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Showing posts with the label Learning disabilities

USA | Should We Humanize Inhuman Acts?

I Am A Killer is a docuseries that gives a nuanced account of murders from multiple points of view. As a psychologist, especially one who has spent a large portion of my career in forensics, it’s not a huge surprise to me that I enjoy memoirs, documentaries, and docuseries. Real-life stories give us access to the incredible diversity of human experience. When Netflix and Crime +Investigation UK released the docuseries I Am A Killer , I was intrigued, but the premise of I Am A Killer is (deceptively) simple and I admit I was initially skeptical. The summary on Netflix states “Death row inmates convicted of capital murder give firsthand accounts of their crimes in this documentary series.” Because American culture, and TV media in general, tends to sensationalize stories and depict them in largely binary terms–good versus evil–I wondered if this might be just another dehumanizing depiction of a bad guy. Or equally as bad, an overly sentimental, no-accountability view of people who com...