing methodologies used by true crime works like Mindhunter and American Horror Story in their respective projects of reexamining the past. Rather than considering possible methodologies for the study of true crime media, we believe that an overview of the divergent methods used by these works enables the implicit ideological investments of such texts to be made clear. First, we discuss a ‘straight’ approach that prioritises the retracing of a past crime through archival material and mimetic recreations so that a long-suppressed truth might be ‘discovered’. Second, we examine a ‘queer’ approach that freely blends fiction and historical fact to present a campy and altogether untenable version of criminality. Throughout, we argue for the utility of the latter, which serves as a productive strategy to reveal the artifice of deviancy itself.