Strategie performative nel true crime seriale

Abstract

The article explores the performative strategies adopted in Making a Murderer and The Jinx in order to represent the artificiality of legal truths in the contemporary American society. Considering True-crime not only a successful and ambivalent TV program, but above all a crucial genre for post-modernist documentary cinema, this essay aims at analysing the different aesthetical choices developed by the authors for the purpose of orienting the viewers in a horizon of relative and contingent truths. Theoretical tools borrowed from Stella Bruzzi’s studies in non-fictional films will be applied to compare these two series, highlighting how they have been influenced by the history of documentary film. The purpose of the article is to investigate the authorial ambitions towards the problematization of the concept of truth in relation with the opportunities offered by the new platforms and formats.