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Ellie Friar and the Triumph of Death
This essay contains detailed discussion of murder and CSA.
Nuclear Warhead, Ready to Strike…
The best movie I have seen this year was not really a movie, nor was it exactly good. It was a three and a half hour YouTube video with the almost-embarrassingly clickbaity title of The Craziest Interrogation You’ll Ever See. It’s a documentary about high-school sophomore Ellie Friar, her too-old boyfriend Gavin Macfarlane, and their doofus mutual friend Russell Jones, and how they all worked together to kill her dad. They got caught almost immediately, and their individual interrogations comprise a triptych of hubris, naivete and regret that inspires a disorienting combination of dark hilarity and intense grief in the viewer. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
I sent this video to multiple people, which is something I almost never do no matter how much I enjoy something. I held forth about it in therapy. I tried to explain it to my disinterested/vaguely concerned girlfriend. I was embarrassed for myself even as I was doing these things; I knew I wouldn’t be able to communicate what this story made me feel, but I had to try. And now I’m trying again.
Legacy of Brutality
True crime has a reputation for being sleazy and exploitative in its tendency to narrativize human tragedy for the sake of profit and entertainment. Tackiness is far from being a universal element of the genre, however. The best works of true crime —like The Keepers or Missing from the Village or We Keep the Dead Close —can not only bring a measure of personal depth to the victims and inform the audience about criminal justice processes, but also expose systemic issues and tell the stories of vulnerable people that would otherwise have gone unheard. True crime at its best can, without hyperbole, make you a smarter and more empathetic person.
The YouTube channel Explore With Us is not true crime at its best.
Explore With Us — with only the mildest of offense intended — is a bit of a cesspool. It’s the type of channel that will constantly badger you to like, comment, subscribe, and Hit the Bell for More Updates! The narrator will holler and growl the lurid details of a gruesome murder in his best impression of a…
