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| Are serial killers a thing of the past? |
Remember serial killers? Those sweaty, shifty-eyed men who used to dominate the news cycle? Sure, you do. They used to be the stuff of nightmares. They were all over TV. Remember TV? Serial killers were huge on there. Movies, too. And books, magazines, and newspapers. You youngsters may not remember, but us older folks will never forget.
For a few decades, serial killers dominated popular culture. We needed something to fill the void after The Beatles broke up, and apparently they were it. You'd see them being taken away in handcuffs after the police discovered their crawlspace full of human torsos. Later, they'd spout some wackadoo gibberish while defending themselves in court. Sometimes, they'd have three names, like John Wayne Gacy or Henry Lee Lucas.
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| Enjoy the '90s while they last, pal. |
We'd be horrified by their crimes, but we'd be compelled, too. They became antiheroes. People wrote them fan letters. In the '90s, you'd occasionally see their intense faces staring at you from magazine covers and T-shirts. Your "edgy" friend might name his terrible band after one of them. There were tasteless jokes and SNL sketches about them.
So what happened to those guys? From roughly the 1970s to the '90s, you could count on a new serial killer every few years. They were an important part of the news cycle. We depended on them, if only for reassurance that we ourselves weren't so bad. "At least I'm not that guy," you could think.
And then... what? We just collectively stopped serial killing? You're asking me to believe that serial killing was just some kooky phase we went through as a society and got over? People got bored with it? Moved on to something else? I can't even remember the last new serial killer to become a media sensation. It's been decades. Where are the Bundys and Dahmers of tomorrow coming from? I ask you.
I refuse to believe that the human race has evolved beyond serial killing. We're not one bit better than we were in the '80s and '90s. If anything, we're worse. Like, a lot worse. We're more violent, delusional, and narcissistic than we ever were. I guess, in the 21st century, we've shifted from serial killing to mass murder. Which, like, sure. It's more efficient. I get it. You can kill a bunch of people at one time and become just as notorious, feared, and hated.
But there was a certain artistry, if you want to call it that, to serial killing. If you, as a killer, spread your crimes out over a period of months or even years, you could create compelling narrative that wouldn't be possible with just a single afternoon of bloodshed. You could develop a mystique. Hollywood understood this. Think of Norman Bates, Michael Myers, Hannibal Lecter—serial killers all, not a mass murderer in the bunch.
You know who I think ruined it? The BTK guy. First off, his nickname makes you think of Burger King. Secondly, when they finally found him, he looked like an assistant manager at Denny's. Hardly the kind of guy to wind up on a T-shirt. A lot of the mystique was gone. And then, after Oklahoma City, Columbine, and 9/11, serial killers were yesterday's news. They seemed quaint. In recent decades, sex-related crimes have arguably eclipsed murder in the public imagination.
It's obvious that we're still fascinated with serial killers in the 21st Century. There are plenty of movies and TV shows about them being made, but the killers themselves are either fictional or decades-old. Bundy's used up. Gacy's used up. Dahmer is beyond used up. Maybe the age of serial killers is gone forever. It's not that I want them to come back, exactly. But it is strange that they vanished from the scene, isn't it?