Some parts of this podcast are exasperating. As others have noted, the main journalist seems to have an ethics issue. She will steal your property if she feels the DNA results may be interesting. She will listen sympathetically as you insist you do not want to be recorded, then she will secretly record you as you continue talking.
Beyond that, there's a serious storytelling problem here. Someone once said to Anne Lamott, "You have made the mistake of believing that every single thing that has ever happened to you is interesting." The same thing applies to Connie Walker, the journalist responsible for "Missing and Murdered." Her repetitive, tiresome musings, her insistence on making us listen to static, to dead-end queries, to inane chatter....All of this is infuriating. "Finding Cleo" should be around four hours, maximum, and instead it clocks in at ten. Ten!
All that said, there's a compelling story here. A Native American family believes that their sister once went missing while attempting to hitchhike. She--the sister, Cleo--had been removed from her mother's care and sent out of Canada, all the way to the U.S., to an adopting family. She didn't want to go. Almost all of the siblings were separated from one another. The surviving siblings are now adults, and they have very little information. Who killed Cleo? Was she really attempting to hitchhike? Where did the death occur?
In a crime story, there's a crime, a cover-up, and an investigation. The cover-up is almost always the most compelling chapter. What's so gripping about "Finding Cleo" is that it's nearly impossible to find even basic facts. Almost every thing that the living siblings believe about their dead sister turns out to be wrong. And the cover-up involves some big, systemic evils. There's shocking racism in the way the siblings have been treated, and then there's shocking racism in the story of their mother, a character who at first seems to be purely a villain (a woman who abandoned her tiny children for days on end). As we dig, we encounter the Gothic horrors of Canadian policies with regard to aboriginal people--the way people were removed from their families and sent to "assimilation" schools, where physical and sexual abuse seemed to be "the norm." This leads to a discussion of alcoholism and suicidal depression, and to the concept of inherited trauma. (And Sherman Alexie's "Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" comes to mind.)
It's admirable that the journalist finds several larger-than-life characters, and often she is able to capture their words on tape. There's the mourning middle-school teacher who continues to wear a dead child's art smock, as a sentimental gesture, forty years after the suicide in question. There's the woman who steels herself to testify before Canada's "truth and reconciliation committee"--and who dies shortly thereafter. There's the creepy pedophile who talks a great deal about a young girl's attempts to sell candy, and who seems to use the metaphor of candy to stand in for darker, more upsetting things. It's startling to hear actual words from these actual people; to catch these people in lies; to feel like you're very close to uncovering buried truths, truths lodged just beneath the "accepted story" (and the accepted story, in almost any context, is generally less-than-true).
I'll continue to think about this podcast for the next few days, despite my reservations. It's flawed and maddening, and it's also a work of art.
Beyond that, there's a serious storytelling problem here. Someone once said to Anne Lamott, "You have made the mistake of believing that every single thing that has ever happened to you is interesting." The same thing applies to Connie Walker, the journalist responsible for "Missing and Murdered." Her repetitive, tiresome musings, her insistence on making us listen to static, to dead-end queries, to inane chatter....All of this is infuriating. "Finding Cleo" should be around four hours, maximum, and instead it clocks in at ten. Ten!
All that said, there's a compelling story here. A Native American family believes that their sister once went missing while attempting to hitchhike. She--the sister, Cleo--had been removed from her mother's care and sent out of Canada, all the way to the U.S., to an adopting family. She didn't want to go. Almost all of the siblings were separated from one another. The surviving siblings are now adults, and they have very little information. Who killed Cleo? Was she really attempting to hitchhike? Where did the death occur?
In a crime story, there's a crime, a cover-up, and an investigation. The cover-up is almost always the most compelling chapter. What's so gripping about "Finding Cleo" is that it's nearly impossible to find even basic facts. Almost every thing that the living siblings believe about their dead sister turns out to be wrong. And the cover-up involves some big, systemic evils. There's shocking racism in the way the siblings have been treated, and then there's shocking racism in the story of their mother, a character who at first seems to be purely a villain (a woman who abandoned her tiny children for days on end). As we dig, we encounter the Gothic horrors of Canadian policies with regard to aboriginal people--the way people were removed from their families and sent to "assimilation" schools, where physical and sexual abuse seemed to be "the norm." This leads to a discussion of alcoholism and suicidal depression, and to the concept of inherited trauma. (And Sherman Alexie's "Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" comes to mind.)
It's admirable that the journalist finds several larger-than-life characters, and often she is able to capture their words on tape. There's the mourning middle-school teacher who continues to wear a dead child's art smock, as a sentimental gesture, forty years after the suicide in question. There's the woman who steels herself to testify before Canada's "truth and reconciliation committee"--and who dies shortly thereafter. There's the creepy pedophile who talks a great deal about a young girl's attempts to sell candy, and who seems to use the metaphor of candy to stand in for darker, more upsetting things. It's startling to hear actual words from these actual people; to catch these people in lies; to feel like you're very close to uncovering buried truths, truths lodged just beneath the "accepted story" (and the accepted story, in almost any context, is generally less-than-true).
I'll continue to think about this podcast for the next few days, despite my reservations. It's flawed and maddening, and it's also a work of art.
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