TV true crime tells us as much about society as it does about the culprits
THE best true crime stories don’t just shock us with blood and gore but have something important to say about the times they are set in.
Truly great examples of the genre – like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood or the Netflix series Don’t F**k with Cats – tell us so much about the way we live.
They have also pointed the way to how our policing needs to change to take account of violent or destructive new trends.
The Amazon Prime Video series Curse of the Chippendales – the all-male, perma-tanned, mullet-wearing strip group founded in California in the 80s – certainly does that.
It speaks to the potential for violence that inevitably comes with our celebrity, imageobsessed culture.
And it also tells us that our liberal attitudes to sex and the sex industry have a dark side.
The series opens in conventional true crime fashion, with a man walking into the FBI Office in Las Vegas explaining he had been contracted for $50,000 to kill two members of a male exotic dance group in London who were seen as rivals to the Chippendales.
Along the way, the series then discusses the murder of Nick de Noia in 1987 by a man hired by Ray Colon, who was an accomplice of Steve Banerjee – the founder of the Chippendales and who would eventually plead guilty to murder in 1994, but committed suicide before being sent to prison. What appeals to me as a criminologist is that we see throughout the Curse of the Chippendales a number of themes which have come to dominate our culture, long after the mullet has been quietly forgotten and consigned to the dustbin of tonsorial history.
Chief among these themes is that we can see in all too clear detail the origin of the contemporary objectification of the male body, which is now so commonplace that it is expected that the young men who appear on reality TV programmes such as Love Island and Geordie Shore will get their kit off.
Of course it is not the average and ordinary “male body” that is being objectified, but a specific type of male body which has been sculpted by sessions in the gym.
That objectification appeared novel in the 80s, especially because women were supposedly demonstrating their freedom by paying men to strip.
The mullets so many of the male dancers seemed to favour also raises the issue of tricholphilia and trichophobia – the sexual attraction of hair or hairlessness as a cultural phenomenon. Some offenders are attracted to hair, such as the double murderer Danilo Restivo, while others are repulsed by the idea of body hair.
We can also see in all of this the mainstreaming of sex work
There is no mystery going on here – men were being paid not just to be sexy but to have sex.
As a criminologist, it always pays to keep a finger on the pulse of cultural trends.
Because when it comes to anything involving sex, celebrity and money it’s a fair bet that criminals will get their sticky paw prints all over it.
Scotland’s leading crime expert’s column with his take on the warped world of crimelords, killers and creeps
Liberal attitude to sex and its industry has a dark side