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Serial Killers In The Entertainment Industry

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The allure of serial homicide and ‘celebrity evil’ is apparent through media and entertainment sectors of society, whereby serial killers and those classified as ‘bad’ celebrities have become dominant features of the popular culture scene.
Box office successes such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Spiderman, highlight the public’s appetite for the ‘grand battle between good and evil [with] identifiable heroes and villains’ (Norden 2007:90). Norden argues that the danger of these films portraying good and evil, heroes and villains, is not so much about the excessive violence that would create ‘a nation of Columbine killers’ (2007:90), but the ‘atrophying of the imagination of the young…and hopeful stories about the battle in the human soul between good and …show more content…

This is described by Seltzer as ‘wound culture’ where public is fascinated by shock, trauma and the wound (1998:1). The allure of serial killers in the entertainment sector is highlighted by the creation of a market for the commodification of murder and serial homicide through ‘murderabilia’. Murderabilia has created an avenue for ‘fans’ to invest and be closer to famous killers, allowing them to be sensationalised and glamorised. Packer and Pennington attribute this to the frenzy in America over the past thirty years where serial killers have been hyped into ‘iconic figures [arising] from America’s socially approved narrative, which makes killers into the bad guys and law enforcement into the good guys] (2014:197). Packer and Pennington go further and argue that beneath the surface lies a fascination with serial killers due to the exposure in the media with attention grabbing stories, creating an allure

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