SVC: Special Victims & Chill

For those of you who like stories about almost-kidnappings. And for the links, obv.

I wrote this episode in response to Sarah Marshall’s essay Violent Delights about the serial killer media industrial complex in the magazine The Believer after Roxane Gay linked it in her Substack: Audacious Roundup. 

The sun had set and I was arriving home. I had given my babysitter the key fob which would get me access to the elevator from the parking garage of my building. But I only have one, so I’d have to do a quick workaround to get inside. It involved me leaving the building and using the keypad on the front entrance to call myself and buzz myself in from my phone. No big deal, right? Well. I did say, the sun had set, which would make it dark outside, and being a woman alone in the dark is not an ideal state of matter. As the serial killer media industrial complex will attest to. And even the history of podcasts, which I didn’t know until recently, but their meteoric rise to prominence was partially due to the prevalence of true crime podcasts. At least, according to Riverside.fm. 

I’d have to brave the night alone. Even if it was only for a few steps. As luck would have it, or fate, or the desire of this essay to be born, there were two men walking past the door just as I exited the building. The man in the back looked right at me, which triggered my troublesome reflexive fear response, which flashed in my eyes, even though I tucked it back in its hiding place as quickly as possible. But. He’d seen it anyway. Our eyes stayed glued together long enough for me to track his response to my initial fear, which looked something like joy, pleasure, or eroticism as defined in my first episode. The look you’d expect to see on a child’s face when you surprise them with a visit to the playground. But he quelled his reflexive response as quickly as I’d thwarted mine, luckily for me, and in the final exchange of our shared gaze was both recognition and mercy. Both of our recognition – that I’d not stand a chance against the two of them, and not likely even just him, as he was, at least 20% larger than me, as males evolved to be – and his mercy. His choice to not act on the initial flash of impulse. It was his magnanimity, and only that, in that moment, that would allow me to preserve my dignity and perhaps my life. And we both knew it. I trembled as I arrived to the front door of my building, my heart pounded as I used the keypad to call myself, and those rings before the connection was made stretched out before me like that same darkness that had produced those two men.  

Sarah Marshall’s essay on the serial killer industrial complex is elegant, makes some good points, and I’m not refuting any of them. I’m just adding my thoughts to the pile.

Perhaps the reason we find true crime and serial killer shows “comforting” is the fact that we exist inside that daily horror – the awareness of which I shared with that stranger. that it was simply his mercy, his prerogative, that I am still here to write this episode. When I say “we” I mean women in general, and any vulnerable population that has an orifice to speak of. 

I’m not sure what these shows offer us, though. Reassurance that we’re not alone in our unwilling role as prey? Preservation of self – like if it happened to them it can’t happen to me – the Beast was fed and I’m still here kind of a deal? Confirmation that we aren’t crazy – and that that cargo van with blacked-out windows really was following me? 

One morning, in Milwaukee, I go for a jog. I go out without a route because it’s my long run and sometimes i like to riff those. 

I live near downtown, but on the other side of the river so I end up in a somewhat industrial area. So there I am. Jogging down a kind of abandoned street, under a bridge or two, with no other people or even really cars in sight. Until. The black cargo van with blacked-out windows starts driving toward me on the other side of the street. I notice & keep an eye on them. So when I see them U-turn and head back up my side of the street, I head in another direction to put more distance between me and the van. I get a few moments of peace but then I see it again. Headed my way, again, suggesting that they weren’t headed anywhere in particular except toward me. So I get pissed. 

Their stalking was fucking up my runner’s high. 

So. This time, there’s not really anywhere else I can go. I’m running back toward the city center and they’re headed my way on my side of the street. I turn to watch them pass. I’m still jogging but slowly now, watching them because I want them to know I know what the fuck they’re up to and if they're bout to try to snatch me, I’m at least not gna make it easy. Just ahead there’s a stop sign. They pass me. They stop. But they stop stop. They don’t continue driving. So I stop. I’m not about to jog past their fucking kidnapper van that is conveniently stationary at the moment. And I’m pissed because they’re fucking up my morning run with their whole trying to abduct and sex traffic me bullshit. I just stare at those opaque windows. And when they still don’t drive I throw up my hands and say “what the fuck do you want?!” Like fucking drive. Bitch. You’re not snatching me today. And so they did drive. And I ran my ass home as fast as I could, even though that day was supposed to be distance and not a sprint. 

Men love to poke fun at our “sick” pastime. I have a healthy sense of humor, so I catch the irony but I am curious: What percentage of the bingers of such shows are victims of sexual trauma or abuse themselves? I haven’t looked up the statistics but I’d be willing to bet they’re pretty high. 

It’s kind of a sickening game that the serial killer industrial complex plays monetizing on the lived reality of our daily horrors, even when they're hypothetical. Though often, they're not. And it probably also normalizes it, which I think Sarah touched on. And I think that points to one of the larger problems of Capitalism or short-term-profit-motive. Which I won’t even try to get into in this episode. But the, usually dudes, who poke fun at this phenomenon of bingeing serial killer shows miss the point. 

Are they willfully failing to see the point, though? Because the system that carved this horrifying little space for us is the same one that prioritizes and benefits them in the first place. In this system, they are the ones with the agency and the prerogative, and they are the ones that get to choose who lives with dignity and who doesn’t, and who gets to live at all and who doesn’t. Any by them, specifically I mean white men by and large. Unfortunately, still. But not for too much longer I don’t think. What's that concept I’ve heard quoted frequently, especially lately? "Nothing…is so powerful as an idea whose time has come." 

My love affair with this niche of shows started early because my mom’s favorite was Law & Order SVU. That woman fled the backwoods of Mississippi when she was 14. Now, take a guess why she ran away. I think, at least shows like SVU, purport there to be actual justice in the world, as Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler passionately throw the book at abusers. I know SVU isn’t a serial killer show. It’s a gateway drug, though. And I think the draw to a show like SVU is that, usually, there’s justice. Why someone like me graduates from SVU to shows like the Night Stalker, though, I think reflects my stage of life. As a child, I believed justice would be brought to perpetrators of sexual violence. As an adult, I know the best I’m gonna get is a psychological thriller but from a safe distance this time. 

Check out the other weird shit I do for fun at adultpapers.com or linktr.ee/lunarviolet