Why We Love Serial Killers (37 page)

Typically, language is insufficient to frame the problematic behavior of those who are considered to be deviant, so society by way of its policing agents constructs symbols and images to demonstrate the dangers allegedly posed by the “other” to the community.

From a functionalist perspective, the social construction of the serial killer identity is symbolic and it helps to clarify the moral boundary that separates good and evil in society. It defines the actions of the serial killer as inhuman and beyond reason. By accepting the framing of serial killers as evil, the public is given moral clarity. Such clarity can be both reassuring and comforting. By framing the serial killer as evil, the public has an explanation for the actions of the criminal and it also has a reason to feel better about itself. Why? The serial killer identity provides the public with a reference point for judging the acceptability
of its own behavior. The actions of the serial killer clearly set the bar for acceptable behavior very low, so it is easy for the public to minimize its own moral failings by comparison. For example, a person might think, “I may not be a saint but at least I don’t kill or eat people!” In addition to providing moral clarity, the framing of serial killers as evil is functional because it provides the public with a point of reference and a way to put its own negative behavior in perspective. It suggests that despite all of our faults, compared to serial killers, the rest of us are not so bad.

Serial killers do horrible things to innocent people. Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper, for example, raped, tortured, and killed their victims, and then engaged in necrophilia and dismembered the corpses. I would argue that such actions do establish the outer limits of human depravity. Is there anything worse one person can do to another than what Bundy, Kemper, Ramirez, and their ilk do to their victims? As stated throughout this book, when the crimes of serial killers are reported by the news media, they are typically framed as the inhuman acts of vampires or monsters. The killers are almost always depicted as being pure evil in order to distinguish them from decent people. From a functionalist perspective, such media framing suggests that if you want to know what evil is and what evil does, then you need to look no further than Ted Bundy and other serial killers.

The Serial Killer Is One of Us

In the social construction of serial killers, law enforcement authorities and the news media compare the actions of the perpetrator to the average person in society. Because the so-called “normal” person is the point of reference in the social construction process, the serial killer identity can be seen as a reflection of the public. The serial killer identity is like a mirror that permits society to consider how the perpetrator is both different from and similar to itself. The mirror reveals that the serial killer is different from the public in many ways, but it also reveals that the serial killer is very much like the public in certain ways. The serial killer identity contains many human characteristics that are valued such as drive, fortitude, persistence, and reliability. As a result, I believe that the serial killer identity blurs the boundary between good and evil. Moreover, it sends a subliminal message that the public may not be that different from the serial killer after all.

Society’s attempt to understand and explain what created the serial killer leads to the possibility that something within the human condition—that is, something from within the world we do understand—created the serial killer. As argued by Dr. Warwick:

Far from their actions being beyond explanation, serial killers are offered as actually being the key to the understanding of the whole of the human condition. What makes them? The answer, undeniably, is that they are we. We are they . . . [Ironically, by labeling the individual who has violated the norms], society collapses the boundary between the normal and the abnormal while simultaneously offering absolute assurance of that boundary’s real existence.
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If evil comes from within the human world and not outside it, then the boundary between normal and abnormal is far more ambiguous than suggested by the stark black-and-white images presented in the news and entertainment media. If evil is created from something within the human condition, then even so-called normal people in society—those considered good—are not entirely immune to its influence. If the serial killer was not born that way, then the distance between the killer and the normal person is much shorter than we thought. To the extent that evil emerges from within society, we are all closer to the serial killer than we might imagine and more capable of abnormality than we would like to think. From a functionalist perspective, therefore, the horrors perpetrated by the serial killer enable society to consider both the source and limitations of its own violent tendencies.

The Serial Killer Clarifies Moral Boundaries

I believe that the serial killer identity represents a collapse of the boundary between human and monster. As a social construction, the serial killer identity involves a merging or integration of man and monster. This serves an unexpected purpose. Most everyone in society has dangerous urges and thoughts lurking in their minds and the person who behaves like a monster helps the public to exorcise them vicariously. The late Gary Gilmore, who was executed for committing multiple murders, once said, “The mind needs monsters. Monsters embody all that is dangerous and horrible in the human imagination.” The late Richard Ramirez famously told a reporter that “we are all evil” when asked if he was evil. David Berkowitz told me that inside everyone lies the “desire
to take out one’s anger and frustration upon someone else . . . Man can become violent in a moment’s time . . . Everyone has the potential to do terrible things.”

Arguably, society needs serial killers because they are like emotional lightning rods that protect people from their own violent tendencies. The socially constructed serial killer identity gives society an outlet to experience the darker side of the human condition that otherwise it cannot or will not consider. As explained in chapter 10, this factor is a key source of the public’s fascination with serial killers. The actions of the serial killer offer society a taste of madness and blood in a controlled environment and, most importantly, they provide a catharsis for the public’s primal urges. The serial killer allows society to act out its darkest fantasies without getting hurt. In a sense, the serial killer allows people to go safely insane. How does this serve society? It provides an escape valve for the public’s pent-up anger and frustration as people observe the carnage perpetrated by the serial killer and participate vicariously in his crimes. From a functionalist perspective, the moral boundaries of society are clarified and reinforced when the serial killer acts on his monstrous impulses while the rest of society sits back and observes the spectacle.

The Public Identifies With Monsters

Strangely enough, part of the appeal and functionality of serial killers has to do with empathy. I believe that people are driven by an innate and spontaneous tendency to empathize with everything around them. My research suggests that not only do people blur the line between real and fictional serial killers, they genuinely identify with both serial killers and monsters in Hollywood depictions of them. The public secretly pulls for the misunderstood monster in the 1931 classic horror film
Frankenstein
, as well as the cunningly brilliant Hannibal Lecter in the more recent classic
The Silence of the Lambs
.

Psychologist Heath Matheson contends that empathizing with the monster or killer in a movie makes it more fun to watch and scarier, too.
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Empathy enables us to identify with the monster or killer. Once we grasp their needs and desires, we can then identify with their purpose, no matter how terrifying it may be. According to Dr. Matheson, a really effective movie monster or serial killer is one that we can identify with and believe is goal oriented, and able to achieve those goals.
¹³³
A classic example is the fictional movie monster King Kong, the giant gorilla,
who struggled valiantly to locate and protect his lost love after he was captured and taken to New York City. King Kong has become a frightening but lovable anti-hero in popular culture.

From a functionalist perspective, the ability to empathize with a monster or serial killer makes it more predictable and less scary. As discussed in chapter 10, the public needs to understand things that are baffling and scary in order to make them less frightening. I believe that people do this to make sense out of everything foreign they encounter and, thereby, reduce their fear. Simply stated, empathetic understanding reduces fear of the unknown. Therefore, the more one can relate to or humanize a monster or serial killer, the less scary it becomes.

Although empathizing with a monster helps us to identify with its purpose, it also exposes one of our most primal fears—that is, the fear that we could become monsters ourselves. Commenting on this point, psychologist Dr. Raymond Mar says, “I think that the scariest monsters are those in which we are able to see an aspect of humanity present. Evil is scary enough, but the idea that humanity, and perhaps ourselves, are capable of such evil is even more terrifying. Understanding our own capacity to be or become a monster creates true existential fear.”
¹³⁴

Applying this logic to the social construction of the serial killer identity, a dual process of humanization and dehumanization seems to be in effect. That is, we try to humanize the serial killer in order to make him less scary but we also try to dehumanize and separate him from the rest of us in order to create a moral boundary between good and evil. Thus, there are contradictory processes of humanization and dehumanization occurring simultaneously in the social construction of celebrity monsters. I believe that this results in further ambiguity regarding serial killers in the minds of many people.

The Public’s Enduring Love Affair with Dr. Hannibal Lecter

The powerful visceral appeal of serial killers has led to a macabre love affair between them and the American public. Society’s passion for serial killers is well documented by its insatiable appetite for Hollywood films on the subject, which number in the hundreds over the years. The box office returns reveal that Hollywood and the public love stories about serial killers. From the earliest known film on this subject, Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Lodger
(1927), to
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
(2011) and its sequels, serial killer films consistently make big profits, attract large audiences, and generate cult followings. The films typically present
a gruesome story of serial homicide in the most graphic way possible and yet, ironically, the perpetrator is often portrayed as a sort of anti-hero. According to the findings of my research, movie audiences will generally root for the serial killer to succeed in his mission at some level.

No serial killer in history has projected the monster as anti-hero image more powerfully or vividly than Dr. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. Despite his fictional origins, Hannibal Lecter is perceived by many people to be the quintessential American serial killer. His stature in the popular culture was recently enhanced by the hit NBC television series
Hannibal
, which focuses on his early life and career. As a larger-than-life popular culture icon, Dr. Hannibal Lecter constitutes a mythical and almost supernatural embodiment of society’s deepest and darkest fears. Society is riveted by the diabolical depiction of Lecter because he enables people to project their fears onto a clearly delineated super villain. He is made even more frightening by the fact that he is an accomplished medical doctor and psychiatrist—that is, a successful, well respected, and seemingly “normal” man. The broad appeal of Dr. Lecter to the public was expressed by criminologist Dr. J. C. Oleson who wrote:

Hannibal Lecter may be such an attractive character because he is something more than human (or something less): a vampire, a devil, or some infernal combination of the two. Springing from the literary tradition of Milton’s Satan, Goethe’s Mephistopheles, and Stoker’s Count Dracula, the character of Hannibal Lecter may be so successful because he plays upon the public’s primal fascination with monsters.
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Like many Hollywood monsters and boogey men, Dr. Hannibal Lecter is exciting and magnetic because he is completely goal oriented, devoid of conscience, and almost unstoppable.

Hannibal Lecter is uniquely different than any other Hollywood movie monster or killer, however. Unlike cartoonish characters such as Godzilla or Freddy Krueger, Dr. Lecter is human. He is also brilliant, witty, and even charming. Similar to the avenging angel serial killer Dexter Morgan, Lecter has a set of strict ethical principles that he lives and kills by, but unlike Dexter, his motives are not altruistic. My research suggests that Dr. Lecter’s enduring popular appeal and the terror he invokes are due to the fact that he is depicted as a mortal man. In many ways, he is like the rest of us. He bleeds and he feels pain. His humanness makes him a much more relatable and identifiable villain to the public than other one-dimensional monster characters in films. At
the same time, his similarity to the public also contributes to his ability to induce fear. Much like Ted Bundy in real life, Hannibal Lecter seems normal—terrifyingly normal. He represents our worst collective fear in the modern world—that is, the fear of the murderous everyman who lives next door. Paradoxically, because Dr. Lecter is depicted as a real person rather than a supernatural monster or boogey man, he elicits greater empathy and greater fear at the same time. He is simultaneously very frightening and fun to watch. That is why we love him.