4 Comments
Apr 22Liked by Maddy Court

I, too, didn't have cable, so I haven't really been into the Nickelodeon documentary. Thank you for writing a summary, though; I'm glad I've been informed. I've been interested in reading I'm Glad My Mom Died, but it seems...stressful.

Growing up, my mom was obsessed with watching TV shows that were true crime before true crime was a genre: Cops, 48 Hours, things like that. (It always seemed like there was one for every night of the week, even on public access channels.) It was very often the last thing I'd watch before going to bed: stories about rape, murder, dismemberment, all packaged by some lurid narrator with bad reenactments. I'm not entirely sure why millennial women seem so obsessed with true crime - I'm sure there's tons of speculation out there - but with my mom, I felt like it was a confirmation of a bias that the world was dangerous, and it was better to just stay home and self-isolate. Either way, I'm glad that she doesn't know that true crime exists as a genre and also doesn't know how podcasts work. May this continue indefinitely.

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so many thoughts as i generally avoid most true crime but my particular niche of interest is scams and cults. i didn't watch quiet on set after hearing the reviews and that so many affected weren't involved - pretty sure that production company also did a doc on "the glee curse" about three main actors dying which felt really exploitative. i also have zero nostalgia for nickelodeon as a cable-less child, but jennette's memoir is SO good and certainly one of the best i've read celeb or otherwise. i do consider jessica simpson's memoir to be very high caliber and a similar reflection on the abuse related to her stardom and the alcoholism that came from that.

for anyone unsatisfied with quiet on set, i would really recommend the hbo doc showbiz kids - to me it gave a full picture of the abuse and labor exploitation of child acting without being re-traumatizing, with interviews with people like mara wilson and evan rachel wood and also going back through the history of child actors.

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