Serial Killer Culture
Natural Celebrities
David Schmid, an English professor at SUNY-Buffalo, looks at the phenomenon in Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture.� Tracing its dramatic rise to the 1980s, he describes how serial killers have become such iconic figures as to inspire bestselling books and critically acclaimed movies.� He notes that we have a socially-approved narrative about the killers (they're bad), along with a "disavowed" narrative (they're fascinating) that remains beneath social consciousness but contributes to an "unstable combination" and supports the current glamorized status of serial killers in our culture.� Schmid relates this to the media's attempt to "give a face to the faceless predator."� The serial killer case is just made for the media, evident since the nineteenth century, and it's no surprise that they have reached celebrity status.� "The serial killer," he says, "is the exemplary modern celebrity, widely known and famous for being himself."
Schmid points out that while most celebrities become famous for what they do — acting, playing baseball, getting rich, inventing a popular program — the serial killer becomes famous as much for who he (or she) is. And they know it, and revel in it.� Some will even confess to crimes they did not do in order to up their standing.� Henry Lee Lucas is a good case in point.� They look for authors to turn their pathetic activities into books and movies that make them larger than life and give them stand-out roles in society.� Some hope to get rich, or at least become notorious enough to be kept alive for a while longer to be studied.� In discussing Carl Panzram's letter in 1929 about turning his writings into a book, Schmid states that it suggests a "highly developed awareness of the market of murder-related products."� Panzram actually advises the would-be author to end it with a photo of himself in his grave or the electric chair, because that will "make a hell of a good book."
Yet it's not just about what the killers desire to have happen; their audiences are all too willing to oblige.� "In order to understand why there is such a vibrant market in contemporary America for ...serial murder in particular," says Schmid, "we have to appreciate that the famous serial killer effectively and economically satisfies a double need...the need for representations of death and the need for celebrities."
In other words, Americans yearn for celebrities that are also associated with death imagery.� Given that we're also a culture quite frightened about death, that desire indicates a complex psychological process in play that yields an overall feeling of dread: we're attracted to the very thing that repulses or frightens us.� "By and large the attraction has been disavowed," Schmid points out, "and repulsion has been allowed to construct the image of the serial killer as a monstrous outsider."
That's one theory, anyway.� Accurate or not, there is a vocal segment of society that firmly and consciously disavows this glorification.
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