Having listened many episodes of This is American Life, my first time listening to the Serial section turns out to be a very interesting one. At the very beginning, the rhythmic tick-tock was inviting, intriguing and even a little whimsical. The narrator’s voice is very clear just like normal This-is-American-Life style. The story unfolded by introducing sounds in real life, such as a phone to indicate a phone call, the realistic replications of people’s voices, and some white noises like opening a door…all make the story vivid and friendly to listen to.
There’re also fade-in music when the narrator introduced new part of story, especially when a new figure joined in the story, like Jay: “Someone is lying here, maybe neither one of here is innocent, but what if isn’t? What if he did do it, but he got everybody thought he was innocent? So it’s either Jay or Adnan, someone is lying. And I really want to figure out who.” After the narrator said this, the quirky music cut in and I feel the audio intendedly leave some space for the listener, just making me feel less overwhelmed.
Also, there are several dialogues between people, and narrator will interrupt from time to time to explain and promote the story development. I used to think this type of story-telling would be disturbing and annoying. Yet on the contrary, maybe because it’s a detective story, the explanation at proper time will make things clearer. Then when the narrator wants to explain big chunk of information, the dialogue become the background music, sounding like news-reporting type.
The difference of audio quality made it easy to distinguish which are the interviews, which are the witnesses’ statements, or which are the narrations. The several kinds of iterative music wistfully set boundary between sections of story, and play a role in advancing the story.
The way the podcasts narrates the story is also interesting. We are so used to murder when it’s all sewn up. What Serial does is remind me that murder and the investigation of it are human, messy, not simple, not clear. Extraordinary, bad things happen to ordinary, good people. We do not wish them on anyone. And yet, because of their extraordinariness, their awfulness, they are fascinating. They bring a thrill. We want to work out murder, order it, get the right villain… because we are scared. This is real life. This actually happened.