Murders and Acquisitions: Representations of the Serial Killer in Popular Culture

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The 'serial killer' has become increasingly prevalent in popular culture since the term was coined by Robert Ressler at the FBI in the mid-1970s. Murders and Acquisitions explores the social and political implications of this cultural figure. The collection argues that the often blood-chilling representations of the serial killer and serial killing offered in TV series, films, novels and fan productions function to address contemporary concerns and preoccupations. Focusing on well-known popular culture texts, such as The Wire, Kiss the Girls, Monster, the Saw series, American Psycho, The Strangers, CSI and Dexter, this eclectic anthology engages with a broad spectrum of cultural theory and performs critical textual analysis to examine the sophisticated ways the serial killer is deployed to mediate and/or work through cultural anxieties and fears.

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The popular fascination for the figure of the serial killer has long gone beyond being an intriguing matter only for media sociology; now it has entered our lifestyles, our dreams, our jokes and we need every tool of cultural analysis at our disposal to understand it. Under the careful editorship of Alzena MacDonald, a top team of international scholars explores, in Murders and Acquisitions, the many, complex aspects of the serial killer craze in popular culture. An essential guidebook. * Professor Adrian Martin, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany *

Author Bio

Alzena MacDonald is a Lecturer in Communication and Cultural Studies at Curtin University, Western Australia. She teaches extensively in the area of Literary and Cultural Studies. Her research interests include representations of crime/horror, Indian nationalisms, and postcoloniality.