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The trouble with female serial killers

Elizabeth Yardley and David Wilson

in Female Serial Killers In Social Context: Criminological institutionalism and the case of Mary Ann Cotton

This chapter introduces the topic of serial homicide, exploring the development of this academic field. Difficulties in defining ‘serial killing’ are considered in relation to the numerous ... More

This chapter introduces the topic of serial homicide, exploring the development of this academic field. Difficulties in defining ‘serial killing’ are considered in relation to the numerous definitions and different criteria upon which they draw. Thereafter the study of female serial killers is explored and the different types of approach to making sense of women who engage in such crimes are critically considered. Thereafter, the case of Mary Ann Cotton is introduced and contextualised within existing understandings of female serial killers – the chapter concludes that existing approaches are limited in the amount of light they are able to shed on this particular case.Less

Whither the Serial Killer Movie?

Philip L. Simpson

in American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium

This chapter offers a critical overview of the serial killer film, especially in the light of the subgenre’s intense cultural significance during the 1980s and 1990s and its subsequent descent into ... More

This chapter offers a critical overview of the serial killer film, especially in the light of the subgenre’s intense cultural significance during the 1980s and 1990s and its subsequent descent into relative insignificance after 9/11. While pondering the larger questions of why and how horror film archetypes drift in and out of the culture’s focus of attention, it also demonstrates how the serial killer film, though often pronounced dead, has instead managed to spread throughout a field of cultural production much larger than that of a strictly defined and narrowly circumscribed cinematic genre. The chapter argues that the serial killer has even made a comeback with recent high-profile productions directed by auteurist filmmakers such as Spike Lee (Summer of Sam) and David Fincher (Zodiac).Less

Screening the American Gothic: Celluloid Serial Killers in American Popular Culture

Sorcha Ní Fhlainn

in American Gothic Culture: An Edinburgh Companion

This chapter situates the American gothic in post-1960 cinema and TV by exploring the distinctly American lineage of the modern serial killer. Landmark films chart seismic shifts in post-classical ... More

This chapter situates the American gothic in post-1960 cinema and TV by exploring the distinctly American lineage of the modern serial killer. Landmark films chart seismic shifts in post-classical American cinema after the success of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1973) to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), American Psycho (2000), and Dexter (2006-13). This Drawing upon the influence of real/reel American serial killers (Ed Gein, Ted Bundy), this chapter argues that the serial killer embodies the counter-narrative American Dream: the consumerist and consumption-driven American nightmare.Less

Serial Killing and the Dissident Woman: Aileen Wuornos

Lisa Downing

in The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer

This chapter explores ways in which the available discourses of the exceptional murdering subject that have been sketched out so far in this book are a particularly problematic fit in the case of ... More

This chapter explores ways in which the available discourses of the exceptional murdering subject that have been sketched out so far in this book are a particularly problematic fit in the case of Aileen “Lee” Wuornos, a lesbian prostitute and victim of sexual abuse who killed seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. It is examined here how the label of “serial killer” was debated with regard to Wuornos, and how it was at times rejected, and at times adopted as a badge of agency and of selfhood by Wuornos herself who continually sought, like those around her, to make sense of herself through her crimes. Her discourse alternated between assertions that her killings were acts of self-defense and statements that interpret them as a proud bid for recognition via the evocation of the “cold-blooded” serial killer.Less

All hail to the serial killer: America's last frontier hero in the age of Reaganite eschatology and beyond

Linnie Blake

in The Wounds of Nations: Horror Cinema, Historical Trauma and National Identity

This chapter draws heavily on the misadventures of the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, from Ridley Scott's film Hannibal. Reflecting the hunger of American audiences for the further ... More

This chapter draws heavily on the misadventures of the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, from Ridley Scott's film Hannibal. Reflecting the hunger of American audiences for the further misadventures of Hannibal Lecter, took this film to a record-breaking $58,000,000 on its opening weekend in the United States. Such massive public interest in Lecter had of course begun with his appearance in Thomas Harris's best-selling novels Red Dragon (1981), The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and Hannibal (1999). This chapter further illustrates that the iconic Lecter's true significance lay in the ways he allowed contemporary audiences to engage psychologically and socio-culturally with the historic traumas of the Reagan years while exposing the ideological mediation of that trauma by all aspects of the culture industry. The violent murderer has been a recurrent figure in the mass cultural imagination of the United States since the earliest days of the republic. He has come to the forefront of the popular imagination at times of political, social or economic dislocation; and his outrageous deeds and fantasies have allowed for a timely re-examination of one of the core paradoxes of American social life.Less

Sic transit: The Serial Killer Road Movie

Louis Bayman

in Journeys on Screen: Theory, Ethics, Aesthetics

This chapter considers the serial killer road movie through a comparison of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (USA, 1987) and Sightseers (UK, 2012). After outlining the importance of mobility in ... More

This chapter considers the serial killer road movie through a comparison of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (USA, 1987) and Sightseers (UK, 2012). After outlining the importance of mobility in conceptualizing the serial killer, it establishes the historical specificity of the serial killer road movie as an anti-humanist inversion of the road movie belonging to late capitalist society. The chapter seeks to show how the combination of serial killer and road joins two modern mythologies, understood here within the different contexts of American independent cinema and British comedy. The chapter considers how mobility characterizes the killers in both films as radically other, yet expressive of something essential to the place from which they emerge. Considering respectively the importance of the post-industrial decay of Henry and the eccentricity of British manners in Sightseers, the chapter outlines the different meanings of the road in British as opposed to US culture, and the special narrational position of remove that cinematic mobility can produce.Less

Evil

Joel Feinberg

in Problems at the Roots of Law: Essays in Legal and Political Theory

Although people are understandably disturbed by the idea of pure evil, they are mistaken to replace it with ideas about sickness and cure. The language family associated with pure evil, or sheer ... More

Although people are understandably disturbed by the idea of pure evil, they are mistaken to replace it with ideas about sickness and cure. The language family associated with pure evil, or sheer wickedness, focuses not on the sick human being, but on the rationally functioning nonhuman being: the superhuman or the subhuman who has little choice but to be wicked. Even so, wickedness and mental illness (or sick! sick! sickness) have a tendency to fuse at their extreme points. This chapter considers the interrelation between sickness and wickedness as it applies to, among other things, serial killers, medical and nonmedical conceptions of sickness, personality disorders (or ‘personal’ disorders), and the relation between moral blameworthiness and mental illness.Less

The Knowledge—Sexual Murder

R. Emerson Dobash and Russell P. Dobash

in When Men Murder Women

This chapter focuses on research evidence, and problems associated with the conceptualization of sexual murder. The historical and contemporary focus on serial murder has had a disproportionate ... More

This chapter focuses on research evidence, and problems associated with the conceptualization of sexual murder. The historical and contemporary focus on serial murder has had a disproportionate influence on research on sexual murder and here we focus on the vast majority of sexual murders that do not involve serial killings. Evidence regarding the national prevalence of sexual murder of women is reviewed along with issues of definitions, lifecourse of offenders, comparisons of rapists and sexual murderers, personality problems and psychological profiles, media coverage, murder of sex workers, the nature of the relationship between perpetrators and their victims as well as the contexts and circumstances of sexual murders.Less

The Human Beast

Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze

in Claude Chabrol's Aesthetics of Opacity

This chapter examines Chabrol’s fascination with ‘human beasts’ or ‘monsters’ through the following (overlapping) motifs: the serial killer, the automaton and the female killer. Through detailed film ... More

This chapter examines Chabrol’s fascination with ‘human beasts’ or ‘monsters’ through the following (overlapping) motifs: the serial killer, the automaton and the female killer. Through detailed film analysis and close attention to techniques, it shows how Chabrol uses these figures to rethink the boundaries and concepts of normality. Although he often provides a detailed social and ideological framework within which to problematize the human beast, class and gender are misleading keys and causality is ultimately blurred to the point of opacity. The closer one gets to the monster (sometimes literally, through the use of close-up shots), the less one understands it. Case studies of the following films illuminate how Chabrol explores film grammar to convey the complexities of human nature and the fragmented, opaque nature of evil: Le Boucher; Landru; Les Fantômes du chapelier; Violette Nozière; La Demoiselle d’honneur; Blood Relatives.Less

Serial Killing and the Giallo

Austin Fisher

in Blood in the Streets: Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema

This chapter analyses films connected through their depiction of serial killing in contemporary Italy, which are usually categorised within the giallo filone. These are shown to demonstrate a variety ... More

This chapter analyses films connected through their depiction of serial killing in contemporary Italy, which are usually categorised within the giallo filone. These are shown to demonstrate a variety of ways in which filone cinema was characterised by tensions between cosmopolitanism and parochialism, in turn providing further insights into how particular filoni sought to capitalise on a preoccupation with the recent past. The giallo's broader obsessions with past traumas, fragmented memories and the unravelling of supposed facts are thus placed in the contexts of Italy's contested recent past, illuminating the extent to which wartime memory weighed heavily on the 1970s present.Less

A Darker Blue

Martin Francis

in The Flyer: British Culture and the Royal Air Force 1939–1945

This chapter is dedicated to broken flyers (those disabled or disfigured in combat), flawed flyers (those with psychological problems), and false flyers (men who passed themselves off as airmen to ... More

This chapter is dedicated to broken flyers (those disabled or disfigured in combat), flawed flyers (those with psychological problems), and false flyers (men who passed themselves off as airmen to facilitate their nefarious purposes, as spies or sexual predators). In contrast to the image of the carefree, debonair flyer which had so captivated the public, it deals with darker imaginings of the men in blue, whether real or fictionalized. It presents the badly burnt airman William Simpson, who is spurned by his wife at first sight of his grotesquely misshapen face; the emotionally stunted ex-fighter pilot Freddie Page in Terence Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea; and Neville Heath, the sadistic serial killer who passed himself off as a dashing wartime group captain.Less

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

John Billheimer

in Hitchcock and the Censors

This chapter examines the impact of external forces on the film Hitchcock often claimed to be his personal favorite. The Production Code office found little fault with the tale of a serial killer ... More

This chapter examines the impact of external forces on the film Hitchcock often claimed to be his personal favorite. The Production Code office found little fault with the tale of a serial killer returning to his small-town roots. The War Production Board, by putting a limit of $5,000 on construction costs using new materials in Hollywood pictures, forced Hitchcock and screenwriter Thornton Wilder to shoot much of the film on location in Santa Rosa, California, adding greatly to the small-town feel of the film.Less

Introduction

James C. Oleson

in Criminal Genius: A Portrait of High-IQ Offenders

Criminologists estimate the true volume of crime—the “dark figure”—to be approximately four times the size of crime reported in official statistics. Most crime goes unrecorded, and criminologists ... More

Criminologists estimate the true volume of crime—the “dark figure”—to be approximately four times the size of crime reported in official statistics. Most crime goes unrecorded, and criminologists know far more about the criminal behavior of the poor, uneducated, and young than they do about the crimes of the wealthy, educated, and powerful. Although the criminal genius is a cherished villain in history (e.g., Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, Theodore Kaczynski, and Caryl Chessman), literature (e.g., Raskolnikov, Professor Moriarty, and John Galt), and film (e.g., Hannibal Lecter, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Dr. Mabuse, and Ozymandias), little is actually known about the crimes of those possessing above-average IQ.Less

Pirates and True Bluebeards

Casie E. Hermansson

in Bluebeard: A Reader's Guide to the English Tradition

In Charles Perrault’s fairy tale, Bluebeard was never a pirate. Yet he is always linked to piracy, particularly to Blackbeard, Captain Edward Teach of Bristol. Captain Charles Johnson published an ... More

In Charles Perrault’s fairy tale, Bluebeard was never a pirate. Yet he is always linked to piracy, particularly to Blackbeard, Captain Edward Teach of Bristol. Captain Charles Johnson published an account of Blackbeard, A General History of the Pirates, in 1724. Another possible cause for the confusion between Bluebeard and Blackbeard is the fact that Teach had multiple marriages: he married his fourteenth bride, believed to be Mary Ormond, a sixteen-year-old planter’s daughter. Robert Lee also wrote a biography of Blackbeard, claiming that he was a victim of the women he could not resist. In addition to his wives, Blackbeard and other pirates are believed to have hidden treasure, making their stories conducive to intertextual connection with Bluebeard, who did not want his wife to examine his affairs too closely. This chapter examines Bluebeard’s connection to pirates and looks at a number of serial killers who were labeled in the contemporary media as “Bluebeard” or “lady Bluebeard.”Less

Evil and Explanation

Luke Russell

in Evil: A Philosophical Investigation

This chapter asks how and to what extent the concept of evil can be used in explanations of actions. Cole and Baron-Cohen have argued that the claim “He did it because he was evil” is vacuous or ... More

This chapter asks how and to what extent the concept of evil can be used in explanations of actions. Cole and Baron-Cohen have argued that the claim “He did it because he was evil” is vacuous or pseudo-explanatory. Yet the concept of evil action and the concept of evil personhood have important roles to play in our explanations of some actions, although they are limited roles, and evil does not provide a complete explanation for any action. Contrary to Cole's claims, we have reason to believe that there really are some evil persons, who are not only strongly disposed to perform the worst kind of wrong actions, but are beyond redemption, for practical purposes, and should be treated as write-offs.Less

Where Your Children Are

Wayne Johns (ed.)

in Every True Pleasure: LGBTQ Tales of North Carolina

In Where Your Children Are, by Wayne Johns, a teenage boy wishes that his friend-or he himself-would fall prey to the Atlanta child serial-killer rather than have his gayness exposed.

Explanations for High-IQ Crime

James C. Oleson

in Criminal Genius: A Portrait of High-IQ Offenders

This chapter describes the qualitative analyses derived from the forty-four follow-up interviews. It relays the life history of “Faulkner,” a drug trafficker with a 162 IQ who claims to have killed ... More

This chapter describes the qualitative analyses derived from the forty-four follow-up interviews. It relays the life history of “Faulkner,” a drug trafficker with a 162 IQ who claims to have killed fifteen people. The chapter also describes the analysis of qualitative materials in light of Travis Hirschi’s theory of social bonds, noting that the interviews were consistent with explanations of crime based upon weakened social bonds (including elements of attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief). The chapter asks whether high IQ is always a protective factor or whether, at some levels and under some circumstances, it might operate as a criminogenic risk factor.Less

Introduction

Andrew Chignell

in Evil: A History

This introductory chapter considers at some of the main ways in which the concept of evil has been applied and analyzed. It also considers related arguments for and against the idea that “evil” is ... More

This introductory chapter considers at some of the main ways in which the concept of evil has been applied and analyzed. It also considers related arguments for and against the idea that “evil” is still a useful concept in a contemporary context. There are three main camps on the latter issue: those who think that “evil” should be replaced by more tractable, anodyne concepts like “trauma” or “disutility”; those who think that using “evil” helps us take seriously (and assign blame for) particularly heinous acts; and those who think it has a non-human or supersensible referent. The chapter goes on to raise some of the main ontological, epistemological, and psychological questions about evil before concluding with an overview of the rest of the volume.Less