Making A Murderer, Netflix’s recent viral sensation about the imprisonment of Stephen Avery, is infuriating in many ways. The content is incredibly provocative, but so is the filming itself; heavily stylised and editorialised but incredibly thorough and with no voiceover commentary, you can’t help but be drawn in. At the time of writing it has convinced so many people that a petition calling for Avery to be pardoned has 250,000 signatures. It highlights how the public can be captivated by a conspiracy theory, but also why these theories, however viable, can often be easily dismissed.
Making A Murderer focuses on Avery, a man previously falsely imprisoned for rape and currently serving life in prison for a murder he says he didn’t commit. He was convicted of killing Teresa Halbach after she visited his home in 2005, two years after he was originally released and whilst he was in the middle of $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County Sherriff’s department. Avery maintains the police framed him, and the filmmakers highlight numerous instances where the police acted with negligence and potentially planted evidence. They also engaged in highly suspect interrogation tactics with Avery’s nephew, Brendan Dassey, who was also convicted.
The film is very thorough, clocking in at ten hours, and has no commentary from the filmmakers. Despite this it is still heavily editorialised, arguing Avery has again been imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. In doing so they leave out certain pieces of evidence that link Avery to the crime, for example his apparent ‘obsession’ with Teresa, his recent purchase of restraints and his sweat being found in her car. When all the evidence is considered, including evidence of a police conspiracy, it is possible, perhaps likely, that Avery is guilty but the police still planted evidence. This middle ground is passed over numerous times throughout the film. For example the confession Brendan gave is said to have been false and coerced, but even if it was true in this case the Reid technique used by the police still regularly causes false confessions amongst juveniles. These are shocking and dangerous revelations, regardless of who is guilty, but by so adamantly professing Avery’s innocence the filmmakers have made it easier to label Making A Murderer a ‘conspiracy theory’, thereby making it easier to dismiss.
This is because there is a conception that conspiracy theorists are all odd men with a laptop and tin foil hat, squirreled away somewhere trawling through blueprints apparently leaked from Area 51. Consequently simply being deemed a conspiracy makes a theory that much harder to prove. The Guardian and The Spectator recently bemoaned the rise of conspiracy theories in politics, largely in relation to left-wing complaints about the media, and argued they were a danger to democracy, which there is undoubtedly evidence for. A study of letters sent to major U.S. newspapers found that when a Republican is president conspiracies about Republicans make up 16% of published letters about conspiracy theories compared to 6% about Democrats. When a Democrat is in power the numbers almost exactly reverse to 15% and 5%. This suggests conspiracy theories come from a minority towards whoever is in power at the time and should be disregarded because they weaken trust in government, but what about when they’re not just theories?
If you read a story tomorrow about the Obama administration secretly selling weapons to Syria via agents in Israel, despite there being an arms embargo, and using the profits to fund anti-communist rebels in a democratically elected country, despite this being directly prohibited by Congress, you would imagine it an insane conspiracy. However this is pretty much exactly what happened in the Iran-Contra affair. How about an article saying the CIA and MI6 were forming a coup against an Australian Prime Minister who wanted to break from the commonwealth and close a CIA base? Or one suggesting the CIA infiltrated media agencies around the world to influence opinion through covert propaganda? Both happened in 1975. Bush didn’t cause 9/11 and Obama was born in America, but completely disregarding anything that could be deemed a conspiracy is almost as dangerous to democracy as believing them all. The government does have these powers, and not investigating and constraining them will lead to misuse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34M2zdLc-2U
The answer then, as it almost always is, is that we need to tread a fine line informed by good research so as to not stray into the realm of the unrealistic. Take Tom Watson’s crusade against the tabloid press and the left wing complaints briefly mentioned previously. In his book on the Murdoch Press, Watson refers to a ‘shadowy’ network building a ‘shadow state’ to control British politics through an ‘invisible web of connections’. A quick trawl through left-wing social media will find similar beliefs propagated regularly; that the media were the only reason Labour lost the election, the right wing press brainwash the public and have politicians in their pockets. This isn’t true and isn’t helpful for Labour to think, and it also detracts from serious study of the influence of the media. Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model of the media posits a scientific analysis of how the media favours the establishment. They make rather grand claims but back them up with masses of data. They argue for subtle factors on numerous systemic levels causing the political economy of the media to favour those in power, there is no mention of a ‘shadowy hand’. When Watson and others talk in these dramatic terms they discredit the study and make it easier for detractors to label the concept a conspiracy, regardless of evidence.
This mirrors Making A Murderer. The filmmakers make some excellent points about corruption and bias in the police and, regardless of Avery’s guilt, this is unacceptable. People may argue that if the right decision was reached then it doesn’t matter, but if they can do it to a guilty person then they can do it to an innocent person too. This should have been the message of Making A Murderer. The lack of bias would have given their criticisms more weight, but instead their profession of Avery’s innocence means these points may be overlooked in the debate over ‘whodunnit’.
I understand why the filmmakers made it this way. They might truly believe Avery is innocent, but they definitely know the easier narrative to sell is ‘innocent man and corrupt cops’, not ‘guilty man’s case may be indicative of widespread but hidden manipulation of the justice system’. It’s the same with the media. It’s easier to think of Rupert Murdoch in a dark tower, committing voodoo with the shrunken heads of Thatcher and Reagan, than it is to think of layer upon layer of political and economic constraints working to subtly filter out dissenting opinions. In one scenario the problem is fixed by getting rid of Murdoch or a few crooked cops, the other… not so much.
words TOM GANE