Sins of a serial killer

By far, one of the most creepy serial killer portrayals I've ever seen is in the movie Se7en. First of all can I just say--what? Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey...all in one movie? Pretty genius if you ask me. 

In the movie Se7en, detectives Somerset (Freeman) and Mills (Pitt) are investigating a murder that they soon realize will become a series of murders following the pattern of the seven deadly sins--gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, pride, lust and wrath. The John Doe serial killer (who we later find out is Spacey) justifies his murders as a punishment for the world's ignorance against these sins. Somerset tries to understand the mind of the serial killer, but Mills believes there is no way you can understand what a serial killer is thinking or what their motives are. 

This film brings back some of the media representations I talked about with the criminal mind set in Dexter. Although Spacey's character is not biologically influenced in his crime, but is psychologically driven to  make a point and to justify his desire to kill. You could also make the claim to the environmental influence since he is doing it out of disgust for what the world has become.

So we automatically recognize the representation of serial killers as creatures of habit. They have a pattern they follow for each victim. Although it an interesting media generated representation that the murders are made out of one underlying motive. In Dexter the motive is to get all the bad guys off the streets to keep the good people safe while still feeding his dark passenger in morally respectable manner (a bit iffy on the use of moral...). In Se7en the motive is to make a statement and purge the world from the seven deadly sins.

Something our class talked about in the reading from Schmid was the Gothic aspect the media puts on the serial killer character. This is portrayed through Spacey's character in the film quite well. First of all he is physically never present and we only see him as this idea of a person though we have evidence that he is real. This adds to the mystery of the character. Then we get the aspect that he has this morally sound reasoning for his murders which gives him this slight sympathetic element. Finally there is the obvious element that he is killing people in a grotesque manner and it is essentially impossible to stop him. Another point to be me made is that though Somerset is working to further understand the mind of the Spacey's character, he can never truly get a grasp at what Spacey is thinking and what he may do next.

In terms of the celebrity involved with serial killers, we get this glorified novelty in the work of the serial killer by making each of these victims "criminals" in a sense themselves. It puts Spacey's character in the position of the necessary purger of sins to cleanse the world and restore order--which is something all audiences want--so it definitely toys with the viewers position against serial killers and heightened the amount of intrigue in their motivations. There is also this dark sort of poetry to the murders that just adds to this sense of fame and celebrity for the serial killer.

Creepy as it may be, serial killer films such as Se7en are interesting to watch because we, in the American culture, are so fascinated by the novelty of the serial murders and the mental process of a serial killer.