If there was even a slight possibility of P Diddy returning to public life after his prison term, Netflix’s new documentary, The Reckoning, has wiped it out. Calling this a “character assassination” would be insufficient. Sean Combs’s character had already been destroyed by his myriad sexual crimes; this documentary was more akin to a drawn-out public execution for a baying audience.

The narrative arc of the programme is very much a Scarface-style morality tale, charting the trajectory of the hood kid who became one of the major gatekeepers in hip-hop before falling from grace. Part of the appeal of this narrative is seeing someone as powerful and seemingly invulnerable as Diddy descend further into disrepute. Even after the self-inflicted torching of his career and reputation, he remains a deluded egomaniac who thinks he’s fighting the world, as previously unseen footage from shortly before his arrest demonstrates.

Watching this documentary, the viewer may be reminded of Michel Foucault’s writings on public executions in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish. Of particular interest is how both public executions and this uber-popular Netflix genre turn crime into a spectacle. While the technology and institutions may differ, the subterranean dynamics of power, public fascination and voyeuristic curiosity have obvious parallels.

Foucault argued that public executions were not just events where the sovereign state asserted its power in public. They were also collective rituals in which the crowd participated with a mix of fear, excitement and fascination. The public enjoyed mass executions as they saw power inflicting itself on the condemned, producing a “carnival” atmosphere mixed with horror and pleasure.

True crime documentaries such as The Reckoning play into the same psychological impulses. They display accusation, crime and sexual coercion as consumable mass entertainment. There’s the same enjoyment of watching someone destroyed by their own misdeeds, creating a communal ritualistic experience, only scaled globally through social media. Viewers here take on the role of witnesses. We receive “insider” knowledge from Diddy’s former associates and colleagues, with condemnation mixed in alongside voyeuristic discussion of his infamous, baby oil-soaked “freak-offs”.

“The disappearance of public executions,” Foucault wrote, marked “the decline of the spectacle.” Punishment shifted from public spectacular violence into invisible, bureaucratic, disciplinary power. But the spectacle hasn’t gone away. Instead, it has been transferred away from the state and onto media institutions. Seeing viewers post their thoughts on TikTok or Twitter amplifies the performance, making crime stories into viral rituals of condemnation. The audience are, far from passive spectators, gleeful participants in this punishment ritual. This is how we now symbolically execute prominent wrongdoers, banishing them from public life.

While it can be fascinating and addictive, the problem with the true crime genre is that it is less about reaching justice than turning crimes into a spectacle. Rather than bringing about structural change in a music industry which facilitated Diddy’s abuse, it is a means of stringing out long-form content. At the centre are not the victims, or even the rapper himself, but you, the audience — the symbolic judge, jury and executioner. It is one form of perverse enjoyment feeding another.

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Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.

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