Are we okay?
I ask this because water-cooler chat in Australia has changed in recent times from the AFL (Australian Football League), Survivor, the Australian Open and Married at First Sight to:
“Yeah, nah, she definitely did it, didn’t you hear about the dehumidifier the cops found?”
“She literally served the beef wellington on an orange plate, everyone else had grey plates, it’s sooo obvious.”
RM Block
“She pretended to have cancer, that’s so Belle Gibson.”
I once pretended to like AFL (although I hate sport) to connect with potential Australian mates, why not a mushroom murder case? I googled details from the above snippets and began to weigh in. I ran out of steam promptly.
Frankly, I believe I’m above true crime as a source of entertainment. It’s ethically ambiguous at best and downright abhorrent at worst. Podcast hosts, series makers, book writers always start their piece with something along the lines of: “Remember that the victims were real-life people, okay.”
One of the top five podcasts in Australia, Mushroom Case Daily, began its series with: “We know people are obsessed with this case, it’s really captured the imagination of so many people, it shouldn’t be forgotten that three people died, and all the people that loved them in the community are devastated by their loss.” By episode eight of Mushroom Case Daily, the hosts gleefully finish proceedings with, “We got some plans to catch up with some pretty ‘fun guys’.”
So begins the reality-TV-esque content marketing wheel. Interviews with biologists, foragers, prosecutors, defence lawyers, one individual who had served on a jury in Texas that one time.
True crime as entertainment can only prosper if we maintain a safe distance from those most affected. We mustn’t think too deeply about the victims to really enjoy it. It doesn’t matter how reverently anyone approaches this subject matter, it’s all about profit, ratings, ad spend.
Erin Patterson on trial: Latest in mushroom poisoning murder case
Three days before Erin Patterson was found guilty of three counts of murder and one of attempted murder, it was reported that the Mushroom Case Daily podcast producers received the green light for a new drama series called Toxic which will be based on the true story of Patterson.
It’s a media frenzy, a multimillion-dollar industry with a primed audience. Some 53 per cent of Australians engage with true crime content and the lion’s share of the audience are female, reports B&T, which describes itself as Australia’s leading news publication magazine for the advertising, marketing, media and PR industries.
The reasons for such high engagement with the genre have been studied to some extent. One psychological study, Out of the Dark – Psychological Perspectives on People’s Fascination with True Crime by academics at the University of Graz, Austria, cites morbid curiosity, defensive vigilance and emotional regulation.
[ Death cap mushrooms: Are they in Ireland and how do you spot them?Opens in new window ]
Melbourne-based clinical psychologist at Integrate Therapy and Psychological Services, Mel O’Shea, unpacks these concepts: “Cases like Patterson’s allow us to psychologically stare into the abyss and get close to events that are shocking and unthinkable in a safe way.
“Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung theorised that we have a ‘shadow self’ which is a part of our selves that holds thoughts, feelings and impulses that are unacceptable and shameful and that we deny and disown. Keeping an eye on the Erin Patterson case allows us to project our own shadow self impulses on to someone else and means that we can explore our own hidden feelings like rage and envy and control without acting on them.”
There’s more, and it’s primal: “From an evolutionary psychology perspective, humans have a desire to pay attention to people who violate social rules and norms as a way to protect ourselves by internalising what not to do.
“It means that we can protect our place in the group – society – and reinforce group norms and safety and keep the population populating. This stuff harks back to caveman days when our very survival meant relying on being part of a group, and conforming to group norms as there was safety in numbers against all those predators we faced in our early existence.”
According to a study by Pennsylvania State University, sci-fi movie watchers fared better during Covid-19 because they had effectively lived and relived their new reality many times before. The study states that “after factoring out personality influences, which were actually quite strong, we found that the more movies about zombies, alien invasions and apocalyptic pandemics people had seen prior to Covid-19, the better they dealt with the actual, current pandemic.”
O’Shea says: “There is a level of preparedness that comes with the engagement. Exploring true crime helps us identify what the risk factors were of victims, and more closely understand the modus operandi of perpetrators so that we can make adjustments and ensure our own safety. True crime engagement easily and readily gives us a long list of red flags that we can draw on to keep ourselves safe.”
I cast my mind back to waking up on a couch one Saturday morning at a friend’s house. I have The Fear, and I think it’s caused by Pinot Noir until I notice that there’s a podcast about Ivan Milat (commonly known as the Backpacker Murderer) softly playing in the background.
My friend needs gore to sleep. She can’t exactly put her finger on it, but she says it helps her to relax. For me, not so much. Milat had pierced my veil of sleep, leaving me full of anxiety before I even started the day. Who needs to be making a concerted effort to feel anxious when the majority of us already spend our lives in fight or flight, because we have access to the internet?
I need to know why everyone around me is obsessed with the “mushroom case”, why one of my best friends who offers only kindness and light loves the gritty details. I ask O’Shea for details on the function of true crime. She says: “I think the level of engagement in true crime by Australians speaks to that morbid curiosity and collective fascination with the darker parts of human nature. With disbelief also comes a desire to understand those who are unable to inhibit and control the shadow parts of themselves.
“At one point in our lives, we’d all like to tell a boss or a family member what we really think of them, but we disavow this and we repress it so that we can maintain our jobs, meet our basic needs, and maintain our connection to kin. When we engage in true crime, we really let the Jungian shadow self come out to play and we can look into the mirror of another who shows us what it would really be like for us should we let our inhibitions go. True crime reinforces to us why we repress those dark parts of ourselves along with our own moral position of never letting the shadow of ourselves creep out.”
Would it not be better that we swap society’s current insatiable appetite for brutal content that will entertain us, with empathy for a wider brutal reality that begs for, deserves, our attention?
True crime is steeped in reality. Is that where the crossover comes from, the selective detachment from those affected? I think of reality TV shows centred around love and dating; the ones where you get to see someone’s full naked body before deciding if they’re the one for you; the one where you don’t see them until you’re standing at the altar; the partner-swapping one; the island one. There’s no denying that reality is a ripe market but don’t be silly enough to forget that while Machiavellian brands clean up on the misery of others, the families and friends of the individuals will need to relive the horror afresh with each new repackaging of their real life, through each hot-take and TikTok video.
What bearing does this have on our collective future? Is it time for a risk-benefit analysis? O’Shea says: “Constant exposure can activate the brain’s threat system, making it a little more sensitive and resulting in increased hypervigilance, anxiety and mistrust. This might become a problem if it impairs functioning such as not going out after dark, which has implications for social and occupational functioning if you have to work the night shift as part of your regular routine.
“On the other hand, constant exposure to murder case details and true crime might actually result in a bit of a desensitisation. When we are desensitised we can become apathetic. If nothing shocks us any more, that apathy can lead to a learned helplessness and may stop us from believing that our actions matter, maybe making it less likely for us to intervene or speak out or show empathy when others are hurt. These are constructs that we call bystander effect and compassion fatigue.”
Bystander effect and compassion fatigue? The data keeps the score, as this graph comparing online searches in Australia for true crime and the situation in Gaza shows.
I asked as many people as I could why they think they care about the mushroom case. The majority of them “don’t know”, just think “it’s mad”, or were hooked because “everyone’s talking about it”.
I believe I’m well versed to comment on this case because I know everything about it. They got me. I even tuned in while I was on the way to a Palestine protest.
Would it not be better that we swap society’s current insatiable appetite for brutal content that will entertain us, with empathy for a wider brutal reality that begs for, deserves, our attention?
I’m saying this because this case, the frenzied excitement around it and the detachment from its devastating realities , makes me wonder if we as a society are okay, that’s why I asked.
Hannah Kingston is a freelance writer living in Melbourne since 2020
