My daughter jokes that I know every terrible thing that has ever happened to anyone on the planet. I have a morbid fear of parking lots, white vans, crowds, movie theaters, and any place where disaster or evil has struck. I’m not alone in my fear. Fear is something that the media encourages and covers—especially when a young girl goes missing. My new novel GOING DARK explores the phenomena of how the media decides which victims to cover. The media’s obsession with certain types of victims—white, photogenic young girls—has even been given a name “missing white women syndrome”—in that while certain victims of crime are reported on to minute detail, many other victims are ignored and fail to generate any interest or sympathy from the wider community.
The recent and very sad case of Gabby Petito is a textbook example of “white women syndrome” in that every detail of her last days, from the timeline of her death to the swath of photos of her reproduced in every media channel, was served up to an insatiable public. The case was even cracked with the help of an “internet detective” – someone went through their camera footage from the national park and found the white van that belonged to Gabby and Brian Laundrie. The fact that we know so much about this case, and how it was publicized to an extent that the public was able to help solve the mystery of her death truly struck me, especially when reading about other cases of missing women of color whose disappearances don’t merit the same media attention.
Without spoiling my novel, the book is about two disappearances: one being the type that we as a society pay attention to, and the other being the type that tends to go ignored. Seeing who generates sympathy and attention in death, as well as in life, is a chilling reminder that some of us matter more than others. Going Dark was written from my desire to pick apart this phenomenon and to write a story that would make us think again about what…
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