We would point out that in considering the significance of pop phenomena it is always useful to put things in a broader cultural context.
SERIAL HUNTER STEPHANE BOURGOIN HANSEN SERIAL
Moralizing critics have been quick to condemn this phenomenon (labeled serial chic) as still another nasty symptom of societal rot, along with gangsta rap and ads for Calvin Klein underwear. The former ran a major essay on serial killers by novelist Joyce Carol Oates, while the latter did an extended, pre-execution profile of John Wayne Gacy that included exclusive excerpts from the unpublished writings of America’s most notorious killer. Indeed, what was initially a fringe phenomenon-an obsession with blood-crazed psychokillers that was more or less limited to diehard splatter-movie fans-has become so mainstream that publications as traditionally staid (if not stuffy) as The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker have jumped on the bandwagon of late. The American public’s long-standing interest in psychopathic butchers-the same morbid fascination that, back in 1991, made Jeffrey Dahmer a People magazine cover boy and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs an Oscar-winning blockbuster-is still going strong.
We are writing this preface in the fall of 1995, when the number-one film at the box office is Se7en, a dark, intensely creepy thriller about a serial murderer who contrives to kill his victims in accordance with the seven deadly sins (lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, pride, anger, and envy). It is offered, in short, not only in the spirit of serious scholarship but in frank recognition of what Joseph Conrad calls the fascination of the abomination. Like the first edition of our book, this revision is meant to both enlighten and entertain. There’s little point in denying the fact that, for whatever reasons-anxiety management, morbid curiosity, latent sadism-people enjoy reading about monsters. It always aimed to be something else: a book which acknowledged that the subject of serial murder exerts a dark but undeniable attraction-the kind of dreadful pleasure that, as children, we derive from immersing ourselves in the fairy-tale world of demons and witches and flesh-eating ogres. But The A to Z Encyclopedia was never meant to be simply a reference tool. In revising our book, then, we have tried to make it as up-to-date as possible.
We have even managed to trace a different-and significantly older-origin for the phrase serial killer itself. Significant shifts have taken place in our understanding of the subject (it is clear, for example, that both female and African-American serial killers are far more common than previously thought). There have been important new developments in old cases (including a supposed final solution of the most legendary serial murders of all, those committed by Jack the Ripper). Harold Shipman, now regarded as the most prolific serial killer in modern history). Major new cases have occurred (like that of Dr. A great deal has happened since the book first came out in 1995. That such long-unresolved cases as Green River and BTK have finally been closed in recent years represents one main reason for the existence of this new edition of The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. So was the apprehension, in early 2005, of Dennis Rader, the seemingly ordinary city worker and churchgoer who confessed to being the notorious murderer known as BTK.
Two years later, Gary Ridgway’s arrest for the infamous Green River killings was front-page news across the country. The savage exploits of Angel Maturino Resendez-aka the Railroad Killer-held the country in thrall in the summer of 1999. In the news, real-life serial killers also continue to command widespread media attention.
At the present moment (we are writing this in the spring of 2005), the same director is in the midst of shooting Zodiac, about the search for the notorious serial murderer who terrorized the San Francisco area in the late 1960s. At the time we wrote the introduction to the first edition, for example, David Fincher’s Se7en was Americas number-one film. Though we now face far graver threats to our national well-being than psychopathic sex-killers, we continue to crave stories about the latter.
SERIAL HUNTER STEPHANE BOURGOIN HANSEN TV
Indeed, the serial killer has become such a pervasive part of our popular culture that a comprehensive list of all the movies, TV shows, and bestselling thrillers that feature such villains would now require a volume of its own.Įven the horrific events of September 11,2001, haven’t managed to stem the tide of serial killer entertainments. In the decade since our book first appeared, the phenomenon it explores-the brand of compulsive, sexually sadistic homicide we now call serial murder-continues to maintain a tight grip on the public imagination.