The Normalcy of Deviancy: The Passion of the Serial Killer Fights the Soulless Savior Known as Status Quo
But let’s get away from serial killers for a moment. I’d like to talk about the common criminal, the ghetto lifestyle that the majority is so brilliantly sheltered from. (Perhaps this will shed some light on why we need the serial killer.)
“No more self-defeating device could be discovered than the one society has developed in dealing with the criminal. It proclaims his career in such loud and dramatic forms that both he and the community accept the judgment as a fixed description. He becomes conscious of himself as a criminal, and the community expects him to live up to his reputation, and will not credit him if he does not live up to it.”-Frank Tannenbaum, “Crime and the Community”
Whatever your thoughts are on this country, they could be positive or negative, you have to agree that we love labels. Gay people can’t get married, because marriage is a label that doesn’t include them; they’re not “right” enough for that label. Marriage is a holy label. It works the same way with criminals. This country does everything in its power to label a large chuck of the impoverished as criminals, but anthropological studies have shown for years that these so-called “criminals” are just reacting to a construct that they have no control over. If college, for the most part, is not an option in a certain neighborhood, and a youth has to choose between making minimum wage at McDonald’s and selling drugs for a hundred times that amount, what do you think they’ll choose?
Our country does a great job at keeping the criminals engaged in crime and, in turn, keeping the impoverished poor and apathetic (read: not voting). And this is why God created serial killers.
What?
I don’t actually believe that, but it is something to think about. Perhaps serial killers are here to punish the upper and middle class for their backhanded contributions to the advancement of “ghetto culture,” or more simply: one group kills each other over drugs and money while another kills each other for no good reason whatsoever. I realize that a large number of serial killers hunt down members of the former group (wanderers, prostitutes and nobodies), and the days of the classic lover’s lane murders (See: The Zodiac Killer) seemed to have past, but the new phenomenon of serial shooting (Arizona, The Beltway Sniper) is ushering in a new era of serial killings, an almost demonic classification: shoot to kill, arbitrary victims, no remorse, no one’s safe.
These are scary times indeed and while my voice may come off as venomous rhetoric, I can assure you that I’m just a concerned American. At the end of the day, despite what I say, I’m just like you.
I like rhymes and apple pie.
