Abstract

In the 21st century, true crime documentaries have had a greater presence in the field of consumption and distribution of audiovisual content, fostering a media debate on the judicial cases presented within their narrative content. By trying to carry out a detailed reconstruction and monitoring of different real events that led to police tragedies, this type of documentaries fosters a close link between cinematographic reproduction and reality that has revitalized contemporary documentary practice from an ethical point of view. Through the case study of The Jinx: the life and death of Robert Durst, a true crime documentary that has had important relevance in the recent public and judicial sphere, we propose to analyze the link between the documentary and reality from the triadic model of the sign proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce, and specifically, on how secondness is a mode of meaning that gives documentary filmmaking the ability to transfer the textures of reality to an indexical level.

Keywords: Charles Peirce | Documentary cinema | Secondness | Semiotics | True crime