Murders and Acquisitions: Representations of the Serial Killer in Popular Culture

267 Pages·2013·5.12 MB·English

by  Alzena MacDonald

Murders and

Acquisitions

Murders and

Acquisitions
Representations of the serial killer in
popular culture
Edited by
ALZENA MACDONALD

NEW YORK • LONDON • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square
New York London
NY 10018 WC1B 3DP
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www.bloomsbury.com
Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
First published 2013
© Alzena MacDonald and contributors, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Murders and acquisitions : representations of the serial killer in
popular culture / edited by Alzena MacDonald.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4411-7630-1 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4411-9292-9 (paperback) –
ISBN 978-1-4411-5485-9 (e-pub) 1. Serial murderers in mass media.
2. Serial murderers in popular culture. I. MacDonald,
Alzena, editor of compilation
P96.S44M87 2013
302.23’4–dc23
2013020323
eISBN: 978-1-4411-7702-5

Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
To my children,

Jed and Nate D’Costa;
my parents,
Allan and Zenobia MacDonald;
and
my mentors,
Professor Jon Stratton and Dr Ann McGuire.

Contents

Figures ix
Acknowledgments x
1 Dissecting the “Dark Passenger”: Reading Representations of the

Serial Killer 1
Alzena MacDonald
2 ‘Made-up and Made-over’: Faking the Serial Killer and the Serial

Killer Fake 15
Sara L. Knox
3 Serial Killing, Surveillance, and the State 33
Alzena MacDonald
4 Forced Entry: Serial Killer Pornography as a Patriarchal

Paradox 49
Robert Cettl
5 Defining Deviance: The Rearticulation of Aileen Wuornos in

Monster 67
Kumarini Silva and Danielle Rousseau
6 “LOOK AT ME”: Serial Killing, Whiteness, and (In)visibility in

the Saw Series 85
Mark Bernard
7 Shopping and Slaying, Fucking and Flaying: Serial Consumption

in American Psycho 105
Christina Lee
8 ‘Slash Production’: Objectifying the Serial “Kiler” in Euro-Cult

Cinema Fan Production
123
Oliver Carter
9 Do Serial Killers Have Good Taste? 145
Louis Bayman
viii CONTENTS
10 Defacing the Acquisitions: A Museal-Analysis of Serial Killing

Horror in Cinema 163
Janice Baker
11 “There’s Blood on the Walls”: Serial Killing as Post-9/11 Terror in

The Strangers 181
Philip L. Simpson
12 Hunting Minds, Hunting Genes: From Profiling to Forensics in

TV Serial Killer Narratives 203
Sofia Bull
13 Homme Fatal: Illegitimate Pleasures in Darkly Dreaming

Dexter 227
David Buchbinder and Ann Elizabeth McGuire
List of Contributors 243
Index 247
Figures

2.1 “Send your sinuses to Arizona”: Dristan advertisement (1960),
Adclassix.com 21
3.1 Internalizing the ‘gaze’: Kate (Ashley Judd) senses being watched in
Kiss the Girls (1997), Paramount/Rysher 36
5.1 A “fabulous monster”: Aileen Wuornos (Charlize Theron) in Monster
(2003), MDP/New Market 73
6.1 Death to the ‘visible underdog’: Tanedra Howard—the “First Black
Scream Queen”—in Saw VI (2009), Twisted Pictures 87
7.1 “Greed is good”: Patrick Bateman’s ménage à trois in American Psycho
(2000), Lionsgate 112
9.1 Taste and killing in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 149
9.2 D oes Patrick Bateman have good taste? American Psycho (2000) 157
10.1 Affective response: Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) learns the truth about the
Chamber of Horrors—all the waxworks are Professor Jarrod’s victims
coated in wax. House of Wax (1953), Warner Bros 177
11.1 “Because you were home”: The sole reason for the victimization of
James (Scott Speedman) and Kristen (Liv Tyler) in The Strangers (2008),
Rogue Pictures/Mandate Pictures 193
12.1 Neutralizing ‘threats’: Criminalist Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda)
employs forensic science to analyze the physical evidence in CSI:
Crime Scene Investigation (2000–), CBS-TV 210
13.1 Double-life: Despite Dexter’s attempts to hide his “Dark Passenger”
behind the facade of ‘family man’, he is (self-)marked as Other. Dexter
(2006–), Showtime 232