Netflix recently released
Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez. It is a three-part documentary that tells the story of the late NFL star and convicted murderer's life. It uses interviews of friends, other NFL players and insiders to tell this story. As a huge football fan, I remember the tremendous player that Hernandez was and I remember this tragic story. This Netflix documentary, however, offered a lot of new and shocking information about the life of Hernandez. During the trial, there was a lot of media speculation about Hernandez's sexual orientation, and whether that had anything to do with the murder of Odin Lloyd. The most shocking piece of information revealed in this documentary was through an interview with Hernandez's high school quarterback, Dennis SanSoucie. He revealed that he and Aaron were in a sexual relationship throughout high school. With Hernandez taking his own life in 2017, the ethical question arises: is it right of Netflix to throw this information out there with Hernandez not being able to comment on this fact or any of the other information revealed int he documentary?
Hernandez, left, and SanSoucie, right
One might think, "Why would SanSoucie make this up?". But making things up to stir up conversation is exactly what Christopher Blair does. He creates anti-liberal fake news stories to stir up conservatives. Many people believe these stories and like and share them on Facebook. However, they are easily checkable. But because Hernandez is no longer alive, the information in the documentary is not easily verifiable, and mostly going off the words of the people interviewed. I'm not saying that SanSoucie, or anyone else in the documentary lied or told misleading information, as I can never know. But, I do not believe Netflix should have put certain information out there without any way for it to be backed up. Who knows if Christopher Blair thought he'd be getting comparisons to Netflix when he first started blogging.
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ReplyDeleteAs a huge football fan, I remember first hearing the news of Aaron Hernandez and all the events that followed. You make a good point about the information regarding his sexuality being unverifiable. When watching the documentary, they discussed his sexual relationship and sexual preferences as if they were fact and even used interviews of other homosexual players to link homosexuality and insecurity about manhood as if to cover up the fact that we don’t actually know the truth as well as make SanSoucie’s story seem as though it is by all means factual and “this is why it must be factual”. Great article! My only suggestion would be to provide a little more background to someone who might not know all the details.
ReplyDeleteAs a football fan and someone who has watched these documentaries as well, I thought both the documentary and your post were super interesting. You highlight a lot of great points about the documentary and raise a good question about the ethics behind what Netflix did with this information. One thing that I think would improve your post would be to use a little bit more information from the readings to connect it back to your blog. Whether it is a quote or simply just a reference, it would improve the post in my opinion.
ReplyDeletePS — I highly recommend watching the interview with Hernandez’s wife that just came out addressing the allegations regarding his sexuality.
As someone who isn't into football at all, I also thought your post was super interesting! Your example is super relevant and the way you discuss it really pushes readers to think critically about the situation and context, along with how media + technology come together to make it possible. One suggestion I have would be to provide a little bit more framework for your comparison (if you have the room) — that is, consider better distinguishing (or putting more emphasis on comparisons and contrast between) Netflix and Blair's parody account, because although both are technically forms of media entertainment, there are a lot of nuances in how they are perceived by the public, how they function in our society, and what we expect from them.
ReplyDeleteI also meant to add — I like how succinct your title is. The vagueness (and shortness) made it jump out against the other blog posts, so great job!
DeleteI found the content of your blog to be really fascinating and I learned a lot about something I previously had no knowledge of. One area I believe you could work on is your comparison between "Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez" and Christopher Blair's writing. Your discussion of Blair comes up rather suddenly and I think it would increase the readability of your blog if you introduced this discussion more gradually. Your explanation of Blair's writing is also slightly confusing so you may want to try and make it easier for an uninformed reader to understand that section.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this post! Having seen this documentary, I had similar thoughts about whether his sexuality should've been highlighted as much as it did. It is troubling to know that Netflix decided to make this such a large part of the documentary. I would suggest including an outside link to content about some of the statements SanSoucie made. This could show us readers some of the information that is being distributed. Also, I would give the readers who arent familiar with the story by highlighting some of the other factors like the CTE he was diagnosed with.
ReplyDeleteThis topic is really interesting, and as someone who also watched the documentary I never looked at it from your viewpoint. I think your title does a good job of grabbing a reader's attention. One thing you might want to think about is changing up the style of your post. Instead of using large paragraphs, trying breaking them up and making them shorter.
ReplyDelete