Attn: "Skeleton Stories": Knock off the Child Worship and Tell the Damn Story

Cafe Society
1

I caught an episode of some forensic show fodder called Skeleton Stories.
As you might guess, it’s about catching killers by analyzing the bones of victims.

This episode was about a three year old girl whose parents divorce and the dad get custody and remarries. Neighbors notice the new stepmother doesn’t like the little girl too much, preferring her own two children. Soon, the father rushes the little girl to the hospital. Her brain is swelling and she dies. She is covered in bruises from head to toe. The stepmother tells the hospital the girl fell down a lot because of problems with her feet. The girl is stashed in a mausoleum until thirty years later when the case is reopened, and the girl’s body is examined. The medical examiner can find nothing wrong with the girl’s feet. A murder warrant is issued for the stepmother, and as the police go to pick her up, the stepmother shoots herself. The end.

Now, the show took forty minutes to tell this story, maybe thirty if you leave out the commercials. You would think in this length of time they could answer some questions such as…oh, I don’t know…Why did the hospital buy the obviously bogus story about funny shaped feet in the first place? Why was the case forgotten for thirty years? How was the case reopened, and by whom? And why? You know, interesting questions like that.

But no, Skeleton Stories thought that airtime was better spent showing “dramatazation” pictures of a cute little blond girl while saying things like, “She was just a precious little girl.” “Who could hurt a little girl like this?” “How could something so brutal happen to this little girl?” “Look at this little girl. I mean, she’s so cute and blond and everything!” “Nobody could hurt a little girl like this!” “Could you hurt a little girl like this?” “Don’t you just want to cry for this little girl? Well, okay, not this little girl who’s just a child actress we hired for the show, but still…dead little girl! How could that happen, huh?”

I mean, they actually said, “The medical examiner has children of her own, and must prepare herself emotionally before doing this autopsy…”

Oh f’r godsakes! She’s a FREAKIN’ MEDICAL EXAMINER!!! She’s probably sliced up kids plenty of times! I’m sure she’s had cases where she’ll shake her head and say something like, “Poor kid never had a chance. People can be such assholes.”

But don’t make out like she has to do some kind of mystic ritual meditation to give her Vulcan-like detachment before she can dare to lift the sheet off the tiny little corpse! Otherwise, she will surely descend into madness! That’s just stupid!

Now, excuse me, I have to watch some kitten videos.

2

Yeah, I know what you mean. I haven’t seen that show in particular, but there’s plenty of times I’ve seen those ‘taken from real life’ shows and rolled my eyes when they go off on tangents like that, and underestimate people’s ability to actually, y’know, do the job they’re very good at.

3

I generally agree with your rant, but in Real Life there are autopsies that even experienced Medical Examiners find unsettling or disturbing. I spoke with one who, like the the ME in the show, had a hard time performing an autopsy on a child who reminded him of his daughter. It’s also not unknown for them to sometimes have to perform autopsies on people they know. I know that funeral directors sometimes have to deal with the same issues.

4

I agree some autopies would be more harrowing than others, but in this instance the corpse had been mummifying for thirty years. Unless the medical examiner’s kids looked like E.T., there couldn’t be that much of a resemblance.

5

Sometimes just the size can cause a reaction. We’re just not used to kids dying. I used to do an intermittant pickup from a college anatomy lab. The donated cadavers were always totally wrapped in gauze and laying on rolling tables. The only one I ever had trouble with was a child. Even completely covered in gauze and having only the outline of a human, the size of it made me feel incredibly sad. It stuck with me for the rest of the day and all I had to to was walk into the room, pick up a box, and leave.

And obviously, I still remember it.

Not that the show doesn’t sound like dead cuteness porn. Was it one of those shows that only have fifteen minutes of actual footage but is padded out by playing scenes multiple times? That gets really old fast.

6

Can’t comment on this particular show, but I applaud the OP. A few years ago I reviewed a book about a couple of amateur detectives out to crack a child pornography/prostitution ring, and every chapter or two it was just like in the OP: “Her eyes welled up with sorrow at the thought of these tiny, innocent bodies being used for such a terrible purpose.” Over and over and over again. And in my review I called them on it: Yes, the reader is aware that Child Exploitation is Bad. We Get It. It doesn’t have to be repeated that many times, in lieu of plot, character development, or dialogue.

And, of course, my editor got an outraged letter from the author insinuating that I had no empathy and that I probably thought kiddie porn was A-OK.

7

I also have a problem with documentaries padding out the show with lame recreations, even if it’s not glurge. Bad acting takes me out of the experience a lot more than talking heads or voicing over photographs. And historical recreations are the worst, where four guys in costume are trying to recreate the First Punic War.

C’mon, documentaries like Ken Burns’s The Civil War somehow managed to hold a nation’s attention with just photographs, music, and an spellbinding subject.