Jake

Idle Thumbs 189: Serious Ma'am

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Koenig didn't tie a big picture bow on Serial at its end, and I think that's part of what people are having trouble with. She didn't say "and none of this would have happened if Americas criminal justice system wasn't so prosecution-biased, fixated on 'making a case' instead of finding the truth," or "the specifics of this case are absurd but in the sea of Americas youth, hundreds of not thousands of situations like this exist and stop one step short of murder," or "what would have happened if the kids were white in an all white town? probably not this," or whatever else you want Serial to be about.

Im not sure how I feel about that to be honest - in some lights everything in Serial feels like a great build up for something more - but at the same time I think it was very effective at saying a ton as a series, without Koenig actually explicitly stating frames or theses. I think it's impossible to listen to Serial without thinking "the jury was biased because of race," and "the prosecutors and police were using cultural prejudices to tip the scales," and "it's shocking how little they care about anything but closing the case at any cost," and "how exceptional is this case really? when I was in high school no one was murdered but people did fucked up stuff," and a million other things, not because Koenig editorialized about it in her own voice, but through the evidence she chose to include when compiling and editing the show. She never lets loose with a final, really satisfying-to-hear firey indictment, but I don't think it had to to shed light on those issues. We still think about them, unavoidably, simply by having the content put in front of us.

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I read that a little differently. I haven't gone back and re-listened in the context of this discussion yet, but my memory of this scene played out something like: she's talking to Adnan's mother, and retains a "hmmmm" moment from the interview, at which point she interjects with "hear that? That was me being skeptical." Which is to say, I recall her using her initial skepticism as a jump-off point to reveal stuff she then found that undermines it. She never comes around to concluding that this was, as Sean put it, a To Kill a Mockingbird style racial conviction, but it seemed to me like her eyebrow was certainly raised a few times during that episode.

 

I'm going to go re-listen to that episode now to find out if I'm full of shit or not.

 

That's how I read it as well: when the mother claimed Adnan's prosecution of racially motivated, Koenig gut reaction was to be skeptical and then she spends the episode revealing that Adnan's mother was largely correct. Maybe what people are taking issue with is that she presents her initial skepticism as being natural and relatable (as it will be for sheltered white people, it somewhat was for me) and doesn't further unpack it. 

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That's how I read it as well: when the mother claimed Adnan's prosecution of racially motivated, Koenig gut reaction was to be skeptical and then she spends the episode revealing that Adnan's mother was largely correct. Maybe what people are taking issue with is that she presents her initial skepticism as being natural and relatable (as it will be for sheltered white people, it somewhat was for me) and doesn't further unpack it. 

 

There is a little of that but to an extent it felt like there was a worthwhile conclusion to make in openly acknowledging that her mind had been changed and clearly racism was an issue because I feel like there are people who would've heard the episode and not really grasped what that means for society at large. And of course the people who are least likely to conclude this without having it explicitly unpacked are the people who need it done the most.

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 I think it's impossible to listen to Serial without thinking "the jury was biased because of race," and "the prosecutors and police were using cultural prejudices to tip the scales," and "it's shocking how little they care about anything but closing the case at any cost," and "how exceptional is this case really? when I was in high school no one was murdered but people did fucked up stuff," and a million other things, not because Koenig editorialized about it in her own voice, but through the evidence she chose to include when compiling and editing the show.

 

Terry Gross says something similar to this during her interview with Koenig. 

 

It's an interesting listen, if you still want to hear and think more about Serial.  But other than a few of Koenig's reactions to things (like its popularity or parodies of it), there's not much meat there. 

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I read that a little differently. I haven't gone back and re-listened in the context of this discussion yet, but my memory of this scene played out something like: she's talking to Adnan's mother, and retains a "hmmmm" moment from the interview, at which point she interjects with "hear that? That was me being skeptical." Which is to say, I recall her using her initial skepticism as a jump-off point to reveal stuff she then found that undermines it. She never comes around to concluding that this was, as Sean put it, a To Kill a Mockingbird style racial conviction, but it seemed to me like her eyebrow was certainly raised a few times during that episode.

 

I'm going to go re-listen to that episode now to find out if I'm full of shit or not.

Yeah, having a rethink about the episode I think you might be closer to the mark than I was, your line of thinking seems to be more in keeping with the way Koenig operates in the podcast as a whole.

 

Koenig didn't tie a big picture bow on Serial at its end, and I think that's part of what people are having trouble with. She didn't say "and none of this would have happened if Americas criminal justice system wasn't so prosecution-biased, fixated on 'making a case' instead of finding the truth," or "the specifics of this case are absurd but in the sea of Americas youth, hundreds of not thousands of situations like this exist and stop one step short of murder," or "what would have happened if the kids were white in an all white town? probably not this," or whatever else you want Serial to be about.

Im not sure how I feel about that to be honest - in some lights everything in Serial feels like a great build up for something more - but at the same time I think it was very effective at saying a ton as a series, without Koenig actually explicitly stating frames or theses. I think it's impossible to listen to Serial without thinking "the jury was biased because of race," and "the prosecutors and police were using cultural prejudices to tip the scales," and "it's shocking how little they care about anything but closing the case at any cost," and "how exceptional is this case really? when I was in high school no one was murdered but people did fucked up stuff," and a million other things, not because Koenig editorialized about it in her own voice, but through the evidence she chose to include when compiling and editing the show. She never lets loose with a final, really satisfying-to-hear firey indictment, but I don't think it had to to shed light on those issues. We still think about them, unavoidably, simply by having the content put in front of us.

 

Yes, looking back on it I think you're right in this regard. I remember someone here saying that Serial could be deemed problematic insofar as Koenig was using a personal tragedy among ethnic minorities to make points about the flaws in the American justice system, and thus could be said to be disregarding their private grief, or even exploiting it, to mount a standard middle class liberal attack on the justice system (I can't remember who said this, but I believe this was the gist of it, apologies if I am interpreting your argument incorrectly.)

 

While I'm not claiming that my interpretation is any more correct than anyone else's, to me this is exactly not what Koenig does, she seems entirely focused on the specific details of the case and at no point, as far as I can tell, attempts to extrapolate these finer details and apply them to any broader critique of the justice system. For example in the part when she is discussing plea bargains with Adnan she doesn't say something along the lines of: "and so you see that the justice system effectively forces suspects to plea guilty to crimes they might not have committed in the hope of receiving a better sentence, a huge flaw in the criminal justice system." Of course, as you state, it seems probable that everyone who listens to that section will probably come away thinking that this is actually true, but Koenig doesn't attempt to state it outright. Thus although recognition of flaws in the justice system (boy I'm getting sick of using that phrase) might be an inescapable outcome of listening to Serial, as far as I can tell Koenig isn't exploiting the case to make these points, she's letting the facts speak for themselves.

 

I think in hindsight that was probably what she was doing with the possible examples of racism, she doesn't state that racist attitudes among the jury led to Adnan's conviction, but she presents the evidence that it possibly could have done.

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Talos Principle play time:

 

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I HOPE THIS IS RECTIFIED, POSTHASTE

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*fart* Steam play times are never right.

 

That's what I tell myself when I look at my Dark Souls 2 playtime. 

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I haven't listened to Serial at all because it has struck me as sort of sketchy for a variety of reasons, some of which have been raised in the thread and others which come from what a few of my friends have said about it, but I did find this interview with Jay Wilds pretty interesting, given what little I know about Serial, the case it covers, and so on. In the context of the specific discussion from the podcast and in this thread, I think it's definitely worth thinking about the incredibly important role that race and racism played in Wilds' actions - from what I can tell, this seems like something the podcast doesn't cover very well (although like I said, I haven't listened to it myself). And here's part 2 and part 3.

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