Serial Killers and the Audience

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice

Chianti. (The Silence of the Lambs). The cultural manifestation of serial killers is prone to be

considered under many different disciplines. It is a subject treated in sociology, the arts, the

media, and psychoanalysis to mention just a few. It belongs to the realms of both reality and

fiction and as a consequence of this cultural criss-crossing, on some occasions reality and fiction

become mixed and influence each other. In the modern era we witness how real-life serial killers

are "narrativized" by the media by turning their killings into coherent patterns, or how they copy

the murders of fictional serial killers. On the other hand, we see how "serious" literature writers

of great prestige write true-crime literature, or how fictional serial killers copy the deeds of real

killers or try to resemble them. The interactions are never-ending and there is no doubt that the

serial killer has become an icon of pop culture. With all these subjects melding together, none are

more interesting than that of the serial killer in cinema. With films such as The Silence of the

Lambs and American Psycho to the TV series Dexter, the genre of a likeable murderer has

seemingly taken root in the lives of the western world through their portrayal in the media and

their interactions with the audience.

In The Silence of the Lambs, a serial killer known as Buffalo Bill is murdering women,

and even worse, leaving them partially skinned. FBI guru Jack Crawford enlists trainee Clarice

Starling to go to Hannibal Lecter, an infamous serial killer and cannibal himself, in an attempt to

get information on Buffalo Bill's identity. Therein, Hannibal and Clarice form a strange "quid

pro quo" relationship, in which he offers information on her case in exchange for personal
information about herself. In time he leads her closer and closer to the way she catches the serial

killer. While in custody to offer information to the senator herself, Hannibal kills two security

guards and escapes. Clarice accidentally goes to Bills house while attempting to get information

on his identity. She gets caught in the basement with him in the dark after discovering the

senator's daughter alive and shoots and kills him. After the ordeal, she is promoted to FBI agent.

In The Silence of the Lambs Hannibal Lecter is not treated as a monster in a classical

sense. He is intelligent and had a liberal profession and is a gentleman. Sure, he is also a cannibal

but he is extremely polite and tasteful, after all he likes to eat his victims with aromatic herbs

(Allu 14). In the film Red Dragon, a prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, it is discovered that

Lecter has been killing several people in Baltimore and removing certain body parts. In a copy of

Larousse Gastronomique, a famous french cuisine book, he has marked Ris de veau, or

sweetbreads, a culinary name for the thymus or pancreas. These have been served at a dinner

Lecter gave for several members, and the president of the Baltimore Philharmonic, a man who

claimed that Lecter was known for his excellent dinners and his articles in gourmet magazines.

Thus, Lecter is not presented as a savage bloodthirsty man but a selective high-class

gourmet. The audience may even like him at the end when he calls Clarice and tells her that the

world is much more interesting with her in it. It is easier to fall into the trap of aesthetic pleasures

in the face of a serial killer who is cultivated, polished and a gentleman. The Silence of the

Lambs then becomes out-and-out pleasure, pure aesthetics, both in the way people enjoy the film

by forgetting about the victims as people and simply discerning patterns, and also by the way

Lecter subtly lures us to his side. And while we may not know why he does these things, we are

lured nonetheless.
 Dexter, however, is not a polished high-class gentleman, but an everyday man. He does

not lure us in with fancy quotes, but allows us to watch along side him as he does his work. Once

we understand where he comes from and why he kills, we are more comfortable in his presence

(Donnelly 24). Set in Miami, the series centers on Dexter Morgan, a forensic technician

specializing in blood spatter pattern analysis for the fictional Miami Metro Police Department,

who leads a secret parallel life as a vigilante serial killer, hunting down murderers who have

slipped through the cracks of the justice system. As a young child he was forced to witness the

brutal murders of his mother and her friends before he was adopted by his policeman father. His

immersion in this gruesome scene is used to explain his fascination with blood and his potential

for psychosis. Dexter is differenthe is not like us and we are not like him. Clear black and

white boundaries establish that difference and eliminate any threat to our moral ideology.

Dexter can kill because he is not like us. While Dexters behavior marks him as clearly

monstrous, the moral code by which he dictates his own actions helps to establish a clear line

between acceptable and unacceptable deviance. For example, child molestation and the

murder of innocence are unacceptable to Dexter, and thus his vengeancethe torture, murder,

and dismemberment of the perpetrator, is acceptable as his behavior perpetuates a clear moral

ideology (Donnelly 23). This clear moral motivation for Dexters crimes is what makes him so

marketable and popular, as opposed to the anti-hero serial killers that came before him. Their

motivations were disturbingly either amoral or immoral not reflecting the traditional, western

moral ideology.

The portrayal of the serial killer in American Psycho is also very unique. In 2000,

director Mary Harron adapted Bret Easton Ellis's controversial third novel American Psycho to
the screen, starring Christian Bale as the 27-year-old serial killer Patrick Bateman. Like the

novel, the film American Psycho can be seen as an ultimate portrayal of the 1980s New York

lifestyle, depicting a world dominated by hedonism, greed, and egocentrism. The novel's long

enumerations of brand name consumer goods, denoting the fashion-dictated materialism that

constitutes yuppie life, have been translated cinematically into a sterile space of 1980s designer

goods (Kooijman 46). While Bateman resembles lecter in many ways, he is not held in as high

of a regard in the audiences mind. He is overly violent in both film and novel while Lecter is

reserved and the violence is left to the imagination. Bateman talks about violence, he kills

homeless people, women, men, or animals indifferently, and he records his murders, all of which

are part of his narration (Yazicioglu 3).

But even with all his violence we are never able to see him as truly monstrous. After one

of the early murders, Bateman is seen performing an excessive amount of crunches in front of a

television playing Tobe Hooper's 1974 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As Patrick performs his

exercise, the screen image shows Leatherface's famous "dance" at the end of tie film, twirling the

chainsaw around in circles. Rodgers claims that contrasting Patrick's perfect body with the

bloated, shapeless, and rotting form of Leatherface creates a complex juxtaposition of health

versus degeneration, control versus disorder, and bourgeoisie comfort versus rural something

decay (236). This lack of physical disgust, and obvious control, to a meticulous degree prevents

the audience from seeing Bateman as a true monster, luring them into the story and psychosis of

a truly unique individual.

Additionally, his excessive nature of perfecting both his life as a killer and his life as an

egocentric businessman combined with the narration invites the audience into the life of a man
living two faades. For example, when Bateman takes his drugged mistress Courtney to the

fashionable restaurant Barcadia, she explicitly asks if they are at the more fashionable restaurant

Dorsia. Bateman says yes, while at the same time showing the audience a close-up on the menu

that shows the restaurant's real name. In their article Kooijman and Laine state that This

construction of double narration, where the spectators are placed in-between, suggests that we

are watching a film that takes place within Bateman's world of faade, his imaginary world

(47). This double narration invites the audience into the reality of Bateman and his constructed

identities.

Although The Silence of the Lambs, Dexter and American Psycho tell the story of a serial

killer, their way of doing it is entirely different. The Silence of the Lambs prefers to use serial

killer genre conventions, and a well polished high-class killer with grace and taste. Dexter gives

us a moral escape that allows us to play along with the killer and stand with him in his actions

with no moral dilemma. American Psycho represents another way of dealing with serial killers.

The aesthetic sources of pleasure are diminished. There will be no restoration of the social order.

Horrific and despicable as the narration may seem, it systematically draws the audience into the

mind of a killer. I think Schneider says it best in his article when he states uncanny by nature,

the serial killer in film represents both a rejected and potential double for each and every one of

us. Schizophrenic or sociopathic; motivated by psycho-sexual fury, revenge, or quasi-religious

belief; messy and indiscriminate or possessed of high intelligence and an artistic sensibility, this

is clearly a genus with a multitude of species (3).

 Works Cited

Allu, Sonia B. "the Aesthetics of Serial Killing: Working Against Ethics in "the Silence of the

Lambs" (1988) and "American Psycho" (1991)." Atlantis, vol. 24, no. 2, 2002, pp. 7-24.
Donnelly, Ashley M. "The New American Hero: Dexter, Serial Killer for the Masses." The

Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 45, no. 1, 2012, pp. 15-26,

doi:10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00908.x.

Gregory, Bettina. "Hannibal Lecter: The Honey in the Lion's Mouth." American Journal of

Psychotherapy, vol. 56, no. 1, Winter 2002, p. 100. EBSCOhost,

umiss.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&

AN=6503985&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Humphries, Reynold. "On the Road again: Rehearsing the Death Drive in Modern Realist Horror

Cinema." Post Script - Essays in Film and the Humanities, vol. 22, no. 2, 2002, pp. 64-80,

Performing Arts Periodicals Database; Screen Studies Collection,

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2144805?accountid=14588.

Kooijman, Jaap, and Tarja Laine. ""American Psycho": A Double Portrait of Serial Yuppie

Patrick Bateman." Post Script - Essays in Film and the Humanities, vol. 22, no. 3, 2003, pp.

46-56, Performing Arts Periodicals Database; Screen Studies Collection,

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2145072?accountid=14588.

Rogers, Martin. "Video Nasties and the Monstrous Bodies of American Psycho." Literature/Film

Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3, 2011, pp. 231-244, Screen Studies Collection,

http://umiss.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.umiss.idm.oclc.org/docview/

880944304?accountid=14588.
Schneider, Steven J. "Introduction, Pt. II: Serial Killer Film and Television." Post Script - Essays

in Film and the Humanities, vol. 22, no. 2, 2002, pp. 3-6, Performing Arts Periodicals

Database; Screen Studies Collection,

http://umiss.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.umiss.idm.oclc.org/docview/

2143731?accountid=14588.

Sundelson, David. "The Demon Therapist and Other Dangers: Jonathan Demme's "the Silence of

the Lambs"." Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 21, no. 1, 1993, pp. 12, Screen

Studies Collection,

http://umiss.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.proquest.com.umiss.idm.oclc.org/docview/

1295985550?accountid=14588.

Yazicioglu, Sinem. "'Passion for the Real' through Snuff Film in Bret Easton Ellis's American

Psycho." B. A. S.: British and American Studies. Americane, vol. 17, 2011, pp. 61-68.