Aestheticization of Serial Killers in Contemporary Crime Literature and Film

• Authors: Ewa Ziomek
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Fictional serial killers often appear attractive, since the authors and film directors deliberately employ certain techniques to depict the villains as seductive and manipulate readers/spectators into forming a bond with devious protagonists. This article argues that by virtue of different stylistic and literary devices, the villains presented in contemporary texts are aestheticized. Moreover, it also explains why the reader/audience often sympathizes with the murderer rather than the victim.

Keywords

EN

serial killers; aestheticization; murder; violence; crime; literature; film

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej
• Journal: New Horizons in English Studies
• Year: 2018
• Issue: 3

Dates

published

2018

online

2018-08-17

Contributors

author

Ewa Ziomek

• The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

editor

Aneta Okuń-Jaśkowiak

editor

Adam Głaz

editor

Lidia Kniaź-Hunek

editor

Anna Bendrat

editor

Ewelina Prażmo

editor

Przemysław Terejko

editor

Piotr Szczypa

editor

Grzegorz Czemiel

editor

Ewa Antoszek

editor

Justyna Galant

editor

Marta Komsta

editor

Edyta Frelik

editor

Agata Waszkiewicz

editor

Anna Oleszczuk

editor

Agata Waszkiewicz

other

Aneta Okuń-Jaśkowiak

References

• Allue, Sonia B. 2002. “The Aesthetics of Serial Killing: Working against Ethics in the Silence of the Lambs (1988) and American Psycho (1991).” Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 24 (2): 7-24.
• Baldick, Chris. 2001. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Black, Joel. 1991. The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Burke, Edmund. (1757) 1990. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, ed. Adam Phillips. Reprint, New York: Oxford University Press.
• De Quincey, Thomas. (1827) 2015. “On Murder, Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” In Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. The University of Adelaide. www.ebooks.adelaide.edu.au
• Donovan, Patricia. 2007. “America’s Fascination with Murder.” University at Buffalo. Accessed February 20, 2016. www.buffalo.edu
• Gronstad, Asbjorn. 2008. Transfigurations: Violence, Death and Masculinity in American Culture. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
• Halttunen, Karen. 2001. Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
• Knox, Sara L. 1998. Murder: A Tale of Modern American Life. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
• Morrison, Robert. 2009. The English Opium-Eater: A Biography of Thomas De Quincey. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. www.amazon.com
• Pinedo, Isabel C. 1997. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing. New York: State University of New York Press.
• Prince, Stephen. 2000. Screening Violence. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
• Rodbjerg, Morten J. 2015. Aesthetic Killers: Justification of Protagonist Violence in Modern American Cinema. Amazon Digital Services LLC. www.amazon.com
• Schneider, Steven J. 2001. “Murder as Art/The Art of Murder: Aestheticising Violence in Modern Cinematic Horror.” In Necronomicon: The Journal of Horror and Erotic Cinema, Book 4. ed. Andy Black. 65-85. London: Noir Press.
• Seltzer, Mark. 1998. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's Wound Culture. New York: Routledge.
• Smith, Murray. 1999. “Gangsters, Cannibals, Aesthetes, or Apparently Perverse Allegiances.” In Passionate Views. Film, Cognition, and Emotion. eds. Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith. 217-238. Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Smith, Murray. 2011. “Just What Is It That Makes Tony Soprano Such an Appealing, Attractive Murderer?” In Ethics at the Cinema. eds. Ward E. Jones and‎ Samantha Vice. 66-90. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Smith, Murray. 1995. Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.17951/nh.2018.3.123