Netflix is just churning out the true crime docuseries of late. I guess from their perspective it’s money in the bank — Night Stalker is pretty gruesome stuff but distinguishes itself by giving voice to the survivors and to the victims’ families. The Ripper really stood out to me however, as it’s so impressively rich in archival footage that acts as a portal into a specific time and place as if you’d woken up there.
The Ripper uses a sharp socio-economic lens to examine the 1970s Yorkshire murders and the investigation as part of a long shadow of misogyny and violence against women in general, as well as the vulnerability that results from poverty and the stigma of being perceived as a woman of “loose morals”. During the investigation the label of prostitute is wielded like a blunt and numbing tool meant to strip away a woman’s humanity and the preciousness of her life. It is unforgivable. From a modern 21st century perspective that’s steeped in technology, forensics and DNA, how an investigation of this magnitude was handled fifty years ago is also fascinating, and in some cases infuriating.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel is not about a vicious serial killer, but rather the disappearance of a young woman that took the internet by storm in 2013 with this viral video footage. What saves this docuseries from being exploitative trash is that it’s just as much about the long and sordid history of the Cecil Hotel as it is about Elisa Lam and the chilling mystery surrounding her sudden disappearance. Watching this I was reminded all over again why her story captured the attention of so many all over the world.
Very well presented is the historical detail of the infamous Cecil and the surrounding Skid Row — all that violence, despair, and neglect packed into such a small area. It’s fucking heartbreaking how many people can be thrown away like garbage and how quickly their suffering and distress become invisible.
The “web sleuths” featured prominently in the third episode had me gnashing my teeth. Their wholesale obsession absolutely run amok to turn Elisa Lam’s final tragic moments into unhinged conspiracy theories (and the way they tortured that Morbid guy) just enraged me. But that’s the internet for you.
I would say that the series could have been drastically improved had this entire episode been left on the cutting room floor; then again, a defining aspect of this story is how Lam’s disappearance morphed into an online obsession for thousands of armchair detectives as they followed each other down the rabbit hole like lemmings off a cliff. What the series misses altogether though, is an opportunity to ask why people become consumed in this way, as if in the grip of a fever, seeing shadows and conspiracies everywhere. It’s a phenomenon certainly not unique to the Elisa Lam case.
***MILD SPOILERS AHEAD***
It’s long past time to let this poor girl rest in peace finally. The reconstruction here of her probable last moments absolutely gutted me. I remember when I first saw that elevator video in 2013 I was as disturbed and unsettled as everyone else. It seemed so strange, so spooky. But now it just makes me so terribly sad to know what we were most likely witnessing was a young woman in severe mental distress in the grip of a psychotic break. And no one noticed enough to care because everyone around her was so desensitized to “strange behaviour.” It was just another day at the Cecil Hotel. So there she was alone, scared, and disoriented — probably hallucinating and maybe even feeling hunted.
Whatever compulsions or mental confusion that drove Elisa Lam to make her way to the rooftop of the Cecil Hotel and then climb into that water tank we’ll never know for sure. What we do know for certain now is hers is a piercingly sad story. As is the ongoing plight of the discarded people trapped on Skid Row, exceedingly vulnerable to the predators who live there too.
@BookBimbo