Serial Killers And Serial Spectators

Download or read book Serial Killers and Serial Spectators written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-02-12 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Serial Killers written by Peter Vronsky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-10-05 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Creating Cultural Monsters written by Julie B. Wiest and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Female Serial Killers written by Peter Vronsky and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-07 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book The Antihero in American Television written by Margrethe Bruun Vaage and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Hannibal's Fairy Tale written by Michelle Leigh Gompf and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-12-29 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Midnight Assassin written by Skip Hollandsworth and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller, The Midnight Assassin is a sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885. In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.