[This fall I
watched Netflix’s Unbelievable, one of the most
compelling and important TV shows I’ve seen in a good while. The show opens up
a number of AmericanStudies conversations, so this week I’ll highlight and
analyze a handful of them, trying my best to avoid SPOILERS (but probably not
entirely succeeding). Leading up to a crowd-sourced post on the TV
recommendations of fellow AmericanStudiers—share yours in comments, please!]
On two stages to
how the story behind Unbelievable was
uncovered and told, and how the show relates to and builds upon them.
According to the
interview with creator
Susannah Grant and executive producer Sarah Timberman that begins this video (after
the trailer for the show), their idea for Unbelievable
began when they read “An
Unbelievable Story of Rape,” a December 2015 journalistic piece and triumph
of investigative reporting by ProPublica reporter T. Christian Miller
and Marshall Project reporter Ken Armstrong.
ProPublica and the Marshall Project represent two sterling examples of the online,
deep-dive investigative reporting and long-form journalism that has thrived over
the last couple decades, and “An Unbelievable Story” was a striking case in
point: both Miller and Armstrong investigated Marie Adler’s story over many
months in 2015, as part of even longer-term investigations into rape and the
justice system from initially distinct angles, before finding each other and
collaborating on the final push for the investigation and then their co-authored,
acclaimed
and influential piece. Great journalism that both investigates
injustice and pushes
for justice is of course a deeply ingrained American tradition, but sites
and reporters like these have brought that legacy into the 21st
century, and we owe them a great debt for exploring Marie Adler’s story with
the depth and power they did.
Miller and
Armstrong eventually expanded their article into a book, 2018’s A
False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. But just a few months
after the article’s first publication, it was adapted into another, even more
fully 21st century journalistic genre, the podcast: This American Life’s February 26, 2016
program “Anatomy
of Doubt” explores the article and the case, with Armstrong joining host
Ira Glass alongside other figures from Marie’s life and world (including Marie
herself and two of her many foster parents). Podcasts and radio programs have
different potential audiences and effects, and so can in those ways be seen as
complementary to online (or hard-copy) written journalism. But the truly
multi-vocal aspect of podcasts more fully distinguishes the genre from any form
of writing, even a co-authored piece like “An Unbelievable Story.” That is, of
course Miller and Armstrong interviewed countless figures and included their
voices and perspectives in their article—but hearing directly from someone like
Marie Adler in the podcast, hearing her voice communicate her experiences and
perspective, is nonetheless quite different and (it seems to me) an important
step toward portraying Marie (performed by an actor and in a dramatic way to be
sure) on screen in a series like Unbelievable.
“Performed by an
actor and in a dramatic way” is of course a very complex parenthetical, especially
for a show that defines itself (in the standalone final sentence of its Netflix description) as “Inspired
by true events.” From everything I’ve seen (including in reading much further
into and about the original article for this post), the show does justice to
those true events, which is of course a hugely important thing to say about a
show with a central theme of how much injustice is done by and to rape victims.
But of course it’s also the case that the article is still available to be read
(at the hyperlink above), just as the podcast is still available to be listened
to (ditto), and that’s just as important a potential effect of the show: that
as a Netflix original, and one with a significant amount of buzz, it can push
audiences to engage further with this story and others like it, including
through finding those prior versions as well as (ideally, but certainly
possibly) researching themes of rape and sexual assault, policing and the
justice system, women’s experiences in America, and more. If that can happen, Unbelievable would be not just inspired
by our 21st century world, but inspiring in its effects on it.
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one more
time: thoughts on this post and show? Other TV shows you’d recommend and
analyze?
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