She just snapped! : rethinking mad, sad and bad discourses of women who kill

Abstract

Women do not fit nicely into the category of violent offenders. Using Oxygen Network‘s flagship franchise series Snapped, I present a historical study of the first season of the show that marks an important moment in criminological and True Crime TV history as it relates to the conceptualisation of women who kill. I set out to answer the question "How does Snapped challenge or reaffirm the dominant theories of women who kill?" I argue that there is an alternative way to explain female killers other than the pejorative mainstream discourses of mad, sad and bad. I use a thematic analysis to unravel themes and draw on Chris Weedon‘s feminist post structuralism with specific focus on discourse and power as they relate to gender and agency. My findings reveal that women who kill are not sad, but they can be however mad, bad, and do possess agency.