In True Crime We Trust: The Artifactuality of John Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s Mindhunter: Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit (2017) and Netflix’s Mindhunter (2017)

Consumers of true crime often take for granted that, as the name suggests, the stories its authors present are wholly true to life. As the following article will demonstrate, however, these consumers are cunningly guided to this fallacious conclusion. Using John Douglas and Mark Olshaker’s Mindhunter: Inside the FBI Elite Serial Crime Unit (2017) and Netflix’s 2017 Mindhunter series as case studies, this article will explore how readers’ first (and likely their lasting) impression of authenticity is shaped by rhetorical, visual, and aural tactics. To support the discussion, Baudrillard’s concepts of consumer society and of simulacra, Derrida’s (2002) concept of artifactuality, and Genette’s notion of the paratext will be utilized to elucidate the strategies at work in establishing authenticity in true crime. (EAF)