The techniques used on a book jacket to shore up consumer trust are reminiscent of Jacques Derrida’s concept of artifactuality, a portmanteau term that combines “artifact” and “actuality.”[1] This term indicates that there is an “authentic” actuality that exists, while also reminding us of the constructed nature of actuality. The actuality presented to the consumer is made up of choices that, Derrida stresses, are never neutral.[2] Derrida uses “artifactuality” specifically to talk of the calculated choices made in the production of television, but it is a framework that is useful for other mediums also, as it elucidates the way in which the packaging of a true-crime text harnesses artifice to assert “truths”. In our everyday lives, we believe that the organisation of our days is organically fashioned, insofar as we assume that we do not self-produce every aspect of our lives. It is a perception that we apply to true crime also: the consumer is encouraged to overlook the artfulness of the narrative. Yet it is this very same artfulness that constitutes the purported “authenticity” of a true-crime narrative. Mindhunter’s construction of truth is first noticeable in its use of blurb from Patricia Cornwell, a prolific American author of crime fiction. Cornwell remarks: ‘John Douglas is the FBI’s pioneer and master of investigative profiling, and one of the most exciting figures in law enforcement’. In this endorsement, two terms in particular stand out: ‘pioneer’, and ‘master’. They signal to the consumer that Douglas’s narrative is the first of its kind and is worthy of trust. However, the irony of a fiction writer backing a supposedly “truthful” text is compounded by the fact that many endorsements are in fact empty gestures. Some writers, when approached for testimonials are less than forthcoming, as Nick Clark divulges: ‘“Just say whatever you want,”’ and ‘“I haven't got time, [...] [j]ust make it up.”’[3] Their impact is further reduced when it is considered that acquiring a blurb is, as publisher at The Friday Project, Scott Pack remarks in an interview with the Independent: ‘“part of a wider marketing drive to create a shorthand for readers[.]”’[4] Therefore, a shorthand operates as a tool to assure the consumer of a text’s “authenticity” because it is written by an author the consumer respects or admires. To link this back to Derrida, these “facts” are, Derrida warns, confusedly called ‘information or communication’.[5] In portraying “facts,” a true-crime enthusiast’s desire to experience privileged insights into law enforcement agencies is exploited, capturing the ability of artifactuality to conceal a medium’s contrived identity. Using a well-known author to support a book therefore conveys to the consumer that the information that has been presented to them is objective and trustworthy, if the consumer does not dig beneath the surface. Additionally, the blurb on the reverse of the book is another formation of “authenticity” that the consumer is directed to invest in. Mindhunter’s assures: ‘John Douglas has looked evil in the eye, and made a vocation of understanding it’. It reiterates to the consumer that the text will provide unequivocal accuracy that will assuage their fears by deciphering ‘evil.’ True crime is not a medium that is read for plot, as Laura Browder contends, ‘but for detailed description’.[6] The “information” given in the text resulted from interviews with violent offenders, placing Douglas in the position of teacher and authority, and therefore suggesting to the reader it is an educational experience to consume this text. The blurb reinforces this notion by declaring: ‘individual case histories including those of Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, [and] Ted Bundy’ will be analysed by Douglas. These three men, Jean Murley argues, ‘have become landmarks in the American popular imagination.’[7] By promising to speak on ‘individual case histories’ of these ‘landmarks’, the aura of fact is upheld by the notion that it will be reported with, as Browder outlines, ‘an air of authority enhanced by the journalistic, “non-literary” style’.[8] Moreover, the names Dahmer, Manson, and Bundy serve in this context as buzzwords that alert the reader to the purported “truth” of this text, in that it is at least based in reality. Their inclusion in the blurb helps to, in Derridean terms, constitute an actuality the reader of a true-crime text is familiar with. It is a text promising to allow the reader to criminally profile like Douglas by looking ‘evil in the eye.’ It is a particularly tantalizing prospect when it is considered, for example, as Murley suggests, ‘Bundy was one of the most devastatingly deceptive serial killers of true crime’s formative period[.]’[9] Men like Dahmer, Manson, and Bundy therefore become canonical in our collective psyche, and the need to understand them sustains interest. With true crime fictionalising the individuals and their crimes, fiction bleeds into reality with the separation between truth and dramatisation waning the more the medium is consumed. In an interview with the Guardian in 2019, psychologist David Canter unapologetically remarks: ‘“Douglas’s writings should be in the fiction section”’.[10] If looking at Douglas’s Mindhunter through a Derridean framework, Canter’s opinion is certainly justified. Artifactuality provides a useful lens with which to realise the duplicity of the “information” given by Mindhunter’s book jacket. As consumers, we must be aware of , as Derrida encourages, the filtration of the “actuality” that is presented to us. Therefore, true-crime narratives, much like many mediums, are made. References [1] Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews, trans. by Jennifer Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), in Zlibrary <https://b-ok.cc/book/964742/79946e> [accessed 20 March 2021], p.3. [2] Ibid., p.3. [3] Nick Clark, ‘Why Blurbs Remain Important in the Digital Age’, Independent, 21 December 2012 <https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/why-blurbs-remain-important-digital-age-8429562.html#r3z-addoor> [accessed 16 March 2021], np. [4] Clark, np. [5] Derrida, p.3. [6] Laura Browder, ‘True Crime’, in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, ed. by Catherine Nickerson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp.121-134 (p.125). [7] Jean Murley, The Rise of True Crime: Twentieth Century Murder and American Popular Culture (Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2008), in VLeBOOKS <https://www.vlebooks.com/Vleweb/Product/Index/565640> [accessed 15 March 2021], p.4. [8] Browder, p.125. [9] Murley, p.73. [10] Tom Seymour, ‘The Real Mindhunters: Why “Serial Killer Whispers” Do More Harm than Good’, Guardian, 19 August 2019 <https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/aug/19/the-real-mindhunters-why-serial-killer-whisperers-do-more-harm-than-good> [accessed 16 March 2021], np. Author Biography
Emily Farmer is currently an MA student, studying Crime and Gothic Fictions at Bath Spa University. With interests ranging from Sensationalist fiction to Scandinavian Noir, Emily’s most recent research has concerned the misplaced attention given to the perpetrators by true-crime narratives, as well as their constructions of “truth.”
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