Write a reflective essay based on this question:
In some ways, true crime documentaries provide us with an opportunity to redeem the threat of disorder. We watch terrible crimes and people, but we are given resolution because we have seen the villain apprehended, or we have made the senseless sensible to our minds. But at a deeper psychological level, true crime documentaries satisfy our fantasies of deviancy and can be used as an outlet for our judgment. Write a paper that explores these psychological categories (the safety in meaning, fantasy of deviancy, and the psychological impulse to judge) in relation to true crime documentaries. How are these categories a part of our common social psychology? How might such a participation be described as staring into an abyss that also stares at you (as described in lecture)? Do they encourage a “comfort of paranoia”? Why have such documentaries become so popular and what does this say to you about the health of our social psychology?
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