It is natural to believe in a power that affects our daily lives beyond our control, but recently young people have seemed to go out of their way to find institutional oppression where there is none.

Although the crime documentary genre has long been an entertainment staple, especially with TV shows including “48 Hours” and “Forensic Files,” it has often been seen as lowbrow, and it is not entirely clear why there has been such a sudden increase in the reputation of the genre.

But the new pinnacle of success set by “Making a Murderer,” a 10-episode Netflix series based on the Steven Avery case, and its continuous developments, reveal that the rise of crime documentaries have more to do with a modern attitude, one held particularly by Generation Y: a belief that there is constantly unjust persecution going on around us.

The documentary details how Avery spent 18 years in jail after being wrongly convicted for rape in 1985. He was then convicted in 2007 of murdering photographer Teresa Halbach and sentenced to life in prison where he stays to this day.

With the masses rallying for Avery’s release, the documentary appears to make the case that Avery was once again framed by law enforcement, and that he and Brendan Dassey, his nephew who was convicted on related charges, should be freed. But this ignores significant evidence and instead proves to be one of the strongest examples of millennials’ desire to find undue persecution and authoritarian abuse even when it may not actually be there.

The documentary presents many compelling points and works hard to depict several members of the police and prosecution — especially head prosecutor Ken Kratz — as single-minded villains. This has spurred people to sign petitions left and right to free Avery, including a Change.org petition of more than 468,000 signatures as of Sunday and a White House petition at about 130,000 signatures, which was enough to garner a presidential response earlier this month.

Avery’s supporters have done this despite the fact that Avery himself is not exactly a savory individual. Soon after we are first introduced to him in the documentary, we learn that he dipped a cat in gasoline and lit it on fire as a teenager, and that he was prone to volatile outbursts, especially toward women. However, these details are minimized in the documentary.

As Keren Henderson, an assistant professor of broadcast and digital journalism at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, wrote in an email, it is not unusual for the documentary makers to leave out relevant information as even “the very act of editing footage is the act of taking information out.”

But millennials tend to always side with the persecuted victim, even if that is nothing more than an appearance. The documentary regularly states that most people have complete trust in the police. But millennials, who have access to the Internet which can inform them of incidents involving corrupt police officers, refuse to accept that the vast majority of officers are completely clean.

“Making a Murderer” taps directly into this mentality. Henderson said that the essential message of the program is that “the American justice system is designed to incarcerate a guilty person … not designed to accurately determine if the person found guilty actually committed the crime.”

Perhaps, it wouldn’t matter if millennials knew whether Avery murdered Halbach. When young people hear the adage “framing a guilty man,” they put the emphasis on “framing,” not “guilty man.” Even the O.J. Simpson case is getting a true crime treatment now, albeit in the upcoming drama series, “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.”

Millennials have learned to distrust authorities until given reason otherwise and this has frequently led to a healthy skepticism. However, everyone must be careful of the instances in which they choose to use it or that distrust will quickly turn to endless cries from a boy about a wolf.

Mark DiBona is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mdibona@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @NoPartyNoDisco.

Published on January 25, 2016 at 12:59 am