True Crime Television as ‘Popular Legality’: Affect, Testimonial Injustice, and the Criminal (In)Justice System in Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us

Abstract

This article examines the Netflix true crime series When They See Us (2019) as a form of “popular legality” (Olson 2022). I argue that the show criticizes structural racism in the US criminal justice system and emphasizes this critique on a level of affect. More precisely, it is through an affective engagement of the audience with the show’s protagonists that When They See Us highlights how Black and Latinx communities are discriminated by US law and the criminal justice system. It thereby not only depicts African American and Latinx legal identities as marginalized by the law and legal system, but makes viewers able to feel them to be so. In addition, I argue that the show negotiates issues of testimonial injustice as one form of discrimination against People of Color in the US legal system. This negotiation of testimonial injustice also primarily takes place on a level of affect by inviting the audience to feel the effects that testimonial injustice has on the show’s protagonists.