Documentary looks at how Internet myths can lead to homicide...and the consequences of those actions
Humans are a species of myth-makers and storytellers. Every society on Earth has created some supernatural tale stemming from their environments, tales that answer questions or give purpose, legends that teach lessons or offer warnings.
In a recent documentary found on Netflix, Werner Hertzog examines spiritual practices surrounding volcanos, ideas which stretch around the world and reflect the people who tell them. There are tales of gods and their siblings in Indonesia, of power manifest and bestowed on the Dear Leader of North Korea, of a religion based around an American G.I. named John Frum in Vanautu.
Each of these myths are related to a very real, very dangerous presence in the lives of those who believe them. It’s easy to assume that this type of backwards spirituality has been eliminated from enlightened America—although there are shades of the exact same thing found in the shadows of churches across the country.
Despite our lofty notions, Americans are still storytellers. We still create myths, myths that take on a life of their own, and spread like wildfire. A new HBO documentary takes on this modern mythmaking in Beware the Slenderman. The documentary tells the story of a brutal crime committed by two young girls in the heart of Middle America, all to appease a mythical bogeyman created in the labyrinth of information that is the Internet.
The Slenderman is an internet meme that started in 2009 during a paranormal picture photoshop contest. The goal was to create something that looked very real out of existing pictures, and one of the users of this specific website added a tall, faceless stranger in a suit lurking in the background of black and white photos of a playground. Text accompanying the photos said “We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…”
With that, an internet legend was born.
It has spawned a variety of stories, games, and media. It’s especially popular on websites like the creepypasta wiki, which is an encyclopedia of scary stories that have been copied and shared (pasted/pasta) over and over. These stories were discovered by twelve-year-old Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who became so obsessed with the myth that they believed it to be real.
In order to become servants of the Slenderman, the girls lured their friend Bella into the woods where Geyser stabbed her nineteen times. They then left their friend for dead. Bella survived and crawled to find help. The girls were arrested and charged with intentional homicide, the question being whether they should be charged as adults.
Much of the documentary is spent interviewing the parents of the accused, who claim that their daughters were just normal little girls, well supervised and raised according to conventional means. Interjected into these discussions are interviews with a variety of experts on the prevalence and power of internet memes, alongside creepy pictures and videos involving the Slenderman.
Details that might be expected in a case like this are outlined—the girls didn’t have many friends, Anissa especially suffered from bullying and loneliness. Morgan’s father was diagnosed years ago with schizophrenia and likely passed it on to his daughter.
There are any number of explanations for why the girls attempted to murder their friend—whether any of them are satisfying is another conversation.
The film, however, does not spend much time on the victim. Likely, her parents weren’t interested in participating in the documentary. The film does tend to empathize with the girls, though it never trivializes their crime.
Where the film misses the mark, however, is that it misses the opportunity to discuss the ramifications of extreme punishment for such young offenders. If tried as an adult, the girls face up to 65 years in prison for a crime they committed at twelve.
While the crime is especially heinous, is that type of punishment justified or does it remove the possibility of reform, the chance at being good citizens? Just what is the purpose here? Had the documentary addressed this, it might have been more thought provoking.
The existence of scary internet memes is far less interesting to me than the justifications for harsh punishment. Beware the Slenderman doesn’t quite rise to the occasion.