2016 is in its premature months and we’ve already seen the birth of plenty of new Netflix Original Series’. Say hello to Chelsea Does, released on 23rd January, a four-part documentary starring Chelsea Handler which explores her views on marriage, drugs and racism in Silicon Valley, Northern California. Location aside, many people around the world will be able to connect with these intimately personal and universal issues that we face as humans. Then, there’s Making A Murderer which focuses on allegedly two-time wrongly convicted criminal Steven Avery.
That’s the other Netflix Original documentary series that was released recently, and boy has it made some noise. Created by two film-makers from New York and filmed in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin over the course of ten years, Making A Murderer tells the real life-story of Steven Avery’s life, from a brief overlook of his childhood, to his conviction of the sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beernsten in 1986 and the subsequent break-down of his marriage and custody loss of his children. (Spoiler alert: it wasn’t him).
After new DNA evidence was released in 2003 that excludes Avery from the crime, he was released from prison and with the help of a lawyer, proceeded to sue the Manitowoc County Police Department for $36 million. It goes without saying that with this amount of dollar, Avery would have the choice to never work again and to leave the county that took so much from him. However, due to a shocking turn of events Avery didn’t quite make the cross-country move; instead he was arrested again in 2005 in connection with the murder of local photographer Teresa Halbach. She had come to take pictures of a minivan for sale at Avery’s yard on the day of her death. It is Avery’s trial of Halbach’s murder investigation which the ten-episode Making A Murderer series follows. Avery consistently claims he is innocent, and this is a trial which has sparked conflicting opinions, theories and controversies by viewers worldwide.
Personally, I think what is most remarkable about this series is not the question over Avery’s guilt or innocence. I do not think a man’s luck or misfortune in the U.S. justice system is the main premise of the show, although clearly it has illuminated some important issues about the judicial system that cannot be ignored. There is no doubt that the situation is in need of drastic change when Avery’s experienced defence attorney, Dean Strang, states in the last episode, “I hope Avery is guilty, because I can’t stomach the thought that he is serving life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”
It seems to me that regardless of whether Strang believed Avery was guilty or innocent, more than anything else, he believed that there was a miscarriage of justice. Avery, his client, was not given a fair trial by the State of Wisconsin, and he was denied once and potentially twice for a chance of freedom by members of the court that had the power to decide his fate. As terrible as this is, isn’t the most disturbing thing about this that it took a television screen to reveal these atrocities? Since when was a TV series relied upon to discover the truth of a murder case and help decide a man’s fate?
In creating Making A Murderer, surely the film-makers must accept responsibility for the huge implications that have derived from it – not only Steven Avery, his family, and Teresa Halbach’s family, but for Police departments and court juries everywhere. By presenting the show with dramatic background music and opening and closing credits, the real-life murder of a woman and the fate of Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey are framed in an artsy, entertainment format. Whilst some viewers are wary of the information the show tells them, other viewers eat the information up like its chocolate – and this is scary.
The series, above all, shows the extent to which our trust in politics and our democratic Government has deteriorated if we are resorting to a documentary to tell us what to believe. Although a documentary depicts real events, we must always remember that it is still a form of manipulated media produced by artists with the intention to make us think a certain way. How is Making A Murderer any better than an article from Fox News or the Daily Mail? Well, it’s not. However admirable and good the film-maker’s intentions are, the reality is that the show has been filtered, edited and manipulated to make us believe Avery is innocent and we just don’t know. Some viewers will be watching the show on Netflix as a bit of light entertainment with their Thursday night lasagne and will feel like they have been given a duty to bring justice to a man that the State hasn’t been able to deliver. I truly believe that people are, on the whole, good, yet I can’t help but feel threatened by the power of media once again.
Sadly, the media is everywhere and there really is no way of avoiding it. If you were really smart, you’d know that I was trying to make you think a certain way by writing this article – and suddenly the world we live in seems like a very ironic and cynical place. What I’m trying to say is to be wary folks, because really no one wins. Including Steven Avery.
