Male chauvinist violence is not a spectacle

This Monday, Crims delved into the case of a woman's murder in Parets del Vallès. The episode was titled Betrayal, but it was something more serious. Carles Porta presented it as a mystery: “The Mossos immediately suspect the perpetrator is her husband, but Jennifer's family don't believe it because to them he is like another son. Are the Mossos wrong? Or are the family members wrong?”. It is unimaginable that Crims would treat a case as an error by the Mossos because praising their work is an essential part of the series. Their material and testimonies are indispensable for the program. It was a case of male violence, but as has happened before in Crims, Porta did not verbalize it. It was implicit. In the entire narrative, gender violence was only pronounced once, because the killer himself wrote it in a letter to feign his innocence and the text was read.

It is incomprehensible that the omniscient narrator, Carles Porta, who is the authoritative voice in the story, does not emphasize it or even when closing the program. It is a social problem with many deaths every year in our country. It cannot be evaded or treated as an isolated case. It is also negligent not to include any specialist in macho violence to point out behaviors and patterns. Experts in the field do not like to participate in broadcasts that treat the subject as entertainment, but at least it could have served to raise awareness on a program with maximum audience. As a public television, TV3 should not allow this malpractice with macho violence. Only, after the program, they added a sign with the emergency telephone number for these cases. Light should be shed on the darkness —because it is a real mystery— on why Carles Porta is so reluctant to explicitly mention it and link it to a structural social problem. The police report also grated, giving it more bread than cheese: “It leaves us stunned”, “We are horrified”, “Despite the emotion, we try to calm down a bit and lower our pulse”, “It impacted us greatly”. The police should limit themselves to the facts and not to the drama. And also point out macho violence. Crims, moreover, fell into the typical imprudence of highlighting the evidence once the husband's authorship is confirmed. Then the sister comes out saying that he was very jealous, that he always controlled her phone, that he didn't let her go out with her friends and that he didn't allow her to dress in certain clothes. But in the report of Crims he was “like another son” from the beginning. A journalistic practice totally discouraged by experts. Selling all of this as a family betrayal was indeed chilling. In the height of cynicism, Carles Porta closed the program by emphasizing that “Jennifer's family has asked us to make the program to remember her and so that her daughter Noa knows what happened”. A way of shaking off responsibility and having the nerve to portray it as a favor to the family. The request does not invalidate professional judgment. Macho violence is not a spectacle.