Author
Amuthan M
Amuthan shows great interest towards post-modern story narration and loves analysing and writing about them. He is persistently trying to understand the minds of creators of arts and how they construct the society.
Movies and Ideologies 3
Part 3- Let’s talk about serial killers
“You don’t understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience and existence. And I have killed 20 people, man, I love all that blood”
-Richard Ramirez
(American serial killer 1960-2013)
It is not good to take inspiration from serial killers or psychopaths. But at the same time, we can’t refuse that we like them and enjoy their presence on the screen. For example – villains from many superhero films. In order to find “Why we like serial killers?”, we should ponder on “What is inside their heads?”. The above sentences of real life killer Richard Ramirez show how the serial killers think and act, and how their brains have a perfect understanding of pessimism.
(Errol Childress- true detective)
Let us take the look at Errol Childress, who is the killer in HBO series “True detective”. Most of the serial killers can be labeled in this category. We can’t call him as a psycho. He is self-educated, he knows what he is doing and he has self-control. But his dark past didn’t leave him and his face scars reveal how he was tortured by his dad. He thinks his life is meaningless. We saw how he murdered a girl in the first episode. He paints on her back and wears a crown of deer antlers, blindfolds her and poses her as if she’s praying to a large tree. This symbolizes his religious knowledge of the Bible. Of course, the whole series has a strong interpretation of philosophy and religion.
(John Doe- Seven)
And some characters are illusional as they are affected by society. We see John Doe from the movie “Seven”. It is a story about a serial killer who commits homicides based on Bible’s seven deadly sins. And he considers this as his honor and is obsessed with his passion. He is not like Errol Childress. Because Doe is completely organized and well planned about his aim. The first case (Errol Childress) stands for dark past and the second one (John Doe) seems like anger with social patterns. John Doe is a sociopath, who is expressed as “A man with antisocial activities”. So from the above cases we can know that the individual vision on the environment of a man can turn him as a serial killer.
Apart from this, the remaining serial killers in movies are considered as psychopaths. John Doe and Errol Childress are characters who are doing murders with self-control and with their knowledge. They know exactly what they are doing. But when it comes to psychopaths, this is entirely different; they can be cured by proper medicines. In movies, this type of serial killers is very interesting to watch, because the way they terrify the surroundings is funny and filled with irony.
(Patrick Bateman- American psycho)
Patrick Bateman from the movie American psycho is the perfect example of a psychopath. He wants to keep his individuality in the whole film. He kills his second victim for having a business card better than him. The reason for this murder shows how really crazy he is. The movie ends with him not committing all murders and all were his hallucinations. We saw the same thing in “Raman Raghav”. Raman is a character who is inspired by the real life serial killer at Bombay streets in the 1960s. The first inquiry scene shows his obsession with killing. He tells, “I walk only on the pavement. Where they lay out the chessboard? Those black and white chequered tiles on the road. I only walk on the black tiles…And I count the tiles…I play it like a game…He was too drunk…I asked him to move away from my tile…He was standing on my black tile…So I had to push him and he fell…But he was too drunk and I don’t want to lose my game…I picked a rock and smashed his head.”
There are many psychopaths in movies but the above cases make sense to me more than other characters. So until next time, stay connected!
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