#82: Fascination with Serial Killers featuring Mae Catt
Usually, I prefer to discuss monsters of a more fantastic vein—Godzilla, werewolves, vampires, and the like. Today, however, I have decided to center the conversation on monsters of a decidedly more realistic sort—serial killers. Lots of serial killers populate books, film, and television, and have attracted large audiences by doing so. I find the celebrity status of serial killers fascinating, and, while I haven’t spent a lot of time personally researching the subject, I admit to an interest in the real-life stories of serial killers.
Filmmaker Mae Catt has made many films featuring her own take on serial killers. She joins me this episode to discuss our fascination with them. I am posting her short films here for your enjoyment. If you like them, please consider sharing or helping fund her next project, which is linked below! Enjoy!
See her fundraiser video here and donate here (click the little “KS” burst in the lower corner to go to her page):
And here is a bonus for you! Fritz Lang’s M!
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You brought up a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about–and talked with you about a little before–Hannah Arendt, werewolves and serial killers, Dexter. I’ve been pondering the difference between male and female werewolves since we talked about it, and I realized that some of the difference in it for me is that the men afflicted with lycanthropy are struggling with being predators but that for women, it is liberating in a sense to not be prey anymore, let alone going from prey to predator, from victim to untouchable.
I think this ties in a little bit with your discussion on why so many women are fascinated with serial killers. My own experience is that the friends I know who are interested in serial killers, are all women. And I can see how on a surface level, it seems like men would be more interested in serial killers and women would find them distressing because serial killers most often target women. I think Mae is totally correct that there’s an appeal to the freedom and commitment that serial killers represent. And I think that both those things can be especially appealing to women. For example, I saw a couple male friends on facebook talking about their midnight runs and how fun it was to pretend someone was chasing them. This whole conversation is almost unimaginable to me because of real concerns about being chased and because of the responsibility I feel for my own safety. I can’t imagine me doing that, but I can imagine how it would feel to have the freedom to do that without worry. But even more, I feel like it makes sense that women would be fascinated by serial killers because we are their most common prey, to use my earlier term. And I can see how giving them empathy or making them focus on killing the wicked who escaped judgment is a way of trying to understand what’s wrong and then repair or redirect it. It’s a way of asserting some control over a danger we’re taught to be mindful of.
It is an interesting connection, the werewolf and the serial killer. In a way, couldn’t a werewolf be considered a metaphorical serial killer? Weren’t they in the past? I remember talking to you about the difference in storytelling when the werewolf in question is a woman, about how it’s less the terror of a curse and more the relish in the power.
The interest in serial killers from a woman’s perspective is fascinating. All of what we are discussing is purely anecdotal, but I can see what you both mean–the draw of complete liberation and abandon. I’d love to hear about it from someone who obsesses over books about serial killers in a way that I don’t think either you or Mae do.
i also think it’s not just the appeal of the freedom/power, but also a greater need to understand serial killers because of being potential victims. i can ask my friends for you.
What I find most fascinating about serial killers, and what I feel is represented most accurately in ‘American Psycho,’ is the complete social alienation and the concept of someone who is constantly surrounded by people and perhaps even well-liked, yet utterly disconnected and divest of all emotion. In a loose analogy to the killer’s motivations in ‘Spoorloos,’ the idea that someone might kill simply to see if an extreme act of violence could spark even the faintest emotion in an otherwise unfeeling soul, or more frighteningly, to see if it would elicit the same trivial response as taking out the trash is a topic that I reply frequently in my mind. Loved the look in to the Banality of Evil, what I consider to be a cardinal sin in all societies.