Murder of Kitty Genovese - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The story of the witnesses who did nothing "is taught in every introduction to psychology textbook in the United States and Britain, and in many other countries... and has been made popularly known through television programs and books," and even a song.

• 1964: A. M. Rosenthal's book Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case explored the incident.
• 1966: Folk singer Phil Ochs was inspired by Kitty Genovese's murder to write the 1967 song "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends". This song related five different situations that should demand action on the part of the narrator, but in each case the narrator concluded that "I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody outside of a small circle of friends".
• 1974: The murder of Kitty Genovese was the inspiration for Harlan Ellison's short story "The Whimper of Whipped Dogs".
• 1975: An American TV movie Death Scream, starring Raul Julia, was based on the murder.
• 1985: Twilight Eyes, a horror novel by Dean R. Koontz refers to the murder as motivation for the main characters to take action.
• 1986: Genovese's murder was a pivotal event in the graphic novel Watchmen. Protagonist Rorschach originally becomes a masked vigilante because of it.
• 1996: An episode of Law & Order, "Remand", was loosely based on the case.
• 1999: The crime thriller film The Boondock Saints uses the incident as an example of good men doing nothing.
• 2000: In his best-selling book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell refers to the case and the "bystander effect" as evidence of contextual cues for human responses.
• 2006: The History Channel produced a documentary on the murder as episode 15.2 of their History's Mysteries series.
• 2009: The 2009 novel Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn was based on the murder.
• 2009: Didier Decoin's novel Est-ce ainsi que les femmes meurent? ("Is this how women die?") is based on the murder. It was subsequently adapted to film in 2012 as 38 témoins ("38 Witnesses"), directed by Lucas Belvaux. The movie has been reset in Le Havre, France.
• 2009: SuperFreakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, uses the murder of Kitty Genovese as a case study in the book's chapter on altruism.
• 2009: In the film Watchmen Kitty Genovese appears as a character who orders a dress made from the signature "Moving Ink Blot" material. After her murder, Rorschach, the creator of the dress, uses the material to create his mask and begins to fight crime, saying that the murder opened his eyes, and he became ashamed of Humanity.