Week 2
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Introduction: Moral Universes and Human Actions

All films that feature stories of deviant behavior or criminality are set within a "moral universe" that serves as the background for the characters' actions and their change in behavior or outlook (or lack thereof) as the film progresses. Films in which the moral universe is unclear (e.g., Blue Velvet (1986))or the characters make no progress or journey (e.g., Raging Bull (1980)) frustrate film audiences (but sometimes receive critical acclaim).

The moral universe of a film is often established during the credits or opening shots of a movie. For example, the first shot of Twelve Angry Men (1957) is of the courthouse, a prime symbol of justice in American society. We anticipate a tale in which justice will ultimately prevail. Critical crime films (Rafter p. 11) may tease the audience by showing familiar symbols of "truth, justice, and the American way" (small town, family, idyllic scenery, urban pleasures, etc.) at the start, but later reveal that evil lurks beneath such facades. For example, Hollywood loves to tell tales of urban sophisticates trapped during visits to small towns, where everyone is involved in an evil conspiracy. Red Rock West (1992) and Breakdown (1997) come to mind.

The establishing shots and ongoing film conventions that document whether the characters live within an ordinary moral universe (right is right and wrong is wrong; bad folks will be punished and good ones victorious) or an extra-ordinary one (evil is ever-present, banal, or victorious) are well known to Hollywood screenwriters and directors (and to many movie watchers). As Rafter (p. 11) states: "...critical crime films...are rooted in the tradition of film noirs, the brooding mysteries and gangster films of 1940s and 1950s that take corruption for granted, assuming that brutality and criminality are part of the human condition."

Within criminology focus on these background issues appears most clearly in a number of sociologically-informed models of human behavior, popularized from the 1930s through the 1970s. These include differential association (Edwin Sutherland), subcultural theories, and labeling theory (Howard Becker, Edwin Lemert).

For a more complex model that assumes background factors serve as temptations rather than determinates of behavior, see Jack Katz's Seductions of Crime. For example, in his analysis of cold-blooded, senseless murders Katz discusses the importance of scene.

The goal of creating a sense of dread and the dizziness of deviance are not enough to explain senseless killings, because it still doesn't explain when and where cold-blooded murderers have chosen to kill. It also appears that the scene must be right. Of course, just what is the right scene is in the killer's imagination. Many while in prison had frequently fantasized what they would do when they got out. These "escapade" dreams often include criminal activities or capers. While a senseless murder during one of these capers may appear to the public to occur randomly, the killer seems to know that the scene or situation is right. Most of these murders occur at night, and frequently very late at night. Some occur in specific locations such as the basement or the bathroom. One set of killers only murdered after having driven long distances in a car with the victim. The "Onion Field" murderers drove the captured police officers hundreds of miles from LA before killing them. This killing transformed the individual (Powell) from a small time crook into a fearless cop killer. There would be no doubt about his deviant identity from then on. In "In Cold Blood" the two former prison buddies travel across the state of Kansas, knowing they that neither will be able to back down when they reach the intended target's farmhouse.

Katz argues it would be quite easy to try and explain such killers in traditional psychological or sociological terms. Most were isolated individuals before they killed (although most didn't act alone) making it easy to label them as suffering from antisocial personality disorder or sociologically attribute their actions to lack of social ties. Katz rejects such models as too simplistic and frequently the result of' the way these cases tend to be written up by the press and crime non-fiction writers. Katz has used their accounts, but found things in the writings that could be used to construct his very different causal descriptions.

Like Katz, most film writers presume that human beings live in world in which human behavior is not determined by outside forces alone. Human beings make free will choices in most movie scenarios. Nevertheless, one must not lose sight of the moral universe in which film characters live.

Victims and Villains in Teen Slasher Films

Never wake a sleeping Jason!

According to Pat Gill, teen slasher films (e.g., Halloween, Friday the 13^th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980), Prom Night (Paul Lynch, 1980), A Nightmare of Elm Street, Hell Night (Tom DiSimone, 1981),  Slumber Party Massacre (Amy Jones, 1982), Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzik, 1983), Fright Night (Tom Holland, 1985), Night of the Creeps (Fred Dekker, 1986), The Lost Boys (Joel Schumacher, 1987), Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987), Pumpkinhead (Stan Winston, 1988), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Fran Rubel Kuzui, 1992), Cherry Falls (Geoffrey Wright, 2000), and their many sequels) have chosen the suburbs as the problematic moral universe for murderous behavior. "The suburban haven, away from the dangers of the city, not only fails to protect its children, but has become the breeding ground of living nightmares unknown to urban landscapes."

In films following Halloween, suburban and small town teenagers have been put in danger time and again, at home, at school, at camp, and on holiday. These films seem to mock white flight to gated communities and parental attempts to shield their children from the dangerous outside influences represented by the city: widespread crime, easy access to drugs, unsupervised friendships. The danger is within, the films seem to say; the horror derives from the family and from the troubling ordeal of being a late twentieth-century teenager.

The moral universe of the teen slasher film has its origins in the Gothic tradition: "defenseless heroines; suppressed passions; unspeakable desires; fearful landscapes and haunted, uncanny interiors; untrustworthy and suspicious relations and relationships; terrifying uncertainty and stifling knowledge; familial secrets and their dreadful exposure; and jarring juxtapositions of the moral and the monstrous, the sexual and the grotesque, the virtuous and the violent."

Gill implicitly criticizes the current craze for all things Goth as a simplistic slip into moral relativism and abdication of responsibility (e.g., the Claire character on Six Feet Under (2001)). In effect, these films are the mirror opposite of the Spielberg-type suburban fantasies (e.g.,  E.T. (1982), Explorers (1985), The Goonies (1985), etc.) in which good suburban kids have exceptional but ultimately innocent childhood adventures. However, the slasher films can be better understood by looking at the issues related to family and adolescence that they bring up.  "Teen slasher films both resolutely mock and yearn for the middleclass American dream, the promised comfort and contentment of a loving, supportive bourgeois family. "

Slasher films show teenagers in peril with no hope of help from their parents. Mostly these parents are generally too busy or too involved in their own problems or pleasures to help. Even caring, concerned parents are impotent; often they are hapless and distracted, unaware of their children’s problems and likely to dismiss or discount their warnings and fears. Indeed, parents like these need guarding, and children frequently find themselves in the stressful adult role of protector. At times the parents, albeit unwittingly, have created the monsters.  Some action in their past has brought about this relentless evil force to wreak havoc among their children. What is striking about most of these films is the notable uselessness of parents, their absence, physically and emotionally, from their children’s lives. Teens must deal with the extraordinarily resilient monsters on their own.

These films also subvert one of the mainstays of criminological analysis, the root of juvenile delinquency in broken homes. While much debated, the superpredator hypothesis is turned on its head in the slasher films.

"The violence attributed to children of broken homes is either projected onto the ubiquitous, supernatural Other stalking the school hallways, the hometown streets, the lover’s lanes, and the bedrooms of its victims, or it is retaliatory, the necessary response to repeated malevolent attacks from a stalking monster. " The kids are not the monsters; they are under attack by monsters.  It seems that the only way to save suburbia is to return to the world depicted in 1950s sitcoms such as Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It to Beaver. This solution was tried in Pleasantville (1998), though the post-modern teens sent back in time quickly realized the place needed updating.

Violent Females: Aberration  or Natural Phenomenon

While women much more often play victim roles, women as violent actors in movies have increased significantly in recent years. There seem to be two general categories of such films, female revenge pictures such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) or Enough (2002) and female buddy pictures such as Thelma and Louise (1991). Baise-moi (2000) combines the two, depicted a pair of abused women who become partners in using, destroying, and dismembering men a la Henry.

Also to be noted is that the good girl can be the one to defeat the evil in a slasher film, if she remains chaste, such as Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween (1978). "

Carol Clover sees in these films the story of the “Final Girl,” the one who “encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril” (Clover 35).  Clover argues that the gender of the Final Girl is “compromised from the outset by her masculine interests, her inevitable sexual reluctance, her apartness from other girls” (Clover 48), making her a masculinized individual who uses ingenuity, skill, and deadly weapons to kill her attacker. “The Final Girl has not just manned herself,” Clover contends, but “she specifically unmans an oppressor whose masculinity was in question to begin with” (Clover 49). For Clover, the plot that pits the ferocious, repressed slasher against the armed, blood-drenched, surviving girl would “seem to be one of sex and parents. The patently erotic threat is easily seen as the materialized projection of the viewer’s own incestuous fears and desires. It is this disabling cathexis to one’s parents that must be killed and rekilled in the service of sexual autonomy. When the Final Girl stands at last in the light of day with the knife in her hand, she has delivered herself into the adult world” (Clover 49).

Kimberly Springer discusses two recent films featuring Black American females in her essay on the Sapphire fixation.  Sapphire is the name the author gives to the stereotype of the black female as brash, sassy, taking no guff from black males, and potentially, instinctually violent. She argues that Waiting to Exhale (1995) demonstrates a tamed version of the Sapphire while Set it Off (1996) shows black women fully involved in gangsterism, robbing banks like men. Black female rage and violence are seen as natural, in comparison to white female violence which is treated as liberating (e.g., Thelma and Louise).

Set it Off cast Jada Pinkett Smith, Kimberly Elise, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox

While Waiting to Exhale is relentless in its bashing of black males (in one scene every negative stereotype about black males and their inadequacies for meeting the needs of black females is recited), only Angela Bassett succumbs to violence, when she torches her ex-husband's car after filling it with all his clothes and belongings. She also attacks the white woman her husband has dumped her for.

Set it Off falls into the gangster category because it shows that socio-economic circumstances have circumscribed the opportunities of each of the film's 4 main characters. Advancement into the middle class is impossible. "Poverty and racism are approved rationales for committing crimes against an uncaring capitalist system and, indirectly, the state." As they participate in more robberies their daring and bravado increase.

Films such as these were celebrated upon their release for offering broader parts to Black female actors, tired of being portrayed as overweight mammies, whores, or gun-totting bitches (e.g. Pam Grier). Springer's position is that these depictions build upon another stereotype.

The Ultimate Predators: Serial Killers

An IMDB keyword search of the phrase "serial killer" shows 502 movies about this phenomenon. What are we to say about the ongoing long-term fascination with serial murder? Certainly these films focus on the most primal of all fears, that unknown strangers lurk our cities, towns, and countrysides waiting for the opportunity to brutally slay us.

Here I would like to further separate serial killing movies from teen slasher films, as the former as sold to us as reality-based while the former emerge from the collective psyche of childhood imaginations. The modern idea of the Ted Bundy/Hannibal Lechter type of serial killer is the result of the cross-fertilization of concepts drawn from several sources. These include true crime novels, crime fiction, FBI and police studies of serial killing (profiling), as well as previous Hollywood films. (see the section below on real serial killers)

One of the things that is true about Hollywood films is that writers, producers, and directors are looking for ways of producing fresh takes on old themes and stereotypes. Movies that reproduce the same plot over and over or offer only the same old stereotyped characters are likely to be panned by critics and ultimately by the viewing public as well. An attempt to trace the development of the modern serial killer stereotype has been done in the documentary Murder by Numbers. One example is the change in the Hannibal Lechter character across the 3 films in which he has appeared, Manhunter (1986), Silence of the Lambs (1991), and Hannibal (2001). By the third film in this series Lechter has been transformed from brilliant but brutal psychopath to an avenging angel, killing only those who deserve death while protecting Clarice from those who might harm her. 

The other thing to notice about serial killing movies is the use of other Hollywood genre-based stereotypes to provide characterization and motivation. In this regard, we have argued that serial killer films borrow from the horror genre and in particular the vampire character.  Directors such as Henry's (1985) John McNaughton have admitted as much when asked about the behavior of their characters. Just as vampires are driven by a blood lust compulsion to seek out more victims (or die), serial killers are motivated by their compulsions and seem to carry these out so methodically that "profiling" is possible from the forensic crime scene evidence. In Henry, the killer is an informed reader of profiling literature, so varies his method of killing, post-killing body mutilations, and dump sites, while staying constantly on the move; thus avoiding detection and capture. (Similarly on the TV show CSI, the criminalists often run into killers who seem to know all about forensic evidence (possibly from watching shows like CSI and serial killer films) who systematically "clean" the crime scene of trace evidence.)

The Compulsions of “Real” Serial Killers

 (from Picart and Greek "The Compulsions of Serial Killers as Vampires:  Toward a Gothic Criminology")

Robert Ressler (n.d., Court TV), the original "Profiler," coined the phrase "serial killer,” based on  twenty years of tracking down killers for the FBI. Because he grew up in Chicago, Ressler first became fascinated with the criminal mind during the "Lipstick Murders" in 1946. He eventually studied psychology as a way to understand what motivates this type of criminal behavior and the “demon” that pushes a killer over the edge, as well as to establish a pattern that could have some predictive power in determining the killer’s next violent act. While he worked with the FBI, Ressler perfected the art of the interview. Through numerous visits to prisons and scores of conversations with convicted killers, he was able to explore whether a killer is driven by an irresistible compulsion or a compulsion that cannot be resisted."  This “compulsion model” is important to delineate because it outlines how the imaging of the serial killer-vampire figure intersects with a theoretical model of what motivates serial killer behavior

A serial killer, according to Ressler, is someone whose violent crimes must have claimed more than three victims, at different times, places and events.  This type of crime involves some premeditation or planning that is spurred by an overriding fantasy, formed early, which “drives” this type of killer to commit repetitive crimes.  Dr. Helen Morrison, a Forensic Psychologist at the Evaluation Center at Chicago, adds the following characterization:  that a serial killer, by the time he is an adolescent, is totally focused on sexual fantasies in an “experimental” sense.  She cites a higher body count than Ressler; no less than ten homicides of a brutal, violent and ritualistic nature (i.e., a “cookie cutter” format) are required in order to establish that the killer is indeed a “serial” killer (Bahn et al, 1995). 

Robert Hazelwood, a former supervisory Special Agent of the FBI, forms a clear taxonomy that distinguishes between a “serial” killer, a “spree” killer and a “mass” killer.  A “serial” killer, like Gacy, commits murders with a certain “periodicity;” a “spree” killer, like Starkweather, may commit several murders separated by time and place, but all these murders are connected to one incident; a “mass” murderer, like Manson or Smith and Hickock (In Cold Blood), kills four or more people at one location at one time.  Hazelwood also makes the provocative suggestion that serial killers have existed as long as humans have existed, and that myths concerning “werewolves” probably emerged because of the degree of mutilation wreaked on their victims by serial killers (Bahn et al, 1995).  Lycanthropy remains an important Hollywood theme as modern American tourists find themselves turned into werewolves in the primordial English countryside or the primitive subterranean worlds of Paris.

What is common to all of these characterizations of serial killing is the powerful effect of violent fantasies, which serve as a compulsive force that impels these individuals to kill in a periodic or cyclical and ritualistic way.  Much of what is meant when we talk about "cycles" of sexual fantasy is based on the vaguer notion of "biological or natural clocks". This is what enables the more or less accurate prediction of when the perpetrator needs to strike again. Although a basic understanding of sexual urges and needs is called for, we are concerned here with abnormal sexual urges and needs, particularly those that call for repeat, or serial behaviors. In this sense, therefore, we can make comparisons to other addiction processes, such as the Victimization cycle and the Cycle of Violence associated with Domestic Violence, as in the following diagrams (Nashville Metro PD):

With the addiction cycle, there's a distinctive "shame - pain" sequence, although with minor forms of dysfunction, the shame part may only be low self-esteem. The part that determines the addiction is when the person comes to associate continued use of the addictive agent with relief from pain (Lindesmith’s theory of addiction). And the pain can be anything, even something as mild as the stress or hassles of living.  There are a number of addictive agents. Here's a partial list: alcohol, drugs, work, money, control, power, food, sex, pornography, approval, relationships, physical illness (hypochondria), exercise, cosmetics, academics, intellectualism, religiosity, perfectionism, cleaning, organizing, materialism, and collecting things.

With the battering cycle, there's a relatively short battering incident in which the person is out of control, followed by a period of apology, gift giving, and a "honeymoon" phase in which the batterer is trying to be contrite with "hearts and flowers". Then, the batterer starts fault finding and becoming verbally abusive. Jealousy develops, and the domestic partner can usually sense the tension building. This leads to a state of fear, helplessness, and inability to control the environment which usually serves as ample ground for a precipitating or provocation incident (provocation if the partner "provokes" a scene to get it over with) which leads again to a battering incident.

The serial killer fantasy re-enactment cycle may thus be diagrammatically represented in this way:

Fantasy occurs well in advance of the crime, and for the serial killer, fantasy evolves into a compulsion. The subsequent behavior keeps true to the flavor of the original fantasy. For some, a symbol, such as a buck knife, represents the original fantasy, or more accurately, a link to the unrealized fantasy waiting in the mind for an opportunity. The crime itself is also the fantasy played out by the offender. The script is cast and well-rehearsed in the mind. The victim is only inserted into a role that the offender needs for the fantasy to come true. Sometimes the victim will be called by a name that is of special importance to the offender. The fantasy becomes the motive and establishes the offender's signature.

Control refers to the way in which the offender keeps the world he creates with the victim true to his fantasy. Domination is the primary characteristic which is enhanced by sadistic sex, torture, mutilation, and murder. Some offenders feel they do not have control until the victim is dead, so they kill immediately, and then turn to freely mastering the corpse. Others will take there time, engaging in repeated torture, escalation, and de-escalation of torment with the victim. Control is also expressed in the staging and ritual displays at the crime scene as well as in the location choice of the assault. Jack Katz (1990), in his discussion of monstrous, premeditated murder emphasizes the importance of time and place to the perpetrator’s attempt to control every aspect of the event. Similarly, Kenneth Burke (1965) recognized the importance of “scene” as motivation for human behavior.  Katz goes on to note the godlike persona of the killer. The gothic killer takes life away as a vindictive god does, without warning or remorse. Like a primordial god, the killer, in his total control of the victim, is an object of dread.

Disassociation refers to how the offender successfully blends back into society, the thick superficial veneer of personality that is entirely disassociated from their violent criminal behavior. Serial killers carry their abilities at self-protective behavior to an extreme, although not to the point of multiple personality. They are intelligent to avoid detection, but they often "overtry" to avoid leakage to their true nature. Many are married or in a relationship, but it is disassociated. New Jersey’s “Ice Man” Richard Kuklinski left his wife and two daughters’ home only to kill; otherwise he was the perfect house husband. The depth of the fantasy determines the depth or degree to which they disassociate. The offender knows full well what behaviors are not acceptable to society, and to disassociate, they seek out "respectable" jobs, mates, and social activities that offer the best "front". In captivity, they often make model inmates.

Re-enactment is a behavioral aspect involving attempts to relive the fantasy. Reenactments are almost always sexual in nature, involving acts of masturbation, uses of pornography, or playing with souvenirs, trophies, or props. These things stimulate the offender, but they also reinforce the escalatory aspect of a serial killer's fantasy because the only thing they can control at this point is themselves. It is at this point also where the planning for future crimes occurs.

There's an additional way to think about the stages in this cycle, and that is to think of them as phases. During Phase 1 (aura phase) the twisted thoughts occur as the killer phantasizes about their next victim. Next, Phase 2 (trolling) begins as the killer goes out to look for the perfect victim. During Phase 3 (seduction) the trap is laid, often using “lures.” Phase 4 (capture) begins with the victim is at their most vulnerable moment, as there is no escape from their captor. This is followed by Phase 5 (the kill) in which all suppressed emotions are let loose. During Phase 6 (totem or trophy) the killer collects souvenirs or leaves props at the scene as reminders. Phase 7 (depression) follows the crime. This appears to be a withdrawal period, as the euphoria from the kill disappears, leading to a restarting of the cycle.

There is thus a striking similarity between the mythic characterization of a vampire and the profiling of a serial killer:  both kill out of an overpowering compulsion, and in similarly periodic and patterned ways.  It is this interesting convergence between criminological theory and popular culture representations that forms the crux of this analysis...

The serial killer mythology is likewise a societal construction. In fact, a genealogy of its origins shows that it is difficult to sift fact from fiction in a clear, unproblematic way. As Hodges (2001) points out, the FBI profiling unit read both crime fiction and true crime accounts, before turning to the interviewing of actual killers. Profiling has had a very spotty record; as William Tafoya pointed out regarding cases such as the Unabomber (Witkin, 1997).  Pat Brown (n.d.), herself a sexual homicide investigator, goes even further:

To date, the general procedure has been to send in crime scene and autopsy information and limited details concerning the crime and the victim to a profiler who then sends back a report. The process pretty much stops at this point. The investigators add it to their pile of data using whatever they feel has some merit. Often the profile serves no purpose at all. Vague descriptions that do not narrow down the suspect pool, descriptions that are useful but are misunderstood by the investigator on the case, useful information but no practical integration of the facts into the investigative process and worst of all, profiles that are completely wrong or ludicrous. The fact that there is no literature proving profiling to be of any measurable benefit to the investigative process is disturbing.

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