The Serial Podcast As A Commentary On Surveillance And Ideology

The Serial Podcast as a Commentary On Surveillance and Ideology This past weekend my fiancée and I both began and finished listening to the first season of the Serial Podcast. I think a little background on this is necessary before continuing on my broader analysis. The program is a weekly podcast which focuses on one particular narrative. In this case, a murder in 1999 in which a 17 year old Pakistani male, Adnan Syed, manually strangled his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee in the city of Baltimore after school one day in January. Adnan was convicted for this crime and sentenced to life in prison. The podcast revolves around the ambiguities of this case that still remain 15 years after the fact and whether or not the correct verdict was reached. It features interviews with many pertinent parties including phone interviews from Adnan, which begin every episode, along with official sources/documents and expert consultants. The first way I’d like to tie this to our class material is by exploring it in regards to surveillance, particularly the therapeutics of the self. Although we discussed surveillance and media in a more obvious form, reality television, I believe this example is just as applicable. In terms of the physical surveillance, the court case in 1999 brought out all sorts of forms of evidence that spoke to the movements of Syed on the day of the crime and, most notably, cell phone records and what towers were pinged during phone calls. It is worth noting that it is one of the first instances this was used in a Maryland court. Secondly, this was a capital crime trial in which a massive community was aware of and bore witness to. Lastly, and this is obvious, but as a convicted and incarcerated felon he is under constant surveillance and the actions and proceedings which put him there are open for anyone to view (enter Sarah Koenig and NPR). But what does this have to do with the therapeutics of the self? As Dubrovsky explains in her article, this idea