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.
Author(s): Sarah E. Fanning, Claire O’Callaghan
Series: Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 390
City: Cham
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
