Serial murder is a global entertainment industry where the serial killer emerges as one of the most significant cultural figures of our time. No longer an exclusively Anglo-American phenomenon, narratives of serial killing are widespread in India, China, Japan, and other cultures. This book asks why this is the case, and how serial violence has been aestheticized in different contexts. It raises important questions regarding the ethics of spectatorship, complicity, and resistance. Unique in its transnational reach, it covers both novels and visual media, both West and East, both perpetrators and witnesses.
A comprehensive examination into the frightening true crime history of serial homicide—including information on America’s most prolific serial killers such as: Jeffrey Dahmer • Ted Bundy • “Co-ed Killer” Ed Kemper • The BTK Killer • “Highway Stalker” Henry Lee Lucas • Monte Ralph Rissell • “Shoe Fetish Slayer” Jerry Brudos • “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez • “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski • Ed Gein “The Butcher of Plainfield” • “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy • Andrew Cunanan • And more... In this unique book, Peter Vronsky documents the psychological, investigative, and cultural aspects of serial murder, beginning with its first recorded instance in Ancient Rome through fifteenth-century France on to such notorious contemporary cases as cannibal/necrophile Ed Kemper, the BTK killer, Henry Lee Lucas, Monte Ralph Rissell, Jerry Brudos, Richard Ramirez, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and the emergence of what he classifies as the “serial rampage killer” such as Andrew Cunanan, who murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace. Vronsky not only offers sound theories on what makes a serial killer but also makes concrete suggestions on how to survive an encounter with one—from recognizing verbal warning signs to physical confrontational resistance. Exhaustively researched with transcripts of interviews with killers, and featuring up-to-date information on the apprehension and conviction of the Green River killer and the Beltway Snipers, Vronsky’s one-of-a-kind book covers every conceivable aspect of an endlessly riveting true crime phenomenon. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS
Serial murderers generate an abundance of public interest, media coverage, and law enforcement attention, yet after decades of studies, serial murder researchers have been unable to answer the most important question: Why? Providing a unique and comprehensive exploration, Creating Cultural Monsters: Serial Murder in America explains connections bet
The antihero prevails in recent American drama television series. Characters such as mobster kingpin Tony Soprano (The Sopranos), meth cook and gangster-in-the-making Walter White (Breaking Bad) and serial killer Dexter Morgan (Dexter) are not morally good, so how do these television series make us engage in these morally bad main characters? And what does this tell us about our moral psychological make-up, and more specifically, about the moral psychology of fiction? Vaage argues that the fictional status of these series deactivates rational, deliberate moral evaluation, making the spectator rely on moral emotions and intuitions that are relatively easy to manipulate with narrative strategies. Nevertheless, she also argues that these series regularly encourage reactivation of deliberate, moral evaluation. In so doing, these fictional series can teach us something about ourselves as moral beings—what our moral intuitions and emotions are, and how these might differ from deliberate, moral evaluation.
Much has been written about the aesthetics of the television series Hannibal and its devoted fans, and some have discussed its philosophical ideas and its Gothic characteristics, but until now there has been no in-depth reading of the show as a fairy tale. However, the show positions itself as a fairy tale in its third season. Recognizing it as a fairy tale provides an understanding of its appeal and forces us to consider its lessons. Like a fairy tale, Hannibal plays with time and reality and teaches its audience about their world and how to survive in it. From the show, the audience learns both the importance and the danger of family and friends, the complicated nature of humanity containing the capability for good and evil, and the arbitrariness of society's definitions and taboos. As a fairy tale, it draws its viewers in and encourages them not only to come back time and again but to retell and even add to the story.
In this fascinating book, Peter Vronsky exposes and investigates the phenomenon of women who kill—and the political, economic, social and sexual implications buried with each victim. How many of us are even remotely prepared to imagine our mothers, daughters, sisters or grandmothers as fiendish killers? For centuries we have been conditioned to think of serial murderers and psychopathic predators as men—with women registering low on our paranoia radar. Perhaps that’s why so many trusting husbands, lovers, family friends, and children have fallen prey to “the female monster.” From history’s earliest recorded cases of homicidal females to Irma Grese, the Nazi Beast of Belsen, from Britain’s notorious child-slayer Myra Hindley to ‘Honeymoon Killer’ Martha Beck to the sensational cult of Aileen Wournos—the first female serial killer-as-celebrity—to cult killers, homicidal missionaries, and our pop-culture fascination with the sexy femme fatale, Vronsky not only challenges our ordinary standards of good and evil but also defies our basic accepted perceptions of gender role and identity. INCLUDES PHOTOGRAPHS
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies considers, via a variety of methodologies and combinations of interdisciplinary approaches, how the architecture that enables human cognitive processing interacts with cultural and historical contexts. Organized into five parts (Narrative, History, Imagination; Emotions and Empathy; The New Unconscious; Empirical and Qualitative Studies of Literature; and Cognitive Theory and Literary Experience), the volume uses case studies from a wide range of historical periods (from the fourth century BCE to the twenty-first century) and national literary traditions (including South Asian, postcolonial anglophone and francophone, Chinese, Japanese, English, Iranian, Russian, Italian, French, German, and Spanish).
Serial killing is an extremely rare phenomenon in reality that is none-theless remarkably widespread in the cultural imagination. Moreover, despite its rarity, it is also taken to be an expression of characteristic aspects of humanity, masculinity, or our times. Richard Dyer investigates this paradox, focusing on the notion at its heart: seriality. He considers the aesthetics of the repetition of nastiness and how this relates to the perceptions and anxieties that images of serial killing highlight in the societies that produce them. Shifting the focus away from the US, which is often seen as the home of the serial killer, Lethal Repetition instead examines serial killing in European culture and cinema – ranging from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and from Britain to Romania. Spanning all brows of cinema – including avant-garde, art, mainstream and trash – Dyer provides case studies on Jack the Ripper, the equation of Nazism with serial killing, and the Italian giallo film to explore what this marginal and uncommon crime is being made to mean on European screens.
Visions and Visionaries is an apt title for this volume of essays on contemporary Austrian literature and film, because this collection offers insightful discussions of a gallery of significant authors and cultural figures. It also investigates important issues of style and genre, and portrays questions of Austrian identity and culture in rich contexts of recent literary and multi-media developments, cross-cultural interactions, and historical forces. This book encompasses relevant trends and notions from the past - especially the complexities of lingering effects of the Nazi era - along with issues of the future - in particular the present and anticipated interactions of culture and cyberspace. The essays are enhanced by poems by Evelyn Schlag and Gerhard Kofler.
Serial Killers - Philosophy for Everyone investigates our profound intrigue with mass-murderers. Exploring existential, ethical and political questions through an examination of real and fictional serial killers, philosophy comes alive via an exploration of grisly death. Presents new philosophical theories about serial killing, and relates new research in cognitive science to the minds of serial killers Includes a philosophical look at real serial killers such as Ian Brady, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and the Zodiac killer, as well as fictional serial killers such as Dexter and Hannibal Lecter Offers a new phenomenological examination of the writings of the Zodiac Killer Contains an account of the disappearance of one of Ted Bundy's victims submitted by the organization Families and Friends of Missing Persons and Violent Crime Victims Integrates the insights of philosophers, academics, crime writers and police officers
