Okay, starting over. 🐌
To get caught up, today's newsletter is free-to-read: a film-based reflection on serial killers, hitmen, and what our attempts to elevate killing through these characters say about how much we struggle to make sense of such a cruel and violent world.
Seven and The Killer hold the floor for most of this, but Dark City gets some time in the spotlight, too.
Do you fall for the magician's background trick when watching these character types?
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/serial-killers-hitmen-and-the-myth
Great newsletter. Side note: David Fincher has done some fine work on the topic of serial killers. His short lived series, Mindhunters, focused on the FBI’s nascent psychological unit studying serial killers.
Sorry, I must have read too fast 😁
Oh, a speedy read is a good sign, thanks. :)
I didn't deep-dive into Mindhunters because its core character, and the whole FBI quest to understand serial killers - which was further elevated by Harris's novels and the movies surrounding them - played a huge role in the cultural mythologizing of serial killers.
There have been some lovely deconstructions as of late of the damage done by elevating this type of transgressor. This podcast ep is one of them:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindhunting-with-sarah-weinman/id1380008439
Thank you!
If you ever have a chance to listen to it, I would love your thoughts - agreeing, dissenting, or otherwise! How we represent those who do harm is a fascinating topic (especially for me as a writer), and I always love other people's thoughts on it!
@evamarie
I mentioned Mindhunters in the piece. :) I had Zodiac originally in there, too, but I had to restrain myself from deep-diving further into tangents around that different take on the mythology.