Dead Girls
June 28, 2018 3:21 AM Subscribe
Alice Bolin's Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession "attempts to investigate why we are so obsessed with grim images of beautiful women and their overwhelming influence on our culture—from the art that we consume to the ways in which we view living women as they express their own motives and determinations." [Esquire]
Why We Love—and Need to Leave Behind—Dead Girl Stories by Kristen Martin
How to Write a Feminist “Dead Girl” Story by Emma Copley Eisenberg
Alice Bolin's 'Dead Girls' Contains One Essay That Could Explain Why Women Are So Attracted To Magic by Sadie Trombetta
The Girls Who Die For Nice Guys’ Narratives by Priscilla Frank
Also:
Infinite Regression: A Conversation with Alice Bolin
DEAD GIRLS: Alice Bolin on the Saintly White Women Who Are Literally Killing Us
“Who Gets to Be a Girl Is Contested”: Alice Bolin Talks Dead Girls and Women’s Pain
Essays by Alice Bolin:
The Oldest Story: Toward a Theory of a Dead Girl Show
The Daughter as Detective
"Lonely Heart"
What People Should Read About L.A. Before They Move to L.A.
Why We Love—and Need to Leave Behind—Dead Girl Stories by Kristen Martin
How to Write a Feminist “Dead Girl” Story by Emma Copley Eisenberg
Alice Bolin's 'Dead Girls' Contains One Essay That Could Explain Why Women Are So Attracted To Magic by Sadie Trombetta
The Girls Who Die For Nice Guys’ Narratives by Priscilla Frank
Also:
Infinite Regression: A Conversation with Alice Bolin
DEAD GIRLS: Alice Bolin on the Saintly White Women Who Are Literally Killing Us
“Who Gets to Be a Girl Is Contested”: Alice Bolin Talks Dead Girls and Women’s Pain
Essays by Alice Bolin:
The Oldest Story: Toward a Theory of a Dead Girl Show
The Daughter as Detective
"Lonely Heart"
What People Should Read About L.A. Before They Move to L.A.
Going to read more of these but I got to say, reading the Virgin Suicides (multiple dead girls! A family of dead girls! Such unknowable, beautiful dead girls!) while being a survivor of a teen suicide epidemic was a fucking trip. It was like reading a shitty anthropological study on my friends. The beautiful dead girl as an object of pity but not identification is definitely a commonality.
One of the variations I find interesting is Homicide - there, the dead girl is a hell of a lot younger (6), and is black - almost all of the dead girls are white. And, I don't know, it seems more reasonable that the audience for a cop drama would not personally identify with a 6 year-old than personally identify with a teenage or young woman.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:28 AM on June 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
One of the variations I find interesting is Homicide - there, the dead girl is a hell of a lot younger (6), and is black - almost all of the dead girls are white. And, I don't know, it seems more reasonable that the audience for a cop drama would not personally identify with a 6 year-old than personally identify with a teenage or young woman.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:28 AM on June 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
Wow this is a great collection.
I myself am a conflicted fan of My Favorite Murder -- I think a lot of criticism of the show is spot-on. And although the hosts are very open and vocal about their own anxieties, I do wonder about the effects of a giant anxiety reflection circle. For example I got really tired of the constant semi-joking refrain of "Stay out of the woods! Don't ever go in the wilderness!" Come on, people! The woods is one of the few damn places where women don't generally have to deal with men!
The show has improved and the hosts are, I think, really dedicated to improving, to centering victims (when the "structure" of the story allows it), to generally promoting positivity. It's still an open question how far the structure of true-crime can be changed though.
And today I also wonder about the impact of true-crime on our (by our I mean "white women") perceptions of the police. For example, I've been reading a lot of Golden State Killer "community" stuff recently and these "communities" have been extremely positive on the detective who finally solved the case--also extremely positive on the woman police detective who worked on it on the 1970s -- but not so much interested in "why was a police officer able to get away with being a serial killer for so long?" They're generally uninterested in discussing ethical drawbacks to familial DNA screening. Fans/"communities" put effort into solving these cases but the "best ending" of a true crime narrative is still a police officer who solves everything--even in cases where the police get the wrong guy "at first".
posted by Hypatia at 7:41 AM on June 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
I myself am a conflicted fan of My Favorite Murder -- I think a lot of criticism of the show is spot-on. And although the hosts are very open and vocal about their own anxieties, I do wonder about the effects of a giant anxiety reflection circle. For example I got really tired of the constant semi-joking refrain of "Stay out of the woods! Don't ever go in the wilderness!" Come on, people! The woods is one of the few damn places where women don't generally have to deal with men!
The show has improved and the hosts are, I think, really dedicated to improving, to centering victims (when the "structure" of the story allows it), to generally promoting positivity. It's still an open question how far the structure of true-crime can be changed though.
And today I also wonder about the impact of true-crime on our (by our I mean "white women") perceptions of the police. For example, I've been reading a lot of Golden State Killer "community" stuff recently and these "communities" have been extremely positive on the detective who finally solved the case--also extremely positive on the woman police detective who worked on it on the 1970s -- but not so much interested in "why was a police officer able to get away with being a serial killer for so long?" They're generally uninterested in discussing ethical drawbacks to familial DNA screening. Fans/"communities" put effort into solving these cases but the "best ending" of a true crime narrative is still a police officer who solves everything--even in cases where the police get the wrong guy "at first".
posted by Hypatia at 7:41 AM on June 28, 2018 [6 favorites]
"The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world." --Edgar Allan Poe
One of the squickiest quotes I've ever seen.
This being said, are we talking about an especially American trope, or is it more world-wide?
Also, the other side of the dead girl thing is that the deaths of men aren't considered especially important.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:46 AM on June 28, 2018
One of the squickiest quotes I've ever seen.
This being said, are we talking about an especially American trope, or is it more world-wide?
Also, the other side of the dead girl thing is that the deaths of men aren't considered especially important.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 7:46 AM on June 28, 2018
Here's a good article on the subject I was coincidentally reading ten minutes ago.
posted by kozad at 8:12 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by kozad at 8:12 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
One of the variations I find interesting is Homicide - there, the dead girl is a hell of a lot younger (6), and is black
And, we're never allowed to forget her name. Her name is Adena Watson, and the one point at which Bayliss starts to depersonalize her, he starts to say (like in the non fiction book by David Simon, upon which the show is based) "This broad--" and he pulls himself up short. He is horrified in that moment.
And we, as the audience are supposed to be horrified. The Adena Watson case on Homicide absolutely is featured as a white man's tragedy, but they did, at least, make sure we remembered her name, and that she was a person.
(BTW, her real name, the girl really murdered in Baltimore, was Latonya Wallace. Her case was also never closed.)
posted by headspace at 8:55 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
And, we're never allowed to forget her name. Her name is Adena Watson, and the one point at which Bayliss starts to depersonalize her, he starts to say (like in the non fiction book by David Simon, upon which the show is based) "This broad--" and he pulls himself up short. He is horrified in that moment.
And we, as the audience are supposed to be horrified. The Adena Watson case on Homicide absolutely is featured as a white man's tragedy, but they did, at least, make sure we remembered her name, and that she was a person.
(BTW, her real name, the girl really murdered in Baltimore, was Latonya Wallace. Her case was also never closed.)
posted by headspace at 8:55 AM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I used to identify way too much with the Lady of Shallot.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:10 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:10 AM on June 28, 2018 [2 favorites]
Wow, thanks for a great post-- this is firmly in my wheelhouse as someone who works in a field (disaster studies) that is very easily turned into pity porn and "inspiring" stories rather than representing the totality of the lived experience.
I also recently started interning in a position that requires me to work extensively with law enforcement and medical responders and other people whose job it is to deal with deal bodies specifically, and what really struck me at first was how totally disconnected the experience of working with female murder victims and other violent deaths is from our narratives about it. I don't usually handle the bodies directly, but I spend a lot of time talking to people who do, and I look at a lot of crime scene photos and reports and paperwork, etc. And it's just.... completely divorced from the way these things get written about. Yes, many of the folks I work with are desensitized to what they see every day (and they probably have to be to keep doing their job.) And yes, they do talk-- sometimes a little callously-- about the deceased (again, a function of compartmentalization and continuous exposure.) But no one thinks it's glamorous or romanticizes dead women-- they know it's grim fucking work and there's absolutely nothing sexy about punching out thigh muscle samples for toxicology screening or peeling the skin off a decedent's neck so they can take more accurate photographs of the stab wound. And no one, at least no one I've run into, seems to harbor any fantasies about being one who solves the case, and if they do solve the case, it both seems to matter a great deal to them personally (these are some of the most dedicated people I've ever been around, who do their awful jobs for chickenshit pay at terrible hours; no one lasts who doesn't care on a spiritual level) and also not matter at all, because they know another one is coming in the door tomorrow.
Which, big fucking whoop, fiction is not like real life, who could have suspected? But at the same time, hands-on experience (actually it's hands-off experience, they take the hands for fingerprinting, hah), has really highlighted the stark contrast between what actually goes on, and the cultural and psychological themes that are clearly being dealt with in Dead Women Fiction. So much of the crime genre is just so obviously about misogyny and women's bodies and the male sexual fantasy of ultimate female passivity and male heroism... so much so that writers aren't even trying to reflect the emotional reality of what actually happens! Which, again, I guess I knew in an academic way, but it is striking how apparent it is. At this point I can't believe anyone thinks we're all genuinely interested in murders.
Exceptions obviously for female-produced, female-consumed true crime media, which I think is also not about murders but is about a totally different set of cultural and psychological issues.
posted by WidgetAlley at 9:26 AM on June 28, 2018 [15 favorites]
I also recently started interning in a position that requires me to work extensively with law enforcement and medical responders and other people whose job it is to deal with deal bodies specifically, and what really struck me at first was how totally disconnected the experience of working with female murder victims and other violent deaths is from our narratives about it. I don't usually handle the bodies directly, but I spend a lot of time talking to people who do, and I look at a lot of crime scene photos and reports and paperwork, etc. And it's just.... completely divorced from the way these things get written about. Yes, many of the folks I work with are desensitized to what they see every day (and they probably have to be to keep doing their job.) And yes, they do talk-- sometimes a little callously-- about the deceased (again, a function of compartmentalization and continuous exposure.) But no one thinks it's glamorous or romanticizes dead women-- they know it's grim fucking work and there's absolutely nothing sexy about punching out thigh muscle samples for toxicology screening or peeling the skin off a decedent's neck so they can take more accurate photographs of the stab wound. And no one, at least no one I've run into, seems to harbor any fantasies about being one who solves the case, and if they do solve the case, it both seems to matter a great deal to them personally (these are some of the most dedicated people I've ever been around, who do their awful jobs for chickenshit pay at terrible hours; no one lasts who doesn't care on a spiritual level) and also not matter at all, because they know another one is coming in the door tomorrow.
Which, big fucking whoop, fiction is not like real life, who could have suspected? But at the same time, hands-on experience (actually it's hands-off experience, they take the hands for fingerprinting, hah), has really highlighted the stark contrast between what actually goes on, and the cultural and psychological themes that are clearly being dealt with in Dead Women Fiction. So much of the crime genre is just so obviously about misogyny and women's bodies and the male sexual fantasy of ultimate female passivity and male heroism... so much so that writers aren't even trying to reflect the emotional reality of what actually happens! Which, again, I guess I knew in an academic way, but it is striking how apparent it is. At this point I can't believe anyone thinks we're all genuinely interested in murders.
Exceptions obviously for female-produced, female-consumed true crime media, which I think is also not about murders but is about a totally different set of cultural and psychological issues.
posted by WidgetAlley at 9:26 AM on June 28, 2018 [15 favorites]
Great post, thanks! I'll really enjoy making my way through these, and hopefully I can check the book out from the library sometime soon!
My first thought was of Ophelia in Hamlet.
posted by lilies.lilies at 10:15 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
My first thought was of Ophelia in Hamlet.
posted by lilies.lilies at 10:15 AM on June 28, 2018 [1 favorite]
This reminds me of Elisabeth Bronfen's Over Her Dead Body.
posted by jeudi at 12:50 PM on June 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by jeudi at 12:50 PM on June 29, 2018 [1 favorite]
I like this conclusion from the Emma Copley Eisenberg article:
"The Dead Girl story doesn’t have to exploit. There is room to create art about the ways women and femmes suffer under toxic masculinity, about the ways they lived—and about the ways they died."
posted by harriet vane at 2:22 AM on June 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
"The Dead Girl story doesn’t have to exploit. There is room to create art about the ways women and femmes suffer under toxic masculinity, about the ways they lived—and about the ways they died."
posted by harriet vane at 2:22 AM on June 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
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posted by headspace at 6:45 AM on June 28, 2018 [6 favorites]