My theory - the new boogeymen are...

Cafe Society
1

So here’s a theory I’ve been thinking about. Humans love telling and listening to stories. And humans love being scared and horrified and titillated by stories of bad and evil things.

In the proverbial “olden days”, those things were a huge collection of what we now know are supernatural beings… fairies, vampires, goblins, elves, etc. Things which, if you were not particularly scientifically literate and lived out in a cottage in the woods, seemed like they really could plausibly exist. (Please let’s not derail this into a discussion of how imprecise my summation is, or whether I’m calling all our ancestors morons, which I’m certainly not trying to do.)

These days, what with our massive scientific knowledge, anyone with even a modicum of knowledge knows that there aren’t goblins living in caves nearby, those creaking sounds in the forest aren’t werewolves, etc. Granted, we still enjoy telling and hearing stories about the classic supernatural creatures, which go through phases of popularity (it was vampires, then zombies, etc.) But those stories are now overwhelmingly told not just as fiction, not as supernatural fiction, fiction that could not really happen.

An episode of a show like Law and Order at least has a veneer of “this could be real events”, a show like Buffy or The Walking Dead doesn’t even try to make that claim.
However, looking at the state of modern TV, I think there’s a new boogeyman which is filling that same role. It’s a creature that seems plausible, it doesn’t violate any of the laws of science that we know about, but it is similar to goblins and vampires in many ways, in that it’s a preternaturally powerful evil force, it resembles human beings, it might even be able to pass as a human being, but it’s nearly unstoppable, could be lurking in your home RIGHT NOW, and can only be stopped by humans with exceptional bravery or the right skills.

I’m talking about… the Serial Killer.

And not the boring real life serial killer who commits some number of murders, often of members of unprivileged classes, and is eventually caught be normal police work. I’m talking about The Serial Killer so beloved of authors and TV shows these days, the one who can be Profiled, who has a Pattern, who is Learning, who is Sending Messages, who wants people to see his Art, etc.

It’s amazing the regularity with which The Serial Killer shows up on TV these days. Just look at this list from the AV Club, and that doesn’t even count all the OTHER Serial Killers on shows such as Hannibal, which generally features an additional case-of-the-week serial killer every other episode.
And the thing is, while none of these Serial Killers literally cast magickal spells, or literally turn into wolves in the full moon, they usually have abilities that go far beyond the mundane, particularly when it comes to their ability to evade capture, avoid suspicion, and always have plenty of time to sneak into whatever high-security facility they wish to construct a tableu-of-corpses in, along with all the corpses, and all the hammering it takes to attach the corpses to the ceiling, and the hammering never alerts a night watchman, and if it does, the serial killer always instantly gets the drop on him, etc.

So, basically, they ARE magical, but a type of magic that is more compatible with current scientific rationality than the magic of goblins and elves and vampires. And they ARE entirely fictional, as far as I can tell. I started a thread once asking if there had ever, EVER been a real-life Serial Killer of the classic fictional variety (not just with the killing of lots of people but with the whole Personal Signature, and the Taunting The Cops By Name and so forth), and the closest anyone could suggest was the Zodiac Killer. Who, while legitimately evil and ultimately successful, wouldn’t remotely make muster as a villain-of-the-week on The Profiler or Hannibal.
So that’s my theory… thoughts?

2

It seems to me that that boat has come…and sailed again already. Serial Killers, as monsters, have had their spotlight of shame, but don’t have the staying power of our other monsters.

I think they lack the sexuality of vampires, the endearment of Frankenstein’s monster, the supernatural eerieness of the Mummy. In one way, they’re “too real.”

Sweeney Todd made a good musical, but he isn’t a “lasting icon.”

The best of them all was Jack the Ripper, you might say the “Sherlock Holmes” of serial killers. But he’s too hard-R rated. You can’t introduce him to children the way you can Frank’s monster. You couldn’t sneak Scarlet Jack into “Monsters Inc.”

And…in another way, they’re too real. There actually are such people, and they aren’t “fun.” It’d be like a child-molesting priest: not the stuff of enduring drama.

I think this has been tried, but it never quite caught on with the broader audience. UFO aliens have a better “connection” with us as viewers.

3

:dubious: Have you watched any “crime” TV or movies lately? As the OP says, its full, absurdly full, of serial killers.

As for Jack the Ripper, no way is he the Sherlock Holes of serial killers: he was real, and his deeds pale in comparison to those of most fictional SKs.

4

You got it backwards. Serial killers most likely inspired stories about vampires and werewolves.

5

Actually, a number of real-life medical conditions and diseases had something to do with both of them. In the case of vampires, for example, it was tuberculosis. Also, many of the signs of lycanthropy have much in common with the symptoms of rabies.

6

Porpyria sufferers and hairy people did not dismember people and eat them.

7

Vampires and Werewolf stories predate most stories about serial killers; Bram Stoker was just recasting old legends. The average person in, say, medieval times, would know very little about serial killers (who, after all, need some sort of media to promote their existance) but already believed in demons and monsters, including those that drank blood, and humans turning into animals was one element of the belief in witches.

8

I would argue that the legends were started because of serial killers, and possibly serial killers are truly the world’s oldest profession.

9

Except that my point is that real life serial killers are nearly as unrelated to fictional Serial Killers as they are to vampires and werewolves. Serial Killers as modern boogeyman start out with something horrifying and real and then (a) twist it nearly to the point of unrecognizability, and (b) make it far far more common than it is.

I suspect the number of Serial Killers on TV in the past year is significantly greater than the number of real life serial killers in the whole of US history (although of course then you have to precisely define “serial killer”, which is not the easiest thing…)

10

Well, it’s sort of like zombies. There are tons and tons of zombie stories out there…and very few of them have any traction. It’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

How many of those TV serial killers are memorable? How many will be written about again five years from now?

I do confess, in my haste, I actually did forget that Jack the Ripper was real! He’s been fictionalized so many times, he’s starting to partake of a legendary status. The same sort of thing is happening to Al Capone. It’s like they said in “The Man who Shot Liberty Valance,” “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” With Jack the Ripper, and, to a lesser extent with Al Capone, the legend is “becoming fact.” (Rather, of course, the “fact” is becoming blurred into legend. The same thing happened to Robin Hood a long time ago.)

I’m a comic book junkie, and I am bemused by the plethora of zombie-themed comic books – maybe one every two weeks for the past couple of years – which have a first issue…and no second issue. I see Serial Killer chic as having the same problem.

ETA: I missed a bet. I should have played up the “Sherlock Holmes was real too” angle – what is sometimes called “The Game.” :wink:

11

That simply means you don’t know about many serial killers. I would recommend the trutv website for an introduction.

12

Jack-the-Ripper taunted the cops, at least once by name, and killed his victims in a “signature” fashion. Presumably he’s the reason those became the hallmarks of the “classical” serial killer.

But its not totally unknown for similar serial killers to show up. The BTK killer also sent taunting letters to the police, for example.

But yea, it’s vanishingly rare, even amongst the small number of serial killers. Thomas Mann seems to have basically played the role of Brahms Stoker for the genre, taking a bunch of loosely tied together stories (Vampire legends in Stoker’s case, actual serial killers in Mann’s) and then through a combination of taking actual traits and making up a few, created a sort of template for a particular kind of monster that other writers have been riffing on since.

13

Did you watch Dexter? A great serial killer series that lasted from 2006-2013. It was also a book series that was first published in 2004. I’ve also heard the author created a Dexter comic book that was released in 2013.

IMHO, serial killers have lasting power as long as they don’t become too unrelatable.