Is the Entertainment Industry Glamorizing Crime?

Graphic by Rita Liu. Images from The Tab and Rolling Stone

This weekend, I was watching the highly anticipated Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile on Netflix with a few friends. In the middle of the movie, one of my friends commented “I don’t like how they’re making him [Ted Bundy] seem like he’s not really a bad guy.” This comment got me thinking. My friend had a point.

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is a movie based on American serial killer Ted Bundy (Zac Efron) – shown through his lifelong girlfriend’s point of view. Throughout the movie, the audience is taken through the life of Bundy and his girlfriend, Liz Kendall (Lily Collins). We’re shown how they met and their time together, including many clips of their sweet and steamy encounters and the difficult denial Liz had to go through when her now-fiancé was charged with murder.

However, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile never showed the crimes that Bundy committed – they were only mentioned briefly. Instead, the entire movie consisted of Bundy loving Liz and wanting her to have faith in him, him never pleading guilty and eventually him mocking the justice system as he becomes his own defense team.   

If I’m being honest, there were times that even I questioned whether he was guilty or not. The movie walked a fine line between glorifying and romanticizing Bundy and depicting him as an actual serial killer. The many clips of Zac Efron's dazzling blue eyes and sly smirk proved how well Efron played his character.

Gif via Tumblr

This movie was highly anticipated due to the large number of crime documentaries and series that have taken over Netflix. Prefacing Extremely Wicked was the also Netflix- produced Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. Similarly, Making a Murderer, Abducted in Plain Sight, and The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann can be found under Netflix’s Originals category. However, their dramatized version of Ted Bundy’s life is the first time the media giant brought in an entertainment aspect while following a major crime.

I also felt this theme resonate throughout the Netflix series You, in which the audience is introduced to another seemingly normal young man who turns out to not be who you expect. The New Yorker claimed it as “a scary, delicious snack of a show” and they’re right. It’s a show that makes you question your liking for a murderer – it makes you forget the awful things he has done.

Gif via Giphy

Overall, with all of these new movies and series that are jumping on the bandwagon of society’s curiosity for murder crimes, the entertainment industry is treading dangerously in the waters of romanticizing “charming” men who have committed crimes. It’s important for audience members to note the questions they are asking themselves while watching these shows and to notice how they feel about these characters. Many of us are sympathetic and we can find ourselves feeling bad for those in question. Although it can sometimes make us feel ashamed to feel this way, we have to remind ourselves that these feelings are valid if the product was made to make us feel this way – many are.

Although they can be fun to mindlessly watch, we should continue being curious when we watch true crime-based movies and shows. This not only lets us to develop a better sense of intuition, but it can also start meaningful conversations about the glorification of crime in the entertainment industry.