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It was only a matter of time, I suppose. It seems like every sensationalized news story ends up being made into a usually cheesy film of some sort. Heck, I can remember three separate films about “Long Island Lolita” Amy Fisher coming out in rapid succession. Well, Dutch director Paul Reuvens is doing it again with a rehash of Natalee Holloway’s disappearance.
Oh, and you’ll love this … Reuven’s is using the incredibly original idea of telling the story from the point of view of a fictionalized journalist. Freaking brilliant!
The journalist goes to great lengths to solve the disappearance of the Mountain Brook teen. He even breaks into Joran Van der Sloot’s house to gain evidence of his involvement in the case.
Filming was done quietly in Aruba due to the sensitivity of the case. The movie, which will be in English, is set to be released in 2011.
Well, this should be interesting. I mean, there was already a Lifetime original creatively entitled “Natalee Holloway” which, according to Alabama news outlets, was pretty bad. The Lifetime movie, by the way, was based loosely around Natalee’s mother’s book Loving Natalee.
Anyway, perhaps the most interesting thing about Reuven’s film is that the murder of Stefany Flores in Peru and van der Sloot’s arrest by Peruvian authorities is incorporated …
… into it. That might possibly give the story enough of a twist (in addition to the very original journalist point of view thing, of course) where it won’t be completely forgettable.
Forgive me if I sound harsh here. I find Joran van der Sloot to be a completely reprehensible human being (and that was before the sex ring thing came out) and feel the utmost sadness for Natalee Holloway, her family, and the greater community that continues to mourn her loss.
I just wonder what the elements of this particular case are that made it such a huge media sensation. There are murders, disappearances, sex rings, domestic abuse, and every sort of disgusting crime that you can imagine (and some you probably can’t).
Have you ever heard of Brittanee Drexel? I hadn’t either. The New York teen disappeared from Myrtle Beach during a spring break trip. The last person to see her was a male acquaintance who acted suspiciously but there was no hard evidence.
How about Alissa Turney, who disappeared after running away to California following a fight with her stepfather, never touching a fairly large amount of money in her bank account.
Then there’s Alyssa Rehfield from Texas, who recently disappeared with a man she’d met on the internet.
When missing children (including teens) are found, it’s almost always a tragic finale. Norma Lopez. Kayleah Wilson. Shaniya Davis. Jahmeshia Conner. Kaylin Doggendorf.
Each of these girls, and millions of others (and that’s not even looking at missing boys), had a story. I can’t figure out why they have not received the intense media focus that the Holloway case has.
So why is it that Natalee Holloway’s disappearance, which happened over five years ago, is the subject of multiple films and scads of attention when these other girls are essentially ignored?
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There are so many disappearances, it would be impossible for the national media to acknowledge them all. Often they’re covered on a local level, though. The media seems to pick a favorite case and trumpet it for years; in van der Sloot’s case, though, I’m glad his name is all over the news. No one will forget who he is or what he did, and if he ever makes it out of prison he’ll still never get a break.
White. Blonde. Cute. Disappeared in a foreign country so we can blame “those foreigners.”
Seriously, I heard the mother of a young black woman who disappeared on tv once. She said that you would never know that anyone of color ever disappeared. You would think only white young women disappeared from the news coverage you get. I started watching (this was years ago) and she has been right. I have yet to see any coverage for any young girl or woman disappearing who was anything but white. (I mean substantial, continuing national coverage.) You can’t tell me that other people don’t disappear.
None of the other missing girls (or guys) are white and from the upper middle class. Far more black men go missing than any other group, and yet when was the last time you ever saw a missing black man make the news?
It’s like the obsession the news media has with kidnappings by strangers. 99% of the time, a kid is “kidnapped” by the noncustodial parent. And yet, the news media tries to make us fear for our children and scares them into never speaking to strangers and all kinds of other ridiculous rules which don’t really even need to be taught to them. This is called a “moral panic”. Other moral panics include mad cow disease and SARS, people putting razor blades in kids’ Halloween candy, and the Satanic Daycare “scandal” of the 80’s. In fact, there’s an inverse relation between the danger of something and the amount of time the news media spends on it. The less likely you are to die from something, the more time the media spends hyping it up and making it seem like an impending disaster. West Nile Virus and flesh-eating bacteria are two recent examples. Special reports on heart disease, obesity, and car accidents? Never on the news.
Ditto for crimes. Violent crime comprises only 2% of our nations’ crimes, yet the vast majority of news crimes reports focus on violent crime. During the early 2000’s, murder was second only to the war in news coverage, taking up 45% of crime coverage on the news. This has the adverse effect of making us all afraid of black men, even though black men are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators of it.
Because she’s white and pretty, anyone else is usually ignored.
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