Serial Killing on Screen: Adaptation, True Crime and Popular Culture (Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture)

This book explores the representation of real-life serial murders as adapted for the screen and popular culture. Bringing together a selection of essays from international scholars, Serial Killing on Screen: Adaptation, True Crime and Popular Culture examines the ways in which the screen has become a crucial site through which the most troubling of real-life crimes are represented, (re)constructed and made accessible to the public. Situated at the nexus of film and screen studies, theatre studies, cultural studies, criminology and sociology, this interdisciplinary collection raises questions about, and implications for, thinking about the adaptation and representation of true crime in popular culture, and the ideologies at stake in such narratives. It discusses the ways in which the adaptation of real-life serial murder intersects with other markers of cultural identity (gender, race, class, disability), as well as aspects of criminology (offenders, victims, policing, and profiling) and psychology (psychopathy, sociopathy, and paraphilia). This collection is unique in its combined focus on the adaptation of crimes committed by real-life criminal figures who have gained international notoriety for their plural offences, including, for example, Ted Bundy, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Aileen Wuornos, Jack the Ripper, and the Zodiac, and for situating the tales of these crimes and their victims stories within the field of adaptation studies. Sarah E. Fanning is Assistant Professor of Drama and Screen Studies and Director of Drama at Mount Allison University, Canada. Claire OCallaghan is Lecturer in English in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Loughborough University, UK Foreword Acknowledgements Contents Notes on Contributors List of Figures 1 Introduction: Screening Serial Murder—Adaptation, True Crime, and Popular Culture Serial Killing Onscreen Notes Part I Re-viewing Victims: Sex, Gender and Spectacle 2 Serial Killer “Monster” Woman (?): Aileen Wuornos on Trial and on Screen Enter the “Monster” Monsterising Women Who Kill The Monster Antithetic Rape Victim or ‘Cold-Blooded and Calculated Killer’?—Theorising Aileen Violent Women and Denial of Agency Female Insanity, the First and Last Resort Ethics of the Performative Documentary Exit the “Monster” Notes 3 The Diminished Figure of the Serial Killer in A Confession Serial Murder, Spectacle, and Celebrity Masculinity, Exceptionality, and Misogyny A Confession Victims and the Central Presence of the Killer Notes 4 The House at the End of the World: Seriality, Death, and the Collapse of Meaning in Twin Peaks Notes Part II Psycho Paths: Re-creating the Scenes of Crime 5 Wolf Creek, Mick Taylor, and Australian Horror Aussie Serial Killers: Who Is Mick Taylor? Trespass: The Australian Horror Film Genre Lure: What the Soundtrack Tells Us About Mick Taylor Conclusion: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing Notes 6 A Strange Sort of Comfort: Domestic Architecture, Home-Bodies, and the Nostalgia of Suburban Containment in American Serial Killer Narratives Constructing Containment: Body, Home, and Suburb Ted Bundy: Slippery Nature Golden State Killer: Inside Outsider John Wayne Gacy: Head of Household Notes 7 Sweet Uncle Charlie: The Unsuspecting Killer in Shadow of a Doubt Notes 8 See No Evil: The Moors Murders on Screen The Moors Murders Place Bricolage See No Evil Staring into the Abyss Conclusion Notes Part III Monstrous Makeovers 9 Innocent Until Proven Guilty? Two Cinematic Portrayals of Johann ‘Jack’ Unterweger The Trial of the Century Trapped in Purgatory Free to Be Jack Verdict: Not Guilty? Notes 10 ‘Homicidal Hams’ and ‘Psycho Clowns’: Serial Killer Humour in American Television Comedies ‘As Common as Dirt’: The Comedic Spread of Serial Killing During the 1980s and 1990s Thinking the Unthinkable: Comedy TV’s Serial Killers Since the 2000s Conclusion: Whistling a Cheerful Tune While Walking Past a Graveyard Notes 11 Jazz Hands and Strangulation: The Musical and the Serial Killer Presenting the ‘Suffolk Strangler’ Verbatim Everybody Is Very Very Nervous Community Conservatism: London Road in Bloom Notes Part IV ‘Based On’: Truth, Authenticity and the Politics of Representation 12 One Anonymous UNSUB and the Five: Fact, Biofiction, and Mythography of Jack the Ripper and His Victims Notes 13 ‘Graze Culture’ and Serial Murder: Brushing Up Against ‘Familiar Monsters’ in the Wake of 9/11 Notes 14 “We’re Here for Something Else”: Mindhunter, Serial Murder, and the Reverential Background Conventional Wisdom and Critiques of Conventional Wisdom About Serial Killers Constructing the Serial Killer: The Exceptional Matrix on Mindhunter The Exceptional Mind: Ed Kemper as the Paradigmatic Serial Killer Kemper, Manson, and the Standard of Reverence What is the Opposite of Exceptional?: Serial Murder and Mediocrity Conclusion: Constructing the Serial Killer: The Exceptional Matrix on Mindhunter Notes 15 ‘What follows is based on actual case files’: Adapting the “Truth” in David Fincher’s Zodiac “It’s just a Movie”: The Screen as Education Zodiac and the Politics of Representation Zodiac: ‘The Film that Ends the Serial-Killer Genre’26 ‘In this cipher is my idenity [sic]’38: Zodiac and the Myth of Genius ‘I need to know that it's him’: Zodiac and the Case of Arthur Leigh Allen Conclusion Notes Index