Schapelle and Aussie Criminals

I don't know why I keep watching true Aussie crime stories when I'm at home by myself late at night. It might be ok if I was snuggled up with someone, who could take my mind of it after, but as it is I keep freaking myself out. I'm a fool. Last week it was the bodies in the barrels, which I never paid much attention to when it happened as I'm not particularly interested in the morbid details. For example, when I'd heard it was people on pensions that had been killed, I always assumed it had been old people. Of course, they were young victims on disability pensions, and others, and getting to see the tortures re-enacted, well wasn't that just fun and dandy. Particularly when its interspersed with footage of the rental homes around Salisbury & Elizabeth, an area I'm quite familiar with. Deeply unsettling.
Then tonight I stupidly got sucked into watching "Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth", and like the foolish pawn I am, I now have to watch the second part. Why am I so susceptible to the blatant dramatisation when I sit at home alone, switching my opinion on guilt and innocence, flicking from fascination to outrage, with a slight swell of the sound track? I feel more informed of the whole situation, but have less idea of the truth then before. Ironic given the title. Now, while I type this, I'm watching re-enactments of the 'Kimberly Killer'. At least that was in the bush, but still. :|
I remember once while in Japan, talking with a Japanese guy I was dating about the relative merits of different horror movies. I was enthused by J-horror, still am, because of its general focus on tension and unsettling atmosphere and the familiarity yet strangeness of the Japanese locales. He told me that while he enjoyed American horror, he simply couldn't bring himself to watch J-horror. It was too familiar and too real. I could appreciate what he was saying, my new intimacy with the environment of Japan certainly gave those films extra resonance. It's the same with these true crime stories. There is nothing particularly skilled or artful in their retelling, its the sort of thing you see all the time from the US. Rather, its the incredible averageness of the settings, from an Aussie point of view, that makes them so effective. It reminds you how much the culture we live in consumes us completely. Even if on one objective level we can try to consider it from the outside, those primal parts of our brain are always tuned into the subtle indicators of familiarity and strangeness. Always aware of precisely where we are. Its fascinating how fear can be magnified by familiarity.

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