{"product_id":"psycho-paths-philip-simpson-9780809323296","title":"Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer Through Contemporary American Film and Fiction","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePhilip L. Simpson\u003c\/b\u003e provides an original and broad overview of the evolving serial killer genre in the two media most responsible for its popularity: literature and cinema of the 1980s and 1990s.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fictional serial killer, with a motiveless, highly individualized modus operandi, is the latest manifestation of the multiple murderers and homicidal maniacs that haunt American literature and, particularly, visual media such as cinema and television. Simpson theorizes that the serial killer genre results from a combination of earlier genre depictions of multiple murderers, inherited Gothic storytelling conventions, and threatening folkloric figures reworked over the years into a contemporary mythology of violence. Updated and repackaged for mass consumption, the Gothic villains, the monsters, the vampires, and the werewolves of the past have evolved into the fictional serial killer, who clearly reflects American cultural anxieties at the start of the twenty-first century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCiting numerous sources, Simpson argues that serial killers' recent popularity as genre monsters owes much to their pliability to any number of authorial ideological agendas from both the left and the right ends of the political spectrum. Serial killers in fiction are a kind of debased and traumatized visionary, whose murders privately and publicly re-empower them with a pseudo-divine aura in the contemporary political moment. The current fascination with serial killer narratives can thus be explained as the latest manifestation of the ongoing human fascination with tales of gruesome murders and mythic villains finding a receptive audience in a nation galvanized by the increasingly apocalyptic tension between the extremist philosophies of both the New Right and the anti-New Right. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFaced with a blizzard of works of varying quality dealing with the serial killer, Simpson has ruled out the catalog approach in this study in favor of in-depth an analysis of the best American work in the genre. He has chosen novels and films that have at least some degree of public name-recognition or notoriety, including \u003ci\u003eRed Dragon\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Silence of the Lambs\u003c\/i\u003e by Thomas Harris, \u003ci\u003eManhunter\u003c\/i\u003e directed by Michael Mann, \u003ci\u003eHenry: Portrait of a Serial Killer\u003c\/i\u003e directed by John McNaughton, \u003ci\u003eSeven\u003c\/i\u003e directed by David Fincher, \u003ci\u003eNatural Born Killers\u003c\/i\u003e directed by Oliver Stone, \u003ci\u003eZombie \u003c\/i\u003eby Joyce Carol Oates, and \u003ci\u003eAmerican Psycho\u003c\/i\u003e by Bret Easton Ellis. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Philip Simpson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 080932329X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780809323296\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Southern Illinois University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/21\/2000\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 264\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.88lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.02h x 6.02w x 0.68d","brand":"Philip Simpson","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47452531032319,"sku":"9780809323296","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_2089d81c-673f-461a-9f0d-ab6c4ce8ee93.jpg?v=1761928977","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/psycho-paths-philip-simpson-9780809323296","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}