Abstract
This chapter is based on 15 interviews with viewers and a content analysis of 12 episodes of Quarto Grado, an Italian true-crime television show. An analysis of the two dimensions of the sublime (Chapter 2), shows that viewers feel a mix of attraction and repulsion for crime; they make contact with evil by identifying with victims, but identifying with criminals is also possible. The sublime is a social emotion: viewers usually learn how to recognise and manage this emotion from their families or from famous cold cases. The sublime is commodified via: the selection and contextualising of specific cases; the aestheticisation of violence; proximity; a mixture of reality and fiction and the uncertainty typical of cold cases. Do these emotions create social bonds? In the case of the TV show, the sublime, as a ‘bridge emotion’ shifts in the direction of a dangerous shared resentment.
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Notes
- 1.
The interviewees were 15 viewers selected randomly via ads and word of mouth. The inclusion criteria was that participants were loyal viewers of the programme and thus people who had simply come across Quarto Grado when zapping were excluded. The age range was 23–70 years of age and included 5 men and 10 women. The interviews were recorded and lasted an hour on average.
- 2.
Episodes were selected on the basis of a systematic sample. The time frame considered is 11th September 2011 to 13th December 2013 during which 90 episodes of the programme were screened. The 12 episode sample (13% of the total) was systematic with k = 7. A correction was introduced into the selection, however, in which only episodes dealing with at least two of three cases in which women were killed were examined, with the three victims being M.R., R.R. and C.P. C.P., was killed at the age of 26 in her Garlasco (Pavia) apartment on 13 August 2007. The only suspect is her boyfriend A.S. At the time this chapter was written the latter had been found guilty by the Court of Assizes appeal court in Milan.
M.R. was killed on 18 April 2011 at the age of 29. Her husband, S.P. a former soldier, was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. This latter case is well known above all, because S used the mass media to plead his innocence and was interviewed at length on Quarto Grado. R.R. disappeared from her home on the night of 13th–14th January 2012. The Court of Cassation had ruled against A.L.’s acquittal for first degree murder and concealment of the corpse at the time this chapter was written.
- 3.
By contrast, the Chinese concept of ‘dao’, for example, accords language a less ‘reflexive’ and more action guiding function. The emotions are perceived as ‘secondary effects’ not strictly bound up with defining oneself and the world which takes place most frequently in the everyday behaviour context. As they are less ‘discriminatory’, then, when in these contexts emotions present as conflictual, they do not generate forms of unease and do not require ‘protected contexts’ to be lived.
- 4.
Mostro di Firenze is the nickname given by the media to an Italian serial killer active around Florence from 1968 to 1985.
- 5.
In this specific case, the video in which R.R. took part in her daughter’s dance show was interpreted as proof of her devotion to the family which was inconsistent—according to the programme’s interpretation—with her having left the family of her own accord.
- 6.
“It is a mistake to consider judicial rites as something archaic… we risk getting our enemies mixed up: a struggle for justice is not a matter of combating all rituals but a battle for the most authentic symbols… public life needs to be repopulated with new symbols, effective, meaningful and manageable rituals” (2001 p. 322, own translation).
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Binik, O. (2020). From Sublime to Resentment: Emotional Trajectories When Watching Crime on TV. In: The Fascination with Violence in Contemporary Society . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26744-5_5
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