Kimberley Tyrrell

Women’s and Gender Studies Program

University of New South Wales

Doctor of Philosophy

2007

‘THE MONSTERS NEXT DOOR’:

REPRESENTATIONS OF WHITENESS AND

MONSTROSITY IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements

for the award of the degree Doctor of Philosophy

from

University of New South Wales

Kimberley Tyrrell, Bachelor of Arts (Hons)

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

November, 2007

PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: TYRRELL

First name: KIMBERLEY Other name/s: RAE

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: Ph.D.

School: WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES Faculty: ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Title: ‘THE MONSTERS NEXT DOOR’: REPRESENTATIONS OF WHITENESS AND MONSTROSITY IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

The focus of this thesis is the examination of whiteness as a dominant identity and subject position. Whiteness has conventionally assumed a normative, monolithic status as the template of humanity. Recent theorising has attempted to specify and denaturalise whiteness. In order to participate in this fracturing of whiteness, I analyse examples in which it functions as a site of contested and ambiguous contradiction. To this end, I use contemporary monstrosity to examine whiteness. Monstrosity is a malleable and culturally specific category of difference that measures alterity, and by displaying discursive functions in an extreme form offers insight into the ways in which deviance and normativity operate. I argue that the conjunction of whiteness and monstrosity, through displaying whiteness in a negative register, depicts some of the discursive operations that enable whiteness to attain such hegemonic dominance. I deploy theories of marginalisation and subjectivation drawn from a variety of feminist, critical race, and philosophical perspectives in order to further an understanding of the discursive operations of hegemonic and normative subject positions.I offer a brief history and overview of both the history and prior conceptualisations of monstrosity and whiteness, and then focus on two particular examples of contemporary white monstrosity. I closely examine the representation of monstrosity in serial killer films. The figure of the serial killer is typically a white, heterosexual, middle class male whose monstrosity is implicitly reliant upon these elements. In my discussion of the recent phenomenon of fatal shootings at high schools in North America, I investigate the way the massacre at Columbine High School functions as the public face of the phenomenon and for the unique interest it generated in the mass media. I focus on a Time magazine cover that featured a photograph of the adolescent perpetrators under the heading The Monsters Next Door, which condensed and emblematised the tension that they generated. It is through the perpetrators uneasy occupation of dual subject positions–namely the unassuming all-American boy and the contemporary face of evil–that their simultaneous representation as average and alien undermines the notion of whiteness as neutral and invisible.

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation

I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).

…………………………………………………………… Signature

……………………………………..……………… Witness

……….……………………...…….… Date

The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.

FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date of completion of requirements for Award:

THIS SHEET IS TO BE GLUED TO THE INSIDE FRONT COVER OF THE THESIS

ORIGINALITY STATEMENT

‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’

Signed ……………………………………………..............

Date ……………………………………………..............

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'

Signed ……………………………………………...........................

Date ……………………………………………...........................

AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT

‘I certify that the Library deposit digital copy is a direct equivalent of the final officially approved version of my thesis. No emendation of content has occurred and if there are any minor variations in formatting, they are the result of the conversion to digital format.’

Signed ……………………………………………...........................

Date ……………………………………………...........................

i

Abstract

The focus of this thesis is the examination of whiteness as a dominant identity and

subject position. Whiteness has conventionally assumed a normative, monolithic status

as the template of humanity. Recent theorising has attempted to specify and

denaturalise whiteness. In order to participate in this fracturing of whiteness, I analyse

examples in which it functions as a site of contested and ambiguous contradiction. To

this end, I use contemporary monstrosity to examine whiteness. Monstrosity is a

malleable and culturally specific category of difference that measures alterity, and by

displaying discursive functions in an extreme form offers insight into the ways in which

deviance and normativity operate. I argue that the conjunction of whiteness and

monstrosity, through displaying whiteness in a negative register, depicts some of the

discursive operations that enable whiteness to attain such hegemonic dominance.

I deploy theories of marginalisation and subjectivation drawn from a variety of feminist,

critical race, and philosophical perspectives in order to further an understanding of the

discursive operations of hegemonic and normative subject positions.

I offer a brief history and overview of both the history and prior

conceptualisations of monstrosity and whiteness, and then focus on two particular

examples of contemporary white monstrosity. I closely examine the representation of

monstrosity in serial killer films. The figure of the serial killer is typically a white,

heterosexual, middle class male whose monstrosity is implicitly reliant upon these

elements. In my discussion of the recent phenomenon of fatal shootings at high schools

in North America, I investigate the way the massacre at Columbine High School

functions as the public face of the phenomenon and for the unique interest it generated

in the mass media. I focus on a Time magazine cover that featured a photograph of the

adolescent perpetrators under the heading The Monsters Next Door, which condensed

and emblematised the tension that they generated. It is through the perpetrators uneasy

occupation of dual subject positions–namely the unassuming all-American boy and the

contemporary face of evil–that their simultaneous representation as average and alien

undermines the notion of whiteness as neutral and invisible.

ii

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my supervisors and to staff in the Women’s and Gender Studies

department – Anne Brewster, Hélène Bowen-Raddeke, Lisabeth During, Ross Harley,

Brigitta Olubas, Lesley Stern, and especially the fabulous Lisa Trahair, who truly went

above and beyond the call of duty.

Thanks to Judith Halberstam for the fruitful discussion, and to Cynthia Freeland

for her generous conversation and time.

Thanks to L-A Yamanaka; R. Miller; Mr. O. Redding; W. Anderson; T. Bangalter

and G.-M. de Homem Christo; RC; N. Young; Todds H and S; D.C.; E for H; C.I., J.T.,

and Z.W. Hanson; PJH; D. Sedaris; AS; SW; KC; L. Erdrich; CD and KP; JKR and

HJP; Joey Ramone, and B. Haverchuck.

Thanks to Sarah for the good times and the hospitality.

Meg for the encouragement!

Neva, Mel, Amy, Alex, Dayna, Sarah, Roxie for all the fun.

Paula for never cutting me off mid-funk and for always being there.

Lisa (the computer maestro) and Manfred for all the amazing support and

generosity, and Owen, Ryan, and Rhys for being such endlessly beautiful nephews.

My lovely niece Marnie for the music, the movies, and the phone calls.

Belinda, Anthony, my little buddy Gabe, Bonnie, Chompsky, and Brogie for

supplying my home away from home, and for all the companionship and fun.

Above all, my brilliant parents, for redefining support and kindness.

iii

Contents

Acknowledgements ii

Introduction 1

Chapter One: Difference, Marginalisation, and Normalisation 11

Chapter Two: The Monster 38

Chapter Three: Race and Monstrosity 65

Chapter Four: The Price of the Ticket: Tracing Forms of ‘Whiteness’ 91

Chapter Five: Serial Killing, the Ordinary Male, and the Banal Monster 128

Chapter Six: ‘The Monsters Next Door’: Columbine, Suburbia, and

White Monstrosity 175

Conclusion 235

Appendix 239

Bibliography 313

Filmography 340

INTRODUCTION

Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man’s soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me.1

Contemporary forms of monstrosity are, like their forebears, complicated, contradictory,

and ambiguous. Monsters are malleable entities that are intimately connected with the

culture that surrounds them and imbues them with meaning. The monster offers the

possibility of tracking some of the anxieties and fears of an age, often quite literally

embodying them as forms of tension. Formed at the borders of meaning and discursive

intelligibility, monsters provide a means of interrogating forms of extreme difference

and processes of marginalisation. This thesis will analyse some of the possible

permutations of the monster in contemporary society.2 While some significant monsters

of our age – including examples of ‘cybernetic teratology,’ to use Rosi Braidotti’s

term – are thoroughly imbricated in developments in technology, the two main figures

that I focus on in the thesis are not quite so extraordinary or dramatic.3 Their

monstrosity is not a new fusion of previously discrete entities, nor is it the result of toxic

pollutants; these figures are, instead, explicitly human and implicitly normative – the

serial killer and the high school shooter. Indeed, the socio-historical salience of these

two figures stems from the tension generated by them on the one hand being known for

their propensity for violence and on the other hand being unremarkable in just about

every other way, that is, for their convincing approximation of a nexus of cultural

norms – whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity, among others. In as much as their

representation in cinema and mainstream media reflects back on these forms of identity

and norms, they provide a site for examining contemporary processes of subjectivation

and strategies of marginalisation.

2

In particular, I will use the figure of the monster as a way to examine white

ethnicity. In doing so, I attempt to break down some of the ways in which whiteness

has been constructed as a monolithic, hegemonic, and neutral subject position by

showing it in specific and negative forms. In looking at the putative norm and racial

template of contemporary North America, I seek to find moments of incoherence,

danger, and friction, where whiteness breaks down and can be examined in fruitful

ways. It is this tracing of a dominant identity, this desire to view the hegemonic and

privileged as equally imbricated (in its other, in culture, in hierarchies) and as equally

constructed and dependent as its negative term, that I wish to pursue.

Throughout this thesis I draw together a number of interrelated areas concerned

with the articulation and representation of marginalised and dominant identities. In my

examination of monstrosity and whiteness, I seek to explore various terms that are, in

different ways, considered to be monolithic and hegemonic. My focus here is on the

manner in which such terms can be dismantled and read against each other in productive

ways. My approach to these dominant and ossified forms of identity is greatly

influenced by examples offered by a variety of critical race, feminist, and

queer theorists and philosophers whose work analyses the complicated notions of norms

and ideals. The theorists whose work I draw upon have all endeavoured to break down

a monolithic and previously inviolate term (such as whiteness) in a way that

acknowledges its inherent plurality, the multiple ways in which it can be inhabited, and

the manner in which the already-existing differences from the norm are subsumed. In

this project I focus on the complicated presence of white racial identity in contemporary

culture. My examination of recent examples of fraught whiteness and their conjunction

with monstrosity attempts to isolate the conditions that enable the oscillation between

neutralised ‘normality’ and stigmatised ‘difference.’

The social and cultural formation of both the serial murderers and the Columbine

school killers (in particular, the teenage Columbine shooters on whom I will focus) as

highly cathected contemporary monsters might broadly be understood as a phenomenon

that Judith Butler has called social abjection. The study of these killers as examples of

this phenomenon necessarily entails an investigation of the articulation of identity and

the boundaries of acceptable humanity. Two major thematic trajectories that will be

3

explored throughout the thesis concern the tension governing the impulse to normalise

and the cost of experiencing and inhabiting difference. The extreme examples of

monstrosity that I have chosen provide ways of demonstrating some of these

characteristics and issues. In particular, my final two chapters focus on an examination

of negative, damaging depictions of whiteness in the media and in cinema, depictions

that are so corrosive and debilitating that they fall under the often fantastic and

fictionalised rubric of monster-making and demonisation. This leap from negative

white racial identity to white monstrosity offers a way of simultaneously examining

whiteness, monstrosity, and normativity.

In terms of my focal points – the serial killer and the high school shooter – it is

significant that these have been labelled as monstrous in the media and by

commentators, ensuring that the public imagination of both examples has been informed

by a rhetoric of monstrosity, driven by the media. Part of the production of monstrosity

is the notion that, if one is called a monster, one is a monster. Such is the strange

linguistic efficacy of naming of monstrosity that monsters are defined from without, and

are known through social processes more than through a strict system of classification.

Monstrosity, as such, is less a fixed and determinate designation than an ongoing

description of a culture’s reaction to particular individuals, entities, or ideas. This is

why the monster provides such an intriguing form of difference – one that hyperbolises

and extends other, more everyday, forms of exclusion and subject creation.

Of the two figures that the thesis foregrounds, the serial killer is the most

well-known and the most mythologised by popular media. In recent decades, the serial

killer has become, for some, the contemporary monster par excellence, the figure of

horror who condenses and emblematises many current anxieties and fears – anonymity,

a crisis of masculinity, urban dangers, and the prevalence of violence, for example. In

the many films that feature serial killers, he is almost invariably portrayed as male,

white, mostly straight, heterosexual, and middle class (though there are occasionally

exceptions to this). The serial killer’s identity is rarely questioned as a factor in his

depiction of terror and aggression. Instead, his monstrosity centres on his banality, on

his ordinariness, on the fact that there are brand-name killers in the world and on whose

exploits these films are often (loosely) based.

4

In addition to the labelling of serial killers as ‘monstrous,’ the infinitely protean

term monster has come to rest upon the teenage shoulders of the notorious Columbine

high school killers: two white, middle class, heterosexual, able-bodied, bright young

males from the United States. In almost any other circumstance, these young men

would be the utter embodiment of the cultural ideal as they rest so squarely in the apex

of normativity. Not only did North American teenagers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris

earn the title of ‘monster’ through their murderous acts, but something about the

oddness of the fit is uniquely jarring and intriguing. The striking conjunction of these

concerns into the term ‘the Monsters Next Door,’ as the headline on an influential 1999

cover of Time magazine ran, provoked public debate and an ongoing interest in the

pair – an interest that continues to flourish, as the 2006 public furore over a

Columbine-themed videogame in which the player takes on the role of the killers,

‘Super Columbine Massacre RPG,’ attests.4

In developing an understanding of the significance of the cultural formation of

these killers it is necessary to delineate the complex intertwinings of the processes of

subjectivation and normalisation together with the instantiation of the normative and the

creation of difference. Key to the notion of normalisation being examined here are

contemporary understandings of the ‘universal’ subject which have indicated that such

‘universality’ implies a related idea of neutrality, and this neutrality in turn emanates

from ‘his’ (the subject’s) whiteness. A variety of cultural theorists have recently argued

that this specificity of the white subject has been historically denied both in culture and

in theory. To the extent that such work goes some way toward redressing this oversight,

I am able to draw on it to argue for the very particular configuration of the white,

middle class, wealthy, resource-rich, heterosexual, able-bodied male as standard. At the

same time, the concept of the universal human subject is still operative in as much as

the examination of monstrosity that I undertake shows the very notion of monstrosity to

both encompass and oppose that subject. In other words, the deliberate monstrification

of certain racial, ethnic, and sexual ‘others’ reinforces the notion of the universal human

subject in order to shore up dominant and convenient notions of self and nationhood.

In Chapter One, I establish the theoretical territory that I cover in subsequent

chapters and introduce the main themes and ideas this thesis will pursue. In my

examination of some of the ways in which alterity is interrogated and sustained in

5

contemporary culture, I follow earlier tendencies in feminist and critical race theory to

focus on a specific and delimited example of difference by restricting my research to the

field of contemporary monstrosity. Like the categories of the grotesque, the abject, and

the freak – all of which have been the subject of recent critical theorising – the monster

has both an extensive history and highly particular meaning in contemporary culture.

I will outline some of the ways in which a consideration of marginality and neutrality

are important to identity politics and contemporary theorising, and argue for a

conceptualisation of the monster as a key figure of alterity.

I focus in particular on the work of a handful of feminists – Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak, Judith Butler, Penelope Deutscher, and Sherene Razack – as the key theoretical

underpinnings of my work. Discussion of these theorists’ work will recur throughout

the thesis, particularly in terms of the focus on marginality that their work shares. By

drawing on Spivak’s analysis of marginality, Butler’s approach to subjectivation,

Deutscher’s understanding of productive instability, and Razack’s insistence on

accountability, and using these theories to explore the dynamic of marginalisation and

normalisation that underpins the nexus of subject positions that I endeavour to

investigate, I argue that hegemonic and seemingly neutral and inviolate subject

positions and ideas may be rendered understandable, mutually constituted with their

‘other,’ and their dominant stances may be fractured accordingly. Whiteness,

monstrosity, and marginality are relative and malleable ideas and subject positions that

draw their strength and relevance from changing social conditions and contexts. Their

protean nature means that each is tenuously named and labelled, and suffers from this

crisis of definition. In this respect, Deutscher offers some very useful strategies for

incorporating these often confusing elements into theory. Her concept of productive

instability has affinities with monster and whiteness discourse, particularly given the

ambiguous and definitionally vague discursive status of these discourses.

Monstrosity is implicitly bound up in humanity as what it rejects, opposes, and

differs from. In my second chapter I offer a brief historicisation and discussion of the

function of the monster. I focus in particular on the way in which certain marginalised

identities have come to be articulated through monstrous tropes. I demonstrate here that

the monster is not a neutral creature or an ahistorical creation but rather, is precisely the

opposite: culturally embedded, socially constituted, and riven with contemporary

6

meanings and attitudes. The characteristics and attributes of monstrosity are deeply

marked by gender, race, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. In deploying Braidotti, Michael

Uebel, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, and Donna Haraway’s theorisation of the historicity,

meaning, and positioning of the monster to create a backdrop and explanation of the

various uses and cultural understandings of monstrosity over time, I demonstrate that

the monster is a mobile, contingent term that is inextricably bound up with the culture in

which it appears. This enables me to argue that contemporary monsters reflect some of

the dominant anxieties of our time.

In my third chapter I focus more closely on this connection between race and

monstrosity, drawing on the work of a range of theorists and historians. Many

investigations of the traits and identity of monstrosity have perceived such continuities

between monsters and existing forms of marginalised identities, such as femininity,

non-white racial designations, ‘Native’ populations, and the physically anomalous.

In turn, these categories have also been defined in part by their alignment with the

monstrous, and by the changing standards of humanity that the monster is defined

through and against. In utilising the analyses and historical data collected by a variety

of theorists including Michael Palencia-Roth, John Friedman, and Leslie Marmon Silko,

who offer examples of racially inflected monstrosities, I demonstrate a continuity and

salience to the notion that monstrosity can be imbued with racial characteristics. In

using Elizabeth Young, Ed Guerrero, and Jeffrey Weinstock’s work to show more

metaphorical approaches to racial representation in recent cinema, I argue that race has

continued to be a factor in contemporary monstrosity, paving the way for my

exploration of both white monstrosity and race in the contemporary serial killer film.

There are two reasons why it is important to acknowledge overt displays of

racialised monstrosity, and in this instance white monstrosity. One is that, as I will

argue in my chapters on the representation of serial killers and high school killers, such

killer’s expression of monstrosity is produced through a rhetoric of banality, of an

‘ordinary’ monstrosity that is significant in part because it is seen to be ‘unmarked’ by a

variety of identity codes. This contrasts directly to the way monstrosity arises from the

racially encoded body of the monster when the monster is seen as non-white. The

second concerns the overdetermined association of the monster and non-whiteness, the

stigmatising and ‘othering’ process this entails, and its manifestation of racial

7

characteristics that work to efface whiteness in general, and white monstrosity in

particular.

In Chapter Four I extend the scope of the thesis to examine whiteness as a

dominant form of identity and privilege. My focus is on whiteness as a space of

plenitude and opportunity, of cultural hegemony and very real material security, on

looking at a subject position that is most often defined in terms of what it is, has, or

possesses. Yet I also wish to examine the very potent and productive underside of

whiteness, to look at negative forms of whiteness that include terror and monstrosity in

their scope. This is not only in order to give myself critical purchase on the slippery

terrain of whiteness, but also to investigate the necessary and constitutive troubling

elements of white racial identity. In doing so I hope to show that these moments or

spaces are both constitutive and open to resignification, and also that an interrogation of

this manifestation of panic, anxiety, and tension enables a reconfiguration of power

dynamics in potent and beneficial ways.

The notion of a malleable whiteness and its variable configurations etches a

specifically contemporary imprint revealing current tensions and standards just as much

as monstrosity does. Indeed, the configuration of whiteness, much like the versions of

monstrosity discussed in Chapters Two and Three, is centred on the white, heterosexual,

middle to upper class, propertied, rational subject of Western post-Enlightenment

discourse, and takes this figure as its implicit norm and fulcrum. Whiteness is a

complicated figure to analyse and define, as it encompasses a number of areas, ideas,

and forms. Multiple and paradoxical, it is open to interpretation and rearticulation, even

as it operates from a position of hegemony and privilege. In addition, whiteness is

frequently perceived as neutral and invisible, and yet at the same time it is viewed as a

plural and heterogeneous formation. Chapter Four traces some of the dominant recent

ideas in whiteness studies, offering an overview of the literature of the field as part of

my broader focus on negative forms of whiteness, and examining some of the

consequences of naming and interrogating whiteness as a site of academic inquiry. In

doing so, I specify the parameters of theorisations of whiteness and indicate their

pertinence to depictions of white racial identity found in mainstream popular culture.

8

By drawing upon contemporary critical race theory to explicate and interrogate

the recently developed field of whiteness studies and using it to analyse the manner in

which whiteness has achieved its seeming dominance and hegemonic status, I

demonstrate that a seemingly invisible, neutral and universal term such as whiteness is

permeable, contingent, and able to be fractured and interrogated. I show this with

recourse to the exploration of the term ‘poor white trash’ as one that already inherently

fissures white neutrality from within. I argue that this form of fragmentation is

necessary in order to understand the particularity or peculiarity of the state of the

contemporary white monster, whose unique status is inextricably intermingled with his

seemingly hegemonic qualities, such as whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality, all

through a veneer of banality. In drawing on the work of theorists such as bell hooks

I describe and explore some initial connections made between whiteness and terror in

preparation for my analyses of white monstrosity in subsequent chapters.

In seeking to critically interrogate representations of whiteness, Chapters Five and

Six focus on figures that have been rarely examined, or represented, in terms of race.

The absence of racialised particularity in the representation of the serial killer and the

high school killer is a striking evasion, one that ignores race as a crucial structuring

component in the portrayal and subject position of all humans under existing

representational strategies. In other words, the depiction of race is key to one’s access

to humanity. In pursuing case studies of these two figures, I argue that racial

configurations may be, and are, found within these depictions in spite of an important

component of the hegemonic value of whiteness being its perception as a neutral, easily

passed-over component of identity, unworthy of comment or attention. It is therefore

vital that these seemingly empty, impartial spaces of identity be interrogated as

particular and meaningful. As I argue in the chapter on monstrosity, the monster acts a

barometer for social tensions and for specific historically located anxieties. The

mutability of the monster and its capacity to reflect contemporary issues and fears has

thus come to encompass the serial murderer as one of its exemplary contemporary

icons. Unlike other monster-figures or sources of threat in many other horror and

thriller genre films, the serial killer is an implacably non-supernatural protagonist, and

explicitly human. Much of the terror he generates is precisely due to his ordinary,

non-fantastic status. I historicise and delineate the term ‘serial killer,’ using official and

academic resources to both name and question the outline of the designation. In drawing

9

on the work of Richard Tithecott and Mark Seltzer I explore the cultural ramifications

of the serial killer’s identity, particularly in terms of his statistical ‘profile.’ By drawing

on the work of Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil and Judith Halberstam, who

extends and explores Arendt’s theory, I argue that the banality of the serial killer

registers in a different way as it opens up space for a exploration of the serial killer in

contemporary cinema in terms of the very qualities that supposedly comprise this

banality – his whiteness, his masculinity, his class status, and his heterosexuality.

The final chapter examines a different configuration of the connections between

whiteness, monstrosity, and marginality. As part of my broader project to denaturalise

and specify white identities as hegemonic and dominant, I interrogate a particular

example of violent white subjectivity that is defined by normative assumptions and

ideals, and examine the presence of marginality within an ostensibly dominant identity

position. I explore the conditions surrounding the specificity of these identities and, in a

denaturalising gesture that I first discuss in my chapter on whiteness, I focus on marking

these identities as firmly situated in terms of race, gender, and class rather than as

simply taking them to be representative of the generic ‘human.’ Unlike my previous

examples specifying the complexity of white identity through the representation of the

serial killer and ‘white trash’ citizenry, in this chapter I analyse a different segment of

the population: the boys who populate small towns and suburbs across the United

States, and who are responsible for the recent and seemingly increasing spate of high

school massacres that have dominated headlines in the 1990s and into the new

millennium.

The individuals responsible for the worst high school massacre in North American

history were two white, male, middle teenagers from the conservative, upper middle

class, predominantly white town of Littleton, Colorado. The representation of Eric

Harris and Dylan Klebold and the pattern of recent high school shootings in the mass

media will be the focus of my sixth chapter. The representation of the high school

killers (including Klebold and Harris) downplays their statistically overwhelmingly

white, male, and middle class status, which aligns with broader forces guiding

representation, such as erasure and normativity. In utilising extensive mass media

reportage and ensuing journalistic interpretations of the high school massacre

phenomenon, I contextualise the case, particularly in terms of establishing historical

10

precedents and in distinguishing these types of killings from other forms of on-campus

or adolescent violence. By drawing on Mike Hill’s account of Oklahoma bombing

perpetrator Timothy McVeigh’s portrayal as a specifically white terrorist, and

Richard Collier’s analysis of monstrosity and gender in the representation of criminals, I

demonstrate that the high school shooter is an important figure in this age and one

whose primary defining characteristics are paradoxically ignored yet centralised in

media representation and discussion of the killings. I analyse the influential Time

magazine cover focusing on the Columbine killers and argue that, as contemporary

figures of monstrosity, the teens reveal an increasingly intimate form of terror and fear

in culture. By drawing on extensive analyses of the racial configuration of suburbia

I demonstrate that the whiteness of the locale in which the Columbine massacre

happened was one major factor in the interest in the case, as Columbine could function

as a synecdoche for the nation, and was a broader factor in accounting for why these

killings have resonated so strongly within contemporary culture. In exploring the

ramifications of this example, I trace the connections between whiteness, monstrosity,

and normativity, and demonstrate the ways in which they provoke and sustain each

other. In concluding the thesis, I argue that the fruitful terrain of exploring whiteness

and monstrosity opens new possibilities for redefining liminality and highlighting the

emptiness of the categories deemed to be privileged and normative.

11

CHAPTER 1

Difference, Marginalisation, and Normalisation

[T]here is no concept of ‘the human’ that includes all subjects without violence, loss, or residue.5

In this chapter I introduce a number of concepts and theorists that will prove to be

important throughout my thesis as I explore the ramifications of uniting the terms

whiteness and monstrosity. I focus on processes of subject creation and in particular,

those that operate through exclusion and negativity. This thesis is preoccupied with

ideas and figures of liminality, with people who appear at the boundaries of proper and

acceptable subjectivity, and with concepts that are often contradictory and mobile, such

as whiteness. The aim of the thesis is to investigate marginality through the trope of

monstrosity and a particular and extreme manifestation of the monstrous other. The

existence of this monstrous other as a heterosexual, able-bodied, middle class,

propertied white male challenges the existing nexus of terms typically associated with

both the normative and the dominant, and it also has the potential to disrupt

conventional understandings of difference, particularly those based on a clear

delineation of boundaries and categories. In order to theorise the specificity of this

extreme and contradictory form of marginality I consider the means by which the white

heterosexual male occupies a position of such centrality (that is, the tropological edifice

that sustains him) as well as theories of marginality, particularly those associated with

feminism, that enable me to explore and articulate a set of relations between the

dominant and the subjugated, the normative and the monstrous, and the central and the

marginal. In exploring difference, and in particular extreme examples such as

monstrosity, I use the notion of marginality to open up the terrain of the normative and

the hegemonic.

12

The concept of marginality underlies my efforts to understand topics such as

whiteness and normativity. For one thing, much feminist, postcolonial, queer, and

critical race theorising has sprung from, and continues to draw from, explicitly

marginalised positions and sources of knowledge. While in this chapter I focus

primarily on some of the questions concerned with, and raised by, feminism, I have

been greatly influenced by all of these disparate fields. As minority discourses,

explicitly born through struggle and with the knowledge of their subjugated status

comprising an intimate part of their functioning and self-understanding, marginality

discourses comprise both an implicit and explicit element of my thesis.6 In a second,

and related, point, I follow many theorists in investigating a topic through an

exploration of negativity – an examination of its underside, its constitutive but

disavowed other, its ignored or unacceptable elements. I will look at the terms that

enable the privileged and hegemonic, and examine the coherency and internal

mechanisms of these putatively hegemonic subject positions, such as whiteness and

masculinity. In other words, I will investigate the ‘violence, loss, or residue’ involved

in production of forms of acceptable humanity.7

I draw examples and parallels from discourses that are directly connected to or

analogous with teratology, the science or study of monstrosity.8 In examining some of

the ways in which alterity has been interrogated and sustained in contemporary culture,

I follow recent critical tendencies which focus on a specific example of recuperated or

unassimilated difference and danger by examining the field of contemporary

monstrosity. An initial point of entry into an examination of difference is frequently to

locate an outstanding and notable example of this alterity or marginality, and to examine

the ways in which it departs from, and shores up, specific cultural norms and ideas.

Like the categories of the grotesque, the abject, and the freak, all of which have been the

subject of recent critical theorising, the monster has both an extensive history and highly

particular meaning in contemporary culture.9 Lastly, my topic concerns the boundaries,

and estimations, of hegemonic and dominant positions. The access of the subject to an

ascription of humanity is conditional. As a number of theorists argue, humanity and

alterity are bound up in each other. Humanity is not a self-evident term, but is

comprised across a number of areas, with varying degrees and conditions – throughout

history, individuals have been deemed subhuman, as objects, as chattel, as inhuman, as

monstrous. It is this final description, the monstrous, that comprises the greater part of

13

my trajectory of interest in my thesis, as it offers a rich and complicated history of

alterity, and is an effective tool through which to investigate forms and processes of

marginalisation, othering, and subject creation. The question of marginality will be

broached by examining subject positions in terms of the possibilities for the

‘appropriate’ human subject, and in terms of the dynamics that govern the impulses that

include and exclude subjects as ‘Others.’ It is the interconnection between them that I

aim to demonstrate.

In order to focus on aspects of the process of marginalisation I offer an account of

the universal, ‘neutral’ subject then examine some of the ramifications of the

specification of this subject as particular. My aim is to show that all subject positions

have a ‘cost’ and that all forms of construction leave a trace, even for the most

normative and privileged. I argue this in order to discuss the belief that some subject

positions are so neutral and invisible that they are difficult to analyse. My focal point,

however, is a set of norms and ideals embodied in the nexus of all norms, the

heterosexual, able-bodied, middle class, propertied white male. I examine his

representation in my final two chapters as a way of breaking down some of these

monolithic terms, and using them as a way of investigating each other. I do this by

drawing on the rich history of the exploration of negativity and alterity found in much

recent identity and critical theory. I use whiteness as an example of one way in which

to interrogate a dominant identity and hegemonic subject position in terms of its very

normativity. This chapter examines the ways that both normativity and interpellation in

a negative mode (such as monstrosity) work. In addition, I delimit some of the ways in

which considerations of difference, marginality, and negative subject positions are

formed, and have been historically important to the articulation of feminist and critical

race projects.

Universality, Marginality, and Identity:

In order to examine difference and processes of marginalisation, I first turn to a brief

examination of universality as it relates to identity. The transcendental universal subject

has been the topic of much philosophical and critical debate. The perception of the

white, heterosexual, middle to upper class, able-bodied, propertied male as the template

and ideal subject position of humanity in post-Enlightenment culture has been roundly

criticised and undermined on multiple fronts by feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and

14

queer theorists.10 David Theo Goldberg, a contemporary theorist of race and ethnicity,

for example, outlines some of the characteristics of the subject of modernity, describing

it as ‘a Subject that is abstract and atomistic, general and universal, divorced from the

contingencies of historicity as it is from the particularities of social and political

relations and identities.’11 The subject’s particular temporal and social identity, in other

words, is flattened and neutralised, and reinscribed as an ahistorical entity. This

presumed universality is summarised by Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg as

‘the privileged construction of a transcendental, white, male, rational subject who

operated at the recesses of power while at the same time giving every indication that he

escaped the confines of time and space.’12 In this manner, the universal subject is both

the standard and the paradigm of humanity.

As a range of contemporary theorists argue, the notion of a transcendental,

‘invisible’ subject of humanity is premised on impossible claims of universality and

neutrality. In particular, masculinity, heterosexuality, and whiteness have, across time,

been considered as objective and ideal modes of subjectivity, as the implicit template

for all individuals in Western, first world nations. Innumerable examples demonstrate

the pervasive and ingrained stature of these assumptions of neutrality; from the

linguistic (‘man’ as commonplace shorthand for humanity), to the ideological (the ‘man

of reason’ as the central and implicit subject of the philosophical tradition,13 or the

prohibition against gay marriage in most countries), to the prosaically empirical (with

the average male’s physiological measurements as the standard for medicinal levels and

safety restraints such as car seat belts).

The perception of the ‘universal’ in terms of subjectivity and standards presents it

as an oppressive, stratifying force that falsely privileges certain individuals, positions,

and ideas as neutral and normative. The assumption of the universal standard entails

that these subject positions are frequently understood and represented as invisible,

immutable, and natural. At their least benign, they serve to reinscribe unfair

stereotypes, diminish the culpability and responsibility of the majority by presenting

their choices and beliefs as inevitable and correct, and position those excluded as not

just marginal but as ‘Other’ and outcast. In addition, these appeals to the universal on

the basis of different axes – such as class, race, gender, sexuality – frequently work

through, and mutually reinforce, each other. In particular, they function through

15

naturalising tropes and modes of power to ingrain themselves as neutral and normal, as

the standard against which all other humanity is judged, a repository of power and

hierarchical benefit.

The universal is a particular form of representation and classification that has

specific discursive results. These include the implantation and reification of particular

ideals and beliefs as ahistorical and acultural, which denies their temporality,

contextualisation, and constitution. I will briefly detail some of the existing facets of

this type of process, in particular, the discursive operations of neutralisation,

universalisation, normativity, and the ways in which they function to condition

subjectivity. There is, as theorists in a variety of fields have demonstrated, a cost to this

assumption, particularly insofar as it organises the perception of other subjects around

itself like satellites or dependents, as adjuncts, derivatives, or versions. In recent times,

this analysis has – as an accompaniment to the multiple and diverse impact of areas of

thought and movements such as feminism, post colonialism, and the civil rights

movement – turned to a consideration of the elements of what have come to constitute

the human in contemporary culture. One moment of agreement between feminist and

critical race thought is that both, particularly when working from a self-reflexive

marginalised position, seek to name and render specific the forms that benefit from their

oppression and othering. That is, they share a similar objective to fracture dominant

standards, beliefs, and values, be they phallocentric or white supremacist ideals. In

addition, there is a connection between the methods that both deploy to fissure and

rework these monolithic, coercive terms.

Feminist investigations of subject positions and the presumption of

gender neutrality seek to undermine the notion that universal norms are applicable to all

individuals, and to illustrate the ramifications of institutionalising beliefs as universal

and static across a variety of areas. The universal is frequently analysed in feminist

accounts as a falsely legitimising account of subjectivity that elides and effaces specific

positions and meanings. This is what feminist theorist and philosopher Elizabeth Grosz

termed the ‘universalist and universalizing assumptions of humanism, through which

women’s – and all other groups’ – specificities, positions, and histories are rendered

irrelevant or redundant.’ This is contrasted with males, ‘who hide themselves and their

specificities under the banner of some universal humanity.’14 By contrast, a focus on

16

the specificity of the subject politicises the notion of identity offers the first step in an

understanding of how the seemingly neutral has contours that we can name, are able to

name and know.

The concept of the subject, as feminist philosophers and theorists have argued, has

been inherently imbued with masculine characteristics and aspirations.15 In Patterns of

Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy, feminist philosopher

Rosi Braidotti’s focus on gender in the history of philosophical thought demonstrates

some of the multiple ways in which masculine privilege has informed and benefited

from theoretical constructions of humanity and identity. A recognition of difference,

and a politicised articulation of specificity, are both key to what Braidotti views as the

function of the feminine within the philosophical tradition – which, she argues, occupies

an effaced and repressed role within philosophy. Braidotti describes this as an

effacement that coexists with the deployment of the trope of the feminine as muse,

essence, and ‘Other,’ and as otherwise occupying the realm of the corporeal,

the emotional, and the irrational.16

Braidotti questions the recent turn by male theorists (primarily Derrida and

Deleuze, and to a lesser degree Foucault and Lyotard) to the ‘becoming-woman’ of

philosophy in the face of the ‘death of the subject’ and poststructuralist questioning of

grand, totalising narratives.17 Braidotti examines the recent male interest in occupying

the space of the feminine in philosophy as a perpetuation of the trajectory of colonising

and appropriating thought that feminism has criticised.18 As such, Braidotti argues that

while the recent broad focus on investigating the feminine in philosophy is in some

senses fruitful and encouraging, it perpetuates two problematic notions. Firstly, it

forwards a conception of the feminine as object of discussion and inquiry for the

knowing subject, which accords with the view of the feminine as an appropriate topic

for inquiry – as property, not an active, viable subject in it/herself. Secondly, it

highlights theory’s frustrating inability to turn the critical gaze back onto masculinity,

even when masculinity is seen in terms of its ‘universal’ status. This, which Braidotti

perceives as a general ‘poverty of male deconstructions of masculinity’ in recent theory,

seems to confirm the already classic feminist analysis: men cannot express themselves, they do not manage to express their bodily experience, their sexual specificity. Used as they are to representing the universal, the general,

17

the human, they find themselves unable to speak of that which is closest to them: their desire, their singularity.19

In her analysis, Braidotti undermines the notion of a subjectivity that defines and

is available to all humans equally. She believes that an implicit element of exclusion is

built into a concept like universality, and that even a supposedly empty and neutral

notion such as the subject is structured by explicit and highly defined contours such as

gender and race.

One way of addressing the false universality of certain identities and ideas is to

foreground their particular and already-specified qualities. Corporeality is an important

metaphor for feminists, given the way that the male has conventionally been taken as

the template and ideal for the human body. In her book Volatile Bodies: Toward A

Corporeal Feminism, Grosz suggests that a critical examination of corporeality and the

specifically gendered body offers one possible way to contextualise and specify the

subject in question. In her view:

the corporeal ‘universal’ has in fact functioned as a veiled representation and projection of a masculine which takes itself as the unquestioned norm, the ideal representative without any idea of the violence that this representational positioning does to its others – women, the ‘disabled,’ cultural and racial minorities, different classes, homosexuals – who are reduced to the role of modifications or variations of the (implicitly white, male, youthful, heterosexual, middle class) human body.20

In this passage, Grosz has articulated two ideas that are extremely relevant to my

argument. While I do not examine corporeality per se in my thesis, it functions to

challenge the role of the white male subject as template and norm in particularly

effective way through isolating the way that a range of subject positions being defined

through or against a normative white male subject position implicitly relies upon a very

particular and very limited subject’s claim to universality. Secondly, the notion that the

creation of the ‘others’ to the norm is effected through violent means, and in what is

itself an act of violence, is an important consideration when attempting to investigate the

process of normalisation. The gravity of the effacement of the specificity and validity

of these various subject positions is born out in the plentiful feminist, postcolonial, and

anti-racist projects to reclaim lost histories, interrogate silences, and examine the

conditions that enable these systematic inequalities.

18

However, the examination of the universal subject is not a project that occurs

without the implication of oneself in the project, in which one must, in Audre Lorde’s

terms, use the master’s tools to dismantle the house. The feminist articulation of the

subject works from necessarily and historically compromised, but also enabling, forces

and terms. In other words, it necessitates attention to the compulsory implication of

oneself in the discourse and tradition that one draws from, but simultaneously opposes.

This process is described by theorist Judith Butler as the

relation of being implicated in that which one opposes, this turning of power against itself to produce alternative modalities of power … [which is] not a ‘pure’ opposition, a ‘transcendence’ of contemporary relations of power, but a difficult labor of forging a future from resources inevitably impure.21

Butler’s work points to some of the problems encountered by theorists interested

in marginal subject positions. Likewise, in a passage brimming with ghostly imagery,

feminist and postcolonial philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak offers a reminder of

some of the consequences and enabling conditions for acts of theorising. She notes that:

[i]f we want to start something, we must ignore that our starting point is shaky. If we want to get something done, we must ignore that the end will be inconclusive. But this ignoring is not an active forgetfulness. It is an active marginalizing of the marshiness, the swampiness, the lack of form grounding at the margins, at the beginning and the end … These necessarily and actively marginalized margins haunt what we start and we get done, as curious guardians.22

As Spivak notes, all subjects necessarily start with ambiguous moorings and tools,

and need to draw on this partiality and impurity to gain legitimacy and access to

discourse.23 Through this insight Spivak acknowledges the importance of boundaries

and their negotiation, particularly in terms of what Michael Uebel highlights as the

dual function of the margins ‘as both marker of separation and line of commonality,’ a

consideration of the intimacy of margins but also their ability to divide.24 Even if

borders are arbitrary or illogical, this does not ameliorate their relevance or potency. In

many cases, it serves to heighten their impact, constituting them as in constant need of

surveillance and reinforcement. It is in the margins where the dynamics and modes of

power relations are at their most extreme and complicated.

19

Feminism, difference, and marginalisation:

The notion of marginality has been of enormous interest and benefit to recent feminist

theory, including its interrogation and embodiment. It both encompasses the

articulation of minority politics (in the sense of disaffiliated and systemically

disempowered) and enables specific positions from which to speak (as marginal, as the

actively marginalised). Although this project of investigating and altering dominant

norms and systems of power has necessarily implied a broader negotiation with

heterogeneous forces and conceptions of the subject, many forms of feminism have

articulated themselves as strategically operating from an embattled and oppositional

stance. I do not wish to falsely homogenise the many types of feminisms and styles of

operation to be found. However, I want to momentarily argue that feminisms, if they

can be so schematised, tend to perceive themselves as operating from a marginalised

and necessarily externalised position within phallocentric discourse. The positioning of

feminism as a unilaterally minority discourse has been challenged in terms of its own

monolithic depiction of the female subject, and specifically its refusal to acknowledge

the considerable differences between women. Despite these criticisms, marginality –

albeit a particular version of marginality that is mobilised as an articulate and

strategically positioned identity – remains a useful and multivalenced tool for many

feminists. This process of ‘self-marginalisation’ is one reason why mainstream

feminism has been roundly criticised by feminists who participate in other fields of

inquiry. For example, Marxist and leftwing feminists have attacked the middle class

values of much theory and activity, while feminists of colour or from explicitly non

white cultural and ethnic backgrounds and have charged that feminism is unable to

encompass their concerns without a substantial revision of the term ‘feminist’ itself

(for example, the additive ‘black feminist’). This view has been echoed by some

lesbian theorists who have felt either ostracised or often ignored by ‘feminism.’25

The theoretical turn to partial, compromised, and ingrained subject positions and

strategies echoes a broader problematisation of knowledge, power relations, and the

subject of feminism itself within much feminist theory, particularly the ‘feminism of

difference’ as located by the philosopher Penelope Deutscher. Deutscher’s term refers

to feminisms that seek to draw from poststructuralist, postmodern, and especially

deconstructive accounts of the subject, discourse, and contemporary power relations.26

20

This desire to explore and express the multiple forms of difference and marginality

available is extremely beneficial for contemporary feminism, and is an important

background to many of the ideas in my thesis’ focus on the dynamic between alterity

and normalisation. A productive focus on fragmentation and questioning, for example,

may be found in the intriguing introduction to the anthology Feminism Beside Itself, in

which editors Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman interrogate elements of multiple

feminist inquiries into identity and forms of historicisation by focusing on feminism’s

increasingly self-reflexive analysis (that is, its emphasis on its own constitution and

status). Elam and Wiegman examine the question of why various feminisms have

grown increasingly aware of the manner in which the constituency of ‘feminism’ is not

homogenous, or uniformly able to be represented. When exploring the issues of

difference and divergence that mark the anthology, Elam and Wiegman note that they

‘debated with one another why feminism’s most elaborate and contentious

conversations seemed now to be about its own political and philosophical assumptions,

omissions, and oppressive complicities.’27 They suggest that the shift in feminism’s

understanding of itself may have arisen because the commodification,

institutionalisation, and increased visibility of feminism undermined the ‘discourses of

marginality and dissent that feminism had understood itself historically to be.’28 That

is, feminism historically had relied upon a mode of organised marginality and an

awareness of constantly negotiating the structures that enabled the boundaries of

feminist discourse. Feminism’s capacity to replicate the forms of domination and

exclusion that it opposes (for example, through the presumption of additive, hyphenated

identities such as ‘black feminist’ or ‘lesbian feminist’ that secure feminism as

implicitly white, middle class, and heterosexual) has placed it under pressure.29

The articulation of the importance of marginality and difference to feminist

investigations and analysis, Elam and Wiegman suggest, follows Foucault’s

understanding of critical ontology as ‘permanent critique of our historical era.’ In this,

critique is a transgressive working at the frontiers of what appears to us as the very condition of our being; it is, in other terms, a ‘limit-attitude.’ … feminism’s limit-attitude would be neither purely inside itself nor outside itself, but more properly beside itself. Neither fully of the past nor of the present, feminism’s consciousness of itself would be contingent.30

21

A limit-attitude bears a consistency with what Spivak envisages as a productive

interrogation of marginality. I understand the notion of the limit-attitude to constantly

occupy a liminal and hence dangerous area, in permanent threat of erasure and

illegitimacy. It also shares the aim of reducing the binary formula of deconstructivist

moves from revalorising or overvalorising the now excluded other side of the binary

opposition (as has occurred with the recent wave of conservative men’s studies and

white rights backlashes).31

The critical positions from which one proceeds as a theorist are implicated not

only in the topic and focal point of one’s interrogation, but are also found in the

assumption of the knowing subject, who is the arbiter and rationale of discourse (that is,

the notion of the subject who knows and is able to know, who grounds discourse with

his or her knowledge claims but who is also formed by the parameters of what

constitutes knowledge). It is significant that theorists such as Wiegman, Braidotti, and

Donna Haraway extend this focus to the need to theorise the always threatening and

impermanent status of inquiry itself within these considerations of minority positions.32

Haraway, for example, offers a somewhat utopian version of a potential feminist

intervention into discourse, with the transformation of processes of knowing into

‘partial knowledges and situated subjects,’ linked to her project of rendering scientific

knowledge accountable and specifically located.33

In her illuminating book American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender,

Wiegman offers another perspective on feminisms of difference when she places the

knowing subject of discourse under particular pressure by invoking the critical notion of

exploring the limits of theory and subjectivity as she explores the complexity of

contemporary configurations of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and gender.34 Indeed,

Wiegman views her book as ‘marked by limits: not only the history, politics, and

disciplinary limits of race and gender as conceptual categories, but more specifically,

the limits of its own theoretical claims to know.’35 In describing her text in this way,

Wiegman brings poststructuralist and deconstructive considerations of discourse, power

relations, and positionality – which she neatly summarises as ‘knowledge, truth, and

politics’ – to bear upon considerations of race and gender. Her gesture here is aimed at

acknowledging the implication of methodology and viewpoint in one’s investigation.36

For Wiegman, this acts as a constant reminder of the necessary implication of feminist

22

subjectivity in imperfect tools and dynamics of interrogations and unveiling. This

self-conscious, reflexive and critical feminism focuses on developing a deep awareness

of one’s stance as embodied, historically informed, and structured by limitations.37 This

self-reflexivity is a different kind of tracing of the marginal, a culpable and implicated

demarcation of the margins that produce one as a subject and which functions as the

willing admission of one’s limits, contra the transcendental knowing subject who is able

to separate from that which is studied, and who is considered to be neutral and

objective.

The articulation of limitations can take several forms and be addressed in

various ways. For example, in an interview in which she is asked to consider how

frequently she is defined as marginal and through marginality, as the embodiment of the

subaltern position to Western first world theorists, all the while speaking ‘for’ women,

particularly for third world women, Spivak states

[i]n a certain sense, I think there is nothing that is central. The centre is always constituted in terms of its own marginality. However, having said that, in terms of the hegemonic historical narrative, certain peoples have always been asked to cathect the margins so others can be defined as central. Negotiating between these two structures, sometimes I have to see myself as the marginal in the eyes of others. In that kind of situation, the only strategic thing to do is to absolutely present oneself as the centre. And this is theoretically incorrect … [but] why not take the centre when I’m being asked to be marginal?38

Spivak destabilises the notion of the centre (or, in the terms of the argument I’m

presenting here, the universal and the normative) in a productive way. She recognises

its necessarily complicated relation to its margins in two ways: that the centre is a

generative illusion around which the more coherent forms of the margins are created,

and that to be universal is actually to comprise a tiny minority.

The subjects that I discuss in my later chapters are rarely ‘marginal’ in any

accepted or non-sceptical sense, except in the sense that the sheer number of those who

qualify for the cultural and social ‘elite’ is statistically minute (though this is not

coincidental). Wiegman considers the use of the terms ‘minority’ and ‘majority’ in

relation to identity politics to be

nothing if not ironic; the very ‘majority’ contained within the category (presumably white, heterosexual, wealthy men) is, clearly, overwhelmingly, a

23

global minority, and the minority against which they wield their power is itself the global majority. This irony is also an incongruity, however, since the oppositional framework for articulating power depends on a homogenization of identities into singular figurations, the ‘straight-white-monied man’ becoming the composite, fixed figure for defining social hierarchies.39

Yet for all its ossification this same figure proves to be quite difficult to analyse,

even when one accepts that it is often a false homogenisation of characteristics. Part of

the ironic potency of this central-but-marginal figure is that its power derives from

being representationally elusive, in that it is hard to pin down the exact nature of this

privileged minority, but it also stems from the way that any attempt to define or

investigate this figure potentially requires the reciprocal solidification of its examiners

in opposition to this marshy, vague figure.

The reciprocity between the margins and the centre, and their possible coexistence

within the same subject, is taken up in a different context by Wiegman. Wiegman’s

awareness of the limits of theorisation and its potential dangers for feminist theory

demonstrates the subject’s implication in that which one simultaneously describes and

investigates. In other words, to assume that there is a neutral or transcendent space

from which to organise and assess discourse, and in particular one’s participation in and

formation by discourse, is to ignore the specific processes that have enabled

participation in discourse and shaped the investment in a belief in neutrality, objectivity,

and transparency.40 Yet as I will discuss in the next section, this is a position of value

and great potential for analysts.

Responsibility and marginality:

In this section I will focus on the significance of the occupation and strategic

employment of the trope of marginality. If, as Spivak believes, the notion of

marginality is important for theorists as ‘one’s practice is very dependent upon one’s

positionality, one’s situation,’ then the process of articulating the particularity of a

subject position requires an understanding of the necessity of recognising and constantly

investigating one’s own position.41 This belief is especially important to my overall

argument as it counters the myth of universality and neutrality that subtends the norms

that I investigate in my thesis. The notion of articulating one’s position also focuses on

the materiality and specificity of the embodied and discursively located subject in a way

that recognises the multiple forms of subjectification that have conditioned their

24

constitution. Indeed, Spivak cautions theorists to be wary of those who claim alterity

without locating themselves as positioned within discourse as the one who names and

not the one(s) who are named, and who aim to share the alterity of their subjects of

discussion without also either illustrating or seeking to ‘undo’ their privilege.42

Instead, it may be argued that the trope of the margins may function as an implicit

reminder of the necessity of self-awareness regarding the costs of occupying a position.

The margins contain within them an implicit rebuke and consistent reminder of the

perils and benefits of examining marginality. These costs also extend to one’s

relationship to others, particularly those who form the (abject) exterior of subjectivation.

As noted earlier, Spivak regards the ‘necessarily and actively marginalized margins’ as

‘curious guardians’ whose presence conditions the possibilities of discourse.43 In an

interview with Ellen Rooney, Spivak articulates the ethics of responsibility somewhat

differently. Responding to the question of how to teach students to think critically

about difference and accountability when faced with plurality and the specification of

identities and positions, Spivak warns that ‘[o]nce we have established the story of the

straight, white, Judeo-Christian, heterosexual man of property as the ethical universal,

we must not replicate the same trajectory.’44 It is key, she argues, to establish an

awareness of setting borders and to proceed from there rather than insist on the mere

pluralisation of multiple identities and expect the individual to embody and represent

this diversity.

One of the first things to do is to think through the limits of one’s power.One must ruthlessly undermine the story of the ethical universal, the hero. But the alternative is not constantly to evoke multiplicity; the alternative is to know and to teach the student the awareness that this is a limited sample because of one’s own inclinations and capacities to learn enough to take a larger sample.45

In other words, she argues, ‘responsibility means proceeding from an awareness

of the limits of one’s power’ – an awareness and examination of privilege and what has

enabled oneself to exist in discourse that, Spivak warns, is neither straightforward nor

simple.46 This sense of responsibility is articulated in an inverse and very pointed way

by author and essayist James Baldwin. He noted, in a point that I will pursue in my

chapter on white ethnicity, that all hegemonic positions have a ‘price,’ an enabling and

simultaneously disenabling set of identifications, though the price of this denial is rarely

formulated as a negative enterprise. It is in this sense that the notion of the occupation

25

and articulation of a particular subject position necessarily indicates a sense of

belonging and a subjective stance. This particularity requires an ethic of responsibility

as an awareness of generative power relations, constitutive foreclosures, and processes

of othering.

Productive ambiguity:

In this section, I focus the notion of productive ambiguity, and give a thorough

background to Deutscher’s concepts before demonstrating why Deutscher’s theory is so

important to my thesis. In her book on contemporary debates and contentions within

feminism and philosophy, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history

of philosophy, Deutscher interrogates a range of topics and texts including two works

that have been extremely important to recent feminist and gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer,

and transgender theorisations of the subject: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of

the Closet (1990) and Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of

Identity (1992). These seminal texts have incited much debate and inspired

reconceptualisations of feminist theory in terms of the sex/gender distinction,

the concept of gender performativity, the homosexual/heterosexual binary, and the

possibilities of gendered identity. Deutscher highlights the way both Butler and

Sedgwick interrogate specific binary structures and question their discursive and

political efficacy and viability. Sedgwick’s primary focus is the

heterosexual/homosexual divide, which she explores in terms of the various questions,

tensions, and incoherencies around sexuality; while Butler questions the sex/gender

distinction within feminist theorisations, and, in a denaturalising gesture, foregrounds

the mimetic structure of heterosexuality. Deutscher contends that both these theorists

utilise avowedly deconstructive manoeuvres and tactics to investigate these moments of

instability, albeit in differing fashion and to different effect. Both Butler and Sedgwick,

argues Deutscher, appreciate the complexity of discourse that ensures that confusion,

instability, and incoherency are not used against the text, subject, or interpretation in

order to invalidate it or prove that it is ‘passé.’ Instead, complexity and instability are

valued by Butler and Sedgwick as important components of the text’s operations and

internal dynamics. In other words, both Butler and Sedgwick understand the

‘constitutive instability’ at stake as tied not only to its functioning in discourse, but

importantly, to the continuing operation and positioning of specific terms, ideas, and

subjects as hegemonic and dominant.47

26

The coherency and stability of the binary, Sedgwick argues in relation to the

homosexual/heterosexual divide, is not undone by this form of analysis. Instead, these

binarisms

are peculiarly densely charged with lasting potentials for powerful manipulation – through precisely the mechanisms of self-contradictory definition or, more succinctly, the double bind. Nor is a deconstructive analysis of such definitional knots, however necessary, at all sufficient to disable them. Quite the opposite … their irresolvable instability has been continually available.48

In a deconstructive understanding of binarisms and discourse, instability is not

seen as undermining the coherency and validity of the text or argument, but as an

important constitutive element in organising the discourse. Sedgwick thus argues that

‘particular insights generate, are lined with, and at the same time are themselves

structured by particular opacities’ does not undermine or invalidate the insights in

question.49

Deutscher marshals Sedgwick and Butler’s analyses into a compelling insight into

the working of hegemonic discourse and the operation of dominant strands of identity:

namely, that moments of opacity, uncertainty, and hesitation need not be necessarily

and consistently debilitating and destructive, but often work in subterranean and

covert ways to generate and sustain inequity and privilege. Deutscher’s analysis of the

core tenets of these texts offers a mode of negotiating some of the areas and topics in

forthcoming chapters. Irresolvable instability will continue to be a key idea in my thesis

as I focus on two main areas of productive ambiguity: whiteness and monstrosity. My

consideration of whiteness, monstrosity, and normativity maps spaces and identities that

are frequently considered to be hegemonic and dominant. Yet these moments, I will

demonstrate, are not free from insecurity and ambivalence. Indeed, their stressed and

ambiguous quality opens a place for their reconsideration in lieu of perceiving them as

static and totalised. Deutscher insists that

contradictions and tensions do not mitigate. They sustain phallocentric accounts of women and femininity … Feminist philosophy also needs to focus on contradictory textual tendencies, rather than looking between or beyond them to the ‘real meaning’ of a confused philosophical argument.50

27

Contradiction and tension, then, are part of the functioning of discourse and do

not exist separately from it as something to be solved or ignored. It is useful that

Deutscher, in discussing this idea of fixing, or moving beyond the boundaries of,

discursive functioning, she describes the impossibility of moving beyond the terms of

discourse, such as the idea of being able to jettison a core element such as gender once it

has been critically interrogated and denaturalised as it no longer ‘matters.’

Neither Butler nor Sedgwick has argued that gender does not matter, though both have wanted to invalidate the fictions of natural, original, discrete or stable gender categories. Both have insisted that one cannot get ‘outside’ what one deconstructs. To think that gender does not matter is to confuse deconstructibility with the fantasy of being able to get ‘outside’ that which is deconstructible.’51

Deutscher later suggests that even when gender is able to be deconstructed that

‘there is a world of difference between this and the optimism that gender categories,

because they are deconstructible, are discardable fictions.’52 Indeed, the mobility of

discourse, and the way that normative and hegemonic forces are reiterated and are able

to regroup in the face of change, belies this notion of such important factors of identity

formation being, in Deutscher’s memorable phrase, ‘discardable fictions.’ The ability

of the mainstream and the dominant to absorb and appropriate challenges and to

neutralise threats has been theorised extensively.53 Whiteness, in particular, gains much

of its currency from its shape shifting, protean nature. This dynamic of precarious

functioning is an important part of the hegemonic identity. Or, as Deutscher puts it,

the idea that there is coherence of definition is in crisis. To suppose that gender is in crisis because its coherence of definition is in crisis is to suppose that gender normativity’s good operation relies on its coherence of definition.54

This idea is particularly important to recognise in terms of the malleability and

slipperiness of a concept like monstrosity or whiteness so that their instability and

indeterminacy is seen as a crucial part of them rather than something that undermines

their desirability as topics for analysis. ‘Ambiguity can be constitutive,’ Deutscher

insists, as ‘incoherence of definition produces discursive “operations”’ rather than

impedes their operation.55 In this sense the internal contradictions and messiness of

discursive operations are not an impediment.

Indeed, Deutscher’s focus on the productivity of the fuzziness and contradiction

of theory and discourse displays a continuity with Spivak’s view of the ‘marshiness’ of

28

theory that I discussed earlier, where the margins provide the space where theory is

most challenged. It also indicates an important way of considering some of the

ambiguity that attends my primary examples and themes. The notion of productive

instability and incoherence resonates deeply with many of the terms and ideas I wish to

interrogate. Whiteness and monstrosity, and my later examples of serial murderers and

high school killers, have something in common: they all exhibit multiple, differing, and

contested definitions. Monstrosity, indeed, is the figure of constitutive ambiguity par

excellence. This valuable and challenging notion of a constitutive ambiguity implies

both a generative inconstancy of dialectical and mutually implicated terms, and the

necessarily implicated and impure set of resources and theoretical space from which we

operate. If discursive functions, as Deutscher says, are ‘enabled, not disrupted, by the

incoherence and ambiguity of their definitions,’ then it is important to recognise that the

generative nature of this inconstancy also brings with it possibilities for the

rearticulation of these terms and identities.56

Butler, normativity, and socially abject subjects:

I now turn to a consideration of subjectivation and alterity, and take a close look at

some key ideas of Butlers that are particularly relevant to my thesis. Butler’s analysis

of the socially abject subject, processes of normalisation, and the possibilities for the

reinscription of the negatively interpellated subject provide further means of

conceptualising the generative instability sustaining the coherent subject. Butler’s

poststructuralist account of the subject is important for several reasons. Firstly, the

process of subjectivation is negotiated with an acknowledgment of the importance of

normativity. Secondly, identities are deemed to be created through multiple and

sometimes competing modes of subjectivation that reflect a wide variety of influences

and determinants, some of which are created as necessarily ‘outside’ acceptable

humanity. In discussing Butler’s formulation of social abjection I draw primarily from

her book Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’, in which she considers

negative and marginalised alterity.57 Particular subjects, Butler argues in this text, are

constituted precisely through their abjection and marginalisation, through being named

and continuing to be addressed and positioned as external, alien, and vile. Some bodies

are constituted as unthinkable and uninhabitable, and certain subjects are positioned as

outside the realm of possibility and are formed by this continual and repetitive exclusion

29

and delimitation. These prohibitions and exclusions ‘not only produce the domain of

intelligible bodies, but produce as well a domain of unthinkable, abject, unlivable

bodies.’58 In terms that we will see in the next chapter and that resonate deeply with

teratological discourse, Butler isolates the paradoxical impossibility and illegitimacy

that sustains and conditions these subject positions. Her points, however, are

constructed in reference to everyday, non-fantastic examples, such as the production of

‘queer’ subjects as intolerable and in some discursive instances, unnatural and

unthinkable.

Butler’s discussion foregrounds the broad cultural necessity of these sites of

isolation and illegitimacy, and acknowledges that the process of othering also constructs

the inviolability and sanctity of the proper subject. The realm of unthinkable and

uninhabitable subjectivity is the ‘excluded and illegible domain that haunts’ the

coherent and sanctioned subject as ‘the spectre of its own impossibility, the very limit to

intelligibility, its constitutive outside.’59 In this sense, the terms by which subjectivity is

negotiated are crucial to the functioning of discourse and to the constitution of the

domain of the subject. In positing a range of subjects that are equally possible but are

structured hierarchically and negatively (that is, defined in terms of their distance from

an improbable ideal), Butler recognises the normative injunction in what she labels

(after Althusser) the interpellating ‘call,’ that it is not a neutral impulse but one that

already requires this domain of impossible and undesirable subjects. Her account of

interpellation requires that she mobilise the subject as structured by an external ‘call.’

However, Butler also institutes a Foucauldian understanding of the matrix of power

relations in which this ‘call’ is understood to work in normative ways, and across a

number of institutions and forms in a varied, ongoing, multivalenced way. In a

complicated but highly influential point, Butler argues that the grammar of agency and

power have worked to singularise and individualise the subject’s accession to

subjecthood; instead of the subject performing gender, strictly speaking, gender

performs the subject.

Butler amplifies her stance through locating the processes by which certain

subjects are brought into discursive existence through their interpellation as impossible

and intolerable:

30

This exclusionary matrix by which subjects are formed thus requires the simultaneous production of a domain of abject beings, those who are not yet ‘subjects,’ but who form the constitutive outside to the domain of the subject. The abject designates here precisely those ‘unlivable’ and ‘uninhabitable’ zones of social life which are nevertheless densely populated by those who do not enjoy the status of the subject, but whose living under the sign of the ‘unlivable’ is required to circumscribe the domain of the subject. This zone of uninhabitability will constitute the defining limit of the subject’s domain …the subject is constituted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one which produces a constitutive outside to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, ‘inside’ the subject as its own founding repudiation.60

This necessary ‘zone of uninhabitability’ that constitutes and bounds the

normative and unremarkable subject offers a productive mode of considering the

ramifications of damaging and violating interpellations, particularly those that seep into

everyday life and have a widespread impact on a range of subjects.61 For example, the

monster, as an extreme instance of the processes and tensions concerning viable

subjectivity, underscores the vitality and complex functioning of these processes by

embodying them in a very literal sense. The range of former ‘monsters’ and ‘freaks,’

such as conjoined twins or giants, that have been recuperated back into demonstrable

humanity by shifts in scientific appraisal exhibit some of the flexibility and danger of

the margins of proper humanity.

Butler notes that all subjects are positioned at the intersecting nexus of various

strands of identity, and are constituted as much by what is excluded and disavowed as

by what they ‘are.’ For Butler, the process of identification hinges upon highly

ambiguous and exclusionary practices and modes. ‘[I]dentification is always an

ambivalent process,’ she believes,

because there is a cost in every identification, the loss of some other set of identifications, the forcible approximation of a norm one never chooses, a norm that chooses us, but which we occupy, reverse, resignify to the extent that the norm fails to determine us completely.62

This includes both those bodies located as culturally appropriate and intelligible,

and those created as the norm’s ‘necessary exterior.’ If identification is charged with

ambivalence, as Butler believes, it is not only due to the ‘cost’ of the multiple potential

identifications that are denied. It is also due to the impermanence and instability of the

call to repeat these norms, the space opened up by the very compulsion to repeat, the

moment and arena in which ‘the norm fails to determine us completely.’ This insertion

31

of a space for incoherence and disobedience – of unfaithful mimesis and disloyalty to

the normative system that generates othering names and ideals – enables an important

gap for critique, and for reworking these norms and ideals.63 I will use Butler’s insights

in my later chapters to elucidate the ways in which a conglomeration of normative

positions – whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity – are able to be interrogated and

are open to resignification.

Violation and Injury:

Butler offers an extremely useful mode of conceptualising the constitution of a subject

in discourse and through discursive procedures that are negative and produce the subject

as marginal, Other, and abject. As noted, she locates the mobilisation of the subject in

relation to an original interpellating call. Butler, however, focuses on what she terms a

process of ‘injurious interpellation’ through which the subject is brought into discursive

being through negative means. The intimate impact of this process is highlighted in

what Butler puts simply as the manner in which ‘[o]ne does not stand at an instrumental

distance from the terms by which one experiences violation.’64

In this, she draws upon Spivak, who has identified the ‘enabling violation’ of identity as

a crucial moment for the theorisation of the subject – particularly in terms of marginal

identities that may seek to deploy this violation against its originary aim. Crucially,

Butler notes that

this repetition is not performed by a subject; this repetition is what enables a subject and constitutes the temporal condition for the subject. This iterability implies that ‘performance’ is not a singular ‘act’ or event, but a ritualized production, a ritual reiterated under and through constraint, under and through the force of prohibition and taboo, with the threat of ostracism and even death controlling and compelling the shape of the production, but not, I will insist, determining it fully in advance.65

The subject is formed by the strictures and the negativity of this interpellating

‘call,’ and yet this violating label, name, or set of identifications also contains the

possibility of articulation and agency for the subject. Butler seeks in particular to locate

the possibilities and ramifications for the socially abject subject. She asks, in a critical

gesture:

If one comes into discursive life through being called or hailed in injurious terms, how might one occupy the interpellation by which one is already

32

occupied to direct the possibilities of resignification against the aims of violation?66

This question, useful on many levels, is particularly important to a consideration

of marginality and monstrosity as it articulates both the impact of being constituted

through or in a negative mode as well as offers the possibility of reworking these terms.

In a move that implicitly foregrounds the constitutive instability discussed by

Deutscher, Butler argues that:

There is no subject prior to its constructions, and neither is the subject determined by those constructions; it is always the nexus, the non-space of cultural collision, in which the demand to resignify or repeat the very terms which constitute the ‘we’ cannot be summarily refused, but neither can they be followed in strict obedience. It is the space of this ambivalence that opens up the possibility of a reworking of the very terms by which subjectivation proceeds – and fails to proceed.67

Here Butler argues for not only the possibility, but the necessity, of these violating

terms being deployed against their originary aims, or what she terms the ‘occasion to

work the mobilizing power of injury, of an interpellation one never chose.’68 This

failure is of vital importance to the thesis as it opens up the space for the critical

interrogation of processes of naming and resignification. A founding component of

their operation is that structured as they are by discourse, they repeat the normative

injunction. Resistance and destabilisation are located in not only the recognition of this

compulsion to re-enact this interpellative call, but in the sphere of ambivalence in the

moment prior to repeating the normative injunction, and then in the inevitably and

constitutively unfaithful mimesis of that ideal.

It is this constitutive failure of the performative, this slippage between discursive command and its appropriated effect, which provides the linguistic occasion and index for a consequential disobedience.69

In performing this ‘disobedient’ act, the subject may occupy the term and rework

it. This is useful in that Butler’s formulation accords with the necessarily embodied and

implicated version of feminist inquiry (found within, for example, the works of

Gloria Anzaldúa, Mari J. Matsuda, and Patricia J. Williams) that formulates the multiple

interpellated subject as inevitably occupying a space of accountability.70 It also locates

these interpellating terms as part of what then enables the resistance and reworking for

the subject, as this is congruent with what many feminists of colour, and many third

33

world, lesbian, and differently abled feminists have noted: to insist on one’s irreducible

specificity, and to take account of what it is that makes one different, is to gain a viable

position as a starting point. This is particularly vital in terms of the ‘violating

interpellation’: we are brought into discourse in terms of positions that enable but also

foreclose identifications, privileges, and access, though some are clearly more damaging

than others.

Butler’s examples of the socially abject, that is, the constitutively ‘unintelligible’

and ‘unthinkable’ beings of discourse, are not fantastic creatures, aliens, or recognisably

fictional monsters. Instead, this is where she considers the socially inscribed ethical

elements of, for example, the politicisation of ‘queer’ as a mobilising discursive term

and tool as a ‘specific reworking of abjection into political agency.’ This is in order to

resignif[y] the abjection of homosexuality into defiance and legitimacy. I argue that this does not have to be a ‘reverse-discourse’ in which the defiant affirmation of queer dialectically reinstalls the version it seeks to overcome. Rather, this is the politicization of abjection in an effort to rewrite the history of the term, and to force it into a demanding resignification.71

Those who would inhabit the term ‘queer’ are not ‘unthinkable’ in the sense of an

animal’s accession to humanity or ‘unnatural’ in the sense of a vampire or werewolf;

however, Butler’s useful focus is in the way that these men and women are nonetheless

imaged and proscribed in ways that resonate with more outrageous and extreme

examples. Her continuum of acceptable and tolerable humanity marks this important

point: that even when legally and putatively human these marginalising forces still

operate to render them perverse and deviant on a different level of privilege and

intelligibility. In terms of my broader focus on monstrosity, Butler’s ‘politicization of

abjection’ helps, in subsequent chapters, to define both the particular, charged usage of

the term ‘monster’ and the possibility for exploring its presence along a continuum with

normativity.

Accountability and privilege:

In this section I will turn to a brief consideration of the notion of accountability as a

way of negotiating some of the issues already discussed in this chapter, specifically in

terms of what happens when questions of marginality, hegemony, privilege, violence,

and universality cohere. The topics that I address in subsequent chapters are frequently

34

defined in terms of their seeming invisibility or evanescence, their ability to be seen as

normal, neutral, or as a template. One strategy of counteracting this is, I argue, to

render specific the outlines and qualities of these identities and notions. This is not to

suggest that this is a simple or easy project, a neat reversal of terms, but rather that it is

an ongoing process of exploration. It is particularly important, yet difficult, to analyse

the multiple and particular forms of privilege that attend all subject positions, names,

and locations, and furthermore investigate them in terms of their intermingled and

mutually fortifying status.

Sherene H. Razack argues that a nuanced and more flexible approach to

complexly structured subjectivity is possible only through the examination of the

multiple and interconnected forms of marginalisation, and not through singular (and

falsely isolated) strands of identity. In her investigation of ‘the idea of interlocking

systems of domination,’ she observes how she ‘came to see that each system of

oppression relied on the Other to give it meaning, and that this interlocking effect could

only be traced in historically specific ways.’72 This is not to imply that such an

approach is simple or even entirely possible, as it is quite difficult to attempt to consider

the ramifications of various types of conditioning for even one element of identity. Any

examination of these strands of identity entails a process that is already problematised

by the notion that they are named and viewed as singular and separable, and even when

they are discussed as mutually constitutive or doubled, it is through the employment of

restrictive terminology. However, theory is imperfect and starts from shaky ground,

and we should not be discouraged by the difficulties of such a program. Furthermore,

Razack does not insist that all nuances and possibilities of a self-reflexive perspective

be examined per se, but suggests that any one form of privilege and coercion is

connected to all other forms, in both implicit and explicit ways. Razack cautions that

[i]n focusing on our subordination, and not on our privilege, and in failing to see the connections between them, we perform … ‘the race to innocence’, a belief that we are uninvolved in subordinating others. More to the point, we fail to realize that we cannot undo our own marginality without simultaneously undoing all the systems of oppression.73

In addition, Razack’s notion of accountability, of acknowledging the ramifications

of inhabiting a particular subject position, is beneficial to consider when analysing

privilege and marginality. Razack describes accountability as

35

a process that begins with a recognition that we are each implicated in systems of oppression that profoundly structure our understanding of one another.That is, we come to know and perform ourselves in ways that reproduce social hierarchies.74

Being accountable, then, means that the subject is always located as a particular

entity, is known as located, and is made aware of the ramifications of their positioning

and privilege. In addition, this view of accountability understands the multiple ways in

which the process of subjectivation proceeds, and acknowledges that the subject is

always, as Butler noted, formed in the nexus of these various calls and injunctions.

Razack believes that individuals are formed at the intersection of multiple and

contradictory social determinants, and that their positioning always reveals and relies

upon this socially embedded constitution. This is, she stresses, a key and indisputable

point of the process of subjectivation, of becoming a viable and recognised member of

culture. Accountability is not at all an easy process, or even necessarily able to be

performed or not always consistently – it implies a hypervigilance that would require a

constant and ongoing commitment to analysis.75 In addition, subjects are formed as

much by absence and displacement as by any ‘present’ knowledge that we are able to

access, and we cannot, prior to investigation, assume that we will (or can) access these

generative gaps.76

Concomitantly, Razack argues that failing to recognise the substantial and

systemically instituted differences between individuals denies the importance of

constitutive access to resources, opportunities, and privilege in subject creation. In this

respect, Razack says that her book’s title, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender,

Race, and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms, is intended

to challenge the widely held belief that relations between dominant and subordinate groups can be unmarked by histories of oppression … Without history and social context, each encounter between unequal groups becomes a fresh one, where the participants start from zero.77

She explains that some Indigenous people do not perceive certain Western and

North American customs in the same way as Westerners or North Americans, and that

apparently ‘neutral’ acts and behavioural patterns (such as constant and determined eye

contact) are considered offensive and rude. The ramifications of such cultural

differences are enormous when this quality of avoidance of eye contact is placed within

a North American context where direct eye contact is generally perceived to connote

36

honesty, sincerity, and a socially integrated personality. Razack’s example

demonstrates some of the ways in which attitudes and ideas that remain uninterrogated

serve to piece together broader myths and stereotypes, as well as illuminate some of the

power relations undergirding hegemonic alliances and perceptions. It is through these

smaller, incremental points of contact between various groups that conditions of

dominance are sustained.

The assumption of a ground zero of encounters between different groups requires

the continuing effacement of the various strategies, systems, and institutions that serve

to ingrain patterns of neutralisation. This effacement ignores the historical contexts for

these encounters that condition and enable oppression in ways that go beyond

direct manipulation or overt oppression. Thus Razack argues that:

[w]ithout an understanding of how responses to subordinate groups are socially organized to sustain existing power arrangements, we cannot hope to either communicate across social hierarchies or to work to eliminate them.78

In arguing against the opacity of the subject, Razack offers an important tool for

tackling the issues surrounding seemingly hegemonic and monolithic terms such as

‘whiteness.’ By insisting on both the specificity of the subject in a cultural context and

the ability of others (the marginalised as well as the privileged) to recognise and name

this specificity, she has cleared a space in which several strategies of discussion and

deployment might occur. She calls upon the privileged and the recipients of cultural

benefits to be the ones to name and learn about themselves, to be the ones who must

learn from others and learn to see themselves in the context of other values and beliefs.

Correspondingly, Razack views the notions of neutrality and universality with

suspicion, and argues against liberal humanism’s tendency to insist that all people are

the same. To circle back to some of the issues identified at the start of this chapter,

the insistence on responsibility and articulation of a particular subject position is

connected with the active marshalling of marginalisation, and the deployment of

necessarily implicated and impure resources and enabling conditions, all contra the

notion of the universal subject. Spivak adds an important consideration to this when she

argues that the ‘idea of neutral dialogue is an idea which denies history, denies

structure, denies the positioning of subjects.79 Neutrality, in other words, requires the

minimisation of the validity and importance of variances in subject positions and access

37

to places of articulation. While universal ideals and goals have a definite appeal and

value, they also homogenise the very frameworks that have enabled and privileged

some modes of thought, speakers, and even ideas about what counts as dialogue.

To conclude this chapter, I want to return to a consideration of marginality, and

the potency of the margins. That the boundaries of identity and subjectivity are so

rigorously policed is a testament to their porousness and instability. This is one reason

why feminist and philosophical work has often cohered at these pressure points of the

margins and the limits, as this is where they are most taxed and overt – and where

norms are most clearly demarcated and reinforced. Not surprisingly, the margins are

considered to be dangerous, threatening in their indeterminacy and stickiness. Grosz

was careful to note, in her discussion of the abject, bodily boundaries, and pollution,

that ‘[t]hat which is marginal is always located as a site of danger and vulnerability.’80

For many of those who are named and known as marginal, the borders may remain

tenuous, inchoate and unsatisfying. The danger inherent in the margins and in being

marginal is an important point, as it locates some of the negativity that accompanies

being liminal, displaced, or in constant flux. While these points have some benefits, as

discussed, the margins are also the most policed and guarded moments. Yet the margins

are also a site of rearticulation and recognition, of a complicated form of valorisation

and necessary identification. They are productive, and they are a place of alteration and

promise. It is this tension that I will explore through examining the tropes of whiteness

and monstrosity, and their conjunction and manifestation in the forms of two archetypal

figures of contemporary monstrosity: the serial killer and the high school killer.

38

CHAPTER 2

The Monster

The discursive site assigned to the monster is … a zone of unthought, a space where the ideological struggles around identity never cease.81

Contemporary North America, as critical theorist Jeffrey Jerome Cohen noted, exhibits

a ‘cultural fascination with monsters.’82 This ‘fascination’ is evident in the multitude of

images and stories dealing with fantastic and often threatening creatures that permeate

popular culture. The sheer variety of monsters across diverse forms of media offers an

intriguing testament to the ongoing popularity of these frightening, abnormal figures.

Monsters, in addition, are not only prevalent within culture but are often the focal point

of popular narratives, providing much of the emotional and psychological resonance

contained within the stories. In cinema, for example, the monster frequently provides

the title of the film, and ensures the continuing link between sequels (for example, Jaws,

Godzilla, and Hannibal Lecter).83

Many recent and successful films feature monsters, including dinosaurs

(the Jurassic Park series), a somewhat friendly green ogre (Shrek [2001]), and aliens

(the Alien series). Monsters Inc. (2001), an animated feature aimed at children and

adults alike, depicted ‘cute’ and likeable monsters as its protagonists. Godzilla, veteran

monster and champion of Japanese cinema, has recently been the subject of an art

exhibition that details his decades-long career and cultural impact. The cinematic

adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was both critically acclaimed and a

box-office smash. Other examples of popular monstrosity include J.K. Rowling’s

extraordinarily successful series of books about Harry Potter, a young boy who

discovers that he is a wizard and whose world is populated by giants, hippogriffs,

werewolves, and chatty ghosts. Some of the most popular television shows of the last

decade, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Medium, Supernatural, and

The X-Files, have a supernatural or paranormal focus, and deal with creatures such as

39

vampires, aliens, demons, and the undead on a regular basis. Even television programs

aimed at children, such as the popular Japanese cartoon Pokémon (short for ‘pocket

monsters’) feature inhuman (if cuddly) creatures as their protagonists. Other monstrous

figures are frequently found in popular computer games, music videos, on the Internet,

and in graphic novels.84 This brief list of examples demonstrates the vibrancy and

prevalence of monstrosity at the new millennium. Monsters, it seems, are here to stay.

The contemporary fascination with monsters continues a long tradition of

representation and interrogation of fantasy and alterity that is found in many cultures,

and is not unique to either contemporary society or to North American culture.

The persistence and ubiquity of monstrous creatures in popular entertainment continues

a long tradition of fascination with the aberrant and the unknown that has been recorded

across many historical eras and locales. Monsters have filled the sky and the sea, have

been found below the earth or in clouds, and have haunted forests, caves, castles, and

cemeteries. Monsters have been present in folk tales, on display as fairground

attractions, and found in freak shows and medical theatres from antiquity onwards.

Incredible legends, improbable events, and fantastic creatures form an important part of

the mythology of many different groups of people across time and locales, particularly

in terms of how they choose to interpret phenomena and to represent it. Some stories

and figures are endorsed and accepted, while others are considered to be outright

heresy, lunacy, or nonsense, if not otherwise politely shuffled off into the realm of

folktales and child’s play.

The enduring historical interest in monsters is matched by equally resilient efforts

to categorise, explain, and make sense of these wild and improbable entities. In asking

what monsters are, how they come to be, and why they are here, historians, theologians,

philosophers, and more recently a slew of critical theorists, have engaged in debates

focused on divinity, nature, and technology. In doing so, monsters – as attested to in the

opening quote from Michael Uebel – provide a critical discursive space for theorising a

range of assumptions and beliefs concerning cultural values, questions of ‘normality,’

difference, and embodiment. The monster, as a sign of extreme abnormality and

danger, reflects definitions and standards of humanity.

40

A recent surge in theoretical and critical interest in monstrosity has brought with it

new approaches to the form and understanding of monstrosity in contemporary life.

Far from being understood as merely marginal or novel, recent commentators now

assert that the monster, in and of itself, is a source of vital information about the state of

the culture that conditions and surrounds it. They argue that because the monster traces

the negative boundaries of what is acceptable and right, what is proper and coherent, it

also illustrates what is standard and appropriate. In other words, the monster is a notion

that has particular resonance for humanity in general. Monsters embody and enact

what are often otherwise seen as invisible, normal, and neutral elements of culture.

They are thus indicators of cultural norms, beliefs, and structural tenets. Monsters are,

in Ismene Lada-Richards’ phrase, ‘good to think with.’85 There is something about the

monster that provokes commentary and questioning, that disgusts and moves us, that

makes us see it as somehow significant – a portent, a sign, or a warning of some kind.

The monster, in many different societies and across time, is never seen as a neutral

marker, but is always presumed to contain meaning. Its function as embodied

difference, as all that is unholy, incomplete, inappropriate, and unwelcome means that

the monster is taken as a special form of anomaly and disruption.

Monstrosity thus offers us a way of investigating anomaly and alterity in a

concentrated, direct fashion. Yet at the same time it demands attention to the dominant

norms and values to which anomaly and alterity are inextricably tied. This chapter sets

out to examine what happens when the monster is used as a tool to investigate some of

the major forms of identity creation, and to explore some of the repositories of norms

and values in contemporary life. The various faces of the contemporary monster can be

understood to provide insight into the monolithic forms of whiteness, heterosexuality,

and masculinity that constitute ‘normality’ and normativity. Indeed, some important

configurations of the monster are articulated through the tropes of banality and a

frightening, threatening ordinariness.

This chapter undertakes to discuss and historicise the function of the monster in

order to understand how certain marginalised identities are articulated through

monstrous tropes. The monster, we will see, is not a neutral creature or an ahistorical

creation but, rather, precisely the opposite: a culturally embedded, socially constituted

figure, riven with contemporary meanings and attitudes. I will show that the

41

characteristics and attributes of monstrosity are deeply marked by gender, race,

sexuality, class, and ethnicity. Critical interrogations of the qualities and characteristics

of monstrosity locate continuities between monsters and existing forms of marginalised

identities, such as femininity, non-white racial designations, indigenous populations of

colonised lands, and the physically anomalous. In turn, these categories are also defined

in part by their alignment with the monstrous, and by the changing standards of

humanity in relation to which the monster is defined. The purpose of undertaking such

analysis, for the questions this thesis in its entirety seeks to interrogate, is to trace the

connections between race and monstrosity before turning to a specification of whiteness

as a particular racial category in my next chapter.

I draw on the work of a variety of historians and cultural theorists who sought to

explore the ramifications of historically specific monstrosity. In particular, I use and

explore the work of Rosi Braidotti, Judith Halberstam, Michael Uebel, and Cohen, who

offer insights into the cultural and social meaning and positioning of the monster – how

the name and shape of the monster influences its reception, how it is understood, and

how it is traced by broader conceptions of identity, such as gender and religious

affiliation. Their work offers a variety of ways of thinking about the monster in terms

of its presence in culture, its multiple (and sometimes contradictory) meanings, and the

way that it is signified through and against humanity. Their focus on the monster as a

dynamic form of alterity, as the embodiment of difference, exemplifies a productive

approach to questions of marginalisation and normality that resonate with the broader

issues of my thesis. Other theorists, as I will discuss in the next chapter, have explored

some links between monstrosity and race as a way of historically contextualising some

of the more extreme depictions of certain races and some particularly blatant examples

of racially inflected monsters, a process of racialisation rarely occurs in terms of white

ethnicity. This will provide a backdrop to the examination of contemporary monstrosity

in terms of hegemonic understandings of whiteness and masculinity that will be

undertaken in subsequent chapters. In positioning whiteness at the centre of monstrous

discourse as an equivalent and defining racial trait I aim to examine its presence as a

specific, unique facet that extends the boundary of teratological studies by virtue of its

normativity and privileged status.

42

The Monster:

Monstrosity has a long and somewhat complicated history that cannot be fully

represented here. The abbreviated perspective on different historical formulations I

offer here and contemporary analyses of them that I discuss aims to demonstrate the

persistence and the ambiguity of the term monster. Each country or region, at various

times, has had some experience of the supernatural or of unexplained events, and tales

of monsters contribute greatly to the richness of their ongoing mythologies. A small

sample of the types and take of monsters from across the world and across time

includes: Quetzalcoatl, the winged serpent, guardian of the Aztec people for centuries;

the Minotaur, the part-bull, part-man creature of Greek mythology; Mokele-Mbembe, a

dinosaur-like creature from Central Africa; the Scottish legend of selkies, or beautiful

women who turn into seals; the Jewish tale of the Golem, inanimate clay brought to life

typically to exact revenge; the Yeti in the Himalayas, and the djinn or genie from Asia

and the Middle East. Detailed in verbal histories and song, represented in media from

sculpture to painting, found in rituals and oaths or blessings, many of the early

monster-figures are connected to stories of creation and to the heritage of the group who

retell its stories. We see this from the Dreamtime in Australia, filled with animals and

magical creatures, to the Babylonian Enuma Elish myth of the slaying of the

two-headed dragon Tiamet.

Even though these myths are ostensibly fanciful accounts of the origin of the

world and the place of humans in the ‘history’ that has ensued from it, the monster has

functioned (and continues to function) as a societal barometer. The monster is rarely

received as a neutral entity, but is overwhelmingly interpreted as a momentous event.

The difference bound up in the form and behaviour of the monster is always treated as

significant, as the monster acts as a harbinger of change or threat. Or, as

Donna Haraway put it in the simplest terms: ‘Monsters signify.’86 The monster is

typically assumed to have some kind of edifying purpose, as its function to teach, warn,

and demonstrate.

This function of the monster is present in the two main definitions of the Latin

terms from which monster is assumed to be derived. The first, monere or moneo,

implies a warning and an admonition.87 The term encapsulates the potential of the

43

monstrous to be both a sign of divine will and the embodiment of a fall from grace or

the flouting of doctrine and order. In this sense it is paradoxical. Regarding the former,

monsters were originally incorporated into schemas of instruction, educating the public

on matters of God’s will and power. The monster thus functioned as a symbol of divine

omnipotence by displaying how things are not meant to be.88 It is only later that figure

came to be seen as the embodiment of a flaw in nature or a sign of divine fallibility.

In the second, and linked, meaning, monster is traced back to the terms monstrum

or monstrare, which are frequently translated as to reveal, or to display. This second

meaning is related to the English term ‘to demonstrate,’ and points to the illustrative

function of the monster.89 The monster is called upon to literally embody and make

visible cultural tensions and fears, which vary as much as monsters do. This second

meaning is less paradoxical and contradictory than the first. It underscores the way that

all monsters, in their various guises and across eras, are typically assumed to have some

educational or symbolic purpose; their offences and threat are assumed to have

meaning and to point to broader cultural and social matters.

The representational slipperiness between the two meanings discussed above is a

core function and distinguishing mark of the monster. Indeed, the mobility of the term

monster is in part encapsulated by the multiple meanings of the term itself. The ancient

Greek term for monster, teras or teratos, Braidotti notes, ‘refers both to a prodigy and to

a demon. It is something that evokes horror and fascination, aberration and adoration.

It is simultaneously holy and hellish, sacred and profane.’ She concludes by stating that

this ‘simultaneity of opposite effects is the trademark of the monstrous body.’90

Correspondingly, this ambiguity and simultaneity extends to the discourse of knowledge

built up around the figure of the monster.

The function and meaning of the monster has been debated on a variety of fronts,

particularly in terms of its philosophical, theological, legal, scientific, and medical

ramifications. Teratology, defined broadly as the study or the science of monsters, is a

complicated field that covers a wide range of topics and interests. Some of the

contradictions and intricacies of monstrosity are captured in these multiple meanings of

teratology. For example, though most sources describe teratology as the ‘science’ of

monsters, others include classic mythology and fantastic narratives under a more

44

general notion of the ‘study’ of monstrosity. This broader definition encapsulates both

folklore and official knowledge, and exemplifies the indeterminate, multiple, and

contradictory status of the monster, in particular its precarious position in relation to

both validated (scientific) and disparaged (oral history) forms of knowledge.91 As

Braidotti summarises, ‘the simultaneity of potentially contradictory discourses about

monsters is significant; it is also quite fitting because to be significant and to signify

potentially contradictory meanings is precisely what the monster is supposed to do.’92

Conflicting reports and understandings of the monster are an accepted component of

teratology, especially given the manner in which the same monstrous figure may be

viewed in and comprehended in a variety of ways, even within the same time period.

One of the first questions that arose in teratology, and which continues to be

present in more contemporary understandings of monstrosity, concerns classification

and naming. What counts as a monster, and how are monsters defined? Can we have a

coherent definition of monstrosity that encompasses all the various (and often veering

close to contradictory) creatures and individuals? The sheer quantity of entities and

states covered by the term have been so great as to prompt some philosophers and

anthropologists to try to categorise them exhaustively according to their various

qualities or attributes; a job that, as René Girard dryly notes, goes against everything

that the monster represents. This reductive approach of a taxonomy of monsters, Girard

recognised, is hopelessly inadequate to the task and ignores the mobile nature and

elusive appeal of the monster, which cannot be easily pinned down and explained.93

A persistent element of the monster is the inability to be contained and fully explained

by the contemporary system of categorisation and belief that surrounds it. The monster,

by existing in the edges, in the imagination, and by virtue of its impossibility and the

horror it generates, defies strict categorisation.

This ambiguity extends beyond the monster’s name and meaning to its treatment.

The question of what to do with the one deemed to be monstrous, if it is captured or

able to be stopped, typically ends in violence. The practice of teratoscopy involves the

examination of the monster, often through what Braidotti termed ‘predictions or

divinations based on the examination of their usually murdered bodies.’ This

examination was often followed by the ritualistic offering of not only the monstrous

body, but that of its mother as well, in an act of atonement.94 Yet while most narratives

45

end with the ritualistic slaughter or neutralisation of the monster-figure, this is not true

in franchises where somehow the monster miraculously escapes or its

offspring/family/disciples are improbably freed to continue the profitable reign of terror.

The monster, paradoxically, has an ambiguous appeal, and provokes a contradictory

response. The sensations of horror and disgust that mark many responses to monsters

often occur simultaneously with a measure of curiosity and sympathy. The allure of the

monster is such that for every pitchfork-waving, enraged mob that seeks to burn down

or otherwise destroy the monster, there is a blind hermit who remains unprejudiced

against him and who seeks to nurture and protect him. For every lonely gigantic ape,

there is someone who seeks to transplant him and make money, and someone who

might see the good inside him.95 The monster, in a sense, acts as a liberating force. It is

no secret that the monster is often the favourite part of the film for viewers, and creates

a degree of sympathy, if not outright affection, as is attested by examples such as the

cult-like popularity of Godzilla, or Freddy Krueger of the Nightmare on Elm Street

series, in whose honour manufacturers have produced dolls and razor-tipped gloves.

The history of monstrosity:

In this section, I will give a brief overview of some of the broad historical

conceptualisations of monstrosity, charting both the dominant ideas of the era and how

the monster was configured and analysed. The history of monstrosity has been divided

by Braidotti into three main eras: the classical era (antiquity), the pre-scientific era (the

Middle Ages and Renaissance), and the scientific era (the modern era). To these she

adds a new period: ‘the genetic turning point in the post-nuclear era, also known as

cybernetic teratology, and the making of new monsters due to the effects of toxicity and

environmental pollution.’96 In his study of medieval monstrosity, David Williams

argues that the changing conceptualisations of the monster reflect many of the dominant

philosophical and theological concerns of the era. As I have already noted, the desire to

understand and manage anomaly and aberration has preoccupied theologians and

philosophers, from Aristotle’s focus on resemblance and deformity to Saint Augustine’s

theological analyses.97

The Hellenistic view of the monster was grounded in what Williams terms a

neo-Platonic perception of the function of the defective as ‘contra naturum,’ or against

nature.98 John Block Friedman argues that the term monster had several main meanings

46

in the ancient world. For example, the term signalled the presence of ‘something

outside the existing order of nature.’ Thus monsters were considered by Aristotle to be

‘defects of nature’ and were studied for their ‘physiological causes’ and categorised

according to type and in terms of the degree to which they exhibited ‘proper’ form.99

Yet the term monster was also understood as a demonstration of divine power over

nature, ‘showing God’s power and desire to revitalize man’s sense of the marvelous.’

Monsters were also ‘portents of the wills of the gods.’100

This perception of the monster shifted by the Middle Ages, at which time the

monster became ‘not a contradiction of nature but of human epistemological

categories.’101 The monster’s reception in the Middle Ages was connected to the

primarily religious manner in which it was contextualised as a sign from God, a divine

portent. Many philosophical debates in Europe at this time focused on the notion of

divine fallibility, the role played by aberration. and on the function of the detritus and

abominations.102 Williams argues that

[u]nlike an earlier period in which the monster was conceived as omen and magical sign, the Middle Ages made deformity into a symbolic tool with which it probed the secrets of substance, existence, and form incompletely revealed by the more orthodox rational approach through dialectics.103

The notion of the ‘true’ nature of the human, for example, dominated medieval

considerations of monstrosity, with theologians and philosophers both debating the

parameters of divine will and the rationale behind human variability.104 The monster as

a philosophical dilemma and expression of critical thought also marked some of the

shifts from medieval to Renaissance thought. As Williams notes:

[t]he replacement of God by Nature as the source of deformation is not a simple substitution. For the Middle Ages, as we have seen, the existence of monsters did not constitute a contradiction of nature, but a contradiction ‘of what man understood of nature’ – to paraphrase the mediaeval formula (noncontra naturam, sed supra). For the Renaissance, however, nature is totally comprehensible, in theory at least.105

Williams clarifies the Renaissance view of the monster, noting that the ‘function

of mimesis throughout the Renaissance discourse of monstrosity indicates a general

desire to control the deformed and the contradictory by assimilating them to the known;

and what is better known, one imagines, than nature and the self.’106 Williams’ view is

echoed by theorists and historians such as Marie-Hélène Huet, Braidotti, and Barbara

47

M. Benedict, who contextualise the early modern and Renaissance monster in terms of

emerging discourses of modernity and consumer culture, the growing prominence and

acceptance of the biological sciences, and the secularisation of the fantastic body.

Huet discusses the Renaissance theory of the monstrous maternal imagination,

wherein the mother’s imaginings were perceived to imprint monstrous characteristics

upon the foetus in relation to the Latin term monere.107 Monstrous children, she notes,

were perceived as omens and retribution.

Monstrous births were understood as warnings and public testimony; they were thought to be ‘demonstrations’ of the mother’s unfulfilled desires. The monster was then seen as a visible image of the mother’s hidden passions.108

Huet also considers the meaning of monstrare as ‘to demonstrate’ during the

Renaissance. She argues that this deployment of the term ‘confirmed the idea that

monsters were signs sent by God, messages showing his will or his wrath.’109

Indeed, Benedict’s assessment of the function and presence of curiosity in the

modern era leads her to a consideration of the monster for its role in then-dominant

considerations of philosophical and theological questions. She argues that

monstrosity at the end of the eighteenth century still uneasily straddled science, superstition, satire, and religion. Whereas medieval and Renaissance popular culture had woven these categories together, the natural philosophers of early modern England sought to differentiate them. Once monstrosity had proven God’s power and man’s sin by corporealizing it, in violation of nature’s rules, vices like lust, gluttony, and bestiality. Now, it was used to explain physical development.110

The increasingly scientific and secular view of the monster soon focussed on it as

an evolutionary aberration and genetic malfunction rather than a supernatural or

mythical being. Recent developments and trends, such as genetic research,

the increasing levels of pollution, and advances in the technological understanding and

manipulation of the human body have created new levels of monstrosity, such as the

cyborg or the mutant created by exposure to nuclear radiation.

In addition, the changing contours and popularisation of medical, technological,

and scientific beliefs have, over time, altered some dominant perceptions about the state

of monstrosity, such as what or who ‘counts’ as a monster. Many individuals formerly

48

considered to be aberrations and offences against God were recast as freaks, as tolerable

sources of amusement, and were displayed in market places, royal courts, and in

sideshows. The reclassification of the freak as a mistake of nature is an important

juncture in teratological history, as the traffic between these similar terms illustrates the

importance of dominant regimes of thought in the perception and treatment of the

deviant body. Increases in travel and cartography, technological advances,

representation and reproduction of images and narratives, and the spread of the

biological sciences led to a shift in the conceptualisation of the monster to the

reclassification of former monsters as freaks or indigenous inhabitants.

This is not to suggest that the scientific model had then or has now completely

replaced the more fantastic and religious one, or that it is the only available

contemporary mode of perceiving the monster. Although most contemporary

explanations of monstrosity are conditioned by existing parameters of scientific and

rational knowledge, they coexist with the religious views and superstitious beliefs that

surround the monster in popular culture. The increasingly secular and scientific manner

in which information is understood and disseminated in culture has not diminished the

role of the monster, and may even exacerbate its prevalence. As stated earlier, the

immense worldwide popularity of contemporary myths, such as the Star Wars series or

the Harry Potter books, demonstrate an abiding interest in the fantastic and the unusual.

A deep level of superstition and irrational belief reveals a commitment to the fantastic

and the unpredictable as a source of interest and imagining. So, too, do the

contemporary horror and science fiction film genres, which are replete with ever-more

sophisticated and previously impossible images of terror and fantasy. The

understanding of monstrosity as a sign, a portent, and an embodiment of societal mores

continues to underscore contemporary monstrosity.111 In more contemporary and

secular terms, the monster can serve as a warning against certain behaviours and

attitudes, including for example sexually active or explicit behaviour (hence the reading

of the ‘punishment’ of sexuality in many slasher films).112

Acts of Naming: classification, difference, and marginalisation

Broadly, many acts of naming in culture are guided by expressions of violence and

terror, which condition and shape possibilities, responses, and subject positions. What

is shut out as illegitimate, offensive, and intolerable, and what is redeemed and

49

validated, are integral components of the process of subjectivation. The articulation of

specifically illegitimate and offensive identities is often through a rhetoric of

monstrosity, and traces particular racial and gendered forms of the monster. Monsters,

as embodiments and illustrations of impossible and excluded conditions and subject

positions, exist on the boundary of intelligibility and confusion, intolerability and threat.

This fascination with monstrosity, in various historical periods, translated not only into

the examination and representation of the monster, but also the attempt to name,

categorise, and understand it. This classificatory effort focused primarily on the

monster’s creation (whether it was seen as being generated by divine sources or as a

spontaneously occurring product of nature), the function fulfilled by the monster (as a

prophecy or divine warning), and perceptions of how to treat or deal with the monster

(whether to tolerate, learn from, or eradicate it). These ideas, and the ensuing debates

around them, demonstrate some of the ways that monsters have marked important

social, religious, and cultural beliefs and practices.

Perceptions and representations of monsters are inevitably conditioned by

available modes of description and explanation, and by dominant structures of

knowledge and analysis. The temporal and contingent nature of these names, and their

assignment and meanings, are tied to the monster as a historically specific and localised

materialisation of culture. To be named and considered monstrous implies that an

individual has crossed a boundary of legitimacy and sanctity in culture, that some

crucial bond, perception, belief or state has been devalued and perverted by their sheer

existence. The monster underlines and displays specific societal constructions and

values that are less readily apparent in more ‘everyday’ human identities, even when the

monster forms their exterior. Frequently, these human identities are traced by the same

externalising compulsions and forces. This strategy of othering and denigration is

apparent in the treatment of the various humans who have been designated as external

and horrifying in different times and cultures.

Forms of representation function through negation and exclusion as much as

through production and reception, and as Patricia J. Williams says, discourse

‘selectively silences even as it creates.’113 The monster, as a privileged and conspicuous

site of alterity, is frequently constituted through processes and acts of exclusion and

expulsion. Monsters are not only present in religious, social, and philosophical crises

50

and debates, but, in a point that I will expand on later, they are constituted through this

confusion of categories and through embodying interstitiality. These productive

margins are a point of inherent and constitutive discursive fragility that enable moments

of critical inquiry. In his article ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses,’ Cohen perceives the

monster as a rich source of symbolic othering that reflects and intersects with many

other forms of stigmatised difference. The monster, Cohen argues, is ‘a category that is

itself a kind of limit case, an extreme version of marginalization, an abjecting

epistemological device basic to the mechanics of deviance construction and identity

formation.’114 The monster, in other words, exemplifies and exacerbates broader

societal mechanisms of marginalisation and strategies of othering, and offers a way to

investigate some of these specific dynamics of exclusion in operation. In addition,

Cohen believes that ‘[t]he monster is the abjected fragment that enables the formation of

all kinds of identities – personal, national, cultural, economic, sexual, psychological,

universal, [and] particular’ – a conceptualisation that, while very broad, also illuminates

some of the monster’s epistemological functions.115

The dynamic of simultaneous marginalisation and centralisation was traced in my

first chapter on marginality. The centrality of the monster in the cultural imagination

offers a different perspective on the way that, as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak argues, ‘in

terms of the hegemonic historical narrative, certain peoples have always been asked to

cathect the margins so others can be defined as central.’116 Spivak elsewhere articulates

the position of the marginalised as ‘the victims of the best-known history of

centralization: the emergence of the straight white christian man of property as the

ethical universal.’117 This broad process of othering, which relies upon the necessary

specification and naming of the marginalised as deviant and different, is important to

the cultural conception of the subject. I continue the investigation of marginalisation

that began in my previous chapter, although now I turn my focus to the ostensible

‘opposite’ of the heterosexual, white, middle class male as universal figure and cultural

ideal. The monster, in many senses, is defined through its difference from this ideal,

and often serves to reify this version of the human as normative and appropriate.

Monstrosity frequently traces the contours of acceptable qualities and traits for

humanity, particularly through illuminating those excluded from its scope. As I will

demonstrate, the ongoing definition of the ‘human’ is a crucial component of monster

51

discourse, and it relies heavily upon the monster both as its inverse as well as an active

tool through which to police the contours of this humanity.

The Function of the Monster in Critical Thinking

The mutability of the monster arises from its complicated positioning in, and

simultaneous tracing of, dominant systems of thought. As Braidotti argues, monsters

are ‘the effect of, while being also constitutive of, certain discursive practices.’118

As discussed in my first chapter, marginal and deviant forms of identity have been the

focus of recent critical attention that has sought to comprehend and dismantle the

multiple ways in which subject positions are created through a variety of stigmatising

and debilitating practices. Many feminist and cultural theorists are interested in forms

of proscribed and devalued difference. In examining these, they have sought to explore

ways in which difference is marked as inferior, and in which it is systematised and

institutionalised. An important gesture in the attempt to interrogate and erode the

tenacity of the normative and dominant is the deconstructive manoeuvre of locating the

pressures and exclusions that trace and form the boundaries of the hegemonic.

Philosopher Jacques Derrida’s insights into the dynamic of the mutual structuring of the

privileged term and the denigrated term that underwrites it have been broadly taken up

across a variety of disciplines, and are of particular interest to feminists (though not

without contention).119 In particular, the mutual construction and implication of the

items located as a (false) binary has influenced investigations of traditionally

subordinate or repressed terms such as the feminine. In addition, following

Michel Foucault’s illuminating work on such diverse subjects as madness, the penal

system, and forms of sexuality, many theorists have sought to engage with hegemonic

and dominant subjects and positions through an interrogation of their moments of

incoherence or instability. Foucault’s focus on the power relations of what he terms a

‘society of normalization’ has been widely replicated in recent feminist investigations,

the scope of which has included the grotesque, the carnivalesque, the abject, and the

inhuman. These negative and complicated examples are seen to display wider societal

attitudes and behaviours towards norms and ideals.

Braidotti has detailed the importance of the function of alterity within critical

thought. Her work highlights some of the connections to be made between critical

thought and teratology, as she utilises the example of the monster as one category

52

(along with ‘mothers’ and ‘machines’) that illustrates some of the ways that alterity may

be considered and deployed in culture. Difference, as she argues, is most often seen as

difference from a central point and as indicating a negative value in a binary set – or as

what she calls the Western ‘logic of binary oppositions that treats difference as that

which is other-than the accepted norm.’120 Braidotti’s view is informed by the history

of teratology and steeped in awareness of the monster’s function in critical thought

since antiquity as a means to define and bound humanity, subjectivity, and normality.

The function of the monster as an example of the unnatural, deformed, and perverse,

Braidotti argues, has historically been an important part of the process of questioning

and determining of a variety of topics ranging from normality and aesthetics to the

extent of divine will and human agency. The meaning of difference, and the way in

which alterity is marked as such, and is known and is part of discourse, are often

debated with recourse to monsters as examples. Questions surround the presence and

appearance of the monster, most often couched in terms of its genesis and purpose.

Braidotti notes, in this regard, that:

[d]iscourses about monsters are fundamentally ‘epistemophiliac’, in that they express and explore a deep-seated curiosity about the origins of the deformed or anomalous body. Historically, the question that was asked about monsters was: ‘How could such a thing happen? Who has done this?’121

In other words, many approaches to the monster place an emphasis on explaining

the genesis and purpose of the monster in the universe.122 The presence of the monster

is rarely taken to be neutral or inevitable, but is assumed to have some form of meaning

attached to it, ranging from divine anger to spontaneous evolutionary side effect. Yet

the monster is a complicated figure of alterity, for it is not only known in one register or

through a clearly delimited discourse, but instead combines the mythological, the

scientific, and the philosophical within its scope. The monster is not pure knowledge or

merely a negative response to elements within culture. Instead, it is more precariously

and tangentially figured as the result of many different elements and dynamics, which

presumably is one reason why the notion of the monster has persisted across different

historical eras, and is able to assume so many different forms. It is in this spirit that

Cohen locates two main areas of teratological inquiry – the creation and function of the

monster – when he concisely states that ‘[e]very monster is in this way a double

narrative, two living stories: one that describes how the monster came to be and

another, its testimony, detailing what cultural uses the monster serves.’123 These

53

‘cultural uses’ range from the exhibition of monsters in narratives or in sideshows for

profit, to a less tangible but still potent deployment of the monster’s significance to

assert or deny structures of belief and forms of knowledge.

The monster, as noted earlier, is a mechanism through which forms of difference

are perceived and understood in culture. Alterity, in this context, is a term broad

enough to encompass some of the multiple ways in which monstrosity is achieved or

created; as Cohen argues, ‘[a]ny kind of alterity can be inscribed across (constructed

through) the monstrous body, but for the most part monstrous difference tends to be

cultural, political, racial, economic, sexual.’124 The scope of these forms of difference

hinges on the dynamic underpinning representations and interpretations of monstrosity

that Halberstam terms ‘the process of othering.’125 Monstrosity traces a particularly

graphic form of encoding and maintaining difference as negative. The monster is never

a stable or static entity, even within a single temporal zone or body, but often mutates

and is perceived in various ways by different individuals. The description and valuation

of difference is not an arbitrary or neutral component of teratological discourse, but an

invaluable component within it. The ramifications of examining the monster as a

heightened mode of alterity include its wide ranging impact on a range of

non-monstrous individuals. Monstrosity, as a term, has surprisingly malleable

gradations – one may be more or less monstrous – and individuals may be tarred by

association with monstrous characteristics rather than be considered a monster.

The Social Function of Monsters

Monsters are imbued with social meaning, as they are not arbitrary signs of disruption

or mutation, but are implicated in social discourses of order, cleanliness, and

wholeness.126 As Butler notes in relation to broad social discourses of marginalisation

and acceptance, the ‘production of the unsymbolizable, the unspeakable, the illegible is

also always a strategy of social abjection.’127 This process of socially grounded

abjection involves exclusion against a set of highly particular characteristics by a

similarly highly particular central subject. Yet this strategy is neutralised and presented

as objective and unremarkable. The differences that mark the figure of alterity are

naturalised, and made to appear inevitable and inherent. The necessary ‘Other’ of

discourse is traced by highly specific meanings.

54

The form of the monster aligns with other negative identity components, including

the heterosexual and feminine contours and attributes of the Other that have been

addressed by feminist theorists such as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Maurizia

Boscagli.128 Other theorists, such as bell hooks and Gloria Anzaldúa have foregrounded

the specification of race, class, and ethnicity in this process of identity formation.129 As

noted in my first chapter, numerous theorists have noted the masculine, heterosexual,

and white aspects of the template for humanity. This version of the ‘human’ is a very

particular conglomeration of identities that by definition excludes and renders

undesirable the subjects it is constituted through and against.130 Thus Braidotti has

noted that:

The monster is the bodily incarnation of difference from the basic human norm; it is a deviant, an a-nomaly; it is abnormal. As Georges Canguilhem points out, the very notion of the human body rests upon an image that is intrinsically prescriptive: a normally human being is the zero-degree of monstrosity.’131

Like Braidotti, I want to explore the variability of monstrous difference; but

instead of expanding the category of the monstrous, I want to locate and fissure the

norm, or perhaps more appropriately, the series of norms and processes of normalisation

to be found in the figure of the monster. It is to this project that I will now turn.

Margins and Discourse

‘The body that scares and appalls changes over time,’ feminist theorist Halberstam

succinctly notes in Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, ‘as do

the individual characteristics that add up to monstrosity, as do the preferred

interpretations of that monstrosity.’132 As Halberstam highlights in her examination of

monstrosity, the ‘preferred interpretation’ of the monster in a given era may be

particular to that age, though the centrality of the monster in the cultural imagination

persists. The malleability implies that the monster reflects, in part, the society around it.

It does not perfectly trace this world, but it shows some of its dynamics. The monster

does not perfectly reveal societal taboos and fears, but embodies them and enacts them

in various complicated and imprecise ways.

As well as being the object of discourse monsters are implicated in its structuring

and conditioning. The monster, as a source of cultural meaning and interrogation,

55

claims Braidotti, is ‘a process without a stable object. It makes knowledge happen by

circulating, sometimes as the most irrational non-object.’133 For Braidotti, the monster

is a state of becoming that draws its energy from inhabiting these margins and

constitutive moments of discursive unintelligibility and incoherency. The monster

exemplifies and exacerbates tropes of marginalisation and strategies of othering. It

simultaneously constitutes and transmits cultural values, such as the normalising

impulses that govern much of teratological discourse. This simultaneity is necessary, as

the acts of marginalisation and normalisation are mutually constituted. The monster is

always perceived and known in relation to those that it threatens and coerces; it is

judged against an implicit norm of humanity that is itself partially formed by these

encounters. As I will discuss later, this normalising impulse is an important component

of teratological discourse, particularly in terms of the specific forms of humanity that

are validated by the presence of the monster.

As a tracing of derogation and desire, the monster is a complicated location and

intensification of despised and outcast otherness. Halberstam observes that the monster

is not restricted to being the literal and sole embodiment of a particular individual or

group, but draws on particular identities and characteristics, though never randomly.

These, in addition, tend to be already proscribed and prone to marginalisation. In her

discussion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, she argues that

[b]y making a connection between Stoker’s Gothic fiction and late-nineteenth-century anti-Semitism, I am not claiming a deliberate and unitary relation between fictional monster and real Jew, rather I am attempting to make an argument about the process of othering … [M]onsters transform the fragments of otherness into one body. That body is not female, not Jewish, not homosexual but it bears the marks of the constructions of femininity, race, and sexuality.134

Her distinction thus allows for a more nuanced approach to a discussion of the

tracings of ‘deviance’ within the corporeality of the monster. The monster is not the

woman, the Jew, or the homosexual per se, but reveals a shared lineage of construction

and similar persecution under the same normative binary structure of comparison.135

That is, there exists no natural or instinctive correspondence between femininity and the

monstrous, or Judaism and abjection, yet there is, in patriarchal and anti-Semitic

cultures, marked tendencies to associate the two.136 There is also an ability to substitute

these terms, due to their lack of precision and general ambiguity, for as

56

Katherine Eisman Maus notes, ‘[t]he language of monstrosity is characteristically

vague, equally applicable to murder, theft, treason, witchcraft, sodomy, or whatever, so

that an accusation of one crime tends to slide easily into an accusation of generalized

criminality.’137

Monsters are often creatures who are partial, excessive, an anomalous

combination of limbs or qualities, or through some measure transgress boundaries of

wholeness and belonging. As Eric White notes of monsters of the classical era, they

were frequently defined by amalgamation and confusion.

Satyrs, gryphons, hydras, the sphinx, are traditionally classified as ‘monstrous’ because their bodies mock the notion of organic unity in their arbitrary juxtaposition of anatomical features drawn from heterogeneous life-forms. Monsters are liminal entities that transgress the ontological categories and distinctions upon which the construction of a comprehensive and lasting representation of reality depends.138

A major portion of the threat perceived to emanate from monsters derives from

their complicated relation to intelligibility and wholeness. Monsters contain elements

that confront hierarchies of aesthetics and systems of order through their partial,

fragmented, and dissolute status, particularly when these are violently juxtaposed in, or

are missing from, a single body or entity. As a compromised and partial being, the

monster confronts the hierarchical system that excludes it and insists on its marginality.

By virtue of its existence the monster troubles and undermines desirably discrete and

distinct names and categories of identity. Thus the monster may link broader and

enduring fears concerning interstitial and partial creatures, which do not conform to

beliefs concerning whole and discrete bodies and to accepted lines of distinction

between entities. A creature such as the werewolf, which has an extensive cultural

heritage and may be been traced back for centuries, and that still populates horror

stories today, embodies both the fear of the improperly embodied and mutated human as

well as more specific and culturally embedded interpretations. Its uncanny ability to be

both animal and human, to transform, and to be bound by magic to respond to certain

stimuli, such as the moon, silver, and wolfsbane, go against conventional

understandings of humanity.139

The monster, as Uebel argues in ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century

Response to Saracen Alterity,’ is a trope of ‘unthought’ that traces modes of thought as

57

an example of its functioning in discourse as both interruption and constitutive element.

Uebel considers the role that a rhetoric of monstrosity played in the complicated

relationship between Christianity and Islam in the twelfth century. He believes that the

twinned figure of the monster and the Saracen operated within contemporaneous

discourse to signal ‘figures of abjection who constitute in the cultural imaginary the

limits of Christian identity.’140 Uebel locates the monstrous impulse as intrinsically

threatening to categories, assumptions, and naming. Symbolising confusion, break

down, desecration, indistinguishability, and the juxtaposition of incompatible

characteristics, monsters are affronts to systems of classification and order. Uebel

argues that ‘monsters expose classificatory boundaries as fragile by always threatening

to dissolve the border between other and same, nature and culture, exteriority and

interiority.’141 He highlights the ‘boundary line’s double status as both marker of

separation and line of commonality,’ a consideration of the intimacy of borders and the

manner in which names and boundaries are constituted and negotiated.142 Uebel

extrapolates from this belief when he argues that the process of investigating monsters,

of exploring alterity, ‘necessarily involves constructing the borderlands, the boundary

spaces, that contain – in the double sense, to enclose and to include – what is antithetical

to the self.’143 What he means by this is that monsters are, in part, one of the ways in

which we define ourselves, and our sense of humanity. Borders are spaces of

negotiation and mediation, as

border lines are thus spaces ‘in between,’ gaps or middle places symbolizing exchange and encounter, facilitating translation and mutation. Sites of potential contestation, they are the areas wherein identity and sovereignty are negotiated, imaginatively and discursively, in relation to the necessary other.144

This interdependence implies, Uebel believes, that ‘alterity is never radical,’ but is

both known and necessary as the necessary outside of discourse is compelled and

produced through the figure of the other. Alterity is not radical, as in unknowable,

unthinkable, and completely alien, as this would presuppose that our ‘Others’ are not

mutually constituted and do not share any qualities and characteristics. Instead,

[e]very system of thought traces, as if along a Möbius strip, its own system of unthought, and in the process unfolds a history of alterity that reveals how the other, “at once interior and foreign,” has been provisionally unthought, exteriorized, and “shut away (in order to reduce its otherness).”145

For Uebel, this monster fulfils this function of unthought, provoking yet

maintaining systems of thought and meaning. In this respect, as Cohen argues, the

58

monster operates as a form of ‘category crisis,’ an ongoing and constitutive definitional

dilemma of knowledge, limits, and appropriate classifications.146

As these limits shift and are rearticulated, so, too, is the shape and threat of the

monster. The monster’s mutability is an important component of its cultural relevance

and importance, as it absorbs and reflects multiple and fundamental societal tensions,

norms, and categorisations. That is, the monster is not just a physical entity, but is

deeply implicated in narratives and myth, which change over time and are rearticulated

in the retelling.147 The monster’s positioning within discourse, as agitator and

opposition, causes its relevance as a site of inquiry (mobile, and reflecting the culture

around it) and also highlights its capacity to provoke thought. As constitutive anomaly

and disruption, the monster is a necessarily impure and imperfect creature, as it gains

meaning from perverting or opposing categories and beliefs. It is this ability to mutate

that Cohen, amongst others, perceives as signalling the continuing significance of the

monstrous. He claims that the monster’s ‘threat is its propensity to shift,’148 and that

this mobility encapsulates some of the monster’s unpredictability and relevance. It

offers a comprehensible limning of alterity, yet retains the ability to mutate into the

unthinkable and the unforeseeable, into an unpredictable and provoking state that cannot

be known in advance.

This perception is echoed by Braidotti, who offers a summation of the constancy

and unpredictability of future monster discourse:

In a perfectly nomadic cycle of repetitions, the monstrous other keeps emerging on the discursive scene. As such it persists in haunting not only our imagination but also our scientific knowledge-claims. Difference will just not go away. And because this embodiment of difference moves, flows, changes; because it propels discourses without ever settling into them; because it evades us in the very process of puzzling us, it will never be known what the monster is going to look like; nor will it be possible to guess where it will come from. And because we cannot know, the monster will always get us.149

This has been described perhaps more optimistically as the ‘promise of monsters’

by Haraway, who sees in the protean, vital shape of the monster a potent metaphor for a

non-totalised, discontinuous, and decentralised subject position and mode of negotiating

the world. Like Braidotti, Haraway perceives this ‘promise’ to be their ability to

regenerate and mutate and so cause new and unanticipated forms of violence and terror.

59

Their promise also lies in their ability to critique cultural norms and configurations.150

The monster, as a compromised and partial being, is already confronting the hierarchical

system that excludes it and insists on its marginality; by virtue of its very existence the

monster troubles and undermines desirably discrete and distinct names and categories of

identity. In this respect, as Braidotti notes, the monster is an entity that changes over

time and whose reception and ‘explanation’ alters across eras and, as such, cannot be

fully anticipated before its emergence.

While the form and name of the monster has fluctuated across historical eras, one

of its consistent qualities remains its ability to encompass and represent cultural

anxieties, dominant social and religious beliefs, and social norms. As Halberstam

argues in her examination of monstrosity and the gothic, ‘[m]onstrosity (and the fear it

gives rise to) is historically conditioned rather than a psychological universal.’151

Monsters, that is, are both shaped by their time as well as act as indicators of broader

current issues and tensions. As I will argue, the monster traces the negative underside

of culture, condensing and hyperbolising many of the traits, forms, and attitudes that are

devalued. No single creature can embody all the potential and various forms of cultural

anxieties in one body, and combine these disparate elements. Yet they trace, in their

incomplete way, some of the dominant ideas about and understandings of humanity,

philosophy, and normality.

Uebel notes that ‘identity emerges through exclusionary means, over and against

the monster who is posited as radically other; yet the monster, residing in interstitiality,

also leads back to, and comes to inhabit, the intimate place of identity.’152 In other

words, the monster is formed in direct opposition to the realm of the acceptably human,

yet is not restricted to such a simple equation or binary formulation. It is also an

implicitly mutual constitution, for in the process of prohibiting access and denying

similarity, the human is also imbricated in the monster. The designation ‘monster’

interrupts and sustains the categorisation ‘human’ during various eras and across

cultures, yoking it intimately to its assumed opposite, inverse and outside, as its

unthinkable or impossible state. The ‘categories “human” and “monster”’ are, in

Cohen’s opinion, ‘coincipient, mutually constitutive, monstrously hybrid;’153 and the

monster is constantly invoked as the standard against which humanity is measured. As

Butler argues,

60

the construction of the human is a differential operation that produces the more and the less ‘human,’ the inhuman, the humanly unthinkable. These excluded sites come to bound the ‘human’ as its constitutive outside, and to haunt those boundaries as the persistent possibility of their disruption and rearticulation.154

The tension between the human and the abject outside, as Butler demonstrates, is

precisely where categories and terms are most challenged and in need of examination.

Butler’s discussion of what she termed the construction of the ‘more and the less

“human”, the inhuman, the humanly unthinkable,’ offers a useful way to interrogate the

gradations of acceptable humanity.

The monster is only one possibility of these variations on the human, but it is a

tenacious and resonant trope of difference. While interpretations, explanations, and

even the names for monsters have changed over time, their peculiarly charged

relationships to humanity, and the generalised significance that they seem to hold, has

not.155 While monsters are often defined as supernatural or as originating in realms and

ways outside of logical and comprehensible forms (such as dragons and minotaurs),

even these are judged against a human standard and used to define the human in inverse.

When monsters are seen to palpably originate from human form, they manifest in

several main ways; they are either born that way (from twins to deformed births), are

made that way (mutation, disease), or become that way (through choice, behaviour,

ethics). While monsters do not occupy the same privileged space in contemporary

philosophical and religious accounts of humanity that they once did, they are still

important in terms of a popular negotiation of the transforming limits of technology and

identity. In the twentieth century and beyond, however, there is an increasing trend

towards finding the actions and behaviour of otherwise ordinary humans to be

monstrous, and to represent and judge them accordingly. This is reflected in

contemporary depictions of monsters and, as I will argue in my final two chapters, has

significant consequences for the representation of white, middle-class, heterosexual,

‘normative’ masculinity.

The monster, as Cohen notes, may restrict potential behaviour through direct

prohibition:

The monster prevents mobility (intellectual, geographic, or sexual), delimiting the social spaces though which private bodies may move. To step outside this

61

official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself.156

The threat of the monster occurs not just as possible physical danger, but also as

an affront to dominant systems of order and meaning. The monster is not always the

physically divergent, but a direct challenge to borders, norms, and order. This

definition of monstrosity is valuable for its emphasis on the marginalised components of

identity that are found in the monster, and for providing an example of monstrosity that

is neither supernatural nor entirely physical and visually perceived. Yet the monster

also functions as a literal embodiment of the knowledge and norms that are being

detailed and proscribed.

Lada-Richards’ work is preoccupied with liminality and mutability, and the uses

of monsters as pedagogical tools. While her focus is upon ancient Greek texts and the

role of the monster in terms of ritual, her points may be taken more broadly.

Lada-Richards’ discussion of ritual liminality shows the way in which the initiand must

both understand the process of what is going on and learn from the monster as improper

being. Yet the categories and ideas that are confused in the monster also point out to the

initiand the broader ideas that are to be absorbed. Lada-Richards argues that:

far from being merely ‘at home’ on the margins, the ritual monster is, on a symbolic level, the very embodiment of liminality itself: straddling irreconcilable opposites and oscillating between extremes, the hybrid creature is arrested ‘on the threshold’ between different categories of being. Yet, if in the joyful, carnivalesque atmosphere or festive liminality the condition of being ‘neither-nor and yet both’ can offer liberating alternatives to everyday norms, for ritual passengers in initiation rites hybrid monsters may represent the somber image of an unresolved, a failed transition: not fully ‘human’ but not quite ‘animal’ either, they signify to the initiands that, should they fail to cross over to the other side irrevocably and firmly, they may become, likethem, forever frozen, forever posed somewhere ‘in between.’157

In other words, the monster not only perches at the border and becomes liminal,

but also directly embodies the knowledge the initiand must learn, and the values and

norms that are desirably followed. This is, Lada-Richards believes, a familiarising

gesture so that rather than function as just a sign of interdiction and negativity,

the monster also symbolises and ‘embraces a wider spectrum of experience than the

initiands must get thoroughly familiarised with.’158

62

Monster and normalisation

A normalising dynamic undergirds the structure of the ordinary and extraordinary, the

spectacular and the mundane, the deviant and the standard. The tension between these

terms, and their dependence upon each other, echoes many of the concerns of the first

chapter in terms of the discourse of marginality.159 Lada-Richards, in ‘“Foul monster or

Good Saviour”? Reflections on Ritual Monsters,’ summarises many of the main ideas

in contemporary teratology that I believe connect to the dynamic of marginalisation and

centralisation at work. The shifting standards of difference, of what constitutes the

properly human and the necessarily abject, are premised on a dynamic of normalisation

and proscription:

the beings or natural phenomena that people of all lands and ages have termed monstra possess no fixed, secure, inherent attributes which can attract or justify such a denomination. If we were to look for one single element of constancy within the ever-changing borders of ‘monstrosity’, this would almost certainly be the relativity of the ‘monster’ as a humanly constructed concept, that is to say, the simple truth that its prerogatives and its essence are powerfully interlocked with the perennial dialectic of ‘Otherness’ with respect to ‘Norm’. And, as norms are culturally determined, ‘monsters’ too become inevitably culture-specific products.160

What I wish to argue is that the norm that is so central to monstrosity studies and

to delineations of appropriate humanity is itself worthy of critical attention. As I argued

in my first chapter, the standard of the human, the neutral, objective ideal of humanity is

a very particular identity and subject position. The construction of neutrality requires

that its other be made specific in highly regulated and derogatory ways. The figure of

the universal human draws some of its representational strength from the façade of

neutrality that it attains in relation to the stigmatising hierarchy of difference. The

potency of neutrality and universality is firmly rooted in a tradition of portraying

difference as deviant, and in depicting this alterity as veering from a particular form of

humanity.

The particular charge of the monster, Braidotti believes, is that ‘s/he is both Same and

Other. The monster is neither a total stranger nor completely familiar; s/he exists in an

in-between zone.’ In what she termed a ‘mechanism of “domestic foreignness”,’

Braidotti observes that ‘the monstrous other is both liminal and structurally central to

our perception of normal human subjectivity.’161 A key element of this dynamic of

63

centrality and liminality is that the core identity (a ‘configuration of human subjectivity

based on masculinity, whiteness, heterosexuality, and Christian values’) is structured

against and from a range of other identities that are symbolically linked in their distance

from the norm (she lists ‘the woman, the Jew, the black or the homosexual’).162

Braidotti, however, does not examine how these identities are linked or mutually

implicated in their shared distance from the norm, or how the hegemonic identity that

she details draws part of its representational strength from its ostensible neutrality when

compared to this range of acceptable Others. What specificity can be located in the

humanity that is created in opposition to, and defined against, monstrosity? This

humanity is homogenised and left unspecified in most accounts of the monster, yet it

clearly has a great impact beyond monster discourse in terms of defining acceptable

modes and levels of humanity in general. In later chapters I will address more

complicated examples of this dynamic, elucidating how some of the normative elements

that I trace in this chapter are problematised through their appearances in contemporary

representations of monstrosity.

Investigating the monstrous requires knowledge of the complex set of norms

against which it is defined. I want to locate and fracture the norm, or perhaps more

appropriately, the series of norms and processes of normalisation found in the figure of

the monster. As Butler has noted, the process of locating an identity and its naming is

‘at once the setting of a boundary, and also the repeated inculcation of a norm.’163 The

impact and potency of monstrosity stems from its relation to the naming and enforcing

of difference from the norm, the ‘hidden’ operational nuclei. The monster is always

marked as Other in a way that is corporealised and borne out, as this difference is

assumed, naturalised and presented in terms of dominant standards – as insufficient,

excessive, and liminal.

The monstrous body is positioned within discourse in such a way that its

difference is sustained and detailed so that it seems self-evident and natural. This

entrenches the unmarked and ‘neutral’ body as normal and normalising. The function

of the normative, as Foucault has demonstrated, compels and sustains the production of

subjects in regulated, standardised forms. Yet there is also a necessary and

simultaneous ‘outside’ to these identities, with subjects produced as inadequate,

imperfect, and impossible.164 Proscription carries a price. As Uebel notes, the norm

64

and that which is positioned as its ‘Other’ are mutually implicated in a dynamic of

violation and inferiorisation; ‘that which is the normal figures as part of its exterior – as

contrary, contra naturam, monstrous, or “queer” – inevitably becomes the silent victim

of intolerance, abjection, and violence.’165 I will address this link between violence,

normalisation, and exclusion in subsequent chapters in terms of banal monstrosity in

serial killer discourse.

In this chapter, I argues that despite the fluctuation in historical interpretations

concerning the monster’s role, naming, and meaning, one consistent thread in teratology

is monstrosity’s connection, or opposition, to humanity. This is not a neat or binary

formulation but rather one that may take many forms. Monstrosity, as the embodiment

of difference, offers a way of investigating negative forms of subject creation. The

historical and contemporary parameters of an overtly different and abject identity are

found in the case of the monster, which frequently reveals broader tendencies that can

also be seen in less extreme and immediate cases. Many of the qualities that mark the

monster are broadly linked to more everyday identities and subject positions that are

also stigmatised or marked as different, such as homosexuality and femininity. The

naming and adjudication of the terms of monstrosity function in tandem to produce

these qualities and states of race, gender, and sexuality through forming the discursive

boundaries of the aberrant identity. In my next chapter I look more closely at the

connection between race and monstrosity, at a range of racial formations that have been

articulated through or conditioned by tropes of monstrosity, paving the way for my

eventual discussion of white monstrosity.

65

CHAPTER 3

Race and Monstrosity

The question of ‘race’ has frequently been at the centre of teratological inquiries, both

explicitly and covertly.166 Monster rhetoric receives much of its potency and imagery

from racial formations. Furthermore, it is not just the case of the monster being

conceived in racially specific terms; race is also constituted, in part, through the

mechanism or technology of the monster. Monstrosity and race then can be seen to be

connected in a variety of mutually constitutive ways – so that race is monstrified, and

monsters are seen as racially inflected. The monster, as the symbol of what is most

reviled and dangerous in a societal context, articulates the contours of racially derived

fear and hatred. In this chapter I turn from a more general exploration of monstrosity to

an examination of the particular connections between historical examples of monstrosity

and contemporaneous configurations of race. In doing so, I will examine the manner in

which monstrosity affects and shapes elements of identity and culture, particularly in

negative ways.

The connections between monstrosity and race can thus be analysed in two ways:

both by examining the impact of race on the figure of the monster, and by exploring

how the notion and image of the monster has informed racial discourse. There are three

levels at which this examination will be directed, and these will determined the structure

of the second part of the chapter. The first entails a literal classification of the

monstrous in terms of race as can be seen in the designation of the monstrous races of

antiquity. The second focuses on the process of othering, such as occurs in colonial

teratology. The third investigates the relation between metaphor and referentiality, and

more specifically the way in which seemingly neutral figures, whether they be aliens or

other fantastic figures in science fiction and fantasy, resonate with racist discourse.

66

There is much interplay between these ideas, but I separate them in order to

demonstrate the variety of ways in which racial discourse connects with teratology.

Without providing an exhaustive account of all the ways in which the two terms are

mutually constituted, I offer several examples that most vividly demonstrate their

connections. My purpose in highlighting these aspects of a broad and continuing

lineage of racialised monstrosity is to demonstrate that white monstrosity, and the white

North American male in particular, nevertheless presents valid topic for analysis,

although rarely discussed by theorists.

In this chapter I will draw on the work of a variety of theorists who examine the

connections between race and monstrosity in different ways. Some, such as Friedman,

Overing, and Sayers, offer historical accounts of monstrosity that are crucially shaped

by then-contemporary racial configurations. Others, such as Goldberg, Guerrero, and

Palencia-Roth, are concerned with questions of the representation of racist and racially

inflected narratives and images, and offer a more theoretical approach to ideas

concerning negative racial imagery that tap into broader understandings of racism and

prejudice. All, however, share a common focus on delineating the ramifications of

negative, divisive, and injurious imagery and terms when they are couched in racial

terms.

Racial formations and monstrosity

Today it is generally a commonplace to understand race as always ‘socially constructed

and contextually defined,’ an integral, though neither purely physiological nor inherent,

component of the subject.167 In contemporary North American culture, for example,

race occupies a complicated discursive space that goes well beyond the realm of skin

colour, although that remains its easiest designation. Race is not a static entity but

(much like monstrosity itself) reflects contemporary cultural ideas and beliefs, within

specific historical and social parameters. I will discuss the definition of race further in

my fourth when I focus on contemporary formulations of whiteness in North America,

but for now I will contend that racial formations are shaped by prevailing social issues

and critical understandings.

In the previous chapter, I showed how the process of monstrification, the

recognition, naming, and depiction of the monster, is implicated in broader ideological

67

and discursive power relations, and how the ramifications of this process are felt at the

level of individual approval or exclusion. Monstrification, in other words, tends to

cohere around particular groups or individuals. Race is never the only way in which

monstrosity is figured; as other theorists have pointed out, the creation and

representation of the monster occurs as ‘an aggregate of race, class, and gender’ as well

as through the interweaving of these categories.168

A crucial factor in my examination of the role of the monster is that it is, as Uebel

and others note, a ‘border creature,’ a figure that rests at the edges of discourse, sense,

and knowledge. As such, the monster helps to define ideas like race even as it

constitutes the medium through which the parameters and meanings of notions such as

race are articulated and examined. The monster, as the literal embodiment and

expression of cultural tensions and beliefs, simultaneously enacts and complicates ideas

and desires. The monster thus does not always ‘make sense’ or offer a consistent

perspective, but is a site of contradictory impulses, wishes, and anxieties.

Different historical eras contain a variety of forms of monstrosity and these

depictions and embodiments of monstrosity illustrate the dominant fears and tensions of

that age. For monstrosity to trace prominent anxieties and reflect racial conflict, race

must also be accepted as being tied to particular historical moments.169 While I would

argue that the monster reflects broader cultural tensions, I consider that there is a limit

to this reflective capacity. The monster cannot completely and coherently detail all the

possible nuances and ramifications of a scenario or idea; nor are scenarios and ideas so

mobile as to be equally accessible to all individuals.

One of the primary anxieties that links race to the monstrous is the very

inadequacy of the concept of race itself. For although it is intended to be a

classificatory tool, it in fact lacks a convincing capacity to determine the content it

wishes to specify. It is indeed the very indeterminacy of race that may be a source of

discomfort for some individuals. This means that the purity which the concept of race

seeks to arbitrate is always threatened by the possibility of corruption and the very

boundaries it wishes to inscribe are threatened by inherent instability. The titular ape in

King Kong (1933) is perhaps the most well-known examples of this coalescing of race

and monstrosity, with the monster reflecting a fear of miscegenation and the ‘crossing’

68

of racial boundaries.170 In other cases, the monster’s undefined but still clearly ‘Other’

status is enhanced by the perception of it as different and horrific by a spectrum of

observers. This is particularly evident in more extreme, alien configurations of the

monster.171 The more extreme and less directly tied to one particular group a monstrous

figure is, the more that figure reflects broad cultural tensions that centre on a fear of

difference itself.

Just as various feminist theorists have sought to interpret the range of monstrous

configurations in terms of now-dominant beliefs about the production and meaning of

gender, so too have critical race theorists sought to interpret monstrous configurations in

terms of identifiable beliefs about racial stereotypes. The small but interesting amount

of work that has been done on the connections between race and monstrosity has been

undertaken by a variety of scholars in a wide range of fields, including ethnic studies,

sociology, philosophy, religious studies, and anthropology. These diverse approaches,

and the different time periods they cover, give a clear sense of just how monstrosity

informs a broad spectrum of areas, attitudes and cultural beliefs. The analysis of

monstrosity and racial formations thus far undertaken by critical race theorists includes

the literal designation of the monster as belonging to a particular racial or ethnic group

(such as the monstrous races of antiquity), the association of the monster with various

racial characteristics, beliefs, or stereotypes (such as the anti-Semitic portrayal of

vampires as traced by Halberstam), and the figuring of race as an inherent component of

the very monstrosity of the monster (such as in old Icelandic narratives). It is

interesting that few theorists have chosen to examine contemporary white identity in

terms of monstrosity, and very few theorists of white identity locate the monster as a

method by which to interrogate culture.

In some examples, racial tension informs the core elements of an individual’s

claim to monstrosity, while in others, the monster is not understood or represented in

terms of race. While this may seem like a banal point to make, it is important to

acknowledge this to avoid homogenising the particularity of the various ways in which

race and monstrosity are entwined. Race is not always the most salient element that

qualifies an individual or race as monstrous, and neither is race always an apparent and

coherent component of all monsters. The monster, as I have noted earlier in this

chapter, is frequently a composite or contradictory figure, and in many cases its racial

69

designation is complicated or somewhat marginal when contrasted with other markers

of horror and excess (eg gender, class, or sexuality) that have been emphasised. While

it is important to attempt to identify and analyse these elements of identity, it is also, as

several theorists have argued, difficult to separate them and study them in isolation.

Racially Specific Monsters

In this first section, I focus on some of the more overt and extreme cases of racial

monstrification. Here, monsters are depicted as either belonging to a particular race or

specific ethnicity and this marker comprises an important component of their monstrous

status. As I will soon discuss, the monster is racially specified for a number of reasons,

not least the fact that race affects all facets of one’s life and is an intrinsic part of all

forms of identity. While it has not always been the case that race is so closely bound up

with identity, particularly given the complicated and shifting definition of ‘race’ over

time, most contemporary theorists argue that race is inextricably bound up with

ideological structures, the power relations that are expressed in them, and the modes of

representation they utilise.

One particular way in which race functions in an ideological sense is evident in

the frequent division of, racial stereotypes into crude Manichean, good/bad, right/wrong

views. Racism requires a visible and locatable entity as its target. It also thrives on

such simplifications and reductive thinking. As I will discuss later in the chapter, the

tendency to caricature and stereotype the mythical ‘Other’ can in turn often bleed into

more fantastical configurations. In some cases, then, the process of monstrification is

linked to a more general pattern of racial stigmatisation.172

When monstrosity and race are most clearly and ostentatiously linked, it is

frequently in the most negative form possible. The monstrosity of the creature

explicitly derives from its racial or ethnic status. The well-documented treatment of an

array of indigenous people as savages and cannibals by explorers continues in more

recent and ludicrous forms such as the 1970s rash of ‘blaxploitation’ horror films such

as Blacula (1972) and Blackenstein (1973). While some of these examples may be

chalked up to hyperbolic hate speech or an extreme approach to visible signs of

difference, not all of them can be explained in this manner. Nor are they unilaterally

intended to be offensive – many of the films made under the blaxploitation banner, for

70

example, capitalised on the profitability of a black hero for a (predominantly) black

audience.173

The naming of a race or group of people as ‘monstrous’ has far-reaching social

and political implications. John Block Friedman’s work on monstrosity in the Middle

Ages, for example, indicates how a variety of racial groups, ethnicities, and types of

individuals have, over time, been stigmatised and marginalised on the basis of their

assumed monstrosity. At the start of The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and

Thought, he cautions the reader to be aware of some of the dynamics at work when

labelling individuals monstrous, noting that:

I call them ‘monstrous’ because that is their most common description in the Middle Ages. But many of these peoples were not monstrous at all. They simply differed in physical appearance and social practices from the person describing them.174

Individuals who today would doubtless be recognised as humans belonging to a

different ethnic group, practicing culturally specific or religious behaviour, or as

differently abled, were then demonised as imperfect, evil, or alien.175

The monstrous races that Friedman details include Cyclopes (individuals with a

single eye), Blemmyae (men with faces on their chests), Gorgades (hairy women),

Giants, Cynocephali (dog headed men), and Hippopedes (people with horse’s hooves

for feet).176 Certain plausible physical, geographic, and religious rationalisations may

be found for specific classifications of humans as monstrous, leading Friedman to insist

that ‘many of the fabulous races did indeed exist,’ albeit not in a literal sense.177 Giants,

pygmies, Bearded Ladies, and Ethiopians (‘black men living in the mountains’) were

amongst the humans who exhibited divergences in physical appearance.178 Similarly,

esoteric cultural and religious practices were seen to signify monstrosity. These

included actions of the Bragmanni, the wise cave dwelling men from India whose

‘name is an obvious corruption of Brahman’ according to Friedman, or

Raw-Meat-Eaters and Ichithophagi (fish eaters), as well as Anthropophagi, or

cannibals.179 Friedman offers a variety of explanations for these designations which

include animals being mistaken for humans (such as monkeys), body armour presenting

deceptive and deliberately misleading facades (in the case of the men with faces on their

chests, for example), and inherited genetic divergence or abnormality (such as extreme

71

tallness).180 In doing so, he not only seeks to normalise the seemingly-monstrous by

providing rational excuses for these names and ideas, but he also underscores the

strength of the connection between a lack of understanding of perceptible difference and

designations of monstrosity.

By that same token, Friedman argues that the monstrous races were explicitly

human in origin. He believes that ‘[e]ven the most bizarre, however, were not

supernatural or infernal creatures, but varieties of men, whose chief distinction from the

men of Europe was one of geography.’181 This determination of monstrosity through

geographical location is borne out in Friedman’s analysis of xenophobic fears of other

people and other cultures. Distant lands and their mysterious inhabitants were ripe for

exaggeration and mythologising, and the ‘foreignness’ of the habits and actions of the

people encountered was also subjected to embellishment and suspicion.182

Myth, as Friedman suggests, was and remains a crucial component of teratology,

and demonstrates that perceptions of race are bound up with narratives, stereotypes, and

tropes of alterity. He illustrates the complicated ways in which fantastic tales were spun

about necessarily distant lands and their inhabitants in order to trace a specific

xenophobic impulse among cohesive social groups to perceive all other races as other

and inferior. Braidotti likewise notes that ‘[o]ne of the dominant teratological

discourses in antiquity is that of the monstrous races on the edge of civilization. We

find a sort of anthropological geography, the study of territories or special lands where

the monstrous races live.’183

As Friedman observes, perceptions of monstrosity were structured by ‘a marked

ethnocentrism that made the observer’s culture, language, and physical appearance the

norm by which to evaluate all other peoples.’184 While this view may be seen to be

generalised to apply to most cultures, it was particularly important to during the

Hellenistic period. Race was a particularly important marker of appropriate humanity

given that communities and identities were built around the exclusion of those deemed

threatening, inferior, or improper.185 The notion of race articulates, with ethnic

difference, how language, dietary habits, clothing, and all forms of cultural prohibitions

and practices contributed to interimplicated understandings of nation and monstrosity,

alterity and humanity. For example, the term barbarian was derived from ‘bar-bar,’

72

from the way in which other languages sounded like animalistic unintelligible babble to

the Greek. Friedman illustrates in detail the perception of differences between groups

and individuals as exhibiting a frightening lack of similarity and embodying an extreme

and hyperbolic variability and distinction. Difference was terrifying and repulsive, and

called into question the status of the human. Yet at the same time, monsters were also

signs of wonder and divine will and were understood as sacred messages, leading to a

complicated relationship whereby humanity was both affirmed and denied by the

presence of the monstrous.186

If designating and rendering discursive the racial other was what Friedman argues

was at stake in the mythologising of monstrous peoples in the middle ages, his own

deployment of the term race has been called into question by David Theo Goldberg. In

his monograph Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, Goldberg

queries the correctness of the use of the term ‘monstrous races,’ arguing that ‘[t]he

concept of race enters European social consciousness more or less explicitly in the

fifteenth century’ – that is, significantly after the eras discussed by Friedman.187 This

precludes earlier conceptions of monstrosity from displaying and being informed by

‘race’ as it is known by contemporary standards. Goldberg argues that Friedman

‘imposes “race” retrospectively upon a form of thinking for which the concept was not

yet available,’188 and claims that

[t]he word ‘race’ is sometimes used in translation of classical and medieval texts, but the term translated is almost invariably ‘species’, and what is intended conceptually is not race but peoples or man generically.189

While Goldberg’s position here amounts to an insistence upon historical

contextualisation of both race and monstrosity, and attention to the specificity of

ethnocentrism and xenophobia, his disagreement with Friedman perhaps misses

Friedman’s broader point.190 Friedman seeks to investigate contemporary racial

formations through a comparison with earlier ones, neither does he explicitly set out to

do so. Friedman, for example, largely treats the term ‘race’ in the broad sense that

Goldberg finds implicit in the medieval and ancient accounts, that is, to broadly refer to

a people or a tribe, a motivated designation of community and kinship. His undertaking

is not oriented towards a social or political analysis of race, but rather a general

anthropology of it based on representations and literature. Friedman’s insights are

useful in designating the boundaries of cultural belonging. In addition, Goldberg, for

73

his part, ignores the symbolic element of the monstrosity at stake in race, particularly

how the myth of the monstrous races has an impact on the European imagination. Other

theorists testify to this – Braidotti, for example, argues that ‘[t]hrough the canonization

these monstrous races receive in Pliny’s Natural History, they will become part and

parcel of European medieval folklore.’191 This position ensures the ongoing salience of

the trope of monstrosity, particularly as it was used in various ways, as I will argue in

the next section, to contextualise and comprehend a range of people.

Process of Monstrification

In this section I focus on the process of monstrification, defined previously as the

turning of an individual, item, or locale into a site of monstrosity. Monstrification is not

simple and straightforward, and in some cases may be a reversible process (when the

monster-figure is explained, neutered, or where its status is otherwise shifted from that

of imminent danger to something akin to a cuddly pet). Here, I am interested in the

transformation of humans into monsters – not by an act of shape shifting, as we find in

the many instances of contemporary popular culture that are buoyed by the morphing

capacity built into digital representation. Rather, my concern is with the various ways

in which specific groups of people have been treated as chattel, animals, product,

inhuman, or otherwise monstrous. Monstrification occurs to certain individuals or

figures who step out of line. In a manner that is consistent with Friedman’s assessment

of the relation of the monstrous races and their geographical location, the

monstrification of races similarly targets those who cross boundaries, or who are simply

from a different, that is, ‘wrong’ locale.

From some of the earliest circulated stories, monsters have been placed at the

literal borders of culture and civilisation. Early modern and medieval conceptions of

monsters, as historian Anne Lake Prescott has observed, were frequently necessarily

located as geographically distant, and were positioned at the enticing and threatening

edges of the known world. She notes how while ‘[p]hysically marvels, wonders, and

monsters were heavily concentrated at the margins of the medieval and early modern

world,’ ‘culturally they were central to Europe’s imagination.’192 Tales of them were

circulated widely and enthusiastically received. They served not only as entertainment

but also to create a mythology around newly explored – or even more tantalisingly,

still-unexplored – territory and its possibilities. It is not coincidental that many early

74

figures of monstrosity came from ‘elsewhere.’193 There was a great reliance upon the

monster being figured as a literally external creature, as someone or something from

another world, another country, from somewhere other than home.194

A broad tendency to name and marginalise non-indigenous settlers is noted by

historian William Sayers, whose examination of monstrosity in medieval Icelandic

culture locates the importance of racially marked group designations. The draugar, a

disruptive and malevolent spirit that retains materiality and returns to everyday life, is

frequently depicted in the Icelandic family narratives as a recently arrived foreigner, or

someone who was foreign-born. Like many of the examples recounted under the

umbrella term of the ‘monstrous races,’ such as the Bragmanni, the geographic origins

of the draugar were emphasised in the retelling of these tales. In this respect, Sayers

notes that

[t]he importance attached to lineage in the family sagas assured that these geographic origins were kept in mind by the original audience. The point the sagas are making, although the equation is never explicit, is essentially defensive and slightly xenophobic. Once past the settlement period, aliens fit less successfully into normative Icelandic life.195

If he adds that ‘[t]here is a similar tendency to locate future draugar among the

less wellborn elements of society,’196 the primary focus remains upon the racial status of

the revenants. In one particular tale that deals with a variety of spirits, some are marked

as being specifically Scottish and Swedish in origin.197 Sayers asks, somewhat dryly,

why the matter of their ‘Celtic origins’ should remain such a problematic issue a mere

‘three hundred years after the settlement of Iceland’ and after the arrival of the

draugar’s ancestors.198 This continuing focus on the foreignness of the monster in

Icelandic narratives points to the resilience of race as a sign of aberration, as an integral

if implicit component of how and why a person becomes a malicious spirit.

Joanna Overing locates the importance of monsters in the cultural imagination

when she analyses their recurring role in colonial discourse, with particular emphasis on

the European depictions of, and approaches to, what she terms the ‘“radical Otherness”

of the New World’s indigenous peoples.’199 Pliny’s tales of races of impossible humans

and amazing creatures were extremely popular and influential throughout Europe in the

Middle Ages. In her discussion of the colonisation of the Americas, Overing analyses

75

the impact of pre-existing stories and beliefs about the monsters of antiquity,

particularly the monstrous races, on explorers’ views of Native inhabitants. These

popular and influential tales, she argues, helped to condition the reception and

description of non-Western inhabitants. In particular, Overing believes that ‘the rich

imagery of the non-European monstrous and fabulous races depicted in Greek and

Roman travel lore and described in Plinius’ Historia Naturalis’ was ‘[i]ncorporated into

the language of alterity used to characterize both domestic and foreign European

Others.’200 The result of this, Overing argues, was that European colonisers subsumed

new forms of alterity into a tradition of the monstrous and the grotesque and thus

rendered them a manageable, discrete, and above all familiar entity.

The codification of the other was part of a systematic denial of the existing history

and cultural validity of the Americas on the part of the colonisers, which doubtless

aided and abetted its own hegemonic interests. The familiar form was, in which the

other was subsumed, other words, a palatable and easily assimilated Other, one that did

not challenge the coloniser’s self perception as righteous and appropriate. Overing

argues that these metaphors and images ‘covered both Europe’s internal and external

Other.’ A ‘similar imagery of the exotic,’ she argues, ‘characterized simultaneously as

both lack and excess’ functioned as ‘an internal negative self-definition for the

European upper classes when applied to peasants, gypsies, beggars, madmen, and

witches.’201 This indicates both the resilience of the negative imagery as well as its

widespread status.

The means by which this process of codifying and demonising another culture and

people serves the self-definition and coherency of the colonising culture is explicitly

noted by Overing when she observes:

The populations of the Americas appeared for the most part as the exotic and pathological antithesis of what the conquerors thought themselves to be. Thus the cultures of America became defined as an ensemble of negations to be contrasted with the civilized and cultured society of the developing ruling classes of Europe.202

There is, of course, a parallel here between Overing’s thesis and Edward Said’s

study of Orientalism. For Said, the West projects its values and beliefs onto an

undifferentiated and static view of ‘the Orient.’ For Overing, the coloniser’s view of the

76

indigenous population is marked by comparable essentialism and fantastic imaginings.

If, she argues, ‘the Orient is a product of a Western hegemonic exoticism, [then] the

same can certainly be said for Native America as it too became the primitive Other to

Europe’s civilised self.’203

Indeed, Said’s influential notion of Orientalism is worth closer scrutiny because it

deploys a dialectical model of alterity, one shaped by various discursive forms (ranging

from the economic to the philosophic) and created though more general fantastic

imaginings and abbreviated forms of knowledge, such as stereotypes.204 The efficacy of

Said’s work rests in its emphasis on the West’s relation with the Orient as mutually

constitutive, and the West’s self-image as implicated in this dynamic. His project is

thus ‘to show that European culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself

against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.’205 Said is also

careful to note that the ‘relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of

power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony,’206 and that

Orientalism also functions as ‘a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having

authority over the Orient.’207 Likewise, though it was not as systematic, widespread, or

ongoing, the representation of Indigenous people in the Americas was clearly marked

by a system of power relations that served to inscribe them as inferior and as subjects

who deserved or encouraged their domination. Not only that but, as Overing contends,

this pattern of representation meant that ‘the divide between self and Other easily

slipped into the opposition of the human and the nonhuman.’208 This division does not

trace hierarchies or a continuum of humanity, but a stark binarism of inclusion and

exclusion. The ramifications of this designation could be enormous.

Indigenous people, when they were encountered, were exoticised and seen as

freakish, alien, and inferior, in what Braidotti terms a system of ‘colonialist teratology’

that narrated racial difference.209 One marker of the expression of racial and cultural

difference in extreme and implicitly hierarchical and negative terms can be found in the

necessity of the papal bull issued in 1537, where Pope Paul II verified that the Native

inhabitants of the Americas were indeed in the possession of a mortal soul and were

able to be considered properly human, despite their less than ‘civilised’ demeanour.210

The ramifications of such an act are enormous.

77

Similarly, as Michael Palencia-Roth illustrates in ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and

the Theology of Conquest,’ an active process of monstrification of other humans and

cultures occurred when explorers and colonisers encountered Indigenous people and

interpreted them according to a pre-existing Manichean racial framework.

Palencia-Roth addresses the colonialist impulse to deny the humanity of indigenous

‘Others’ with particular reference to the monstrous races of antiquity as detailed by

Friedman, and outlines how tropes of monstrosity shaped colonial perceptions of

Indigenous inhabitants and ‘became part of the debate on the humanity –or on the

monstrosity – of the Indians.’211

Early accounts of Europeans encountering Native inhabitants of subsequently

colonised lands, such as Christopher Columbus’ travel descriptions, were often framed

in terms of monstrosity and abjection.212 As Palencia-Roth argues,

[w]hen Native Americans turned out not to have monstrous or inhuman features, monstrous or inhuman behaviour was attributed to them by Europeans, truthfully or not, in order to redefine their nature, and this in turn often to justify European actions in the Americas. Moreover, these attributions became part of the cultural allegorization of the New World.213

Teratology, he goes on to note, was important to this process of allegorisation and

understanding, which revolved around the definition and dimensions of humanity. Like

other theorists of monstrosity, Palencia-Roth stresses the mutuality of the terms human

and monster, and notes that the monster

is a creature similar to yet different from human beings. Both the similarity and the difference are important in the term’s semantic field. A monster deviates from an accepted norm of humanity. This may be a simple thought, but it has enormous consequences.214

These consequences include basic human access to universal rights and privileges.

Individuals not considered properly or entirely human, or able to fully benefit from

cultural and religious privilege, were deemed savage and soulless. Thus, in a critical

shift in perspective, ‘[w]hen no physically monstrous Indians were discovered, the

physiological or the biological notions of monstrosity were deemphasized. Behavioral,

moral, and theological conceptions of monstrosity then came to the fore.’215 These

social conceptualisations of the monster are an important facet of the racialisation of

teratological discourse, as they form a continuity with less fantastic or physically

stigmatised forms of monstrosity (such as Friedman’s ‘barbarians’ who could not speak

78

Greek), and adds other dimensions to the ways in which processes of monstrification

occur.

The Native inhabitant as monster is defined, as Palencia-Roth’s title illustrates, as

an ‘enemy of god’ through their imperfect status and distance from the human ideal.

This designation enabled and sanctioned methods of treatment, eradication and

reformation that included the forcible removal of land and property, being deemed

second caste citizens and unable to vote, being sent to boarding schools, and being

subjected to processes of assimilation such as being prevented from speaking one’s

native language in favour of the coloniser’s language. Palencia-Roth concludes that

[i]n search of justifications for the conquest and colonization of the New World, Europeans overlooked the similarities between the races and defined the Indians of the New World as different, deformed, monstrous, and inhuman. These definitions had profound consequences for the subsequent treatment of Native Americans, even up to the present day. Europeans were not the first to have so dehumanized another people, nor will they be the last.216

Leonard Cassuto covers similar terrain in his work on Native Americans and early

settlers in North America. Cassuto insists that the self-definition of the settlers was in

part dependent upon their stigmatisation of the Indigenous population as other, alien,

and ‘primitive.’ The race of the Indigenous inhabitants was an important component of

this perception, as were their diverging religious beliefs and social practices. In his text

The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature, Cassuto explores

processes of objectification and dehumanisation and examines a central paradox of

racist activity: the justification of horrendous individual and systematic acts of

dehumanising violence visited upon other humans. Cassuto locates the tension between

the racial objectification of humans as a key feature in North American literature and

imagery. The racial grotesque, he argues, is to ‘try to imagine other people as

nonhuman,’ or more precisely ‘the attempt to turn a person into a thing on the basis of

race.’217 His book focuses squarely on the tensions that arise from the simultaneous

awareness of the humanity of an individual and yet their non-status as a person and

citizen. In his view, the racial grotesque exemplifies the discursive slippage between

the recognition of a shared, yet reviled, humanity.

A major component of the process of dehumanisation, Cassuto argues, is the

racial ‘grotesquification’ of the other, wherein to be racially different is to transgress the

79

limits of humanity and no longer approximate human status. This differs from other

conceptions of racial monstrosity precisely because of its utilisation of a notion of the

inhuman as a standard. This renders strategies of violation and segregation not just

conceivable, but valid and desirable. Cassuto cites the institutionalisation of slavery and

the colonisation of the Native people as two prime examples of dehumanisation in early

North American white settlement. The task of making a human an object or thing is, he

believes, complicated by the inherent instability of this insecure belief. The process of

dehumanisation is constantly internally undermined by the difficulty of maintaining the

inhuman status of the other, and the sheer effort required to sustain this perception and

treatment of the racial other in terms of the racial grotesque is enormous. As such, the

grotesque is a complication of the category of humanity through the ever present threat

of the possibility of its dissolution. Accordingly, the tension implicit in creating the

grotesque is

the anomalous embodiment of cultural anxiety. The grotesque is born of the violation of basic categories. It occurs when an image cannot be easily classified even on the most fundamental level: when it is both one thing and another, and thus neither one.218

This inhabitation of multiple (and often contradictory) categories and states

underpins the status of the inhuman human, the slave and the colonised inhabitant,

which is both recognised as human (for example, sentient, not an animal, capable of

speech) and yet is ripe for subjugation (can be denied of universal rights, treated as

property, and deemed inferior). The notion of slavery implicitly depends on a shared

humanity, but not a humanity that can encompass both owner and slave as equally

human. Thus the status of the racial grotesque, summed up in the contradiction that

enables one to discriminate against others on the basis of a shared but unequal

humanity, depends on the instability of the slave or indigenous inhabitant as

insufficiently human, as an object, a thing.

In contending that the ‘grotesque is a threat to the system of knowledge by virtue

of its liminal position within that system,’ Cassuto aligns it with the privileged position

of the monster in teratological discourse.219 As Braidotti argues of the monster’s

position in scientific discourse, and Uebel suggests in relation to the monster’s

privileged role of ‘unthought,’ the grotesque is intimately tied to the production of

knowledge and systems of classification and naming.220 As I will discuss later, the

80

complicated attempt to strip the Other of all claims and resemblance to humanity,

though a necessarily doomed and internally unstable process, can be perceived in more

contemporary examples of objectification and differentiation.

The dread and discomfort arising from this juxtaposition resonates with much

contemporary monster discourse through its emphasis on liminality and the ‘in between’

status of the offending object or state. Indeed, Cassuto frequently refers to monstrosity

as an important component of the grotesque, most often as the counterpoint to affirmed

humanity. For example, in one discussion of Native American rights, he notes ‘[n]ow

human, now monster, the Indian becomes a tense, unstable anomaly. This dynamic flux

across categories creates the grotesque.’221

Cassuto devotes a chapter to the treatment of Native inhabitants by white

colonisers, which he argues was conducted in terms of dominant tropes of inhumanity

and monstrosity gleaned from the rhetoric of the ‘monstrous races’ in Europe. Much

like Overing and Braidotti, Cassuto recognises the impact of mythology and fantastic

narratives of distant lands on the treatment of Indigenous people by white settlers,

particularly in terms of their inability to recognise a mutual humanity. Instead, Cassuto

highlights that early settlers, while not necessarily seeing themselves as ‘white’ in a way

that would accord with contemporary classifications, viewed the Native inhabitants in

binary terms as either ‘noble savages’ or ‘heathen monsters,’ both in legend and first

person accounts.

By extension, whiteness was thus implicated in the creation and perpetuation of

the racial grotesque. Although Cassuto does not deal specifically with transformations

of whiteness in accordance with changing social movements, or the specificity of the

whiteness created in opposition to this ‘inhumanity,’ he does note that the

racial grotesque was in part ‘the source of ideologies of whiteness and institutions to

protect them.’222 Without specifically interrogating white ethnicity in depth, Cassuto

does introduce the specificity of the racial identity of the presumed, and effaced, human

that the racial grotesque is defined against, and argues that as ‘dominant (white)

American category systems have generally been extremely rigid, the very presence of

the “other” race has amounted to a challenge to the white definition of what is

human.’223

81

While the whiteness of what is conceived of as humanity is left undefined, it is

nonetheless implicated in the notion of the grotesque. Significantly, Cassuto argues that

there is an implicit reciprocity in the designation:

The process of racial objectification thus reverberates back to the white subjects, calling their humanity into question in a different way, and thereby making them grotesque also.224

The extent or quality of this different kind of grotesque is not interrogated; yet it

is a quality made painfully clear in much available literature that details non-white

perspectives in which whiteness is experienced as terrorising, as malignant and

misguided.225 Although this is not Cassuto’s main point, it is nonetheless an important

one as it affirms the reciprocity of the grotesque, and predicts a point that will occupy

my subsequent chapters – the instability of the term ‘whiteness,’ and how it occupies a

place of violence in relation to those against whom it is defined.

Native American author and essayist Leslie Marmon Silko also demonstrates the

ongoing effects that Native Americans have frequently endured after being deemed

subhuman and animalistic. In Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on

Native American Life Today, she discusses the impact of colonisation on the Americas

and argues that the narrativisation and representation of Indigenous people by colonisers

is a crucial component of their perception as undesirable and inadequate. Silko notes

that ‘the representation or portrayal of Native Americans was politicized from the very

beginning and, to this day, remains an explosive political issue.’226 She traces the

deliberate destruction of culturally important artefacts such as books, which imply not

only organised social and symbolic knowledge and methods of communication, but also

culturally specific modes of the transformation of knowledge that signified ‘civilisation’

to Europeans. Silko recounts the following incident:

Except for a few fragments, the magnificent folding books of the Maya and Aztec people were destroyed in 1540 by Bishop Landa, who burned the great libraries of the Americas. Europeans were anxious to be rid of all evidence that Native American cultures were intellectually equal to European cultures; they could then argue to the pope that these indigenous inhabitants were not fully human and that Europeans were therefore free to do with them and their land as they pleased.227

82

Following the systematic destruction of both the books and the people who

created them, soon the only recorded literature concerning Native Americans was, as

she notes, ‘written and made by non-Indians, who continued to portray indigenous

people as subhumans.’228 It is a quick slide from subhuman to improperly human to

monstrous.

These theorists have demonstrated some of the ways in which racial monstrosity

has occurred and been interrogated. As all of them show, there are grave dangers

associated with the assignation and inhabitation of the terms ‘human’ and ‘monster’ that

go beyond mere semantics. The human monster is not a silly term or a frivolous

association of words, but has had a lingering and odious association that deals with

human rights and the question of survival at a very basic level. The term monster has

been deployed in social and historical contexts in order to effect the subjugation and

disempowerment of various peoples, having been used to enslave, to justify genocide, to

enable a physical and cultural colonisation, and to explain the degradation of other

cultures and beliefs. More broadly, the power of myth to both prefigure and sensitise, to

shape the views of new data in terms of existing stereotypes and stories, has also been

shown to have a lingering impact that has endured into contemporary representations

and understandings of race. In my next section I address more contemporary

understandings of the connection between race and monstrosity, particularly as they

occur in representation and cinema.

Popular Culture and fantasy

‘We live in a time of monsters,’ Jeffrey Jerome Cohen declared in his preface to the

1996 anthology Monster Theory: Reading Culture.229 Our recent history has not

revealed a lessening in the interest in monsters, their prevalence in culture, or the critical

attention paid to them; rather, they continue to be an important element of popular

culture. Not only is popular culture saturated with monsters and monstrosity, but the

mutual construction of these ideas between the media and the public also affects the

broader perception of contemporary monsters and those rendered Other by implication

in this history of abjection and defilement. In this section I will examine some of the

most prominent theorists’ insights into the representation of monster, extraterrestrials,

and aberrant figures in a range of science fiction and horror films. The representation of

monsters in contemporary cinema has been analysed by theorists across a number of

83

different fields and themes, particularly in terms of their gender, sexuality, ethnicity,

and class identities.230 Monsters have also been analysed for the identities that they

imply rather than directly embody. A number of theorists believe that the monster

‘stands in’ for broader societal tensions that are too volatile to be directly addressed on

screen. My interest here is in the connections between depictions of monstrous race and

monstrified ethnicity. Monstrous race and ethnicity in such examples is not often

literally or overtly manifest. Indeed. I will argue that the presence of race frequently

occurs as a ghosted, refracted element, appearing through metonyms or references,

rather than being named explicitly as a normal or human aspect of the monster’s

identity.

Focusing on the allegorical implications of the monster, feminist film theorist

Elizabeth Young views the monster as mediating and facilitating otherwise impossible

representations. Her emphasis is upon the impossibility of directly representing volatile

situations and the necessity of utilising mediated forms. Young offers a sustained

historical and contextualised examination of intermingled race, gender, and sexuality in

Bride of Frankenstein (1935), examining the cultural milieu of lynching and the ‘New

Woman’ in terms of how they are shaped by the figure of the monster. Monsters, she

argues, reflect the mores, compulsions and fears of the era in a refracted manner, so that

Bride of Frankenstein, for example, specifically draws on and embodies a

then-contemporary discourse of race in the United States. The deployment of lynching,

she argues, must be viewed as a violent response of containment and control to political

and social change.

For Young, films such as Bride of Frankenstein and King Kong reflect and

mediate contemporary culture inasmuch as they detail topics too volatile and sensitive

to be directly addressed in mainstream culture. These fantasies necessarily reflect their

environment and milieu by contextualising and grounding them. And the fantastic

structure of such films enables graphic allusions and references to be made without

direct representation. Such films are of their time in the sense that they conform to

contemporaneous tendencies that regulated depictions of race and forbade visualisation

of miscegenation which was taboo. Yet the mediated, non-realistic nature of the film

enables an interrogation of racial inequality and xenophobic impulses in a fantastic

84

register, which at the same time is uncensored in a manner that contemporary social

realist texts could not be.

The dramatic, allegorical and highly mediated form of the monster in Bride of

Frankenstein is, through its extremity and non-realistic nature, able to negotiate

then-contemporary issues, such as the continuation of segregation, in a way that less

fantastic creatures could not in such volatile times. For all its ‘apparent distance from

“reality”’ the film, Young argues, may ‘more fully emblematize the iconography of U.S.

racism than any other film, more openly mimetic, could have in this era.’231

Frankenstein’s Monster, like the consistent critical perception of King Kong as overtly

racialised by other theorists, represents an insurgent and explicit non-white threat.232

For example, in a noteworthy moment in the film when the monster is captured by the

crowds pursuing him,

he is strung up on a tree as an angry cluster of men surrounds him. The image is so shockingly reminiscent of the imagery of lynching that, as with the monster’s ‘blackness,’ the film here radically rewrites boundaries between the ‘fantasy’ of the horror film and the ‘realism’ of other genres.233

The contemporary discourse on lynching was too fresh, too raw and incendiary,

Young believes, to be represented directly, but its influence conditions not just the film

but our reception of it. The film, therefore, ‘could articulate a lynching plot more

vividly through fantasy than could be represented through realism.’234 The monster, in

other words, has been detailed in particular ways that are legible to those familiar with

broader social signifiers, such as the codes surrounding lynching – the burning torches,

the angry mob, the spectacle of violence that coheres in the display of the (often

mutilated and tortured) body of the victim.235

The notion that the racial and sexual tensions of 1930s North America were too

tense and too compulsively inflammatory to be articulated in conventional mainstream

narratives reflects what Cohen has described as the curious sanctity of the monstrous

body. Cohen’s argument that ‘through the body of the monster fantasies of aggression,

domination, and inversion are allowed safe expression in a clearly delineated and

permanently liminal space’ underscores one of the key cultural functions of the

monster – its role as an entity that embodies tension and does so in an already delimited

and sanctioned, individuated space.236 As the representation of Frankenstein’s Monster

85

in Bride of Frankenstein illustrates, dominant cultural concerns may be traced within

these non-realistic and excessive forms. Yet their representation of such concerns

contains the rehearsal of these tensions in a manner that ameliorates the need to directly

address them directly. This does not, however, take the place of direct intervention into

a social issue. The film does not make an explicit and coherent political point; nor does

it function as an unambiguous critique of a volatile racial situation.

One particularly rich and symbolic version of the monster is the alien, a twentieth

century updating of the monster-figure that reveals contemporary obsessions with

technology, exploration and the boundaries of knowledge and humanity. The

monstrous alien is often seen as a ‘neutral’ form of expression, an unmarked and

politically correct foe against which racially and sexually united humans are pitched.237

Braidotti believes that contemporary versions of the monstrous races can be located in

the example of mythological creatures such as the Abominable Snowman and

extraterrestrial aliens. ‘Extraterrestrials, in popular science-fiction literature and films,’

she notes, ‘perpetuate ancient traditions of representing far-away places as monstrously

alien.’238 The reinscription of monstrosity in contemporary terms is debated by

Jeffrey A. Weinstock, who examines depictions of aliens in terms of their relation to

freak discourse and the regimes of voyeuristic depiction of the differently embodied.

He argues that the cultural shifts that rendered the exhibition of the exceptional body for

profit and amusement insensitive and passé in contemporary North America still

permitted the display of freakish difference in outer space. ‘The American freak show

has not disappeared,’ he says, ‘it simply has relocated to “a galaxy far, far away.”’239

This is not a causal relationship or a simple gesture of transference and replacement, as

clearly the monstrous human and the impossibly alien are not commensurable in terms

of the reactions they invoke in the public at large, and neither are there the same

ramifications of living as a freak in contemporary culture to being one on screen.

While Weinstock does not draw attention to this, displays of freakishness are

certainly still evident on an everyday level in America’s talk show culture, in the

public’s fondness for outrageous tabloids, and in the popularity of self-mutilating

techniques such as piercing and body modification. The commodification of difference

is alive and well, only now there is a cachet associated with self-mutilation and a certain

hipness to being an ‘outsider.’ Yet Weinstock’s point concerning the motivated display

86

of difference as aberrant and ‘freakish’ in science fiction cinema is well taken. He

argues that

the alien is never innocent, never totally divorced from real-world politics. As numerous SF critics have observed, “one cannot depict the totally alien.”Extraterrestrials, particularly because they do not exist in the real world outside of the texts and tabloids that give them life, readily become metaphors for terrestrial groups and situations, thereby constructing and reinforcing specific ideological positions.240

Borrowing from Said’s Orientalism, Weinstock coins the term

‘extraterrestrialism,’ which he believes is ‘the process of “othering” that essentializes

alien difference as inferiority.’241 He traces the various deployments of coded racial

formations and identities in the Star Wars series, arguing that they exhibit an

imperialistic view of embodied difference and Third World caricatures.242 He

summarises the racial characteristics of main characters as follows: ‘Chewbacca is

black, Jabba is the “Oriental despot,” and the Ewoks are “primitive” tribal members.’243

In contrast, however, the characters of the Jedi, the peacekeepers of the universe, are

portrayed as uncomplicatedly white and male. Weinstock notes that ‘the serious task of

saving the universe lies with the “normal” white male human,’ whose normality and

whiteness is rendered particularly graphically against the plethora of freakish and

monstrous aliens in the films.244

Like Weinstock, Ed Guerrero, in his chapter ‘Slaves, Monsters, and Others:

Racial Fragment, Metaphor, and Allegory on the Commercial Screen’ in Framing

Blackness: the African American Image in Film, has examined the metaphorical and

refracted depictions of race in fantastic cinema. Focusing on the representation of

African Americans in cinema, Guerrero examines genres and themes ranging from

1970s blaxploitation films to the urban ‘gangsta’ movies popular in the 1990s, and

traces recent developments in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres – including

the way in which race informs and is played out through a variety of stereotypes and

figures of alterity. As with Palencia-Roth and Cassuto, Guerrero is concerned with the

metaphorical and allegorical implications of representations of monsters. Unlike them

he does not deal with an explicitly colonial context or with the transmutation of humans

into monsters. Rather, he examines the racial and ethnic connotations and images of

various monsters, aliens, and other creatures, seeking to interrogate ‘the fantastic

87

depictions of blackness and racial otherness in a broad range of popular science-fiction

and horror films.’245

Guerrero focuses on racial metaphors and narratives in the science fiction, horror,

and fantasy genres, in utopian projections and predictions, in alternate universes and

imagined contemporary realities. In particular, he seeks to demonstrate the presence of

racial formations in more fantastic and non-realistic areas that are often perceived to be

ideologically neutral. He argues that the ‘social construction and representation of race,

otherness, and nonwhiteness is an ongoing process’ that occurs across a range of

‘symbolic, cinematic forms of expression, but particularly in the abundant racialized

metaphors and allegories of the fantasy, sci-fi, and horror genres.’246 Guerrero isolates

these genres for their deployment and rearticulation of stereotypes and well-worn racial

imagery in more improbable and extravagant surroundings. Even when divorced from

more conventional contexts and adherence to realist codes of depiction, Guerrero insists

that racist imagery and clichés do not dissipate, but are repeated and recycled in new

and sometimes surprising ways. This is part of what he terms the ‘ongoing construction

and contestation’ and continuing ‘negotiation of racial images, boundaries, and

hierarchies’ in contemporary North America.247 He believes that the symbolic

resonance of this alterity may be explained in several ways, including

these genres’ dependence on difference or otherness in the form of the monster in order to drive or energize their narratives; the now vast technological possibilities of imagining and rendering of all kinds of simulacra for aliens, monsters, and mutant outcasts, and the like; and the infinite, fantastic narrative horizons and the story worlds possible in these productions.’248

The reliance upon the trope of the monster’s ‘difference or otherness’ for potency

and dynamism, and as source of narrative interest and threat, draws upon cultural mores

and sanctions. These monsters and figures of alterity, Guerrero argues, ‘hold great

possibility for imagining difference and transcoding present-day social anxieties’ by

offering projections of future possibilities and hypotheses, by exaggerating, parodying,

or refracting contemporary locales, behaviour, and situations. As such, they can offer

what he terms ‘quite sharp countercultural critiques of the dominant social policies and

values of the present’ through pointed mimesis and transposed content.249

88

Guerrero’s arguments align with Marina Warner’s consideration of the impact and

resonance of myth in monster discourse. Warner sees the figure of the monster as both

channelling cultural tension and as a primary conduit of the rearticulation of certain

ideas and images. ‘Every telling of a myth is a part of that myth,’ as Warner notes, for

myths do not remain static but are created and reinvented with each recounting.250 The

relevance and continuing appeal of myths, she believes, is that they are ‘not immutable’

and ‘convey values and expectations which are always evolving.’251 Or as she puts it

elsewhere, ‘the meanings of rituals and images change in relation to the social structures

with which they interact.’252

Guerrero is concerned with locating persistent and undesirable stereotypes and

images of racism within ostensibly neutral or metaphorical representations.

He demonstrates convincing links between existing and more patent forms of racism

and fantastic creatures across readings of a number of films, displaying parallels

between historically degrading and ambivalent forms of representation as they are

refracted through the form of the alien. He addresses the spectre of the

‘model minority’ as it is refracted through the hardworking and industrious eponymous

aliens of E.T.: the Extraterrestrial (1982) and The Brother From Another Planet

(1984), as well as the notion of an ethnic minority becoming politicised, tracing the fear

of minorities gaining social and economic power.253 Guerrero also discusses the fear of

difference and unstable borders in explicitly racial terms in the television program Alien

Nation, in which the ramifications of the suspicion towards visually different aliens

residing upon Earth are recycled in terms of ‘a sustained allegory for nonwhite

immigration.’ The story concerns a ‘community of runaway slave-aliens that quickly

grows into a huge population inhabiting its own vast barrio in Los Angeles,’ with the

aliens termed ‘Slags’ and their ghetto ‘Slagtown.’ This depiction, he believes, indicates

‘our culture’s reflex suspicion and contempt for racial otherness, as well as its need for

clearly marked categories and boundaries so intrinsic to hegemonic racial order.’254

One of Guerrero’s most important contributions to theorising race and monstrosity

is his emphasis on the figure of the slave, contrasting more conventional narratives

about race and North America’s relationship with slavery such as The Color Purple

(1985) with Blade Runner (1982), and the science fiction film Planet of the Apes

(1968). Each film contains characters who are virtual or literal slaves, who invoke the

89

recent history of slavery in North America without necessarily referring explicitly to it.

(This strategy is also manifest in The Brother From Another Planet, in which the alien

escapee from another world draws parallels between the life he fled and the situation

depicted in an exhibition on slavery). Yet as Guerrero argues, the more extreme and

fantastic genres also display the kind of racial metaphors and allegorical play found in

realist depictions of contemporary life, thereby highlighting the strength and persistence

of stereotypes and forms of othering in white culture. The strength and endurance of

racial markers as they are rearticulated and reenergised through their retelling is

matched by the resilience of the monster as a sign of functional, embodied difference.

Guerrero’s work demonstrates several crucial points. Firstly, he highlights that

race may be located in areas and forms not conventionally believed to feature racial

formations or signs, or which assume a stance of neutrality. Secondly, he argues that

racial formations are often intimately bound up with designations of adequate humanity

that are frequently couched in terms of monstrosity. Finally, Guerrero points out that

markings and stereotypes of race persist over time, and are reconfigured to fit

contemporary modes of representation and narrative. This point will be more forcefully

argued in terms of the shift towards displays of white monstrosity in later chapters.

In this chapter I turned from a more general exploration of monstrosity to an

examination of the particular connections between historical examples of monstrosity

and contemporaneous configurations of race. In doing so, I examined representations of

the monster and, in a more concrete fashion, the manner in which monstrosity affects

and shapes particular elements of identity and culture, particularly in negative ways. I

sought to outline some of the ways in which seemingly ordinary individuals and

situations are limned by and defined in contrast to more fantastic contours, typically to

their detriment. I focused on examples that link the monster to the production of

marginalised identities, and the ways in which these are articulated through these

monstrifying tropes. In addition, I focused on examples of monstrosity that deviated

from the physical and the visual realms, such as the spiritual, paving the way for the

shifting face of contemporary monstrosity. This different type of monstrosity,

particularly as described by Palencia-Roth, significantly, presages the contemporary

monster that is considered aberrant because he deviates from the normative sanctions

and beliefs governing contemporary white masculinity. In my next chapter, I turn to a

90

consideration of whiteness as a specific racial formation, and examine it in terms of its

assumed privileged and hegemonic status.

91

CHAPTER 4

The Price of the Ticket: Tracing Forms of ‘Whiteness’

In this chapter I turn from an exploration of monstrosity and race to a more specific

focus on race, and whiteness in particular. In the previous two chapters I examined the

figure of the monster, its history and meanings, and the manner in which it reflects the

culture in which it is embedded. I argued that, rather than be seen as a neutral figure,

the monster embodied the anxieties and interests of the age in which it occurred, with

race comprising an important (if not always explicitly articulated) portion of this

configuration. In my exploration of racially delineated monstrosity I focused more on

the way in which race affected the designation of monstrosity and treated race as if it

were a singular and consistent entity. In this chapter, I explore race with a particular

focus on the articulation of whiteness as a specific racial category. I examine whiteness,

the manner in which it is constituted, its function of normativity, and the privileged

status it enjoys, leading to the exploration of the white monster in the final chapters.

The question of what constitutes and defines whiteness is a key issue in

contemporary North American culture, and has been a contested topic in recent critical

race theory. Much time and effort has been spent debating what whiteness ‘is’ and

delineating its parameters. Whiteness, as a racial identity, name, and process, is

inextricably entwined with hegemony, normativity, and the demarcation of appropriate

subject positions. As such, whiteness as a topic for discursive examination focuses

upon questions of privilege and hierarchy in racial designations. In Chapters Two and

Three I explored some of the ways in which race and monstrosity have been linked over

time, most frequently to constitute the stigmatised ‘other’ of whiteness. In critically

interrogating representations of whiteness, this and the following two chapters will

focus on two exemplars of contemporary monstrosity, the serial killer and the high

school killer. Rarely have these figures been examined in terms of race. Nor has their

92

portrayal in media representations sought to correlate their ‘monstrosity’ with their

racial identity. Indeed, the absence of racialised particularity of both serial and high

school killers is a striking evasion of race as a crucial structuring component in the

portrayal of all humans under current representational strategies. In other words, the

depiction of race is a key element of one’s access to humanity. In this chapter, I argue

that racial configurations may be, and are, found within these depictions. And yet the

hegemonic value of whiteness as a neutral, easily passed-over component of identity,

unworthy of comment or attention is an important component of these depictions. It is

therefore vital to interrogate these seemingly empty, impartial spaces of identity as

particular and meaningful.

Before turning to an investigation of case studies of white monstrosity in my final

two chapters, this chapter sets out to question the basis of the assumption that whiteness

simply embodies normativity and privilege. In the context of an examination of the

emergent field of white studies, its core tenets and arguments, I locate several key

moments and dynamics of incoherency, vulnerability, and instability as a way of

dismantling some of the privilege and value surrounding whiteness. These moments of

discursive tension, which Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has termed ‘sites of definitional

creation, violence, and rupture’ in otherwise stable systems, open up a space for the

interrogation and rearticulation of whiteness as a more complicated and malleable

entity.255 My aim is to bring to the fore a much less universal conception of whiteness

than the one that assumes it signifies the normative and the privileged. By illustrating

the consequences of examining racial positioning in terms of the normativity and

privilege operating within white racial designations, I begin to uncover the

heterogeneity of whiteness.

This heterogeneity is made explicit by an exploration of the simultaneous and

entwined projects of making whiteness specific, and, in the terms of influential

whiteness studies theorist Richard Dyer, making whiteness ‘strange.’256 The process of

rendering the normal and the ordinary ‘strange’ which involves locating the alien,

uncanny, and threatening in the everyday, the objective being to denaturalise claims of

neutrality. It undermines the forceful representation of whiteness as average, as the

template of humanity, as the goal and ideal. By exploring some of the multiple

possibilities of negative whiteness, I make whiteness accountable and racially specific.

93

I do this in order to locate the ephemeral, mutable, and disavowed status of whiteness,

while simultaneously grounding whiteness as a distinct and discernible subject position

that effaces its privilege and neutralises a specificity that is nonetheless able to be traced

and named. In an effort to examine some of the ways in which white hegemony is

constructed, I explore the ramifications of locating whiteness in a negative register.

This requires a shift from examining whiteness in terms of invisibility and ‘normality’

to analysing the connection between whiteness, violence, and terror. I sketch the ways

in which whiteness is unsettled or fragmented when it is reconfigured to be perceived as

a cultural construct and an enabling fiction. In the next section I will briefly historicise

and explore shifts in contemporary critical race theory as background to my discussion

of the recent explosion of interest in whiteness.

The Process of Racialisation

The complicated and conflicted production and embodiment of ‘race’ has long

preoccupied North American cultural analysts, who seek to understand the workings of

the institutions and social divisions that have promoted and sustained an

overwhelmingly racially defined and often racist culture. In the United States, race is a

particularly vital and contested topic, and has been the focus of an extraordinary body of

critique and analysis. Much recent academic work, including critical race theory,

pedagogy, history, and psychology, has veered away from purely scientific and

biological understandings in order to emphasise the socially constructed and mutable

character of racial formations and identities. This has resulted in an increased focus on

how the ways that we experience, embody, and understand race are greatly informed by

our contemporary cultural and social milieux.

In contemporary British and North American studies there has been a ‘shift from

treating “race” as an explanatory construct to focusing on racism as a structure and

ideology of domination and exclusion.’257 This change in approach emphasises the

systematic and continuing process of instituting and maintaining unequal and

exclusionary positions and advantages, and the ideological justifications and validations

of these. The recent shift in critical focus to the broader ideological underpinnings and

ramifications of racial prejudice retains the insights gleaned from earlier debates and

investigations, while attempting to work beyond a ‘cause and effect’ model of racism

(which implies that the problem of racism is caused by the race in which its effects are

94

manifest). This means, as Thomas F. Pettigrew argues, that race is seen to be a broader

issue encompassing all members of society, and as such cannot be pinned down to

expressions of racism or what has popularly been called at different historical moments,

in the context of the United States, ‘the colored problem,’ the ‘Negro problem,’ and the

‘black problem.’ The historical attribution of race as a ‘problem’ – and the assignment

of this problem exclusively to those most disadvantaged by then-contemporary laws and

societal regulations – is hardly coincidental. These varying designations all imply ‘that

the issue resides solely with African Americans, as if it were they who caused it and

only they who endured the pain of the nation’s racist heritage.’258 This equation effaces

the mutual implication of conceptions of whiteness in assigning and judging this

‘problem’ of race.

Contemporary theorists have highlighted that race is not an entirely inherent or

natural component of identity, but is created and maintained by a complex set of

intertwined social relations, beliefs, and forces. Although race is neither biologically

determined nor an intrinsic quality of identity it needs to be examined for its significant

role in discursive formations. As Chris J. Cuomo and Kim Q. Hall contend:

[i]n the last decade many scholars of history, sociology, literature, law, and philosophy have begun articulating and analyzing a fact that anthropologists have acknowledged for half a century and that some people have always known – that racial categories are socially constructed and contextually defined.259

Race, in other words, is an important element of contemporary identity and

social organisations, but is neither purely biologically determined or an intrinsic quality

of identity. Filtered through social conventions, modes of apprehension, and cultural

representations, ‘race’ is in part socially determined and comprehended.

This change in perspective enables what Rodolfo D. Torres, Louis F. Mirón, and

Jonathon Xavier Inda term the recognition of ‘racialization’, that is, the exploration of

… ‘race’ in terms of processes rather than as a natural category. In short, [racialisation] calls attention to the ways in which ‘race’ is always actively constructed, to how its referents are inherently unstable, thus making ‘it’ open to multiple meanings.260

Racialisation is an important consideration as it creates a discursive space for

intervention and reconfiguration as it denaturalises race. The destabilisation of race

95

does not imply that it is dispensed with as a concept to be critically interrogated, that

(borrowing from Cornel West) race no longer ‘matters.’261 As Deutscher argued, and I

discussed in Chapter One, efficacious functioning in discourse isn’t reliant upon

stability and coherence, and that being deconstructible doesn’t mean that race is a

‘discardable fictio[n].’262 Indeed, if anything there has been an intensification of

academic interest in race in recent times, and indeed recent proliferation of analyses of

whiteness in all its permutations illustrates that race remains a valid and compelling site

of inquiry. Irrespective of current critical attention, however, the mobility of race

cannot be said to be an accepted or widespread cultural truism or belief. While the

meaning and experience of ‘race’ may alter over time, individuals have a clear

investment in perceiving race as unchanging and ahistorical. The perpetuation of

hegemonic forms of race relies, in part, upon its perceived immutability and static

nature.

Whiteness Studies: Overview and Underpinnings

‘Whiteness,’ as Mike Hill noted in his introduction to Whiteness: A Critical Reader, ‘is

a distinct and relatively recent historical fiction.’263 The critical examination of

whiteness is a necessarily fragmented and heterogeneous field of analysis, drawing its

contributors from, to name a few disciplines, comparative literature, anthropology,

ethnicity studies, gender studies, education, psychology, popular media studies, and

philosophy. The interdisciplinary status of most of the material reveals the multiple and

overlapping spheres and interests shared by theorists. The breadth, quality, and

originality of these studies, crossing the popular/academic divide as well as disciplinary

boundaries means it is possible here only to sketch some of the major trends (such as the

denaturalisation of whiteness and the interrogation of the term ‘white trash’) subtending

these disparate works. This sketch will provide a context for the points I will later use

to examine contemporary examples of whiteness.

The editors of the collection Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society

have noted the relatively late emergence of whiteness as topic for investigation. It was

not until the early 1990s that notable attention and interest began to be paid in an

organised and concentrated fashion to whiteness as a racial configuration and a

delineated discourse with its own boundaries and terminology.264 Playing in the Dark:

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, a collection of speeches published by

96

noted African American author and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison in 1992, was a key

text in marshalling interest in whiteness and in arguing for the notion of whiteness to be

addressed in its representational complexity.265 A rumination in part on the effaced yet

crucially formative presence of African American culture in North American literature,

Morrison’s work traced the reliance of white literature on the trope of blackness – often

articulated as the structuring absence of African Americans – and called for an

interrogation into forms of whiteness in order to undermine the presumption of primacy

and import that undergirds these texts.266

In the same year that Morrison’s Playing in the Dark was published, critical race

and cultural theorist bell hooks appealed for an end to the interrogation of black culture

by white historians and academics without a nuanced and intensive location of their

own culture as participating in racism and ethnocentrism.267 Morrison’s and hooks’

petitions to subject white culture to scrutiny have been widely and enthusiastically

embraced by a range of academics working in different areas, employing varying

methodologies and investigating divergent fields of interest. A sample of some recent

entries in white studies reveals the ways in which a broad array of theorists have aimed

to name, decentre, and rearticulate white hegemony and white privilege, primarily

through strategically locating and specifying previously conventionally neutralised and

naturalised power relations. White; White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race;

The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class;

Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical Reflections – these works reflect a concentrated

effort by theorists to grasp and investigate the often elusive way that whiteness

conditions, organises, and transforms social relations and lived experiences.268

The central preoccupation unifying the disparate approaches and authors involved

in whiteness studies is the exploration and interrogation of the parameters of racial

status, normativity, and privilege. In tracing the increasing academic interest in white

studies – which, as he notes, has been accompanied by a simultaneous rise in

explorations of contemporary whiteness in the popular media – Henry A. Giroux has

observed that in the 1990s theorists began interrogating whiteness on multiple levels

and in a variety of forms as a ‘social, cultural, and historical construction.’269 The

emergent field of whiteness studies described by Giroux builds on the history of efforts

to define and transform the debilitating effects of racism in the United States, and is

97

reliant on modes of self-interrogation and personalised narratives. As a component of

critical race theory, and a field that has been influenced by movements such as

post-colonial theory, feminism, and Marxism, whiteness studies shares a commitment to

rethinking and destabilising oppressive power structures and stereotypes through a

systemic interrogation of personal and societal values and beliefs.270

Yet when the field emerged in the 1990s it was at a point when, while many other

important components of subjectivity were questioned and interrogated in academia

(including issues concerning civil rights, feminism, sexuality, and disability), a systemic

approach to investigating whiteness was largely glossed over in favour of a focus on the

disenfranchised.271 In an academic climate characterised by the widespread

denaturalisation of hierarchies and questioning of privilege, the editors of Off White:

Readings on Race, Power, and Society have noted that the critical focus on whiteness

‘as race, as privilege, as social construction’ has been ‘[s]trikingly absent’ from the

discourses and discussions that conventionally examine multiple and interconnected

components of subject creation, oppression, and inequity, such as debates about

multiculturalism and gender studies.272 They view the omission of whiteness as a topic

of interest as a glaring oversight by ‘both conservatives and liberals’ who have, in

different ways,

so fetishized ‘people of color’ as the ‘problem to be understood’ that whiteness, in all its glistening privilege, has evaporated beyond study.One of the ironies of white power is the ability to escape social and intellectual surveillance.273

Academics addressing race frequently did so from a race-neutral perspective, or

failed to consider whiteness at all. Given the extent that, given the enormous amount of

academic and popular fascination with and urgent debate over issues of race and racism,

that the sheer quantity of material generated glossed over or left whiteness unquestioned

seems surprising.274 The opportunities, identities, and privilege enabled by specific

formations of whiteness were consistently undermined and negated as specifically

racial. Instead, when racism and racial issues were debated, only the identities and

moments most negatively affected by this interaction were discussed, so that the

institutions and individuals perpetrating the instances and systems of inequity and abuse

were not subject to the same levels of interrogation and analysis. Whiteness, in short,

98

was never considered by white theorists to be an active component or critical focus of

the ‘race problem.’

My point here, however, is not to devalue the importance of scholarly work on a

diverse range of ethnic and racial positions and considerations, nor do I contend that

whiteness be analysed in preference to other forms of identity. Rather, I would argue

that whiteness needs to be considered as a part of any racial critique insofar as it

remains the implicit norm or ‘preferred’ racial classification, and it is critical to analyse

whiteness in terms of how it both participates in and conditions other forms of

domination and the marginalisation of other viewpoints, subjects, cultures, from

homophobia to misogyny.275 Ruth Frankenberg articulates this guiding impulse of

clarification and exploration as the drive to ‘examin[e] how white dominance is

rationalized, legitimized, and made ostensibly normal and natural,’ frequently through

‘the “revealing” of the unnamed – the exposure of whiteness masquerading as

universal.’276 This struggle to name and investigate the manner in which whiteness

functions as the universal standard for ‘race’ in North America is a major theme in

much critical work on white ethnicity. It has been a central insight of whiteness studies

that whiteness, when not the explicit subject of racial discourse, is often left as a

monolithic, homogenous sphere, implicitly separate from any other issues under

consideration. The editors of Off White contend that whiteness is generally assumed to

be and represented as though it

embodies objectivity, normality, truth, knowledge, merit, motivation, achievement, and trustworthiness; it accumulates invisible supports that contribute unacknowledged to the already accumulated and bolstered capital of whiteness. Rarely, however, is it acknowledged that whiteness demands and constitutes hierarchy, exclusion, and deprivation.277

‘To ignore white ethnicity,’ as Coco Fusco has said, ‘is to redouble its hegemony

by naturalizing it.’278 The awareness and interrogation of effaced whiteness, which

Clyde R. Taylor describes as part of the recent emphasis on strategies of

denaturalisation within critical theory, follows the exploration of other hegemonic forms

and schemas such as heterosexuality and masculinity as normative and regulatory.279

Building from these examples, whiteness studies highlights the necessity of examining

the dominant or hegemonically privileged racialised term ‘whiteness’ as a crucial

constitutive element of discourse and marginalisation. The seeming transparency,

99

universality, and ordinary status of the term often work to efface the complexity and

ambiguity already attending and conditioning whiteness as a racial signifier.

Like other hegemonic terms and subject positions such as heterosexuality or

masculinity, whiteness is already a site of contestation and resistance, and is open to

resignification.280 Making whiteness available for scrutiny as a specific racial formation

and foregrounding the way that whiteness informs previously unexamined aspects of

existence are key strategies within white studies, as they combat the prevalent

perception of whiteness as a crucial yet frequently unstated component of subjectivity,

as the unspoken ‘template’ of humanity. Whiteness studies theorists have engaged in

what Giroux describes as a project to:

… locate ‘whiteness’ as a racial category and to analyze it as a site of privilege, power, and ideology, but also to examine critically how ‘whiteness’ as a racial identity is experienced, reproduced, and addressed.281

The focus on whiteness as not just a designation and idea but as an embodied and

negotiated identity is a crucial factor in the varied approaches to understanding

whiteness. Theorists working in the field have examined the ways in which whiteness,

as name, cultural force, and configuration, institutes and maintains hierarchical relations

and differences between individuals, and links privilege, exclusion, and neutrality

across damaging and stratifying embodied experiences. The titles of texts such as

White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America; The Possessive Investment in

Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics; and Off White: Readings

on Race, Power, and Society illustrate how theorists in recent years have conceptualised

whiteness in strategic terms, as both broadly implicated in relations of power and

subjectivity and yet as open to intervention and transformation.282 White ethnicity is

theorised as being located in various and simultaneous forms across institutions,

lifestyles, types of knowledge, and processes of identification. Michael Eric Dyson has

usefully categorised the three main areas of interest and intervention in white studies as

identity, ideology, and institutions – a description that encapsulates many of the

multiple, systemic and entwined areas of domination, regulation, and embodiment that

are so crucial to the varied and complicated experience and manifestations of whiteness.

A substantial portion of whiteness studies focuses on broad ideological critiques

that examine what Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg term ‘the various ways

100

that social forces, including language, knowledge, and ideology, shape white identity

and positionality.’283 These range from analyses of connections between whiteness,

national identity, citizenship and the law, to the contention that burgeoning white

ethnicity was an important, if often unacknowledged, component that helped to

construct and cohere working class identity, to the self-perpetuating advantages for

white North Americans suggested in Lipsitz’s title The Possessive Investment in

Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics.284 These broad approaches

offer a way to connect the strategies and power relations behind racial formations to

other components of identity such as class and gender, often in fruitful ways. Yet the

scope of these analyses of systemic tendencies and relations is increasingly

accompanied by localised attention paid to specific issues, eras, tensions, and events.

The need to personalise and rupture dominant categories is a hallmark of white

studies, with many approaches to whiteness attempting to fracture its hegemonic

positioning, and combat the widespread tendency to perceive white racial identity as

ahistorical and unchanging, by investigating how it is played out across diverse eras or

locales in more localised and historically grounded testimonies and accounts.285 This

accords with the way many feminist theorists have argued, who propose that to focus on

singular issues of identity ignores the multiple axes upon which identities are founded

and derive signification.286 Feminists of colour, in particular, have long argued for a

more complex approach to subject creation that is flexible enough to countenance

multiple and often contradictory elements, and that is capable of allowing for the

shifting and multivalenced relations of power that exist between individuals.

Sherene H. Razack has argued that a nuanced and more flexible approach to complexly

structured subjectivity is possible through examining multiple and interconnected forms

of oppression and marginalisation, rather than singular (and falsely isolated) strands of

identity. When investigating ‘the idea of interlocking systems of domination,’ she says,

‘I came to see that each system of oppression relied on the other to give it meaning, and

that this interlocking effect could only be traced in historically specific ways.’287

Whiteness:

A number of theorists locate the conditional social, performed, and embodied dynamics

of whiteness as a key component of their analysis of the term. Ian F. Haney López, for

example, believes that ‘[b]eing White is not a monolithic or homogenous experience,’

101

but rather that it is ‘contingent, changeable, partial, inconstant, and ultimately social.

As a descriptor and as an experience, “White” takes on highly variegated nuances across

the range of social axes and individual lives.’288 In other words, whiteness is partially

constituted through its specific cultural and temporal parameters, and the experience of

whiteness is reliant upon many other factors. The value ascribed to whiteness and

experiences of it differ not only across nations and historical periods, but also within,

for example, a single country or a limited time frame, and across gradations of class,

gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and expressions of physical ability.289

Given its simultaneous variability and dominance, whiteness as ‘race’ needs to be

contextualised and historicised. It is also important to trace whiteness as both mutable

and contingent and yet specific and recognisable within each historical and social

context. As Kincheloe and Steinberg argue:

[w]hiteness cannot be separated from hegemony and is profoundly influenced by demographic changes, political realignments, and economic cycles. Situationally specific, whiteness is always shifting, always reinscribing itself around changing meanings of race in the larger society.290

Torres, Mirón, and Inda’s understanding of race as a continually enacted and

negotiated substance or idea, not a stable biological or natural category, enables a

critical space in which to interrogate the many strands of culture and identity that

coalesce and are influenced by broader social patterns and environments, and are open

to intervention. This focus on ‘racialisation’ is reflected widely in white ethnicity

studies, and undergirds many critical approaches within this area. The recent shift

towards perceiving race as a process, system, and idea is reflected in the difficulty of

determining and detailing what ‘whiteness’ is, while also foregrounding the importance

of investigating it for a number of reasons.

Many academic discussions grapple with the evanescence and mobility of

whiteness, and with the variety of forms it has assumed across time.291 That

contemporary whiteness is both ambiguous and open to contestation generates, rather

than diminishes, its scope, resilience, and relevance within culture. To locate the

fictional and impermanent elements of race and to ground whiteness within a

denaturalised sphere of ideology and cultural signification does not reduce its impact

and importance as an organising idea and ingrained, lived reality.292 Indeed, this

102

ambiguity and instability provides much of the rationale behind investigations of

whiteness, as it is in part its ephemeral and mutable nature that has enabled whiteness to

accrue such cultural capital and its hegemonic status.

In a broader context, the notion of whiteness, as a dominant yet mutable

subject position and manifestation of ideological and social compulsions has mediated

and helped to condition national and individual identity. Several theorists argue that

the history of race in the United States is inextricably bound up with the question of

whiteness, particularly when refracted through examples such as restricted

naturalisation and citizenship, individuals’ legal status and access to rights, segregation

and slavery, and the colonisation of Native inhabitants.

In this context, in his discussion of the mobility of whiteness in North America in

Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race,

Jacobson dissects the United States’ ‘melting pot’ myth and reveals the strategic

assumption of an identity of whiteness as a precondition for full access to constitutional

privilege in the construction of ‘American’ national identity. He notes, for example,

that the first naturalisation law of 1790 specified that citizenship be restricted to ‘free

white persons.’293 The collective and legal understandings of what constituted ‘white’

identity, however, changed radically from era to era, and topical classifications

gradually melded into the contemporary (and still erroneous) term ‘Caucasian’ that

encompasses previous differentiating appellations such as ‘Nordic, Anglo-Saxon, Celt,

Slav, Alpine, [and] Hebrew.’ Jacobson notes that these transformations did not occur

quickly or deliberately, but took place gradually, as the ‘vicissitudes of race represent

glacial, nonlinear cultural movements.’294 Arguing that specific and highly determined

systematic exclusion was key to the creation of constitutional rights and the parameters

of citizenship, Jacobson attests that ‘inclusions and exclusions based on whiteness did

not contradict, but rather constituted, republican principles’295 – so much so that in

practice the idea of citizenship became thoroughly entwined with the idea of

‘“whiteness” (and maleness).’296 This identity was most clearly delineated through

participation in highly racialised practices such as the overtly aggressive and ongoing

quelling of any potential and actual slave rebellions, and the punitive treatment of

Native American resistance to colonisation, but was also found in more subtle and

insidious arenas, such as forms of political representation.

103

David R. Roediger is careful to elucidate that highlighting that race is socially

constructed does little to negate the impact of racism in everyday life as it traces

contemporary fears, anxieties, and understandings of social position, gender and

sexuality, the body, and class.297 However, the work of Roediger, Haney López, and

Eric Lott demonstrates powerfully the mutable and historically sensitive permutations of

race, and of whiteness in particular. The ways in which markers of whiteness have

altered over time ranges from the different ethnic groups that have been considered

white (for example, immigrants of Italian, Irish, and Polish descent have been granted or

denied access to whiteness in different historical periods) to acceptable customs and

behaviours that require a white referent for legitimacy (such as the traditions of

minstrelsy and blackface). More personal and individual markers have included visible

physical characteristics such as clothing and hairstyles, and extend to speech,

characteristics, and behaviour. Contemporary forms of whiteness, as George Lipsitz

argues, always reflect then-current society. These whitenesses are

… not simply the residue of conquest and colonialism, of slavery and segregation, of immigrant exclusion and ‘Indian’ extermination. Contemporary whiteness and its rewards have been created and recreated by policies adopted long after the emancipation of slaves in the 1860s and even after the outlawing of de jure segregation in the 1960s. There has always been racism in the United States, but it has not always been the same racism. Political and cultural struggles over power have shaped the contours and dimensions of racism differently in different eras.298

The meanings and attributes connected to whiteness, though contingent and

mobile, are not arbitrary. Race is never just a neutral name for a particular ethnic group

or a scientific designation, but is always positioned within and known through culture,

and is marshalled for specific purposes. The resources and advantages accrued in

society from being or appearing to be ‘white’ are often enormous, despite the

fundamental instability and vagueness of the term. Dyer has proposed that it is, in part,

the very ambiguity of the term and concept ‘whiteness’ that enables it to posses and

wield such hegemonic power. As Dyer suggests, the flexibility and broadness of the

term is paradoxically one of whiteness’ greatest strengths, as it is defined both through

processes of exclusion (most often in terms of who is not white) and explicit

demarcations of hierarchically arranged deviation from the norm (in the form of

gradations of acceptability).299 In addition, its fragility and permeability partially enable

104

the hegemonic and monolithic status of whiteness, as it is continually reconfigured to

remain contemporary and hierarchically dominant. That is, the inconsistency and

ambiguity of hegemonic whiteness requires, and yet is sustained by, continual renewal

and reinvocation, as part of the discursive negotiation of constantly changing cultural

terrain. This resignification occurs through a variety of discursive strategies, including

the absorption and appropriation of opposition and resistance through imitation, through

stripping racial and ethnic signifiers of political meanings or fetishising them as

‘exotica.’300

The Price of the Ticket:

To focus on the underside of privilege opens up a space in which to examine identities,

behaviours, and institutions previously considered monolithic and naturalised. Though

all subject positions are marked by power relations, dominant forms, such as whiteness,

are more difficult to articulate and analyse due to their status as frequently centralised

and neutralised within discourse. When these identities and positions are marked and

named as normative and invisible, it is harder to trace the ways that they exhibit signs of

construction, precisely because they are the standards against which the deviant and the

different are measured. It is by locating the points of indecision and tension, and

analysing the constitutive ‘price’ of these moments that we gain some critical purchase

on this slippery terrain. This generative cost, and the system of exclusion, denial, and

absence to which it gives rise, will provide much of the focus of this chapter.

To this end, I begin with a comment from noted African American author and

cultural critic James Baldwin that I find coheres and provocatively restates a central

paradox of whiteness. Baldwin observes that

part of the price of the black ticket is involved – fatally – with the dream of becoming white. This is not possible, partly because white people are not white: part of the price of the white ticket is to delude themselves into believing that they are.301

This provocative claim was made in his autobiographical 1985 article ‘The Price

of the Ticket,’ and although Baldwin’s central topic was a personal account of

negotiating racism in the United States, not an interrogation of whiteness per se, he

touched upon the tenuous, aspirational status of whiteness in an illuminating fashion.

As Baldwin suggests, there is an implicit cost to any name or marker of a subject

105

position. There is thus a ‘price’ to whiteness, a charge for privilege that is, in part, the

continuous investment needed to maintain the hegemonic positioning and cultural

relevance of whiteness. I believe that this provocative notion of a constitutive fee or

investment offers a way to theorise some of the limits and costs of belonging to a

hegemonic group or possessing a privileged identity, an idea that goes against the grain

of many understandings of whiteness.

Baldwin argues that racial configurations in North America have been structured

by the very unrealisability of the ‘dream’ of becoming white, which conditions both

white and non-white identities. In a point that I will return to later, Baldwin

conceptualises whiteness as mutable, precarious, and fictional. This gesture to

denaturalise the power understood to emanate from whiteness allows discursive

intervention into whiteness as a social, and not strictly biological or physical, category;

as Matthew Frye Jacobson concisely observed, ‘race resides not in nature but in politics

and culture.’302 The conventional effacement of this price and its debilitating effects in

culture is a quintessential element of the potency of whiteness as a generative illusion.

Baldwin, as noted, undercuts the potency of whiteness by insisting that it has vulnerable

points. He also demonstrates that access to white privilege occurs at the expense of

other refuted or denied identifications and possibilities that are implicitly contained

within whiteness. Baldwin’s focus on the price of the white ticket illustrates that no

matter how significant the benefits associated with a belief or position may be, there are

inherent limitations to these formulations.303

Judith Butler argues for a similar conceptualisation of the inhabitation of positions

of privilege when, in Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex,’ she argues

that ‘there is a cost in every identification’ that includes ‘the loss of some other set of

identifications’ as a constitutive element of identity creation.304 Butler, who draws on a

range of philosophical, psychoanalytic, and legal texts in her influential analyses of

contemporary power relations and subjectivity, argues that identity is, in part,

constituted through the repeated approximation of a set of norms and cultural values.

As I outlined in my first chapter, Butler’s work addresses the ongoing tension between a

dominant and a marginalised identity, with a focus on the potential for the disruption of

hegemonic and seemingly inevitable subject positions. In doing so, Butler explores the

range of possible identities that lie outside the officially recognised scope of acceptable

106

subjects. Butler’s work is particularly useful in reconfiguring white identity as less than

impermeable and total, as fissured rather than monolithic, particularly given that Butler

consistently focuses on ‘repetitions of hegemonic forms of power which fail to repeat

loyally and, in that failure, open possibilities for resignifying the terms of violation

against their violating aims.’305 Whiteness, much like Butler’s examples of gender and

sexuality, is also structured by its relationship to a series of norms that require constant

reinscription.

The process of neutralisation

A lack of recognition of substantial and systemically instituted differences between

individuals denies the importance of constitutive access to resources, opportunities, and

privilege in subject creation. A neutralisation of specific (and frequently debilitating)

individuating processes, and a homogenisation of the various possible positions along

axes of privilege, belonging, and security, occurs when there is no adequate means of

registering this difference, for ‘[w]ithout history and social context, each encounter

between unequal groups becomes a fresh one, where the participants start from zero.’306

This is tantamount, as Razack says, to endorsing the ‘widely held belief that relations

between dominant and subordinate groups can be unmarked by histories of

oppression.’307 This effaces the ingrained and operational systems undergirding the

constitution of these identities and positions, and further neutralises white dominance.308

The multiple and particular forms of privilege that attend subject positions, names, and

locations must be specified in order not only to account for variances in white privilege

but also to highlight historicity and accountability. Whiteness achieves differing

qualities and strengths, and operates under mobile imperatives according to cultural

contextualisation.

Recent work in ethnicity studies has focused on concepts of invisibility,

categorisation, and accountability, with an emphasis on the naming and specification of

whiteness as hegemonic and a neutralised norm. Whiteness, as Dyer wrote in an

early and influential article, is ‘everything and nothing,’ and he believes that this

flexibility comprises ‘the source of [whiteness’] representational power.’309 This

ostensible transparency and unaccountability is, paradoxically, a distinguishing

characteristic of whiteness.310 As Dyer noted in his book White,

107

[w]hiteness must be seen to be white, yet whiteness as race resides in invisible properties and whiteness as power is maintained by being unseen. To be seen as white is to have one’s corporeality registered, yet true whiteness resides in the non-corporeal ... White is both a colour and, at once, not a colour and the sign of that which is colourless because it cannot be seen: the soul, the mind, and also emptiness, non-existence and death.311

The effacement of whiteness as racially specific is achieved in part by the appeal

to universality in concepts, actions, and attitudes, in conjunction with the simultaneous

massive specification of other races precisely as othered, marginalised, known, and

located.

Kincheloe and Steinberg trace the presumed ‘universal’ status of whiteness to

Enlightenment principles of rationality and objectivity. Dyer’s view of the ‘everything

and nothing’ quality of whiteness, its implication as both template and ideal for

humanity, is echoed in Kincheloe and Steinberg’s perception of ‘the privileged

construction of a transcendental, white, male, rational subject who operated at the

recesses of power while at the same time giving every indication that he escaped the

confines of time and space.’312 This subject, in other words, is situated in a highly

determined and advantageous nexus of power relations. Whiteness, in this context,

becomes ‘a norm that represents an authoritative, delimited, and hierarchical mode of

thought,’ structuring others in relation to (or from) it. Furthermore,

the encounter with whiteness would be framed in rationalistic terms – whiteness representing orderliness, rationality, and self-control and non-whiteness indicating chaos, irrationality, violence, and the breakdown of self-regulation.313

Goldberg echoes this connection between rationality and race, and argues that the

stakes of the definition of whiteness include access to full humanity. He believes that

… just as ideals of rationality are gender constructed as predominantly male, so, too, are they racially constructed as exclusively white. Historically, various sorts of racially defined non-Europeans, and more recently ‘non-Westerners,’ have been excluded on racial grounds from membership (or at least full membership) in the human species.314

As I argued in my previous chapter, race and markers of acceptable humanity are

entwined, and Goldberg notes that it is not a coincidence that whiteness is the

racial designation that stands in as the template for the appropriately human. For Dyer,

whiteness frequently, and most damagingly, has taken the place of the template, of

108

assuming ‘the human,’ in much Western discourse.315 He notes the paradoxical status

of whiteness as implicit but unnamed, as a distinguishing characteristic:

[a]s long as race is something only applied to non-white peoples, as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people.316

This formulation of ‘we are just people’ is, in its simplicity, an important

component of white normativity. Within this formulation of non-white all ‘Others’ are

homogenised in relation to a central white norm.317 This process of normalisation and

neutralisation that conditions and absorbs so much of white discourse is of crucial

importance to considerations of ‘appropriate’ identity, designations of humanity, and

possible subject positions. The splintering and denaturalisation of whiteness as a way to

organise potential types of knowledge and subjects thus hinges on an effort to

particularise whiteness, in its manifest forms, its average and unique status, and its

complex and entwined relations to other forms of privilege and domination.

Whiteness, in its complexity and multiplicity of forms, is inextricably bound up

with processes of normalisation and stigmatisation. Normativity conditions whiteness

in several ways. These include the hierarchical positioning of subjects from the

white norm, of perceiving difference from this white norm as ‘deviance’ and

negative difference, and as frequently generalising this difference into an ‘otherness’

opposed to the norm. Whiteness, as several theorists including Dyer argue, is structured

in part not by a white/other race formula, but a white/non-white mode of exclusion.

An example of this strategic admission to whiteness is the ambiguous ‘one drop’ rule

that was operational in the United States for many years, dictating that anyone with

even ‘one drop’ of ‘black blood’ was legally and in official terms excluded from being

considered white. Much like binaries analysed in deconstructive texts, in this example

whiteness gains a primacy at the expense of the other derogated and effaced term, yet

denies mutual constitution.

The process of normalisation is implicated in the white subject’s constitution as a

subject. As discussed in my first chapter, Butler explores some of the implications of

the normalising structures and imperatives that occupy the subject’s social and psychic

life. The call to repeat the normative injunction, the impossibility of doing this, and the

space opened by the subject’s negotiation of this compulsion, locate a sphere of agency

109

and identity formation that can be investigated and reworked in order to help unravel

privilege. Butler notes that we are all positioned at the intersecting nexus of various

strands of identity, and we are constituted as much by what we exclude and disavow as

by what we incorporate and appropriate. This, which Butler terms the ‘founding

repudiation’ of the subject as it is ‘constituted through the force of exclusion and

abjection,’ operates as one mode in which Baldwin’s notion of the price of the white

ticket is graphically articulated.318 This price, moreover, is a constitutive element of

whiteness as a viable subject position, encapsulating what the subject must forego in

order to be a subject. Baldwin argues that whiteness is constituted as much by what the

individual forsakes – such as ties to specific communities, or a commitment to a less

oppressive racial order – as by what they choose. One marker of this process begins, he

believes, with immigrants jettisoning overtly ethnic surnames upon arrival in the United

States, a symbolic divestiture of ties with the past and a sign of the forging of a new

identity.319 Whiteness is also constituted by what is necessarily denied in order to be a

viable subject – the ideological imperatives that constrain the articulation of the subject,

such as an identification with race, gender, and sexuality. This cost, or set of possible

identifications, is not to imply that whiteness is easily or arbitrarily chosen and

demonstrated; there are far too many tragic examples of ‘improper’ and liminal

racialisation, from minstrelsy to ‘passing,’ to suggest that racial designations and beliefs

can be easily undermined or decided.

Resistance to, and destabilisation of, power relations are located in not only the

recognition of this compulsion to re-enact this interpellative call, but as Butler shows, in

the sphere of ambivalence in the moment prior to repeating the normative injunction,

and in the inevitably and constitutively unfaithful mimesis of that ideal.320 This

insertion of a space for incoherence and disobedience, for unfaithful mimesis and

disloyalty to the normative system that generates these names and ideals, in part enables

the critique of white ethnicity. In addition, ‘identification is always an ambivalent

process,’ Butler argues,

because there is a cost in every identification, the loss of some other set of identifications, the forcible approximation of a norm one never chooses, a norm that chooses us, but which we occupy, reverse, resignify to the extent that the norm fails to determine us completely.321

110

The necessary ambivalence of identification opens up a space in which

the constant reiteration of the call to repeat these norms is unsuccessful, yet this does

not deny the efficacy of these norms. The potency of the white norm and its connection

to dominance and marginalisation are key factors of white hegemony.

Whiteness is generated and sustained in ways that frequently rely on and produce

hegemony and domination. Whiteness, as Kincheloe and Steinberg note, is inextricably

bound up with the intimate experience of hegemony as a crucial structuring component

of constituting whiteness. They argue that ‘[w]hiteness cannot be separated from

hegemony and is profoundly influenced by demographic changes, political

realignments, and economic cycles.’322 Very specific white identities are formed

precisely through access to dominance, resources, and privilege, whereas those that are

marginalised by other components of subjectivation, such as class, gender, and

sexuality, are marked and comprehended through their stigmatising difference from the

‘appropriate’ and centralised white norm.323 Violent hierarchisation and marginalisation

produces a continuum of norms and differences, structured and maintained by

perceived insufficiency and distance.

Yet this assumption must be qualified, for as Frankenberg remarks of whiteness in

her introduction to Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism,

‘hegemony is never complete, never uniform.’324 White normativity, as Frankenberg

suggests, is not a seamless, flawless entity. There is a spectrum of possible and enacted

versions of whiteness, and some of these whitenesses have demonstrable negative

associations or are consistently represented in negative ways. While ‘poor white trash’

is perhaps the most obvious example of this complication of hegemony, others are

considered to be more the source of great ridicule, such as white youth who are so

invested in African American culture that they imitate and absorb it to a seemingly

laughable degree, and as such are called ‘wiggas.’325

This view of malleable whiteness/es enables a welcome emphasis on the

possibilities for interrogating the dynamics of racial representation. Frankenberg

believes that whiteness is ‘historically constructed and internally differentiated.

Whiteness as process is seen to be contested and contestable,’ yet she also retains an

awareness of ‘the fundamental coconstitution of whiteness and racial domination.’326

111

Hegemonic depictions of whiteness depend in part upon whiteness’ own internal

‘other,’ most notably in the form of ‘poor white trash,’ an example that I will discuss

later. With this focus on the operations of privilege in mind, I turn to a discussion of the

presumed universality and benign ‘invisibility’ of whiteness in various areas and forms.

Ordinary and Banal Whiteness

As I have indicated, whiteness is perceived and understood in culture as not just

hegemonic and dominant, but as the template and in effect ‘default setting’ for

humanity. Additionally, it forms the bland, everyday, and ordinary facets of

‘humanity’ – indeed, this seeming banality is one of whiteness’ most efficacious means

of achieving predominance and neutrality. Whiteness is typically seen as not just

average, but as ‘unremarkable,’ ‘an essential feature of everyday life and yet

unaccountable.’327 Critical attempts to undermine claims to the essential, inherent,

immobile status of racial identities often interrogate the manner in which race is

engrained in quotidian and banal ways through tracing specific historical examples and

cultural contextualisation. Various critical race theorists and historians have examined

alterations in racial designations over time, assessing changes in scientific approaches to

race and examining how race functions in tandem with other forms of identity.328 In

doing so they have traced the mutability of socially inscribed meanings of race and

underscored the importance played by ‘race’ in our daily lives. Thus the editors of Off

White believe that ‘few have sought to unravel the very raced hierarchies that shape our

schools, communities, social research, political movements, and our sexual lives.’ This

broad range of interests and the quotidian scope of ways in which whiteness affects and

conditions existence underscores the banality of whiteness, implicating the engrained,

everyday sense of whiteness in a general inability to perceive whiteness as racially

specific, and as race.

We are asked to inscribe and perform our race in a multitude of ways every day,

from choosing a designation when filling in official forms, to being confronted with the

palette of colours for makeup and hair dye. These are, of course, some of the less

innocuous forms of racialisation, and are not on the same level of visible inequity as

being passed over for promotions or not receiving the same wages as other (usually

white) employees, nor being the subject of vicious, racist attacks and assaults. Yet

these examples illustrate some of the multiple ways in which racial designations and

112

processes of racialisation inform and condition daily lived experience. Lipsitz focuses

with remarkable intensity on the material benefits gained from participating in what he

terms the social and cultural ‘possessive investment’ in white subjectivity. He charts

whiteness through its material impact on everyday life and lived experience, from

available housing and hostile living environments (that is, those most subject to

pollution and crime), through educational possibilities and resources, to popular culture

imagery and stereotypes. Outlining the central concerns of his text The Possessive

Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics, Lipsitz

argues that ‘both public policy and private prejudice have created a

‘possessive investment in whiteness’ that is responsible for the racialized hierarchies of

our society.’ He continues that

[w]hiteness has a cash value; it accounts for advantages that come to individuals through profits made from housing secured in discriminatory markets, through unequal educations allocated to children of different races, through insider networks that channel employment opportunities to the relatives and friends of those who have profited most from present and past racial discrimination, and especially through intergenerational transfers of inherited wealth that pass on the spoils of discrimination to succeeding generations … white Americans are encouraged to invest in whiteness, to remain true to an identity that provides them with resources, power, and opportunity. This whiteness is, of course, a delusion, a scientific and cultural fiction that like all racial identities has no valid foundation in biology or anthropology. Whiteness is, however, a social fact, an identity created and continued with all-too-real consequences for the distribution of wealth, prestige, and opportunity.329

In focussing on banal and embodied experiences, Lipsitz offers a rigorous account

of the multiple, intersecting, and engrained ways that whiteness – occasionally overtly

but more often incrementally and subtly – determines facets of subjectivity. In this

excerpt Lipsitz outlines some of the many ways in which white privilege is made

tangible and foregrounding the importance of experiential and embodied whiteness.

The quotidian and the banal are precisely the crucial areas in which whiteness is

sedimented and made manifest. In rendering whiteness ephemeral and yet taken for

granted, functioning as a ‘social fact,’ these everyday practices, living spaces, and

assumed rights to education and health make whiteness seemingly universal and

standard.330

113

Building on Dyer’s and Lipsitz’s work, I argue that whiteness is viewed

differently by those considered ‘white’ and those who are not. Indeed, many white

people have a paradoxical relationship to their racial status, which is so often elided

with general conceptions of humanity that it does not even appear to them as race. As

noted earlier, Dyer formulates this as the fact that ‘other people are raced, we are just

people.’331 This, in arguably its most extreme form, is extrapolated by white subjects to

mean that they have no culture, in comparison to the overt and marked-as-different

customs, dialects, and styles exhibited by other cultural groups.332 This paradoxical

status is expressed by Roediger, who notes that ‘[w]hites are assumed not to “have

race,” though they might be racists,’ so that they may implicitly judge and maintain

racial hierarchies without being implicated themselves.333 White subjects’ belief that

they are not marked and constituted by racial imperatives in the same way that their

‘Others’ are, and their failure to acknowledge the extent to which race conditions or

often determines their possibilities and choices, is exemplified by the conservative view

that a level ‘playing field’ exists for all individuals and can be deployed equally, with

the proper access and determination to work hard – a view that, needless to say, effaces

the impact of institutionalised systems of inequity on individual capacities.

One crucial component of racist discourse is, as hooks notes, that the non-white

subject is always excessively particularised, marked as differentiated and

non-normative, even when this occurs in a supposedly positive manner.334

The effacement of whiteness as a specific racial identity occurs in relation to the always

and overtly particularised ‘Other,’ who is contrasted with, and constitutes, the white

subject’s transparency and security.335 Difference is always constituted as difference

from the white norm, and the other is specified rigorously in order to be categorised and

demonised more efficiently. This particularisation and stigmatisation is part of the

ongoing and consistent constitution of whiteness as template and norm, which is

ingrained as neutral and invisible through hyperbolic comparison.336 Frankenberg

argues that ‘whiteness makes itself invisible precisely by asserting its normalcy, its

transparency, in contrast with the marking of others on which its transparency

depends.’337

In her celebrated essay ‘Eating the Other’ hooks argues that this effacement of

whiteness may occur even during gestures of apparent goodwill or interest. The

114

appropriation and mimesis of the qualities and signs of the racial other (such as

dreadlocks, tans, or clothing coded as belonging to a particular group) is a strategy that

renders the self ‘neutral’ through an overt and displayed adoption and enactment of the

other’s supposedly authentic and highly particularised characteristics or visible markers.

A focus on these attributes, emphasising the difference from the norm as vividly as

possible, maintains that this difference is always open to attempted resignification and

importation into dominant style as flourish, as fetish, as exotica, and never as equal or

valued.

Another feature of the dynamic of neutralisation is the manner in which

differences between subjects are downplayed, both in terms of homogenisation under

the assimilationist ideal of the ‘melting pot,’ and in terms of not acknowledging the

positive benefit of the specificity of these differences.338 One widespread fear to be

found in white studies involves cultural sensitivity becoming appropriative and

homogenising, which ensures, as Razack notes, ‘a superficial reading of differences that

make power relations invisible and keeps dominant cultural norms in place.’339 Razack

invokes Chandra Mohanty’s insight into the negation of critical distinctions through

participation in ‘a harmonious, empty pluralism’ that absorbs and neutralises

opposition.340 This critique of white liberalism focuses on whiteness when it takes the

form of ignoring important interpersonal, social, and cultural differences under the guise

of liberal humanism, and effacing the need to insist that everyone is a participant in

systematic racial hierarchisation and valuation.

The belief in emphasising sameness as the most beneficial mode of dealing with

negative expressions of and reactions to alterity (such as racism being met with the

response that ‘we are all just people’) works to minimise the importance of difference.

This process of effacement is described by Linda Alcoff, who notes that ‘the universal

sameness that was so important for the liberal self required a careful containment and

taxonomy of difference.’ This difference, she believes, ‘must be either trivialized or

contained in the Other across a firm and visible border.’341 The argument that we are all

the same, then, is perceived as an appeal to the reduction of difference, and is aligned

with the perception of whiteness as the ‘template’ of humanity as a devaluation of

plurality and attenuation of relevant determining elements. Recognising difference

assists in revealing hegemonic identity as constructed, and neutralised. This is

115

articulated by hooks as part of an anti-racist strategy by whites, who ‘believe that all

ways of looking that highlight difference subvert the liberal belief in a universal

subjectivity (we are all just people) that they think will make racism disappear.’

Furthermore, these individuals possess ‘a deep emotional investment in “sameness,”

even as their actions reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign informing who they are

and how they think.’342 This investment strips individuals of the specificity that has

worked to create them. Minimising and downplaying difference assumes a

commonality of experience and, as hooks also notes, does not take into consideration

the viewpoint of the other.

hooks discusses the erasure of the possibility of a returned critical gaze that itself

assesses and names whiteness. She recounts how, in her classroom, white students

express surprise to find themselves the subject of the other’s gaze; they are amazed by

the reversal of the mechanism of scrutiny and discomforted when they are pinned in

critical headlights by a perceptive, knowledgeable source. Hooks notes that:

there have been heated debates among students when white students respond with disbelief, shock, and rage, as they listen to black students talk about whiteness, when they are compelled to hear observations, stereotypes, etc., that are offered as ‘data’ gleaned from close scrutiny and study. Usually, white students respond with naïve amazement that black people critically assess white people from a standpoint where ‘whiteness’ is the privileged signifier. Their amazement that black people watch white people with a critical ‘ethnographic’ gaze, is itself an expression of racism … Many of them are shocked that black people think critically about whiteness because racist thinking perpetuates the fantasy that the Other who is subjugated, who is subhuman, lacks the ability to comprehend, to understand, to see the working of the powerful.343

As hooks argues, not to see oneself as having an investment in a subject position –

that is, not to see that one has characteristics that are able to be critically viewed by

others, to perceive oneself as neutral – is only a short step from believing that the other

is not capable of formulating a concrete and viable opinion of the dominant. This is a

key point of racist discourse, as it connects the dehumanising element of racist discourse

(that race structures access to ‘appropriate’ subjectivity and to designations of humanity

through stereotypes of subhumanity) and foregrounds the lack of reciprocity and

insularity associated with whiteness, its belief that the other does not have an adequate

critical gaze. The dominant rarely question the manner in which the marginalised

perceive them, denying both the subjectivity of the marginalised (as capable of

116

assessing them) and the possibility of themselves being encoded as the focus of

attention. Whiteness, as noted earlier, is defined in part by its excessive

particularisation of its others, yet it divorces itself from any connotations of mutuality

and dependence.

The Invisible and the Unmarked

In this section I will examine some of the problems to be found with the association of

whiteness and neutrality in white theory. Giroux, in his chapter ‘White Noise: Racial

Politics and the Pedagogy of Whiteness,’ details some of the complexity and variety of

contemporary representations of whiteness, a point that is frequently ignored or denied

in arguments that foreground the homogeneity and invisibility of hegemonic whiteness.

Whiteness, far from being uniformly invisible or unstated in contemporary North

America, has been aggressively embraced as the cornerstone of a new sense of racial

identity, one based on pride, vehement avowal, and a dramatic sense of exclusion.

However, it is easy to understand the rhetorical importance of this claim, for whiteness

is often couched in these terms, both in academia and more broadly in culture.

Whiteness has been taken up by a host of different contemporary groups as the nucleus

around which they have built strategic and often highly visible identities, often in an

attempt to reinstate their former importance and status. This is not a linear continuation

of prior forms of racial pride or a sense of racial superiority. Rather, it is constituted

specifically in this environment of the post-civil rights era’s awareness of identity

politics and personal entitlement, particularly in the context of these articulated

conceptions of cultural marginalisation and social disenfranchisement term the

‘victimisation’ of identity politics. Giroux observes that this whiteness was clearly and

broadly articulated, and ‘[r]ather than being invisible, as left-wing critics such as Dyer

and hooks have claimed, “whiteness” was aggressively embraced in popular culture in

order to rearticulate a sense of individual and collective identity for “besieged”

whites.’344 Whiteness, he continues,

has become both a symbol of resurgent racism and the subject of a rising academic specialization. For conservative ideologues, ‘whiteness’ has been appropriated as a badge of self-identity and fashioned as a rallying point for disaffected whites who claim they are the victims of reverse racism in a country that is becoming increasingly racially diverse and hybridized.345

117

These range from white supremacist groups who desire an ‘Aryan nation’ of racially

pure individuals, to less extreme but nonetheless still aggressive and reactionary

examples like the ones detailed by David Savran in his analysis of contemporary white

masculinity in Taking it Like a Man: White Masculinity, Masochism, and

Contemporary American Culture.346 Whiteness has quite clearly been marshalled in

recent culture in particularly articulate, self-aware, and often hostile ways. In his book,

Savran examines contemporary white identity, including examples of the perceived

social backlash against white males, many of which notably coalesce around a sense of

aggrieved disenfranchisement and marginalisation. The latest incarnation of the

white male often occurs as the self-perceived ‘newest minority’ in society, and the

heterosexual, middle-class white male is frequently presented as the ‘victim’ of

affirmative action quotas, reverse racism, and the gains of the civil rights, feminist, and

gay and lesbian movements.347

In addition, as various historians of white ethnicity have argued, the perceptible

lineage of a consistently articulated, if mutable and historically grounded, notion of

whiteness belies the ostensible ‘invisibility’ of whiteness. The boundaries and content

of whiteness may have shifted over time, with different names and ethnicities admitted

at various points, yet the term’s ability to be named and defined implicitly undercuts

any disavowal of whiteness as a racial designation or the belief that it is a neutral facet

of identity. To exist in a continuum of racial designations, to be able to be known as

white, implies that whiteness is already delineated as both white and racially marked,

however contingently.

The notion of whiteness as hegemonic and invisible, as an impossible and

totalised ‘everything and nothing’ has shifted in theorisations of whiteness to

encompass the violating strategies of interpellation, and to a perception of whiteness as

a process and mode of being. A consideration of whiteness as neutralised, rather than

invisible, opens up space for an interrogation of several key points concerning the

interlocking of privilege and oppression on multiple and united fronts. It also

denaturalises the scope and validity of claim that whiteness functions as template and

ideal through foregrounding the experiential and socially embedded status of whiteness.

118

Denaturalisation, however, is hardly a singular and final occurrence. To state that

whiteness is now named and known is not the same as reconfiguring whiteness in a

more beneficial manner. To denaturalise whiteness does not mean that it cannot be

reformed in damaging and negative ways, for as the example of the ‘angry white male’

illustrates, the formerly hegemonic subject is often able to recoup its previous attention

and status through regrouping and absorbing alternate modes of subjectivation. As new

forms of specification and interrogation occur, so too does the normalising process

rework what it means to be white, and how whiteness is positioned to its others.

A continuing engagement with these shifts is required, especially in light of the way that

white identity has been politicised as marginal and threatened in recent culture.

‘Whitenesses’: plurality and diversity

The broad shift in emphasis within whiteness studies from a rhetoric of invisibility to an

understanding of white ‘neutrality’ as a naturalised form of identity was key in the

articulation of simultaneous and often contradictory forms available within whiteness.

The complex structure and multiple strands of whiteness entail that there is no definitive

narrative of whiteness, no single homogenous experience. There is, however, a frequent

minimisation of differences between forms of whiteness in culture in both

representation and critical analyses.348 By this I do not mean a conscious strategy of

homogenisation, but a widespread belief that the potency and value attached to

whiteness works to smooth over any inconsistencies in white portrayals, or that it is a

signifier of such resonance that it compensates for other debilitating aspects of identity.

The differing levels of access to resources, of approximations of various norms and

ideals guiding societal approbation, and the experiences explicitly withheld or denied by

claims to white ethnicity, are frequently undermined and ignored in the face of the

enormous benefits conventionally assumed to accrue to whiteness. Academics have

addressed a variety of topics concerning negative element of white ethnicity that range

from white poverty, white shame, and white marginalisation.349 Even these examples,

however, do little to diminish the extraordinary privilege and normativity that whiteness

signifies.

Ruth Frankenberg, in her introduction to Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social

and Cultural Criticism, offers a mode of analysing various constitutive differences

within white identities that appreciates their plurality and does not efface their

119

inconsistency or entwined status with other components of subjectivity. Indeed, she

suggests that racial formations be viewed as a collection of ‘whitenesses’ in order to

fragment the perceived homogeneity of the problematised category.350

Frankenberg proposes an exploration of whiteness as ‘historically constructed and

internally differentiated,’ as both grounded in a specific locale and constituted by a

particular nexus of societal relations and dynamics, yet as mutable and able to display

highly variegated shifts and deviations within the broad span of the term ‘white.’351

Additionally, Frankenberg proposes that whiteness be

viewed as ensembles of local phenomena complexly embedded in socioeconomic, sociocultural, and psychic interrelations. Whiteness emerges as a process, not a ‘thing,’ as plural rather than singular in nature.352

Frankenberg introduces two important distinctions here, distinguishing whiteness

as a ‘process’ and whiteness as ‘plural.’ This redefinition aligns with the broad

denaturalisation of ‘race’ within white studies as a precultural or purely biological entity

that I discussed earlier, and emphasises the multiple and varied forms of whiteness

already available within culture. Whiteness as ‘process’ emphasises the continual and

mobile constitution of whiteness, rather than race as a set of characteristics and

preordained meanings. This ongoing effort to maintain a hierarchically advantageous

position often occurs, as noted earlier, through the marginalisation of others.

Yet these ‘others’ found in plural versions of whiteness include other white

individuals, in forms both demonstrably white and yet improperly white. This will soon

be discussed in relation to the example of ‘white trash,’ in which the complexity of

hegemony conditions these negative moments and portrayals of white ethnicity by

doubling displacing them. In many senses, these moments of white negativity and

white marginalisation are both easy to locate and hard to analyse, as they offer a way

into the structure of racial formations and yet are often decried or effaced in culture.

In addition, the articulation of whiteness as a process opens up a space of malleability

and permeability. In a gesture akin to Butler’s understanding of the resistance located

in the space between interpellative call and ensuing response, Frankenberg finds that

viewing whiteness as a process, as a mode and way of being and not an immutable

biological entity, enables it to be ‘seen to be contested and contestable.’353 As such, it

connects with Torres, Mirón, and Inda’s broader notion of ‘racialization,’ or race as a

process, a concept that opens a space for the questioning and rearticulation the dominant

120

and normative impulses of white hegemony. In the next section, I focus on one specific

example of a complicated white identity that, in many ways, undoes the presumed

privilege of whiteness. The example of ‘poor white trash’ encapsulates some of the

major points that I have been seeking to articulate concerning the seeming neutrality

and invisibility of whiteness. It shows that there are already multiple possible identities

contained within the hegemonic designation ‘whiteness’, and that the presence of

marginality (here, economic disadvantage) attends the creation of a negative form of

whiteness, one that is stigmatised and racially specified at the same time.

‘White Trash’ Identity

Conflicted whiteness or mimetically imperfect whiteness is the key to investigating

some of the ways in which white identity can be understood both as plural, and as

having negative connotations. The example of ‘poor white trash’ as it encapsulates

some possible trajectories of fragile and degraded forms of whiteness. ‘White trash’

ethnicity offers a particularly volatile and cathected set of characteristics and qualities

that traverse class, race, gender, and sexuality in a complicated fashion. Both white

plurality and negativity are implied in the term ‘white trash’ as it signals an overt and

articulated white identity that is self-evident, and yet is one that is marked through

exclusion and derision. The name ‘white trash’ illustrates, in part, some of the pressure

and anxiety attending the series of norms and standards that serve to condition the

possible representations and embodiments of whiteness. This marker of white

subjectivity, which is between not only various forms of whiteness but the ability of

certain white individuals to take up positions of privilege in society, is a critical and

self-haemorrhaging notion that is crucial to white studies.

In an interview with Derek de Koff in Next magazine to celebrate the 25th

anniversary and re-release of his notorious 1972 film Pink Flamingos, director

John Waters was questioned about his reaction to his films’ impact on fashion.

The interviewer asked:

I saw a fashion spread recently that borrowed images from several of your films. They marketed the featured clothing as ‘white trash couture.’ How do you feel about that term?

To which John Waters responded:

121

I would never say it. I think ‘white trash’ is the last racist term. ‘Trailer trash.’ I would never say that. That offends me, actually.354

Waters underscores the everyday denigration in North America of what are

commonly known as ‘poor white trash’ or more commonly these days, ‘white trash.’355

In the introduction to their anthology White Trash: Race and Class in America,

Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray quote a similar sentiment from John Waters, from a

1994 article ‘White Hot Trash’ by Tad Friend. In it Waters declares that the term white

trash is ‘the last racist thing you can get away with.’356 White trash, a term that can be

traced back to the early nineteenth century, carries with it a long history of violence

against poor whites and an ongoing mockery of their disadvantaged state.357

Newitz and Wray are concerned to address some of the prevalent stereotypes and

characteristics that have been associates with white trash identity, or as self confessed

white trash emeritus Constance Penley calls it, ‘white trashnicity.’358

These characteristics often involve an aesthetic based upon the excessive and

‘the flashy, the inappropriate, the garish’ without being camp,359 and were stereotyped

as a set of behaviours and attitudes of ‘rural poor whites as incestuous and sexually

promiscuous, violent, alcoholic, lazy, and stupid’ that continue to resonate in culture.360

The widespread belief, notes Penley, is that ‘white trash folk are the lowest of the low

because socially and economically they have sunk as far they might as well be black.

As such, they have lost all self respect.’361 She adds, however, that ‘if you are white

trash, then you must engage in the never-ending labor of distinguishing yourself, of

codifying your behaviour so as to clearly signify a difference from blackness.’362

White trash is a sensibility derived from socioeconomic disadvantages and limited

opportunities – as evidenced by the instability and precariousness of mobile homes as a

symbol (indicating poverty and mobility, and with pink flamingos on the lawn) – yet it

also marks the institutionalisation and hierarchical positioning of racial privilege and the

everyday existence of those thus named as ‘trash.’363 White trash, as a term,

encompasses both race and class in its scope, as it both names a particular racial/ethnic

group whilst creating a minority position within it base upon access to privilege and

resources.364 The conjunction of meanings within the term are layered and interrelated.

It implies, for example, that whiteness requires a qualification to be considered

negative, that ‘trash’ is tacitly non-white, and that poverty is a required but not always

necessarily stated component of white marginality. It is in this sense of cutting across

122

various lines of gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and race, to name a few, that white

trash, Newitz and Wray believe, ‘speaks to the hybrid and multiple nature of identities,

the ways in which our selves are formed and shaped by often contradictory and

conflicting relations of social power.’365

Newitz and Wray seek to examine how it is that

[i]n a country so steeped in the myth of classlessness, in a culture where we are often at a loss to explain or understand poverty, the white trash stereotype serves as a useful way of blaming the poor for being poor. The term white trash helps solidify for the middle and upper classes a sense of cultural and intellectual superiority.366

Roxanne Dunbar, in her analysis of white trash in American culture, examines the

widespread perception of the ‘great shame’ of white trash as ‘poverty; that is, ‘failure’

within a system which purports to favor them.’ Even in this racist society geared

toward white advancement and prosperity a great number do not ‘succeed,’ which calls

into question their status as proper whites. Her crucial definition locates the manner in

which ‘white trash’ citizens are stigmatised for not taking full advantage of the

(economic) opportunities supposedly guaranteed by their racial status, a view that

ignores systemic disenfranchisement in favour of a utopian sense of manifest destiny

and unlimited potential that is equally open to all.367 This illustrates that race is never

known or perpetuated alone, but only through other modes of identification, and that

wealth, property, and behaviour are inextricably bound up in racial identities.

White trash shows one way in which white identity is formed and regulated

according to strict parameters of acceptability and codes of conduct. It is ‘a naming

practice that helps define stereotypes of what is and is not acceptable or normal for

white in the U.S.’368 Furthermore white trash is, as Penley puns, an epithet that locates

the individual as ‘beyond the pale,’ as excessive, inappropriate, and undesirable.369

This normalisation is premised on exclusion and abjection rather than desired

standardisation, as it deploys the vulgar and the extreme to reinscribe neutrality.

White trash individuals, instead of being seen as just a way of dealing with a flaw in

white conception (its ‘failure’), are a necessarily liminal component of the normalising

discourse that conditions whiteness. As an internal critique or necessary condition

resulting from the impossibility of the desires guiding white racial normativity, white

123

trash traces the boundaries of acceptable whiteness by showing and miming its

vulnerability and need to be reiterated. White trash functions as a marginal identity

within a hegemonic formulation, one that works to undo the privilege and compulsions

undergirding its formulation. In the next section I move from a consideration of the

‘degraded’ race in the white trash identity to another negative, though infinitely more

threatening, form of whiteness.

White terror:

Whiteness and violence have a long, if frequently contentious, history of mutual

implication in North America, with whiteness frequently fashioned on the side of

coercive, manipulative, extreme, or brutal means. One has only to think here of the

displacement of Native people, lynch mobs, segregation, and the rise of white

supremacist organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Brotherhood. Yet

there is something uniquely revealing about contemporary configurations of whiteness

that relies upon, and yet denies, the manner in which its racial status and privilege is

implicated in, and even constituted by, violence and negativity.370 Several theorists

have approached the connection between whiteness and terror in a variety of ways.

Newitz and Wray, in their ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and Class in America,

believe this association of whiteness and negativity to be so prevalent that they seek an

alternative to it by stating: ‘[p]erhaps white trash can also provide a corrective to what

has been called a “vulgar multiculturalism” assumption that whiteness must always

equal terror and racism.’ As such, Newitz and Wray want to avoid a simplistic

rendering of whiteness solely in terms of domination and oppressiveness by showing

the many gradations within the scope of the term whiteness.371 Yet I feel that the

connection between whiteness and terror is not so self-evident or accepted that it

requires no further exploration.

For others, the contemporary configuration of the white monster is, if not a

standard image, then not entirely strange, either.372 Black on White: Black Writers on

what it Means to be White, a recent collection of essays on the African American

perspective on white North Americans, contains a section devoted to the various

responses to whiteness as terrorising and terrifying, both as imbued with violence and as

an active threat. This is not just in response to systemic and organised racial violence

such as lynching, voter intimidation, or land acquisition, but locates violence in the

124

context of the construction of the white identity and the hierarchisation of the races. Its

editor, Roediger, cites a range of writers and theorists such as Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale

Hurston, and Paul Gilroy to demonstrate that violence is an intrinsic part of the white

experience in North America and is present within all race relations.373 In addition, the

ramifications of violence extend beyond the more overt forms of institutionalised

brutality such as slavery and segregation to include systematic patterns of stereotyping

and representation.374

Moreover, there is a level of reciprocity to this construction of whiteness and

violence, so that ‘whiteness is also experienced through terror by whites, who find and

reproduce unity by committing, and more often by witnessing, acts of violence.’375 This

harnessing of community through the ritual punishment and spectacle of the other has

been ably analysed by Robyn Wiegman in terms of the creation of the white community

through the body of the other, through spectacle and violent ritual. In addition, Trudier

Harris believes the potency and significance of lynchings to have been based upon a

dynamic of spectacle functioning as simultaneous warning and punishment.376 This

dynamic, of course, echoes the simultaneity of the impact of the monster: both an

explicit caution and a reprimand encompassed in the same body, though of course the

ramifications are very different.

hooks offers a useful critique of the association of whiteness ‘with the terrible, the

terrifying, the terrorizing’ and of white people with (or as) ‘terrorists’ in her influential

1992 essay ‘Representations of Whiteness.’377 In this, hooks explore some of the

connections between whiteness, invisibility, and dominance. As discussed in my

chapter on whiteness, in this essay hooks demonstrates the presence of a critical,

non-white gaze that takes whiteness as its subject. She later explores some other

elements of this returned examination to reveal the ways in which whiteness is not only

able to be observed and analysed by non-white participants but that, contrary to the

perception of whiteness as solely affiliated with goodness in a Manichean schema,

whiteness operates on multiple levels, many of which are coercive, oppressive, and

aggressive.378 White people who are accustomed to perceiving whiteness in line with

the ‘fantasy’ of whiteness as inextricably ‘synonymous with goodness’ and as

automatically beneficial, she argues,

125

do not imagine the way whiteness makes its presence felt in black life, most often as a terrorizing imposition, a power that wounds, hurts, tortures, is a reality that disrupts the fantasy of whiteness as representing goodness.379

Whiteness is connected to forms of violence through these explicitly terrorising

methods of achieving and maintaining hegemony and neutrality. As discussed in the

chapter on marginality, the neutralisation of the ‘universal’ subject is based on highly

contingent marshalling of norms, ideals, continuums of acceptability. hooks also

recognised the terroristic policing of culture as a crucial component of racial subject

creation, pervading the ‘[s]ystems of domination, imperialism, colonialism, and racism’

that maintain unequal social relations, negative self perceptions, and offensive

stereotypes.380 hooks’ appreciation of the multiple ways in which terroristic acts work

to define the subject aligns with the perception of violence offered by Ted Robert Gurr,

who understands violence functioning to keep hegemony intact and most often in

neutral, benign, and ostensibly ‘natural’ ways.381

Violence, as a ‘compelling, though unacknowledged’ component of culture,

undergirds many legitimate and hegemonic positions, yet is rarely named as aiding their

creation.382 Historian Richard Maxwell Brown, in ‘Historical Patterns of Violence,’

notes that violence is not always aligned with insurrection and revolution, with

challenges to the dominant order, but is more frequently and insidiously employed in

the maintenance of hegemonic positions. Some of the examples that he examines from

the long history of violent action in the United States include the Civil War, feuds,

criminal violence, vigilantism, and race riots. A core component of hegemony is the

manner in which its oppressiveness is neutralised as oppressive, and normalised as

inevitable. Sanctioned and legitimated violence, state violence and police authority, for

example, are not depicted as participating in violent rhetoric in the same way as

criminalised and ‘gratuitous’ actions. Maintaining one’s hierarchical position is not

considered as violent as attempting to dismantle the hierarchy. Brown argues that

‘violence has been tinctured with social conservatism. Established groups have been

quick to resort to violence in defense of the status quo they dominate.’383

This connects with what Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber, in their introduction to

Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination, describe as the possibility that ‘violence is

not necessarily the exclusive characteristic of the other but rather, and perhaps even

126

above all, a means through which the self, whether individual or collective, is

constituted and maintained.’384 They qualify this claim in part by adding that

[i]nstead of formulating the question in terms of a simple, but undoubtedly simplistic alternative – stating or implying that violence stems either from the other or from the self – we would suggest that violence leaves its indelible mark precisely in the mutual exclusivity of such binary oppositions.385

Violence, as their helpful distinction suggests, is imbricated in the definition and

(false) separation of self and other, and conditions the relationship between them. Not

being a property or characteristic of either, but marking their connection, violence

establishes an on-going dynamic between the marginal and the hegemonic. As

contemporary race theorists have also demonstrated, the concept of marginality is

inextricably bound up with a concomitant definition and enclosure of the dominant, and

that names and identities of the dominant are carved out through brute and on-going

force in order to seem inevitable and natural. This is articulated by de Vries and Weber

as ‘violence would come to pass not in the passage from self to other, much less in that

from other to self, but perhaps in the very attempt to delineate the borders that separate

self from other.’386 The energy of this aggressive definition of the subject, as well as the

ambiguous surrounding material of the self and other, have formed much of my first

chapter on marginality and my second chapter on monstrosity. Both of these were

preoccupied with definitions and the power relations involved in demarcating a

dominant and hegemonic identity, particularly one that takes much of its identity from

effacing the discursive violence attending its constitution as natural and benign.

The definitional crisis of these depictions of white violence also work as a

reminder of what Deutscher discussed as ‘constitutive ambiguity,’ which functions as a

required structural element of identity and not as a debilitating focus or side effect. Or

rather, the possibility for reading these terms otherwise has been part of the structural

ambiguity of dominant terms such as whiteness and humanity, requiring the presence of

the abject other as the boundary but denying any mutuality of their construction. Their

‘productive instability’ is an important part of their definition, particularly in terms of

the strategies of neutralisation and marginalisation that work in tandem to prop up

specific ideas and subject positions as central, and maintain others as marginalised and

particular.

127

Liminal and improper whiteness is connected to terror through this focus on

marginal status, particularly within a dominant category. This ‘imperfect mimesis’ of

normative compulsions, as Butler notes, is not only a precondition for the presence of

the norm itself, but its necessary failure (as in her argument concerning heterosexuality)

opens space for analysis and rearticulation. This marginalised, violent version of

whiteness is one such location. Terror undergirds many cultural conditions of

possibility for racial identities, appearing through graphic depictions of abjection,

exclusion, and the naming of ‘proper’ identities. The boundaries of humanity, as Butler

reminds us, are limned by the outcast and the abject, by those who are explicitly utilised

to provide the parameters of acceptability. This conditional acceptance, as argued in my

chapter on monstrosity, is connected to one’s access to a range of norms and ideals.

Hegemonic identities, such as whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity, are often

constituted in mutually entwined modes of damaging negation and violation. As noted

earlier, they are in part formed through the prolonged muting, effacement, and denial of

other subject positions.

In this chapter I traced some of the conditions surrounding the production and

interrogation of whiteness in contemporary culture. I covered a number of perspectives

on the constitution and nature of whiteness, such as whiteness as invisible, hegemonic,

banal, and neutral, and argued in favour of whiteness being seen as normalised and at

the centre of a standardising discourse. I argued that the term such as ‘poor white trash’

inherently reveals the constructed nature of whiteness. I shifted from the analysis of the

connection between violence and terror to a more literal case study concerning many of

the theories touched upon in the chapter. In the next chapter I examine the figure of the

serial killer in contemporary cinema, focusing in particular on his seemingly neutral,

normal, invisible figure and how the complicated spectre of race functions in his

representation.

128

CHAPTER 5

Serial Killing, the Ordinary Male, and the Banal Monster

The real enemy is within: s/he is liminal, but dwells at the heart of the matter.387

‘Millennial America,’ film theorist Martin Rubin believed, was ‘obsessed with the

figure of the modern multiple murderer.’388 The most iconic of all modern multiple

murderers, the serial killer, is a particularly resonant icon in contemporary

North American culture, condensing a number of pressing and contested issues and

anxieties that range from the function of masculinity to the spectre of random and

glamorised violence in society, within a single terrifying figure. In this chapter I focus

on the contradictory and ambivalent representation of the serial killer in contemporary

North American cinema.389 ‘Every era,’ Rubin suggests, ‘has its preferred nightmares,’

and the stories and images that are favoured in any given epoch shift in accordance with

prevalent desires and tastes.390 In the three decades preceding September 11 the serial

killer attracted such a degree of critical and popular attention in North America that it is

unquestionably one of the most salient ‘monsters’ of its era.

Though the phenomenon of serial murder has occurred for over a century, the

coinage of the term ‘serial killer’ in the 1970s by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

agent Robert Ressler391 cohered a particular image and perception of the killer that has

subsequently been widely popularised: a single white male who, on an impulse that few

can comprehend, has violently and sadistically slaughtered innocent individuals at

random. Recent widespread cultural fascination with this figure is evidenced, as Barry

Keith Grant notes, through a ‘considerable media mini-industry’ that has evolved

around the serial killer; hence serial murder now has ‘its own discrete section in

bookstores,’ and serial killers are featured on collectible trading cards and in comics,

books, television shows and movies, often in highly sensational and explicit forms.392

129

The visibility of the serial killer as a cultural icon is highlighted by the fact that

serial murderers are often known by the public on a first name basis – or by the concise,

striking media nicknames they attract, such as ‘Son of Sam’ and ‘Jack the Ripper’ – and

that, unlike the perpetrators of many other types of crimes, the serial killer is better

known than his victims, and it is his story, not theirs, that is told (and re-told).393 As

this suggests, and as a number of analysts have observed, the status of the serial

murderer is almost akin to a folk hero, and he (and, as I will demonstrate, the use of the

masculine pronoun is entirely appropriate here, and I will continue to deploy it

throughout this chapter) functions as an ambivalent icon whose popularity depends on

his cult-like and transgressive stature. ‘Countless films and novels,’ argues Jane Caputi,

‘both overtly and covertly, present the serial killer as sacred monster/hero.’394

The prevalence and mainstreaming of the serial killer has been aided by a

large number of films that – in a trend that began in the 1980s and gained a high profile

in the 1990s – focused on the serial murder phenomenon. As film historian Andrew

Tudor has shown in his study of the horror film, since the 1960s there has been a

dramatic rise in the number of films that feature psychotic or disturbed individuals as

killers or monster-figures, supplanting more conventional forms of threat such as

vampires, werewolves, or aliens.395 This psychologically troubled character has

increasingly taken the form of the serial killer since the term was popularised in the

1970s. It is over a decade since the commercial and critical success of The Silence of

the Lambs (1991), and the popular image and understanding of the figure of the serial

killer that film helped to create still persists, indicating a broad interest in the serial

killing phenomenon that has yet to wane.396 Indeed, following the widespread

popularity of films like The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en (1996), films featuring

serial murdering protagonists had become so prevalent that many popular reviews

claimed the sub-genre and concept to be redundant and clichéd.397

The explosion of films about serial killers in the last two decades has not only

helped cement the serial murderer as a site of great interest in culture, but has generated

a particularly resilient vision of the serial murderer as a single, white, heterosexual, and

utterly average male. The serial killer, particularly as he is represented in cinema, is

typically ordinary and ‘normal,’ and is barely distinguishable from other humans.

130

Yet his actions inspire much debate and controversy, and cause him to achieve cult

status. He is reviled as an aberration yet generates fanzines, he is both the quiet next

door neighbour and the embodiment of fin de siècle horror.

In examining media and cinematic representations of the serial killer in this

chapter, I will explore the serial killer’s complexity and popularity as a simultaneously

marginal and central figure. In doing so I will argue that the specific racial and

gendered configuration of the serial killer is key to his representation as an emblematic

figure of monstrosity of recent culture. In particular, I will suggest that whiteness,

masculinity, class, and heterosexuality are problematised through their specific

interrelated configuration in the figure of the serial killer, and I will explore the

ramifications of the location of specific identities in terms of conventionally unmarked

and effaced configurations in a range of contemporary mainstream serial killer films.

This chapter will pivot on two main intersecting trajectories that combine the

analyses and ideas of previous chapters. I will analyse the representation of the

cinematic killer in terms of race, and in terms of monstrosity. In doing so I will focus

on the whiteness of the serial killer, and the banal monstrosity that is articulated through

him. These themes are linked, as I will demonstrate, as the monstrosity embodied by

the serial killer relies on his status as the universal human ‘ideal,’ as the intersection of

so many forms of privileged identity, and as normal. In formulating this perception of

the serial killer as monstrously banal I will examine both popular and critical

understandings of the serial murderer, and offer an overview of the common beliefs that

surround the public profile of the killer.

The Serial Killer

In cinema, the serial killing concept has become a clichéd way to both incite audience

interest (through comparison with famous examples and by denoting a particular type of

killer and investigation) and to determine a character’s motivation and behaviour by

providing him with instant validation and acceptable back history. That is, the phrase

‘serial killer’ in cinema has come to encompass any murderer who kills sequentially and

for personal satisfaction. The term functions as shorthand for when a compulsion

‘behind’ these crimes is required, with little further elaboration or analysis of what the

term means. Although some films reveal a great deal of research into the serial murder

131

phenomenon, others merely invoke the term as if it were an adequate explanation for the

psychology and motives of the killer.

To distinguish the serial murderer from the various other types of killers who

populate the screen, I will offer a brief definition of the serial murderer in order to show

the statistical profile that is so important to the representation of the killer, particularly

in cinema. It should be noted that while the term serial killer is used as a shorthand

term in popular culture to signal a distinct character and mode of violence, it is itself a

contested and opaque signifier within academic discourse. Crime writers

Harold Schechter and David Everitt note that ‘serial killing is surprisingly tricky to

define. Part of the problem is that police definitions tend to differ from popular

conceptions.’398 Although there is general consensus on the use of the term ‘serial

murderer’ to designate a particular form of mass homicide, the parameters of the

definition remain porous. What exactly is a serial killer, and what counts as serial

killing behaviour? My focus on these questions is neither designed to necessarily

undermine present terminology nor to evacuate the term of meaning. Rather, my aim is

to link the process of definition and articulation to the popularisation and accessibility

of the phenomenon. The classification of the perpetrators of multiple homicides is

intimately linked to the manner in which they are represented, and indeed forms a

crucial component of their subjectivity and iconicity.399

The serial killer is characterised by several key elements, although as I have

indicated these characteristics are subject to debate.400 The official FBI definition is that

of a murderer who perpetrates ‘three or more separate [homicides] with an emotional

cooling-off period between homicides, each murder taking place at a different

location.’401 In addition, although this is more contentious, the killer is most frequently

a white, single, middle class, heterosexual male, aged 20 to 40. Often abused as a child

and from a dysfunctional family, they exhibit a history of violence, possess above

average intelligence, are employed, and able to function in social situations.

Other predictors include a long record of misdemeanours, problems with authority, and

interest in violent images and pornography. In addition, killers tend to murder within

their own ethnic group and to target a particular type of victim, most often a sexually

desired or otherwise compelling stranger.402 Serial killers’ choice of victims, and the

132

modus operandi of their murders, are typically structured by and enacted around

repetitive and highly ritualised fantasies.

Some of the factors listed above are variable, such as sexual orientation in the

cases of Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, or race in the cases of Wayne Williams

and Juan Corona. The disparity amongst those who fit the interpellation of young,

white, heterosexual, lower to middle class male further exemplifies the need to be

cautious about generalisations. Ressler, for example, acknowledges the fluidity of the

terms employed to describe serial killers; he is aware that they are uniquely wrought

individuals and stresses an operational flexibility when employing the descriptive terms

as heuristic diagnostic tools, particularly when acknowledging the differences between

serial killers. Yet the vast majority of killers remain white, heterosexual, and male, and

are represented in numbers disproportionate to their presence in the population.

Their victims, as well, are statistically over represented as belonging to (not

coincidentally interrelated) groups considered to traditionally wield less influence and

prestige in culture – women, children, prostitutes, gay males, and members of

racial/ethnic minorities.

Although serial killing is often considered a contemporary ‘plague’ or

phenomenon, often seen to emblematise the specific tensions of contemporary

North American culture, serial killing, in the contemporary sense of the term, has

existed in most countries for more than a century. Earlier examples of ongoing and

ritualised homicidal behaviour may be traced back to Emperor Caligula and

Countess Elizabeth Bathory403, although some believe the parameters of the crime only

stretch back for 125 years or so.404 The infamous Jack the Ripper, who terrorised

London for a surprisingly brief period of several months in 1888, is widely considered

to be the ‘first’ known serial killer of modern times. In recent decades the phenomenon

of serial killing has become more prevalent and increased in scope and intensity, with a

concomitant heightening of media interest and representation.

While serial killing occurs in other countries, the vast majority of reported cases

and killers are located in the United States, with many theorists agreeing that it is a

predominantly, though not exclusively, North American phenomenon.405 Despite the

United States comprising roughly 5% of the world’s population, it also contains 75% of

133

the known serial killers, roughly ten times as many as other countries. Strikingly

similar and equally brutal and horrific patterns of attack and mutilation occur in many

other countries, yet in terms of officially announced and named cases, the United States

has approximately ten times as many as other countries.406 This may reflect on the

methods of criminal detection and labelling in the States, an increased ability and desire

to marshal statistics and data, or more resources with which to pursue killers. It may

also be that other countries choose not to publicise data, or choose not to frame cases as

being serial killer cases.

In an effort to highlight the distinctive elements of the murders, and to clarify

what were initially called ‘stranger murders,’ ‘recreational killings,’ and ‘lust murders,’

FBI agent Robert Ressler coined the term ‘serial killer’ in the 1970s to best reflect what

he perceived to be the salient aspects of the killer’s patterns and desires. Ressler linked

the compulsive, repetitive nature of the crimes to the form of the short film series shown

in cinemas when he was young, the cliffhanger stories that, much like soap operas

today, end episodes on suspenseful and dramatic notes in order to preserve audience

interest and anticipation:

Each week, you’d be lured back to see another episode, because at the end of each one there was a cliff-hanger. In dramatic terms, this wasn’t a satisfactory ending, because it increased, not lessened the tension. The same dissatisfaction occurs in the minds of serial killers. The very act of killing leaves the murderer hanging, because it isn’t as perfect as his fantasy … After a murder, the serial murderer thinks of how the crime could have been bettered.407

The serial killer, then, is understood to be driven to compulsively enact a

dangerous fantasy, only to be thwarted each time in his quest for a perfect

correspondence between the fantasy and the actual crime. The focus is not on the more

conventional criminal motivation of material profit, but lies in the importance of

preparation and performance to the killer.

The FBI classifies serial killers as belonging loosely to two categories, organised

and disorganised killers, although there is traffic between the two types.

Briefly, disorganised murderers tend to kill impulsively and opportunistically.

They rely on environmental cues and the congruence of factors in both the location and

killing of the victim, yet retain a compulsive desire to continue the killing. They rarely

attempt to dispose of evidence, keep trophies, or create a safe haven in which to kill.

134

Organised killers, by contrast, tend to plan and hunt more carefully; the process and

methodical staging of the murder is as important as the action. The implements used,

and the treatment of the body, are carefully planned and enacted, incriminating evidence

is taken care of, and the killer often creates a room, set of tools, or other paraphernalia

to enable him to enact his fantasies. This distinction in part explains some of the variety

of types of serial killers – some, such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, are intelligent,

socially functional enough to charm their victims into accompanying them, and lead a

double life that enables them to conceal their crimes for long periods of time. Others

are unemployed, disadvantaged, socially incompetent, have a long history of

institutionalisation, and overtly aggressive. As adults, they are frequently drug or

alcohol dependent, and there is some (somewhat controversial and disputed) evidence

that some may exhibit trauma or damage in areas of the brain linked to self control and

aggression.408

Researchers are unsure why serial killing has escalated in the last few decades and

have frequently sought cultural explanations. Possible factors include the alienation of

individuals in industrial urban areas characterised by mobile and anonymous

populations. In this theory, individuals feel dispossessed and asocial, and do not value

the presence of community. They are also able to use urban anonymity to better hide

their activities. The disintegration or impairment of social and familial structures, a

diminished welfare system and lack of resources for the disadvantaged are other

possibilities that suggest the decline of social services for the mentally ill and the

abused. Other theories include the increased availability and popularity of weapons in

conjunction with a hostile and aggressive militaristic environment that fosters violent

and antisocial impulses and perpetuates the notion of an ‘acceptable’ level of violence

in society and the right of the individual to express ‘appropriate’ limits of personal

aggression. Media representation, in multiple forms, is also considered responsible for

glamorising these violent ideals, and for sensationalising the more horrific aspects of the

cases whilst simultaneously making media stars out of the perpetrators.

The public’s fascination with the serial killer has only intensified since the term

was coined and gained currency. This is not to imply that the naming of the

phenomenon has solely brought about this level of interest and representation.

The trials of serial killers H.H. Holmes, Peter Kürten, and Lizzie Borden, for example,

135

were as publicised in their time as contemporary cases such as Ted Bundy or

Jeffrey Dahmer are today, replete with the same form of ghoulish, extravagant focus on

gory details.409 The criticism that such sensationalist and graphic reporting of events

may lead to the potential corruption of impressionable minds is not new, either. At the

turn of the century in the United States, Schechter and Everitt found a widespread

critique of cheap pulp fiction known as dime novels or ‘penny dreadfuls’ targeting their

potential ability to induce violence.410

Indeed, criticism of the salacious and exploitative media representation of the

serial killing phenomenon has long accompanied the intense news reportage and public

interest. In Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany, Maria Tatar relates that

then-contemporary journals such as Punch and The Lancet expressed grave

dissatisfaction with the lurid and often gratuitously detailed attention paid to the Jack

the Ripper murders within popular newspapers. The sensationalist reportage that

accompanied the Ripper slayings were, she notes, decried for pandering to base, morbid

impulses, and for emphasis on the mimetic impulse in representations of serial killing.

The fear, Tatar notes, was that ‘newspaper accounts would “infect” Britain’s youth and

inspire copycats with a craving for the kind of attention received by Jack.’

The mysterious figure of Jack the Ripper thus functioned as a ‘double menace’ through

having created a very real state of panic concerning the presence and plans of the killer,

but also having ‘promoted a kind of moral panic among the upper social classes about

the effect of crime reporting in the young and working classes.’411

Jack the Ripper’s panicking of the population on several fronts through a

combination of direct physical threat and as a potential incitement to similar forms of

destruction is uncannily borne out in the various tensions at work in the film Copycat

(1995). As will be discussed later in this chapter, the worst fears of 1880s London are

made manifest in late twentieth century San Francisco, in the form of Peter, a polite,

intelligent, bland, and utterly terrifying young man who seeks fame through the

annihilation of others. He hopes to attain notoriety through exceeding the boundaries

and standards set by other killers, and seeks self-satisfaction by becoming the most

infamous and prolific serial killer of all time. His desires and motives are entirely

bound up with the sense of competition he feels with other historical figures. It is not

coincidental that Peter cites Jack the Ripper as one of his sources of inspiration, as he

136

says that more books have been written about him than former U.S. President

Abraham Lincoln. The echo of Jack the Ripper’s actions more than a century later, and

the sense of competition that he inspires, underscores some of the potency of the serial

killer as contemporary hero and/as monster, and someone to be emulated.

The fictionalisation and mythologisation of the serial murderer, as suggested

earlier, is an important component of his popularity and resilience as a contemporary

social icon, as well as provoking the intertextuality and blurring of discursive

boundaries that serial murder cases provoke.412 As Tatar states, ‘[c]inematic

constructions have, to a remarkable degree, shaped our understanding of real-life killers,

with the construction sometimes eclipsing or eradicating the facts.’413 Many films about

serial killers are based upon real life cases, and subsequently the passage between

fictional and ‘real’ killers is indeterminate and highly charged. Their interimplication

heightens the impact of the serial killer narrative and stereotype, as the true crime

accounts of murders often slip into glamorised and mythologised retellings, and films

that are based on pre-existing events gain a certain dubious authenticity and gravity.414

It is useful to acknowledge the mutuality at the core of the serial killer’s

representation, for part of the cultural salience of the serial murderer is precisely the

continuing reification and perpetuation of him as a popular icon and as requiring critical

analysis. Why do we keep returning, as Tatar notes, to figures like Jack the Ripper?

We have made him more than just a serial killer from the turn of the century – he is now

a myth, a cultural reference point. The ramifications of this myth-making, and of the

serial killer’s implication in it, are that the serial killer is always constructed through

forms of representation, and that they serve to inscribe and bound his possible

configurations.

The Form of the Serial Killer

Race, gender, and heterosexuality are located and complicated through their specific

interrelated configuration in the figure of the serial killer. The serial killer offers a

different way to examine the figure of the heterosexual, white, middle class, propertied

male that I addressed in my first chapter in terms of its presumed universality,

particularly as the cohesion of a series of norms and ideals. The representation of the

serial murderer offers a way of examining the connections between these multiple

137

subject positions, and how they are interrelated, though the specificity of this particular

identity as a particular identity is often downplayed (as are the interconnection and

mutual support between elements such as race and gender). The serial killer, as a

deviant or extreme version of these hegemonic identities and subject positions,

exemplifies some of the processes of neutralisation and effacement at work. In

particular, the portrayal of the serial killer plays on the operation of the white, middle

class, privileged, heterosexual male as normative in a variety of ways, and constitutes an

extreme limit case for questioning and problematising intersecting, dominant forms of

gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. The serial killer hyperbolises and undermines

many of these qualities and strategies of representation. Through miming and debasing

this privileged figure, frequently considered the template for the human, he illustrates

the liminality and vulnerability of this subject position. The serial murderer ghosts the

norm and in so doing highlights its ambivalence and illustrating the instability and

precariousness of the process of constituting and maintaining regulatory ideals.

The representation of the serial killer has spawned multiple interpretations by

various theorists that mostly focus on gender, class, and sexuality. Feminist theorist

Annalee Newitz, for example, argues that the public’s fascination with the repetitive

nature of ‘the serial killer – in both allegory and reality – acts out the enraged confusion

with which Americans have come to regard their postwar economic and social

productivity.’415 Mark Seltzer, a cultural critic, understands the serial nature of the

phenomenon as a manifestation of a post-industrial ‘machine culture’ defined by mass

production and repetition. He locates serial killing in a ‘wound culture’ in which

‘addictive violence has become not merely a collective spectacle but one of the crucial

sites where private desire and public fantasy cross.’416 Caputi, Brian Simpson, and

Elizabeth Young are all careful to point out that statistically serial killers are not only

overwhelmingly male but that, as stated earlier, their victims are women, sex workers,

children, and gay males. In addition, the serial killer is seen to display broader gender

dynamics of oppression so that the figure of the murderer, as Caputi notes, ‘represents

an extreme of patriarchal masculinity and masculinity’s valued traits of independence

(loner mentality), sexual aggression, emotional detachment, affinity for violence and

objectification and hatred of the feminine.’417

138

The articulation of the serial killer as white is an important component of his

public profile, yet it is rarely addressed in either critical analyses of the phenomenon or

as a comment on the dynamics of the representation of whiteness in culture. Later in

this chapter I will offer an examination of the serial killer in terms of an overt and

demonstrable white identity, one that displays whiteness as negative and marginal,

occasionally simultaneously. I will briefly address the topic of a ‘white trash’ identity

as a way to split the presumption of hegemonic whiteness (in culture and theory).

The notion of a marginalised identity already operating within a dominant one, as both

an implicit support for and yet external to it, will be taken up in this chapter by

examining the various norms that the serial killer undermines and complicates whilst

nominally inhabiting them. It is striking that part of the insistence that the serial killer

reflects back on culture is that he is seen as ‘abnormally normal’ by a variety of

theorists.418 The serial killer inspires both a sense of familiarity, in that he is somehow

already known and is easily comprehended as a probable, non-fantastic threat – he

occupies a space of probability that few other monsters do, however statistically

unlikely it is that one will encounter a serial murderer. No matter how exaggerated and

fictionalised the reports of his crime may be, he does not quite occupy the same position

in the realm of the fantastic as other creatures that do not pop up in ‘true crime’ sections

of the bookstore, accompanied by gory crime scene photos.419 Yet, as simultaneously

‘abnormally normal’ and the locus of a unique and reprehensible horror, he also

provokes a perception of uncanny perversion. The outwardly neutral and unremarkable

veneer of the killer sharply contrasts with the ferocious actions and unspeakable

violence unleashed upon other humans.

The Serial Killer in Cinema

In the decade since the commercial and critical success of The Silence of the Lambs, a

film that, I have already noted, helped create a popular and persistent image of the serial

killer, there have been several dozen ‘serial killer’ films. These include films featuring

protagonists or characters who are compulsive and repetitive murderers, and who share

characteristics consistent with serial killers without being expressly named as such in

the narrative. More frequently, however, they are films that focus explicitly on serial

killer discourse, on the detectives tracking specific cases and the particular procedures

of investigation involved, and on the real-world correlates of killers raised to celebrity

status. The representation of the serial killing phenomenon varies across films. Some

139

evince a deep awareness of dominant and popularised criminological perspectives on

the phenomenon and present their killers and crimes in accordance with these views

(e.g., Crime Time [1995], Freeway [1996], and Post Mortem [1997]) while others depart

from these widely held beliefs and deploy the term and actions with relative inaccuracy

or for comic effect (eg, Dark City [1997] and Serial Mom [1993] respectively).420 In

addition, the representation of the serial killer fluctuates across films, from hero to

monster, from inevitable by-product of a flawed culture to an inexplicable force of

nature.

This range of portrayals is particularly vital when analysing how the killer is

marked as aberrant, despite his otherwise conventional and normative identity. Given

that the serial killer is typically portrayed in film as falling into a normative subject

position as white, heterosexual, middle class, and male – usually with at least one but

frequently all of these characteristics present – the portrayal of his deviance and

monstrosity become a somewhat tricky prospect. This is partially due to the process of

effacement that typically accompanies representations of these hegemonic identities, as

I discussed in the chapter on white ethnicity. The accrual of so many dominant and

normative identity markers in one body makes the serial killer’s representation even

more charged. Because it is difficult to represent heterosexual white masculinity as

dangerous and deviant, there are very few examples that do not include some other,

more conventional, form of derision and stereotyping.

It is possible to identify three linked ways in which the representation of white,

heterosexual, and middle class masculinity is marginalised in the serial killer film. The

first two methods of representation focus on the dynamic between marginalised and

dominant identities and attributes within culture when they are embodied within a single

identity, albeit in highly distinct ways. The first strategy focuses on the demonisation of

identities that are already marginalised, and their alignment with other ‘deviant’

positions and subjects, such as homosexuality and femininity. The second, which is in

some senses more difficult to locate and discuss, occurs through the fracturing of

dominant subject positions by locating malfunction within them – this degradation of

dominant subject position is exemplified in the notion of ‘white trash.’ The third

strategy, and the one that I will discuss at greatest length, is when the ordinary and

‘normal’ nature of the serial killer is rendered hyperbolically banal.

140

In the first strategy, the serial murderer often displays some of the behaviours or

characteristics that have often been derogated and marginalised within culture, typically

in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and race. This stigmatisation occurs most

frequently in relation to aspects of identity that have historically been subject to

negative representation, such as femininity (Butterfly Kiss [1994], Monster [2003]),

homosexuality (Cruising [1980]), non-white racial status (Switchback [1997]) or

‘foreign’ ethnicity (Diary of a Serial Killer [1997]). A small sub-genre of films that

incorporate homicidal women as protagonists, despite the relative paucity of female

serial murderers, exists within the serial killer genre.421 In all of these films the serial

killer is marked as different not just through his or her actions, but due to the

constitutive elements of his or her identity. These attributes are stressed as an important

component of the killer’s identity and deviance, even to the point of comprising the title

(e.g., Single White Female [1992], Serial Mom). Their difference from the white male

norm is explicitly marked and presented as an integral component of the visible

deviance of the serial killer. This is often through foregrounding the element that

differs from the conventional serial killer profile as an important component of the plot

while retaining the other characteristics, such as the otherwise wholesome and proper

mother (Kathleen Turner) in John Waters’ campy, humorous Serial Mom who is driven

to kill citizens who refuse to recycle or who wear white after the U.S. Memorial Day

holiday. As the film’s title suggests, the Serial Mom is primarily defined by virtue of

her maternal and domestic status; yet the domestic sphere is also from where she draws

her strength and skills.422

In a similar fashion, the race of the African American killer (Danny Glover) in

Switchback is all the more noticeable as he is virtually the only person of colour in the

film (although his heterosexuality and masculinity are both stressed through his

peculiarly obnoxious gesture of papering the interior of his car with pin up girls in

suggestive poses).423 In these instances, the protagonist’s difference from the broad

serial murderer profile that is popularised in mass media and representation is often

couched as a twist to make a clichéd story more interesting and vital (as with the

advertising of a documentary about Aileen Wuornos that stressed that she was the ‘first

female serial killer’) or their difference is more subtly couched as the cause of their

deviation. The representation of female killers far exceeds the number of known female

141

serial murderers, and the murderous intentions of the homicidal female protagonist are

always connected with her femininity.424

The second method of representing the aberrance of the serial killer involves the

fracturing and demonisation of conventionally valorised categories of dominant identity

such as whiteness, heterosexuality, or masculinity. For example, ‘inadequate’

masculinity is perceived as effeminate or abject (To Catch a Killer [1991], The Silence

of the Lambs), the blue collar status of the killers in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

(1990) and Kiss the Girls (1997) is brought to the foreground, or the benefits typically

accorded to whiteness is undermined through killers being presented as ‘poor white

trash’ (Kalifornia [1993] and Natural Born Killers [1994]). These films, in contrast to

the ones featuring female, homosexual, or non-white killers, present more nuanced

accounts of the effects of marginalisation. The demonisation in these films displays

some of the gradations of acceptability that are present within the parameters of a

hegemonic identity, though they reveal a form of discrimination that is just as potent as

more obvious types of exclusion.

The significance of the representation of the serial killer, then, is that he inhabits a

unique position within these parameters, not only coalescing these ostensibly dominant

terms in the one body, and single identity, but also demonstrating that they do not

automatically equate with privilege and normality. In addition, his complicated

occupation of many of these terms serves to bring forth the typically erased underside to

such terms and configurations. These include the whiteness in white trash, for example,

or the femininity that must be repudiated in order for successful masculine subjectivity

to be demonstrated. In deviating from the normative presumptions that underscore

whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity, the serial murderer in these films is

rendered marginal, dangerous, and deficient. He embodies the normative subject

position – but in an overt and awkward manner. Whilst nominally manifesting certain

privileged identities, he displays levels of hierarchy within these hegemonic terms.

To take a notorious example, the gender and sexuality of the character

Jame Gumb, a.k.a. ‘Buffalo Bill,’ in The Silence of the Lambs attracted much critical

attention, particularly as the film generated protests by gay, lesbian, bisexual, and

transsexual activists who argued that the character’s representation was offensive and

142

had the potential to incite violence and hatred against people of non-standard genders

and sexual orientations. Gumb’s aberrant personality and monstrous drives are

primarily presented through his unique sexuality, as someone who is ‘biologically’ male

and seeking to be female. In his determination to transform into a woman, Gumb crafts

a ‘woman suit’ made from real female skin. His inability to properly embody and enact

heterosexual and masculine gender and bodily conventions renders him abject and

monstrous. Though carefully described in the movie as neither transvestite nor

transsexual, as having male lovers yet not being ‘gay’ in conventional terms, the

character was nonetheless taken as improperly gendered and as offensively straddling

the lines between genders (and this type of border confusion is, as noted in my second

chapter, a hallmark of monstrosity). In addition, Gumb dances, sings, has a little dog he

calls ‘Precious,’ wears makeup, and exhibits other markers typically associated with

female behaviour in conventional gender constructs. The confusion embodied in

Gumb’s character reportedly drew homophobic comments from audiences when it was

screened, who yelled epithets and wished aloud for his death, thereby continuing a

long-held tradition of funnelling ambiguity into a convenient and historically

overdetermined target.425 It is worth noting that while audiences vilified Gumb’s

character, the other serial killer featured in the movie, Hannibal Lecter, became a

popular, almost beloved, cultural icon, providing punch lines and noteworthy quotes

(such as the infamous ‘I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti’ line).

The film portrays Lecter as intellectual, dominating, and virtually superhuman, almost a

father figure or lover to Clarice Starling, and his more acceptable version of masculine

monstrosity underscores the abjection of Jame Gumb.

Gumb’s literal monstrification is borne out in his constructed veneer, his ‘woman

suit,’ which follows more conventional forms of visually distinguishing monstrosity

through the individual’s physicality (and, of course, horror and serial killer films are

certainly not unique in this respect). Physical deformity or unsightliness is frequently

seized upon as a mode of conveying the moral deformity and evil of the serial killer,

such as in Manhunter (1986), in which the protagonist has a harelip and extreme tattoos

covering his body; his monstrosity is heightened by his habit of wearing pantyhose as a

facial disguise, which grotesquely flattens his already distorted features.426 The film

Freeway offers an interesting gesture of monstrifying the killer through his grotesque

physical deformation. Based on the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood, and updating

143

the Big Bad Wolf into a predatory serial murderer, the millennial Red Riding Hood is

Vanessa, a white female juvenile delinquent from an impoverished background with a

drug-addled prostitute mother, sexually abusive stepfather, and a deep familiarity with

protective services.

After a series of events in which her mother is arrested, and her boyfriend killed,

Vanessa decides to go visit her grandmother. En route she encounters Bob, who

initially appears as a credible and sympathetic white male counsellor, and who exhibits

great patience and kindness in his interactions with her. Vanessa discloses to Bob

intimate details about her sordid life, such as having been forced to work as a prostitute,

only to have Bob suddenly turn on her, calling her names and attempting to physically

restrain her. Realising that he is the ‘I-95 Killer’ profiled in news clips that have

occurred throughout the movie, Vanessa flees, but in the process of escaping, she has an

epiphanic moment when she realises how sick and perverse he truly is, and she decides

to shoot him. However, her gunshot fails to kill Bob, leaving him horribly facially

deformed. This process of monstrification, this making patent and unmistakeable of his

inner, previously hidden perversity and corruption, is a key turning point in the film.

Arrested once Bob has recovered enough to identify her and press charges, Vanessa is

completely unrepentant as she hoots with laughter and jeers that Bob has been ‘hit with

the ugly stick’ when she is confronted by his new appearance for the first time in court.

His apparent normality and sympathetic demeanour are stripped away in an act of

deformation that encodes his perversity upon his body. However, the killer’s

monstrification, the erosion of his bland suburban veneer, is the first step to his eventual

exposure as a serial killer.

Before this, however, Bob’s carefully neutral façade worked seamlessly as he

successfully charmed Vanessa into trusting him. The dramatic shift in his behaviour

was striking, and follows a more popular trend in serial killer cinema. Typically, the

killer is more often shown to engage in ritualistic, compulsive, or extremely aggressive

behaviour that makes us aware of his intentions and danger, even when we are only

shown him in fragments or his actions are not explained. Depictions of the killer’s

depravity usually occur through displays of his irrational behaviour and mania, such as

wailing and crying, and taking instructions from a dog (Summer of Sam [1999]), the

144

obsessive re-enactment of crimes (Striking Distance [1993]), or the repercussions of his

awesomely fierce temper (The Stepfather [1987]).

However, if the killer is not shown onscreen to engage in shouting fits or acts of

violence, particularly if the identity of the murderer is a mystery that is not solved till

the end of the film, then the evidence of the killer’s psychosis and monstrosity is born

out through the evidence he leaves behind, and in particular through the destruction he

brings to the human body. In an extension of the notion of the killer’s human ‘façade’

being eroded to reveal his monstrosity, the deformation and hideous violence enacted

upon other humans is typically shown in serial killer films in graphic, realistic detail,

and at great length. It is striking just how many films either open with or contain a

sequence that almost lovingly depicts the trauma visited upon the human flesh.

The opening sequence in The Crimson Rivers (2001), for example, offers an amazingly

explicit and detailed interrogation of a tortured and murdered male body in extreme

close up.427 Simultaneously exploitative and a testimony to the often ignored trauma

implicit in serial murder narratives, this slow trawling of the camera over a body with

missing hands and eyes, broken bones, and that is prey to insects, acts as a literalised,

inscribed reminder of the will and possibilities of the serial murderer. So, too, the vivid

autopsy scenes in The Silence of the Lambs and Post Mortem, or the crime scenes

detailed in Se7en and The Cell (2000), function as examples of the necessity for films to

provide direct physical evidence of the perversity and brutality of the killer. Given that

the killer’s only visible manifestation of his monstrosity are his actions, which display

his belief and desires, the corpse attains a particular importance in the serial killer

narrative. It bespeaks the monster’s deviance that he cannot otherwise show.

Sometimes the killer is seen to have a pedagogical bent to his treatment of the body, and

teaches through example, or through his ‘punishment’ of sinners, such as with Se7en.

In others, such as Resurrection (1999), the killer is telling a story through the desecrated

flesh he leaves behind. However, there is a third way of displaying the monstrosity of

the serial killer as aberrant, in addition to the two previously discussed – that is, by

focusing, precisely and paradoxically, on his very normality.

This third mode of representation involves the hyperbolisation of the killer’s very

‘normality,’ of his remarkable unremarkability and seeming blandness; paradoxically, it

is precisely this quality of normativity that marks him as monstrous. The identity of the

145

murderer, in many serial killer films, is concealed until the last possible minute in a

‘shock’ revelation, a surprise that would not be possible without the ability of the killer

to pass as otherwise normal in society and within the milieu of the film. Instead of

being a nocturnal vampire, or a gigantic shark, the monster-figure is someone who can

hide in plain sight, someone who was there all along. Indeed, a recurrent trope of many

serial killer films is that they feature the murderer within the text before he is revealed

to be the murderer in question. Not only that, but the killer is often able to pose as a

figure of authority, and to escape without arousing suspicion. For example, John Doe in

Se7en appears early on as a reporter, and in this role he gains intimate and ultimately

destructive knowledge of the personal lives of the police officers who are working on

his case. In The Bone Collector (1999) the killer is the detective’s doctor, and the

murderer in Kiss the Girls is one of the main police officers working on the case. In the

next section, I will briefly address the presentation of the serial killer’s identity, and the

simultaneous refusal to acknowledge its specificity, as an important example of the

simultaneous depiction and effacement of the killer’s occupation of the nexus of

dominant identities – white, heterosexual, middle class, and male. The focus shifts, in

other words, from the horror of the other, the marginal, and the different, to something

more threatening – the horror of the same.

The Profile

A key moment in many serial killer films is when someone, typically a police officer or

expert in the field, is called upon to give their testimony regarding the identity and

future behaviour of the as-yet unknown murderer. In The Silence of the Lambs, Post

Mortem, and Mortal Fusion (1997), for example, predictions are made based on

evidence the suspect has left behind, clues are gleaned from the pattern of behaviour

shown by the killer, and a character sketch of the murderer is constructed. In addition,

each description of a suspected or apprehended serial killer is careful to note his vital

statistics and the details of his physical appearance, such as height, race, gender, hair

and eye colour, and distinguishing marks. In particular, none fail to distinguish whether

the perpetrator is white or male. This is based upon the methods employed, and

popularised, by the FBI, which compiles a statistical profile of the killer based on items

at the crime scene, observations, behavioural patterns, and similarities to other cases

gleaned from interviews with other killers, amongst other clues.428 In films, this sketch

146

and a brief outline of a disturbed childhood, aberrant mother, or fractured personality

are enough to qualify as an acceptable history and set of motives for the killer.

The character sketch described above typically occurs in the form of a

transmission of information between police officers, or an expert and a civilian who is

being tutored in order to survive. The audience is thus informed of the parameters of

the crime and the expected contours of the criminal, yet in a mode that paradoxically

suggests the recognisability and individuality of the killer despite being based on

generalisations and projections. This process of locating and specifying the

serial killer’s identity, or at least his crude statistical outline and potential motivation,

occurs in a curious scene in Resurrection. Though the film is neither a comedy nor

generally parodic, this scene mocks both genre conventions and the popularity of serial

murder narratives. A serial killer has been ritualistically murdering specifically chosen

victims and leaving clues indicating the religious significance of these deaths and the

connections between them. There has been little progress in the case when the

protagonist Detective Prudhomme is suddenly informed that there is an uninvited ‘FBI

profiler’ seated in his captain’s office, awaiting a meeting. ‘What is he going to tell

me?’ Prudhomme demands sarcastically, ‘I’m looking for a white male, 25 to 45 years

old?’ Nonetheless, he and his partner meet with the FBI agent, who in the course of the

conversation opines that ‘[b]ased on what I’ve seen so far, I’d say you’re looking for

someone of above average intelligence, white, 25 to 45 years old.’ He stops when the

two officers begin to smirk, and asks them if something is funny, before continuing with

his assessment, at their urging.429 The twist, in this scenario, is that the supposed FBI

agent, whose authority and the accuracy of his comments are never questioned, is later

revealed to be the murderer in disguise, a gesture that simultaneously confirms and

undermines the integrity and validity of the profile.430 The killer is now an expert,

having gleaned as much expertise from true crime books and literature as the detective

has from experience.431 The killer completely inhabits the persona and is describing

himself, yet he also underscores the basic inefficacy of the profile by literally being

overlooked by the investigators.

The level of recognition and dismissal implied in this scene is extraordinary in

respect to the relatively recent naming and popularisation of the category of the serial

killer, even when contextualised in terms of the high public interest in the phenomenon

147

and the enduring popularity of contemporary serial murder narratives.

This referentiality is only possible because the massive public attention paid to the killer

ensures that he is already a known and standard quantity, and through the repetition of

these stark statistics as the formula that ensures the capture of the killer, despite the

fundamental vagueness of the identity that they outline. Yet the familiarity of the

profile does not contain criticism of its perceived redundancy, nor a questioning of the

values and attributes that constitute the cliché. Cynthia Freeland termed this convenient

reliance upon the serial killer’s background the ‘familiar empty formula’ in which the

killer’s flawed psychology is gestured at, and taken for granted, but not examined in any

particularly in-depth fashion.432 Even though this recital of the profile occurs in

virtually all serial killer films and as such implicitly acknowledges that issues of race

and gender are of such consequence that they need to named and examined, there is

little ensuing analysis of this gesture. Instead, any ramifications of this explication of

contemporary anxieties, such as the status of white masculinity, are not addressed. The

profile thus condenses and emblematises the simultaneously enunciated and yet

‘unspoken’ nature of the serial killer’s identity. Akin to the generic and ‘empty’ terms

that comprise his statistical outline, such as masculinity and whiteness, the contours of

the serial killer are at once both known and unknown, named but not entirely pinned

down or revealed by this term.433 Much like Dyer’s concise assessment of the alleged

‘invisibility’ of whiteness, the specific parameters of the serial killer’s statistical outline

are ‘everything and nothing.’ It is this paradoxical everyman quality and defining

banality that I will address in my next section.

Abnormal Normality

He’s not Freddy. He’s not Jason. He’s real.

The advertising tagline for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer encapsulates the

imbrication of the serial killer’s menace with his status as an explicitly human, possible,

and ‘real’ threat. This, as Freeland notes, marks what she terms ‘realist horror’ as an

aesthetic trend and strategy within the horror genre in which monster-protagonists and

narratives are portrayed in an increasingly understated and pseudo-documentary

fashion, and narrative are based on the exploits of ‘real’ people.434 The film’s iconic

poster features Henry, loosely based on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, standing and

looking at himself in a bathroom mirror with a particularly surly, malevolent expression

148

on his face.435 Clad in a white singlet, under a gloomy fluorescent light, Henry appears

neither glamorous nor potent.436 In contrasting the protagonist with the

supernaturally-tinged and cartoon-like horror movie characters Freddy Krueger and

Jason Voorhees, the poster’s tagline deploys the seeming lack of artifice of the image

(the unflattering lighting, the apparent vulnerability of a man in just an undershirt, the

voyeuristic examination of an individual’s self regard) as a conscious strategy of

deliberate banalisation.437 In utilising Henry’s supposed ‘authenticity’ to provide chills

and legitimise the story, Henry’s monstrosity relies upon his apparent invisibility as a

monster, and upon his seeming normality. In a point that I will return to later, Henry

emblematises what Richard Tithecott notes of the serial killer in general: ‘[h]is image

says everything and nothing, for it is “normality” which stares back at us.’438

A dominant perception concerning the serial killer in much recent literature is that

he, as a random, brutal, yet undetectable individual, could be ‘anyone and anywhere,’

and that he is virtually indistinguishable from the rest of humanity. ‘Dress him in a

suit,’ as a court psychiatrist commented about Jeffrey Dahmer, ‘and he looks like

10 other men.’439 The mass media foster a perception of the serial killer as haphazard

and aimless, as a force that may enter anyone’s life at any time.440 Serial crimes are

deemed random and motiveless, being neither performed for money, as with

professional killings, nor politically motivated, as with assassinations. The crimes are

seen to have no plausible or logical explanation, and due to their heinous nature are

frequently deemed incomprehensible by popular commentators.441 Their seeming lack

of logic, though this idea is disputed by experts, is often deployed in the media to

heighten the impact of the serial killer’s threat to the public. The potency and allure that

this gesture accords to the murderer often romanticises and mythologises him,

frequently in the mode of a folk hero, as noted at the start of my chapter, as a wilful,

lawless individual who determines his own destiny and is not bound by conventions.442

The serial killer’s pleasure and release is most often the sole source of motivation for

the crime.443 As John Douglas affirms in Journey Into Darkness,

the kind of criminals we deal with don’t kill as a means to an end, such as an armed robber would; they kill or rape or torture because they enjoy it, because it gives them satisfaction and a feeling of domination and control so lacking from every other aspect of their shabby, inadequate, and cowardly lives.444

149

The increasing compulsion to enact a fantasy, as noted earlier, distinguishes the

serial killer from other murderers. The number of victims that a serial killer accrues and

the conventional criminal motivations are not considered as important as the ritualistic,

repetitive acts and the manner in which a fantasy of the crime is corporealised. Ressler

acknowledges that serial killers possess their own rationale for committing crime so that

their focus on their pleasure and satisfaction, their indulgence of pressing impulses, and

their need for self expression, are comprehensible if repulsive. He argues that

people who commit crimes against other people, crimes that have nothing to do with money, are a different breed from the ordinary criminals whose motivation is profit. Murderers, rapists, and child molesters aren’t seeking monetary profit from their crimes; in a perverse though sometimes understandable way, they are seeking emotional satisfaction.445

The insistence upon a lack of motive on behalf of the killer, and the pointless,

haphazard lack of meaning of the crime, also obfuscates the ongoing history of violence

that has permeated Western societies, particularly the United States. To label

unexpected brutality ‘random’ is thus to ignore what theorists of societal change and

aggression, such as Richard Maxwell Brown in his article ‘Historical Patterns of

Violence,’ consider to be the endemic and ongoing crisis of violence in culture –

namely, that violence may be unwelcome and often surprising, but this is not the same

as being random or unforeseeable.446 The lack of a clear cut and comprehensible cause

for their actions shifts the focus from the typicality of the killer as a criminal to, as

Rubin notes, an emphasis on how the ‘modern multiple murderer frequently confounds

notions of a “criminal type” or behavioural predictability.’447 Most importantly, serial

murderers typically do not look like killers, both in the sense of broad stereotypes

concerning criminals (which tend to be class and race-based), and in terms of their

overwhelming apparent ordinariness as individuals.

The insistence on the ‘abnormally normal’ serial killer comprises one of the most

striking and contradictory facets of serial murder discourse.448 It is such a dominant

refrain that cultural theorist Seltzer devotes extensive time in his book on serial violence

to analysing the sheer banality and redundancy of this type of assessment on a number

of levels. In doing so, he derides its generality and inefficacy.449 For Seltzer, a defining

component and major flaw of much popular and critical serial killer literature is that it is

so general as to be virtually meaningless, and he argues that its predictive capacities are

150

virtually nonexistent. Even though, as I have noted, both the public and statistical

identity of the serial murderer are extremely limited in scope and only refer to a limited

subset of the population, Seltzer argues that these broad strokes cannot, in themselves,

predict much about the individual responsible for murder beyond, if anything, his gross

physical and psychic parameters. The profile can only help once a crime is committed,

and does not offer a clear way to understand the killer, nor to prevent the emergence of

future serial crimes. Seltzer’s points are more broadly concerned with the construction

of the killer as an ‘identity’ within popular and criminological discourse as he

extrapolates from Foucault’s work on the complicated production of subject positions

such as ‘the homosexual’ and ‘the criminal’ within discourse. My aim is to redeploy

Foucault’s insights more broadly in terms of some of the normative presumptions that

govern the representation of the serial killer.

Certain phrases, such as ‘the boy next door,’ ‘so nice and quiet,’ and ‘the last

person you’d expect’ have become clichés of serial killer discourse, comprising an

ironic component of the public face of the killer.450 Indeed, the satirical newspaper

The Onion parodied the cliché of interviewing the serial killer’s typically oblivious and

shocked neighbours in the brief article ‘Serial Killer Remembers Neighbors as Quiet,

Unsuspecting.’451 The tendency to foreground the ‘abnormal normality’ of the

serial murderer has resulted in a peculiar tension within serial killer literature in that the

killer’s identity as white, male, middle class, and heterosexual has achieved such a level

of notoriety and familiarity that it has become a stereotype. Yet this highly particular

set of characteristics is rarely questioned as either adding up to a distinctive subject

position in itself; nor is it acknowledged that that this specific configuration belies the

notion that the serial killer could in fact be ‘anyone, anywhere.’ Even though the

various components of the profile have been addressed by theorists, particularly

feminists interested in the way that the serial murderer’s violence represents broader

patterns of male aggression and behaviour in culture, the figure of the serial killer is

rarely questioned in terms of describing a restricted and very specific portion of the

population. The fact that the white, heterosexual, middle class male conforms to the

profile, the low statistical correlation between the group and killers has ensured that this

particular type of criminal is rarely seen as socially relevant and hence as warranting

social critique. Nor is the serial killer profile seen to complicate or to undermine the

151

presence of the white male as normative and a societal ideal in any substantial way.

This notion of normativity is critical to serial killer studies in a variety of ways.

Whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality, as noted in my earlier chapters, are

often considered to be formed by their perceived ‘invisibility,’ neutrality, or otherwise

lack of particularity and markers of culture. They function as templates, as default

settings for humanity unless otherwise specified.452 The connection between this nexus

of forms of privileged identity and their general representation comes into particularly

sharp focus in the form of the serial murderer. The power of the normative, as the

standard against which other, more visible and vulnerable identities are measured, is a

crucial facet of the configuration of the serial killer, who mimes and hyperbolises these

facets of identity.453 For example, one crucial component of racist discourse, as bell

hooks notes, is that the non-white subject is always excessively particularised, always

marked as dissimilar and non-normative, even when this occurs in a supposedly positive

or beneficial manner.454 In addition, Elizabeth Grosz has highlighted the necessity of

analysing the ‘neutralization and neutering’ of particular subject positions in order to

dismantle ‘the universalist and universalizing assumptions of humanism, through which

women’s – and all other groups’ – specificities, positions, and histories are rendered

irrelevant or redundant.’455 This notion is echoed by Robyn Wiegman, who believes

that ‘the universalism ascribed to certain bodies (white, male, propertied) is protected

and subtended by the infinite particularity assigned to others (black, female,

unpropertied).’456 The seeming neutrality of the cultural ideal is ghosted by a very

particular identity, one that is protected from specification by its status as assumed

template and norm.

Monster as Serial Killer/Serial Killer as Monster

Sometimes an act is so frightening that we call the perpetrator a monster, but as you’ll see, it is by finding his humanness – his similarity to you and me – that such an act can be predicted.457

The question of terminology arises in The Silence of the Lambs, revolving on how

exactly to classify the film’s central villain, Hannibal Lecter. He is bitterly described as

a ‘thing’ by the Senator whose daughter has been kidnapped, and the question is asked

if it’s true that he’s a ‘vampire.’ The blunt response given is – ‘They don’t have a name

for what he is.’ Earlier, FBI agent Crawford, in sending Clarice Starling to interview

152

Lecter, warns her against deviating from the procedures governing personal contact with

Lecter, particularly concerning telling him anything personal about herself. ‘Just do

your job but never forget what he is,’ he says to Clarice, and she naturally asks what

that is. Immediately, the film shifts to Clarice meeting Dr. Chilton, the head of the

institute in which Lecter is housed, and who casually answers her question. ‘Oh, he’s a

monster. A pure psychopath.’ The serial killer is, over and over, in both fictional and

non-fictional realms, conceptualised in term of monstrosity. However, while the serial

killer is frequently considered to be a monster, and even for some theorists to embody

contemporary monstrosity, there is little analysis of what the invocation of this term

means for either teratological or criminological analyses, or what this might say about

the particular nature of the threat posed by the serial killer. The very persistence and

ubiquity of the belief that that serial killers are monsters makes it necessary to examine

what happens when the serial murderer, particularly in cinema, is termed a monster.

My interest here is in how this alignment in turn has an impact on the quality and shape

of contemporary monstrosity.

The presence of monster rhetoric in serial killer discourse is exemplified in the

titles of Robert Ressler’s books, Whoever Fights Monsters and I Have Lived In The

Monster. Ressler utilises the term monster in the title of his accounts of his time in the

FBI when he helped to form the unit devoted to serial murder, and he frequently refers

to various criminals as monstrous throughout his books.458 Salah el Moncef considers

both the serial murderer Hannibal Lecter and FBI trainee Clarice Starling as monstrous

in ‘Lecter Knows Worst: Justice as Marginal Value and the Law of Series in

Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs.’459 Mark Pizzato, in his analysis of

Jeffrey Dahmer’s depiction in the mass media depiction and the source of his

fascination for the public, asks how Dahmer came to emblematise normality.

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s 1992 insanity trial epitomized the mystery of violence behind a handsome, yet common, face. How could a middle-American, middle-class family (Dahmer’s father holds a Ph.D. in chemistry) produce such a monster?460

Similarly, although few analyses of serial killer films focus on the analysis of

monstrosity per se, it is striking how many of them invoke teratological language when

describing the form and impact of the serial murdering protagonist. For example,

Caputi, as noted at the start of my chapter, sees the serial murderer in terms of his

153

function as ‘sacred monster/hero,’ yet with little analysis of what the terms meant, nor

of the impact of their conjunction.461 Philip L. Simpson, in his analysis of the

conservative and apocalyptic impulses in the spate of mainstream, big budget

serial killer films in the 1990s, notes that they, in contrast to earlier low budget and

more experimental films, seek to ‘uphold a patriarchal, law-and-order status quo derived

in large measure from a repressively puritanical heritage.’ This entails that

the cinematic narratives work very hard to depict their serial killers as monstrous beings. They are human, to be sure, but they are also unmistakably signified in terms of a demonic Other that justifies the most violent and reactionary impulses in the American character.462

This distancing gesture translates, he believes, into the serial murderer being

positioned as an exaggerated, external threat, and a consequent perception that he

neither stems from, nor is complicit in, the contemporary political and social milieu.

Simpson’s provocative point is that the serial killer in cinema is rarely taken as a mode

through which to critique the various broad ideological policies that have enabled both

his importance in culture and the ongoing public fascination with him. Instead,

Simpson believes that films and academic treatises alike tend to individualise and

mythologise the killer in a way that reinscribes certain reactionary politics and views,

particularly a bloodthirsty, conservative, vigilante mode of behaviour.

Rubin, in his analysis of The Honeymoon Killers (1969), asserts that the

contemporary killer, both as a real life and cinematic figure, differs from an earlier,

more spectacular concept. Although this more flamboyant figure, exemplified by the

protagonists of M (1931) and Psycho (1960), ‘may appear bland on the outside, their

psychology contains a monstrous alter ego more in keeping with the monstrous acts

they commit.’ Rubin contrasts this with contemporary killers such as Edmund Kemper

and David Berkowitz, and argues that these men ‘exhibit an equally bland psychology

beneath [their] bland exterior.’463 For Rubin, then, the ‘monstrousness of these crimes

seems excessive in terms of both the external and internal sides of the murderer’s

personality. This results in an alienating sense of excess and disproportion – a

schizophrenic disconnection between the murderer and his murders.’464

The trope of monstrosity recurs in Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the

Construction of the Serial Killer, Richard Tithecott’s account of the interimplication of

154

monstrosity and masculinity, as figured through the prism of the serial killer and in

particular through the media’s depiction of Jeffrey Dahmer.465 Of the various theorists

who engage with serial killer theory, Tithecott goes the furthest in examining the

function of serial killer in terms of contemporary monstrosity and mythologisation in

North America. For Tithecott, the serial killer is, as I have noted, our contemporary

monster par excellence, a definitive political and social icon at the turn of the century.

Tithecott’s more nuanced perspective on monstrosity offers a way of engaging with

both the cultural ramifications of the serial murderer’s popularity and fascination as well

as the particular resonance of the serial killer as a monstrous entity. It is highly relevant

that Tithecott believes that ‘contemporary monstrosity assumes its most compelling

form for us as the serial killer;’ particularly given that, as he notes, ‘the idea of the serial

killer seems to be increasingly important to the way in which we perceive our world.’466

The serial killer, he believes, cathects forms of media, celebrity, and popular

psychology, and offers a way to navigate the construction of the killer, his audience, and

their mutual implication.

Tithecott does not endorse the view that the serial killer represents an attack on

the contemporary moral regime. Rather, he believes that the actions of the serial killer,

as they are represented, illustrate that ‘part of the moral structure might be continuous

with, not opposed to, the phenomenon’ of serial murder.467 Instead of the more

conventional understanding of the serial killer as an evil aberration, as the abject

exterior and an incomprehensible deviation from society, Tithecott demonstrates that in

many cases the serial killer’s actions and beliefs are an extrapolation of certain societal

standards and ideas (such as the strong individualist mentality of the United States, or

consumerism run rampant in late capitalist culture). For Tithecott, the serial killer’s

configuration instead suggests that ‘“normality” and “perversion” exist together on a

dynamic continuum as much as they are oppositional structures giving each other

meaning.’468

Tithecott notes that some theorists compare the phenomenon of serial murderer to

a virus, then points out that ‘[w]e’d rather not ask why the “disease” seems to infect

only the dominant, or once-dominant, social nexus, white men.’ He suggests that we

accept FBI figures that demonstrate that most serial killers are white males, yet ‘we fail

to explore correspondence between the meanings we give to serial killing and the

155

meaning of masculinity and of whiteness in modern America.’469 Indeed, Tithecott

comes tantalisingly close to a critique of the racial and gendered underpinnings of serial

killer discourse, particularly when he connects Dahmer’s whiteness and masculinity as

being key to his portrayal in the mass media as an average, normal guy. Throughout his

book, Tithecott approaches the question of racial identity and masculinity in a number

of productive ways. His insistence on not only viewing Dahmer as an explicitly ‘white

monster’ in contrast to his more popular depiction as gay, as male, as a cannibal, is a

rare move. However, Tithecott engages in little analysis of this form of whiteness, or

what it means to join the terms whiteness and monster in this contentious context.

What does the persistent connection made by theorists between serial killers and

monstrosity mean for monster studies? In their hands, the term ‘monster’ becomes the

embodiment of horror and destruction within an age, an emblematic sign and focal point

for negative energy, a way of navigating the seeming impossibility of certain actions

and beliefs. We have moved to having these faceless, nameless, invisible figures be our

icons of terror; only, of course, they are not nameless or faceless once they are found.

Theorists are not wrong in either calling serial killers our cultural icons, or in using the

term monster to mean a salient figure in a historical period. The monster, however, has

a more complicated history, and their usage of the term opens up new space for

teratological inquiries.

Monsters, through their sheer range of variety and prevalence, provide an

intriguing forum for investigating tendencies toward difference and anomaly within

culture. Rosemary Garland Thomson argues that anomalous bodies ‘function as

magnets to which culture secures its anxieties, questions, and needs at any given

moment.’470 Thomson makes this point in her introduction to Freakery: Cultural

Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, an important anthology on freak discourse, and

although it is illuminating, it also serves as a reminder of how difficult it can be to

analyse the body that is (ostensibly) normative. Such sites of normality, neutrality, and

standardisation are – precisely in their ordinariness – frequently opaque. The

anomalous body, as Thompson notes, is a source of great tension, analysis, and

representation, being simultaneously hidden and displayed, reviled and yet comprising

the focus of great fascination. Taken broadly, her point also encompasses some of the

reaction to the monster in culture, in which the fascination with the deviant body

156

underscores both a deep impulse toward normalisation as well as a continuing interest in

defining and settling this boundary of ‘abnormality.’ Questions about identity,

belonging, and what is termed ‘natural’ circulate around these examples of difference,

and have an impact upon the way in which alterity is perceived and understood.

Yet these moments of definition and articulation are mutually constitutive; thus

Susan Stewart notes that the acknowledged and controversial aberrations of a particular

era trace its particular dynamics of normalisation and regulation, and argues that

while the freak show may seem, at first glance, to be a display of the grotesque, the distance it invokes makes it instead an inverse display of perfection.Through the freak we derive an image of the normal; to know an age’s typical freaks is, in fact, to know its points of standardization.471

If we cannot have processes of standardisation without the simultaneous

production of the anomalous body, are not the normative bodies, the regular, the proper

bodies also magnets for cultural anxieties, questions, and needs, however implicitly?

Correspondingly, the more conventional investigative modes of ascertaining the value

and strength of the deviance from the central, normative element, in a recuperative

gesture, revalues the alterity precisely for its difference. How, then, are we to proceed

with an analysis of the normal, ideal body, in and of itself? Clearly, the serial killer

does not quite constitute this exact site of exploration, as we are able to enter into an

examination of his deviance through his criminality, his violence, and the terror that he

represents, and these all mark him as separate from the norm and as able to be

investigated. Yet the serial murderer is also a curiously slippery topic to pursue.

Following the other sites of ambiguity that I have deployed in my thesis, the serial killer

is an unstable locus of knowledge and ideas, a reminder of Penelope Deutscher’s notion

of ‘productive ambiguity’ as a generative force. The awkwardness and tension that play

across the serial killer’s body, identity, and representation are themselves signs of

broader discursive unease.

The monstrosity of the serial killer eventuates when his humanity is questioned.

His actions are so shocking and alien that any connection to a common humanity is

denied and thought to be impossible. Yet on the other hand, his monstrosity is premised

on the severity of his actions and human quality – would they be of such consequence if

performed by Godzilla, or a werewolf? – and without his underlying humanity to

157

ground the meaning of these actions, there can be no judgment of monstrosity. As

noted in Chapter Two, historically significant and enduringly popular monsters

frequently have a peculiar relationship to humanity, and some of the most notorious

monsters and often told narratives involve partial, or occasional, or even shape shifting

humans. The story of Jekyll and Hyde, ‘the Creature’ or Frankenstein’s monster,

werewolves, the minotaur, zombies, the undead, ghosts, vampires – all were initially

human, are sometimes human, or are some strange combination of the two. Whether

‘revealing’ monstrosity under a veneer (Jekyll and Hyde), changing into a monster (the

werewolf), or being composite and reworked humanity (Frankenstein’s monster), the

humanity in question remains a central point, bound in a dynamic of mutuality. As

Halberstam notes in relation to her discussion of Frankenstein’s monster, ‘[t]he monster,

therefore, by embodying what is not human, produces the human as a discursive

effect.’472 Yet this mutuality is critically effaced, and is not a direct or articulated

element.

Grosz’s discussion of freak discourse echoes Halberstam’s focus on the mutuality

of the construction of the human and the monster. The historical examination of the

philosophical and categorical meanings underpinning the concept of the freak

illustrates, Grosz believes,

the psychical, physical, and conceptual limits of human subjectivity … and the degree to which these factors are able to tolerate anomalies, ambiguities, and borderline cases, marking the threshold, not of humanity in itself, but of acceptable, tolerable, knowable humanity.473

Her focus on ‘acceptable, tolerable, knowable humanity’ is, I believe, an

important distinction to make within teratology. Monstrification is neither accidental

nor coincidental, and the levels of humanity that may be explored within the realm of

the monstrous remind us that there are gradations of more and less ‘acceptable’ humans.

However, the quality of the serial killer’s monstrosity is not uniform, even within the

limited sub-genre of cinematic representations, and so in the remainder of this chapter

I will address several different permutations of the serial killer as monstrous. In

addition, I will be looking at the configurations of racial identity in serial killer cinema,

and explore why whiteness of the serial killer is rarely addressed as a topic.

158

The Serial Killer as Banal

The banality and the monstrosity of the serial killer are necessarily entwined, and

mutually constitutive. As I noted earlier, many recent articles and books on serial

murder, despite dealing with the phenomenon in very different ways, touch upon the

killer as banal and normal. In recent cinematic representations, the serial killer’s

banality takes several forms. For one, the serial murderer, unlike many other

monster-figures or sources of threat in horror films or psychological thrillers, is an

implacably non-supernatural or mythological protagonist; that is, he is explicitly

human. Part of the horror that he generates is due to his ordinary, non-fantastic status,

and it only adds to the tension that many serial killer films are based (however loosely)

on the exploits of ‘real life’ killers. This fact is typically noted in the film’s credits or in

the its promotional literature, and seeks to authenticate the film. Otherwise, the fictional

protagonists are frequently compared to real life killers as a way of contextualising and

validating the ones found onscreen. In addition, part of the sheer horror engendered by

the monstrously banal is that the agents of violence are so unremarkable, and the only

noteworthy or spectacular element about them is the disparity between their acts of

horrific violence and their personal insipidness. As Rubin has observed, the ‘modern

multiple murderer’s monstrous actions often emanate from a bland and unimpressive

agent.’474 The serial killer is thus banal in more than one sense: the serial killer is not

just an ordinary or everyday threat and locale of horror, but his identity is also so

common as to be dull and unremarkable.

Yet this lack of remarkability is twofold. The serial murderer is implicated in

broader representational strategies of the universalisation and neutralisation of specific

identities – not only ones that seem inadequate when compared to the amount of misery

and horror that they generate, but those that are continually inscribed as dominant and

hegemonic. As discussed in my first chapter, these strategies of marginalisation and

neutralisation require that the white male is represented as paradoxically ‘invisible’ and

the template of humanity. The terror generated by the serial killer is based, in part, on

his occupation of forms of culturally validated subject positions such as whiteness and

masculinity, and it is his simulation of this very particular social and cultural identity

that undergirds the uncanny threat that he presents. In the next section I draw Judith

Halberstam’s reworking of Hannah Arendt’s influential formulation of the ‘banality of

159

evil’ in terms of contemporary monstrosity to argue that banality need not only mean

ordinary, hackneyed, or dull, but that it also implies commonality and responsibility,

and may function as a means of social critique.

From Eichmann Onwards

In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Hannah Arendt’s analysis

of the 1961 trial of Nazi official Adolf Eichmann for the death of countless prisoners,

she inaugurates a core component of contemporary teratology: the banal monster.475

The subtitle of Arendt’s book, the ‘banality of evil,’ helped to spawn a new way of

examining acts of wrongdoing, responsibility, and the treatment of crimes and acts

deemed to be against humanity. Halberstam in turn introduces the ushering in of this

‘new’ monster by saying that ‘[t]he monster, as we know it, died in 1963’ with the

publication of Arendt’s report.476 In Eichmann, Arendt found a criminal whose salience

rests precisely in his qualities of being seemingly normal, ordinary, and

indistinguishable. Arendt was not the only one to focus on the apparent unremarkability

of Eichmann, as Claudia Roth Pierpont notes:

Arendt was far from alone in her reaction to the banal appearance and demeanor of this giant of evildoing. Reporters at the trial seemed to vie with each other for the homeliest comparison: slight and pale and twitchy and sniffling, S.S. Obersturmbannführer Eichmann seemed, to their amazement, just like a milkman or dentist or a small-town tax collector or the Vacuum Oil Company travelling salesman he had actually been before the war – a perfectly ordinary-looking monster.477

The discrepancy is also noted by C. Fred Alford in his analysis of the

contemporary meaning of evil. Discussing the notion of the banality of evil in terms of

the disparity between acts of violence and their perpetrators, he points out

the frequent disproportion between the smallness of the evildoer and the magnitude of the evil deed … there is nonetheless a terrifying disproportion between the ludicrous fool Eichmann and the suffering upon millions that he inflicted. Arendt is trying to get at precisely this idea with the ‘banality of evil,’ the awesome incongruity between man and deed that characterizes so much, but not all, evil.478

Indeed, as Arendt pointed out, the rhetoric utilised by the prosecution and the

media alike soon turned to well worn mythological narratives and images, for Eichmann

was compared to Bluebeard, and at one point protested against his treatment:

160

‘I am not the monster I am made out be,’ Eichmann said, ‘I am the victim of a fallacy.’ He did not use the word ‘scapegoat,’ but he confirmed what Servatius had said: it was his ‘profound conviction that [he] must suffer for the acts of others.’479

Arendt argues against a tendency to perceive Eichmann as ‘Bluebeard,’ as a

monstrous and supernatural figure, as this action would defeat the purpose of trying him

as a sane, rational, and culpable human being.480 She writes:

Clearly, it was not enough that that they [the judges] did not follow the prosecution in its obviously mistaken description of the accused as a ‘perverted sadist,’ nor would it have been enough if they had gone one step further and shown the inconsistency of the case for the prosecution, in which Mr. Hausner wanted to try the most abnormal monster the world had ever seen and, at the same time, try in him ‘many like him,’ even the ‘whole Nazi movement and anti-Semitism at large.’ They knew, of course, that it would have been very comforting indeed to believe that Eichmann was a monster, even though if he had been Israel’s case against him would have collapsed or, at the very least, lost all interest. Surely, one can hardly call upon the whole world and gather correspondents from the four corners of the earth in order to display Bluebeard in the dock. The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together, for it implied – as has been said at Nuremberg over and over again by the defendants and their counsels –that this new type of criminal, who is in actual fact hostis generis humani,commits his crimes under circumstances that make it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he is doing wrong.481

In this passage, Arendt points out the impulse to monstrify that which is

bewilderingly alien and to demonise any human actions that we cannot easily

comprehend or countenance. She also notes the ‘comfort’ to be derived from this

assertion of monstrosity, the sense of distance that this judgement implies in its

separation of the individual from those who judge. It is interesting, then, that Arendt’s

views received a mixed reception. Roth Pierpont details the responses to Arendt’s

work, including the outcry against her book at the time of publication, with some

commentators asserting that Arendt blamed the Jewish people for their annihilation and

exonerated Eichmann of his crimes so that ‘by exaggerating the complicity of the

victims and emphasizing the ordinariness of the defendant – the book was subtitled

A Report on the Banality of Evil – she had written a defense of Eichmann.’482

161

To focus on Eichmann’s banality does not mean that Arendt offered a defence of

Eichmann’s actions. To exaggerate his monstrosity, Arendt points out, undermines the

ramifications of Eichmann’s actions by insisting on his singular threat and ignoring that

his potency was derived from being part of a broader system of belief and action.

Alford affirms the impact of Arendt’s beliefs concerning the inequity of the perpetrator

and the disproportionate ramifications of his or her actions:

No wonder Arendt’s thesis of the banality of evil is so threatening. It takes the proportion out of evil, making its cause unequal to its effect, making light of our suffering, revealing our tormentor to be not Satan but a ridiculous fool.As one of Robert Jay Lifton’s informants puts it in The Nazi Doctors, ‘It is demonic that they were not demonic.’483

This form of evil, the power of which stems precisely from its sheer banality,

reworks prior and alternate understandings of the excessive and supernatural status of

monsters, and extends those that concern the explicitly human. Although Arendt was

correct to note the fantastic, mythologising elements at work in the depiction of

Eichmann as a demonic individual, she also ushers in a different mode of perceiving

this morality of culpability and acquiescence, of following orders and doing one’s job

efficiently. He is not Bluebeard; he is a different species of monster entirely.

The monster has a richer and broader level of meaning than just as an excessive,

imaginary creature. Indeed, I would argue, as Halberstam does, that one can be both

ordinary and a monster, and that one’s monstrosity may be paradoxically channelled

through one’s simulation or embodiment of this very banality.

Halberstam opens her chapter on queer sexuality and monstrosity in The Silence

of the Lambs with a discussion of Arendt’s work, and asks ‘[w]hat exactly is the

comfort of making Eichmann or others like him into monsters?’ She responds by

stating that monsters

confirm that evil resides only in specific bodies and particular psyches.Monstrosity as the bodily manifestation of evil makes evil into a local effect, not generalizable across a society or culture. But modernity has eliminated the comfort of monsters because we have seen, in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, that evil works often as a system, it works through institutions and it works through a banal (meaning ‘common to all’) mechanism. In other words, evil stretches across cultural and political productions as complicity and collaboration and it manifests itself as a seamless norm rather than as some monstrous disruption.484

162

Unlike others who sought to explain the monster behind Eichmann’s mask of

normality, Halberstam believes that Arendt perceived in Eichmann ‘the banality of a

monstrosity that functions as a bureaucracy.’485 Complicity and silence are thus key to

the maintenance and preservation of a system of terrorisation, for ‘Eichmann’s crime

was precisely that he was no monster, he was simply “terrifyingly normal.”’486

Arendt’s insights led to a new kind of monstrosity, one that reflected the milieu in

which it was situated. In late capitalist, post-industrial societal relations the role and

form of the monster stretches to become part of the machinations and power relations of

culture, for monstrosity becomes a function of knowledge and accuracy, of competency

and ability, of exploitation and oppression. Though the term monster had previously

referred broadly to a type of monster, generally locatable within one singular body, the

effect of monstrosity is now often generated by systems, relations, and information. In

decentralising the locus of terror, shifting it from the individuated body into a network

of systems, where evil could be performing one’s job correctly and efficiently and

where monstrosity functions as knowledge and compliance, Arendt’s focus is on the

moral and ethical realm rather than the physical and visual.

The comfort of monstrosity that both Arendt and Halberstam address, then, is in

part a recuperative gesture that establishes appropriate limits of subjectivity and

humanity.487 The ‘comfort’ of Eichmann-as-Bluebeard is that he reduces and limits the

ramifications of this new type of evil into a more conventional form, and yet one that

we may accept with ease. Monsters reassure us by showing us what we are not. Yet the

monster, as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen notes, also functions as a rehearsal of alterity, albeit

within carefully structured borders. He argues that ‘[t]hrough the body of the monster

fantasies of aggression, domination, and inversion are allowed expression in clearly

delimited and permanently liminal space.’488 These fantasies serve as an arena in which

the monster enacts, but also contains, transgressive impulses, particularly within the

realm of the imagination. The connection between the two ideas – the comfort of

monstrosity and the containment of impulses within the figure of the monster – are

important in teratology as they can function as a safety valve. There can be a pleasure

in the rehearsal of the monstrous, and also in the packing away and retreating from the

monster, in due time. At the same time, certain pressures and ideas (such as the sheer

necessity of this type of policing and regulation) are articulated with particular clarity

163

and resonance in these limited areas, where the enforced liminality makes them more

acute.

The compartmentalisation of threat, of securing anxiety and terror within stable

confines, may be seen in the depiction of the perpetrators of serial violence – it is

reduced to the figure of the individual, pushed back into a recognisable and discrete

locale, even if the strangeness he induces is often explained in broader societal terms.

The constitutive liminality of monsters, in this contemporary context, is reworked so

that the borders they occupy and confuse are social mores and standards, such as

‘white trash,’ masculinity, and normality. Part of this reworking is undertaken through

more conventional ways of addressing difference through stigmatising and exclusionary

fashion, as I noted earlier in relation to female, homosexual, or non-white serial killers

in cinema, but there is at least one other way in which liminality is a core issue in serial

murder cinema, which I will now address.

In this respect, I turn to a consideration of the production of normalisation and

hegemonic subject positions as implicated in this broader sense of banality and

monstrosity. To extrapolate, I find it beneficial that Halberstam focuses on the norm as

monstrous rather than the potential haemorrhaging of the norm, or a neat opposition of

monster to norm. That is, the monster becomes implicated in societal functioning, as a

constitutive element – the monster is part of, not opposed to, culture. If this form of

monstrosity is implicated in the norm, and in some respects is normative, then it opens

up a space for the consideration of this specifically human version of the monster.

It also enables an interrogation of the way in which the serial killer, in turn, troubles

dominant categories of identity in its occupation of a privileged space.

The representation of the serial murderer is, unlike many other types of monster, not just

white, male, heterosexual, and middle class, but is often all these at once.489 I argue that

this conglomeration of points in one pressured, charged example may be viewed as

hyperbolic, and that it may also be rendered as accountable, that is – able to be specified

and interrogated. Although my pursuit of this idea differs somewhat from Arendt and

Halberstam’s ideas of banality, I want to argue that this aggressive and hyperbolic

‘invisibility,’ these assumed positions of normativity function in ways that underscore

and expose undo the myth of normality.

164

In a fashion similar to Judith Butler’s influential foregrounding of gender’s

permeability and instability as evidenced by its performativity and mimetic status, I

wish to focus on the norms that are made overt in the process of effacement in the guise

of banality.490 I will forward a view that interprets the representation of the serial killer

in two ways – as displaying tropes of mimesis, and as containing already fragmented

identities within the putatively hegemonic ones shown onscreen. In other words, I will

argue that serial killer cinema is an area in which these dominant norms and tensions are

laid bare and illuminated in specific and highly charged ways, but particularly through

their association with both the criminal and the (seemingly) neutral.

The serial murderer’s implication in tropes of safety, normality, and ordinary

humanity offers a mode for questioning the value and positioning of normativity, a way

to interrogate the processes of the banal and the ordinary. By miming and undermining

the figure of the heterosexual white male, the serial killer illustrates the liminality and

vulnerability of this subject position and its appeal to the ‘human.’ The serial killer,

then, may be seen to function as a critique or comment on contemporary standards and

forms of representation, particularly of racial stereotyping. The depiction of the serial

killer as banal offers an implicit criticism of the identity that has been enshrined as

normative through its capacity to approximate it so closely. The way in which the serial

murderer serves to reinscribe certain types of identity as normal, even when violent and

homicidal, or perhaps partially due to his violence and murderousness, offers a chilling

account of broader societal tendencies and standards. That is, he reflects back on social

values and ideals and, in his simulation/embodiment of the ‘seamless norm,’

underscores their potency.

The film Copycat illustrates this element of normality, surface banality, and the

lack of distinguishability, and it foregrounds these elements as not only part of the

narrative but as part of the fear that the serial killer inspires. The thrust of the narrative

is that the main featured killer, Peter, desires to be an ‘über killer,’ to attain fame as a

supreme murderer who enacts the styles and signatures of other killers, but who also

seeks to erase the significance of their actions by miming and undermining them. Like

the real life Peter Kürten, from whom he takes his pseudonym, Peter seeks to be the

‘most celebrated criminal of all time,’ to reap notoriety through killing, and to be the

best at it.491

165

The presumed normality of whiteness, heterosexuality, and masculinity are

strikingly displayed and made accountable in Copycat. The banality and constitutive

‘absence’ that inform the serial killer’s identity are given a sharp twist in an

extraordinary early scene. In this sequence, Dr Helen Hudson, an expert on serial

killing, delivers a speech on the phenomenon, and seeks to demonstrate the sheer

indistinguishability and perverse ‘normality’ of killers simply through pointing out their

similarity to the audience members. She invites the male audience members to stand,

and then specifies those members that she wishes to remain standing: ‘[n]ow would

everyone under 20 and over 31 take a seat. And if you’re of Asian or African American

descent, you may sit down.’ As these men are filmed and their images are

simultaneously projected onto a large screen onstage for the everyone in the lecture hall

to see, Helen asks the rest of the audience ‘[s]ome pretty cute guys don’t you think? I

mean, if one of these fellows asked you out for a drink you’d go, wouldn’t you?’ But as

she speaks the most recent image of a wholesome, amused audience member has been

replaced on the screen by a black and white image of Edmund Kemper. The film

reverts to brief shots of the now somewhat uncomfortable males, both in the audience

and on the screen. ‘Well, let me tell you something,’ Helen continues, as a colour slide

of John Wayne Gacy, dressed in the notorious homemade clown costume that he used

for charity work, is displayed, ‘nine out of ten serial killers are white males aged 20 to

35 – just like these.’

Just like these. Hudson’s implication is clear; the killer is not easily

distinguished or located. Yet rather than acting as a frightening depiction of a menace

defined by its apparent normality, her words and actions reduce the potency and

viability of the apparent banality of the killer. Her act of individuation and deliberate

re-presentation of these figures renders them highly specific and accountable, and gives

the serial killer an extremely visible, and recognisable, public face. The meaning

behind this gesture is given a further twist when, it eventuates, the audience at Helen’s

lecture actually contains (at least) two killers. The first, Daryll Lee Cullum, is familiar

to Helen, as she has already testified against him at a trial. He has escaped from prison

and the threat of retaliation hangs over Helen, who delivers her talk under heightened

police security – protection that, unfortunately, will fail, as Cullum brutally attacks

Helen in the bathroom immediately following her lecture.492

166

The second killer, Peter, at this point unknown to Helen, is not yet identified as a

murderer or a threat of any kind, and hence appears as just another random male at the

talk. Though not notably singled out, Peter is several times cleverly positioned near

some of the other males spotlit by the beam, precisely illustrating the dangerous banality

operative in serial killer discourse. Indeed, the moment at which we most clearly see

the person we will soon know as Peter is when we hear Helen say ‘just like these,’ for at

this point the search light and camera both pass directly over him, and keep moving.

He, as a proto-killer, as someone who will soon be performing nightmarish acts of

violence, is virtually indistinguishable from the other men that Helen located as the

average, the statistical ‘norm.’ He is visible as aberrant only in retrospect. There are so

many ‘like’ him that he is able to literally blend into the background. This point may be

extended to indicate that there is something already within the norm that enables this

representation of the serial killer. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to speak of the

presence of a conditional norm in serial killer discourse, a strategy of normativity that

shifts with discourse to encompass the possible fluctuation of terms and meaning.

Helen, after asking the men to sit back down and kidding that they were ‘scaring’

her, goes on to discuss the relative ‘normality’ of these males who engage in serial acts

of violence. They are, she says, ‘quiet, unassuming, even nice. They held down jobs,

they made good neighbours. Their victims trusted them.’ In short, they are the boy

next door, grown up. Hudson’s opinion reflects mainstream understandings of serial

violence. Serial killers are not always overtly and demonstrably threatening and

dangerous. Indeed, Ted Bundy, killer of many female college students, often coerced

his victims by appearing helpless and injured, frequently by wearing a fake cast on his

arm or asking for directions in order to inspire pity and lull suspicion.493

The serial killer is banal both in terms of being bland, as indistinguishable and

imitable, and he is also banal in terms of being quotidian, ordinary, and explicitly not

supernatural. Some serial killer films display both of these qualities. As noted earlier,

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a notorious example of the ‘ordinary’ serial killer,

and has elicited considerable debate and criticism. Various approaches to Henry have

considered the ramifications of Henry, the protagonist, as supplying ‘realist horror,’ as

illustrating differences between art-horror and alternative cinema and more mainstream

167

horror films, and as exemplifying a particular trend to postmodern and apocalyptic

terror.494 Flatness and a lack of intrinsic interesting qualities forms a striking

component of some serial killer films, in which the protagonist’s blandness is matched

by the muted or gritty stylistic choices of the film. Freeland has connected the

pseudo-realist mode of filming with the serial killer’s banal monstrosity, which she

terms ‘ordinary horror,’ in which, as noted earlier, part of the fear that Henry engenders

stems from the fact that he was a real killer, as the film’s tagline emphasises. The

aesthetic strictures that bind representations of ‘realism’ are faithfully adhered to in

Henry, which diverges from the more extravagant or cartoonish displays frequently

found in the horror genre. The realistic style also reifies the sense of Henry’s insular,

monochromatic world, in which other staples of serial killer films, such as law

enforcement officers, plucky ‘Final Girls’ (in Carol Clover’s well-known term

describing the female protagonist who survives to the end of the film), and more

conventional hero figures are all absent.495

It is interesting, then, that Annalee Newitz believes that the studied normality of

Henry draws attention to itself, and undermines the conceits it undertakes to explore,

when she argues that the ‘pseudo-documentary style of the film draws attention to

Henry’s “normal” act; the grainy photography and cinema verité acting invite

audiences to see it as artfully constructed.’ 496 She expands this idea by noting that

‘the docu-drama artificiality of Henry’s realism works to enhance our sense that Henry

and [his collaborator] Ottis’s ordinariness is sheer performance, and thus utterly

extraordinary. Although an audience can see through Henry’s ‘ordinary guy’ act,

doubts about what is ordinary remain.’497 Newitz’s analysis opens space for a claim

that the serial killer’s occupation of specific hegemonic identities is already riven with

internal fissures, and that the serial murderer functions, in some senses, as a critique of

these ordinary, average, everyday subject positions and norms.

Race and/as Whiteness in the Serial Killer Film

Unlike the other monsters analysed in my second chapter, the serial killer’s monstrosity

is due, in part, to his status as human, male, and white. In contrast to my previous

examples of the ‘monstrous races,’ the indigenous populations, or futuristic and racially

inflected aliens, the serial killer is rarely from an ethnic minority or is presented in

conventional modes as racially marked. This follows on from a broader trend in the

168

horror genre, in which the vast majority of monsters and villains are white. A role call

of influential and popular monsters, from Freddy Krueger to Michael Myers to Hannibal

Lecter to Jason Voorhees, reveals that all are white. Henry, Pinhead, the Tall Man, and

the ‘Stepfather’ are not only all white, but their race is typically effaced in all critical

discussion of horror, of monstrosity, and of the motivation for their actions.498

The representation of the monster partakes of the effacement of whiteness that occurs

more broadly in culture. When theorists examine racial monstrosity they rarely

interrogate the precepts undergirding what race is, what the dominant race is, and how

these perceptions of monstrosity actually inform and actively cohere racial designations.

Even when whiteness is investigated as part of the analysis, there are no efforts made to

connect the potency of the designation, the ways in which the race of the monster

undermines his status as monstrous, and so forth.

Yet whiteness is crucial to the representation of the serial killer. Serial killers are

statistically overwhelmingly, white males. Yet the potential significance of this has

rarely been analysed, nor has the specificity of the whiteness of the serial killer. Within

the broad designation, various forms of whiteness (such as both ‘white trash’ and the

firmly middle class) are articulated through the figure of the serial killer, and these are

informed by various other components of identity, particularly when negative. The

serial killer is rarely depicted as belonging to an ethnic group. Yet, his race is caught in

a curious fetishistic bind of disavowal. It functions as an important component of his

representation, but his whiteness is rarely articulated as racially specific or as a

significant element of his identity. Despite the overt, even graphic portrayal of the

serial murderer as belonging to a specified ethnic group, this component of his identity

is somehow left untouched by this association. His actions are never seen to cast

whiteness in a negative light, or to confirm racist stereotypes about white people. Dyer

has outlined a set of statements that display some of the inequity involved in racial

representation. They express some of the conditions and experiences available to white

people solely on the basis of their race, and range from ‘I can swear, or dress in

second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices

to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race’ to ‘I am never asked to speak

for all the people of my racial group.’ 499 These statements are particularly apt in terms

of serial killer representation, as both these notions, of speaking ‘for’ one’s race, as well

169

as any negative or violent behaviour automatically reflecting upon one’s race, are

notably absent in films about serial violence.

The conjunction of whiteness and serial killing opens a space for investigating the

way in which race functions, particularly through the denial of its presence as

constitutive or vital. The white heterosexual male is never named as accountable and

specific, yet he ghosts the forms of acceptable representation available to other subject

positions, and appears as their counterpart. The systemic refusal to acknowledge the

serial killer, disproportionately figured as white and male, as symptomatic or even

reflecting part of the constitutive elements of cultural values, is moored in the fetishistic

disavowal of the centrality and importance of whiteness in organising and benefiting

from cultural norms. The whiteness of the killer, in many texts, is considered a mere

distinguishing mark, and is in no way representative of a trend, or broader societal

problem. This echoes certain perceptions of whiteness that refuse to acknowledge the

privilege and status frequently accorded to whiteness in culture, and choose to read

whiteness solely at the level of skin. These reductive interpretations deny the complex

interaction between race and other components of identity.

As I have illustrated, the race of the serial murderer occupies a peculiar space in

his public portrayal, as it is both constantly articulated and named in media profiles and

in cinema. Yet the impact of this naming and the designation itself are rarely

interrogated. What does it mean for the serial killer to be a white male in contemporary

society, in which the whiteness of criminals is treated in a vastly different way to that of

non-white criminals, in which race and monstrosity are considered to be mutually

exclusive, and in which the value of whiteness is premised, in part, on its ability to be

perceived as ‘neutral.’ Accounts of the serial killing phenomenon evade or erase any

significance either in the fact that the serial killer is always named (and is able to be

named) as racially specific within both academic discourse and popular representations,

or in the overwhelming evidence that a disproportionate amount of serial killers are

white males.

In addition, in film and in reality the vast majority of not only serial killers but

also law enforcement officers and victims are white. The environments they inhabit,

their lifestyles, living spaces, jobs and behaviour, are coded as white. Investigators

170

confidently predict the race of the serial killer based on the race of the victim, given that

they so overwhelmingly hunt within their own ethnic/racial group of the killer.500 Yet

serial killer crimes are rarely acknowledged as racially motivated beyond efforts to

locate the ‘cause’ of serial violence within childhood (as abuse, neglect, or learnt

behaviour) or physical trauma, both of which can be seen to reveal a basic awareness of

entwined racial, gendered, and class relations working to inform subject positions.

These positions and forms are racialised in the sense that all subject configurations are

implicated in dominant strands of meaning, by which no one person, idea, or system can

step outside of this nexus of signification.501 This partially reflects the difficulty of

locating white criminals as racially accountable. Crime is rarely seen to ‘reflect’ on the

white community or white ethnicity in the way that racial minorities are consistently

stigmatised by stereotypes. 502

When race is featured as a specific formulation and identity in the serial killer

film, it is generally in terms of an overt intrusion into an implicitly white world, most

often through a character foregrounded as foreign, strange, or ‘ethnic.’ Deviations from

the white norm are marked as such, and are often commented on as a sign of difference.

The few serial killer films to feature non-white protagonists display the ethnicity or

nationality of the character in markedly pointed ways; for example, the treatment of the

Latino male protagonist in The Honeymoon Killers renders him ‘exotic’ and connects

him to well worn stereotypes through music, dancing, pronounced accent and taste in

clothes. In Kiss the Girls, Dr Alex Cross, an African American forensics psychologist,

travels to North Carolina to search for his missing niece, where he encounters much

initial resistance from local law enforcement. It is plausible that his role as an outsider,

as an expert offering unsought advice, has irked the men; it is equally plausible that the

all-white team is initially hostile to him for unspoken racist reasons, at least until he has

‘proven’ himself to them. Yet the whiteness of the two serial killers never arouses

suspicion, causes interest, or is considered a core component of the killer’s

psychological makeup, environment, or motivation.

It is interesting that the white criminal is rarely described as white, much less held

accountable as a threatening white citizen, within this rigidly demarcated system of

racialised agency and morality. What investment do we have in treating the white

criminal as an aberration, as racially unmarked, and how do we perceive his

171

masculinity, heterosexuality, and whiteness working in tandem not just to accord with,

but to perpetuate white hegemony? As Butler shows in relation to the infamous

Rodney King video, hegemonic whiteness structures possibilities of perceiving crimes

and criminals in terms of their motives, their impact, and the punishment required.

White criminals are judged individually, the causes for their acts are sought, they are

seen as anomalous (or perhaps, as a threat of a worse world to come) and most of all,

their race is never seen to ‘cause’ or even influence their crime.

One example of conflicted criminal whiteness in particular serves to highlight

some of the ways in which white identity may be understood both as plural, and as

having negative connotations. When whiteness is made specific as a racial formation in

cinema, as I noted earlier, it is frequently implicated in, or mediated by, other forms of

hierarchically organised points of identity. Often, whiteness is made contentious and

abject when joined to a derogated homosexual identity, or to a representation of ‘poor

white trash’ as homicidal and dangerous. As Dyer notes, figures of white monstrosity

are also often marked as ‘liminally’ white. Their ambiguous, or visibly ‘impure’ racial

status is foregrounded and openly questioned in a manner that partially constitutes their

monstrosity. Some whites are necessarily liminal, in order to bound both the privilege

of whiteness as well as to signify other determinants of identity; and in this context the

designation ‘poor white trash’ illuminates some of the conditions that are placed on

achieving and demonstrating adequate hegemonic identity.

A number of fictional serial killers are filtered through the stereotype of

‘poor white trash.’ The Cell, Copycat, Henry, Kalifornia, Kiss the Girls, Natural Born

Killers, Clay Pigeons (1998), and The Vanishing (1993) all feature protagonists who, to

some degree, are marked as coming from small town or rural areas with strong regional

accents, who are either impoverished or are not as wealthy as their victims, and who

appear to be tasteless, naïve, and to lack sophistication and worldliness. Their

whiteness is contrasted with that of other characters, whose whiteness is neutralised and

appears as the flat screen against which these class and socioeconomic details are

played. Kiss the Girls, Copycat, and The Silence of the Lambs are unusual in that they

all feature pairs of killers in the film, with the ‘trashier’ half of the duo serving to

normalise the whiteness of the other murderer.

172

Interestingly, The Silence of the Lambs not only explicitly contrasts forms of

whiteness by comparing the behaviour and choices of Jame Gumb and Hannibal Lecter

but also by having Lecter recognise Clarice Starling’s regionally-inflected accent, and

perceive in her ‘good bag and [her] cheap shoes’ that Starling is ambitious and a social

climber (albeit one whom Lecter can dissect with brute precision). Even so, Starling’s

aspiration is implicitly endorsed by the film and does not count against her– until

Lecter’s brutal assessment effectively relocates Starling to her appropriate position in

the white social hierarchy. Starling is sent by Jack Crawford of the FBI to sound out

Lecter and to seek his help, though without Starling’s direct knowledge. Instead, she is

asked to pursue Lecter’s participation in a survey, though Lecter sees through the ruse

immediately. His interest is piqued by Starling, however, and so he condescends to

have her pass him though the questionnaire. Lecter grins at her and exaggeratedly

pages through the survey, barely looking at it, and says ‘Oh, Agent Starling, you think

you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?’ His voice has slipped into a regional

southern accent on the last three words, but Starling doesn’t recognise this warning.

Instead, she demurs, and Lecter says:

You’re so ambitious, aren’t you? Do you know what you look like to me with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube, with a little taste. Good nutrition’s given you some length of bone, but you’re not more than one generation away from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?

And that accent you’ve tried so desperately to shed: pure West Virginia. What is your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp?

And oh, how quickly the boys found you. All those tedious, sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out, getting anywhere, getting all the way to the FBI.

Lecter markedly exaggerates his mock-Southern accent on coal miner and lamp,

and his pronunciation of FBI is particularly pointed; ‘effa bee eye,’ he says, mocking

and making small her ambition to escape and make a better life for herself while

positioning himself as the arbiter of, and expert on, taste and class.503

Newitz analyses displays of white trash ethnicity in ‘White Savagery and

Humiliation, Or a New Racial Consciousness in the Media,’ interrogating the way that

films from Planet of the Apes (1968) to Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987) depict

173

violence and ‘savagery’ and in doing so analysing their negative view of whiteness.

Some of the complexity of contemporary whiteness is addressed in these films, and,

following other critics, Newitz suggests that the easiest way to view whiteness is

through a negative register in which ‘whiteness emerges as a distinct and visible racial

identity when it can be identified as somehow primitive or inhuman.’504 In a range of

films, the ‘hillbilly figure designates a white who is racially visible not just because he

is poor, but also because he is sometimes monstrously so.’505 In her discussion of

Kalifornia, a serial killer film in which the white male killer, Early, is particularly

brazenly portrayed as lower class and trashy, Newitz notes that the killer ‘refuses to

behave in a ‘socially acceptable’ way and pass as middle class. His homicidal impulses

are portrayed as some apocalyptic convergence between his low-class behavior and his

shamelessness about it.’506

As suggested earlier, the category white trash is frequently deployed as a way of

distinguishing a ‘superior’ form of whiteness. The function of the white trash citizen as

arbiter of unacceptable behaviour is complicated by what Newitz styles as a double

gesture of location and eradication. Newitz illustrates how, in the films that she

analyses, the forms of whiteness literally compete with, and against, each other, with

middle class values inevitably emerging triumphant in a gesture that ‘sustain[s] the

notion that the only power the disenfranchised have is to bring the powerful down to a

horrific, animalistic level.’507 This conservative approach to depictions of class and race

is also noted by Simpson, who acknowledges both the potential for critique in the serial

killer film, as well as the way that this critique is usually defused for either a

glamorisation of the killer or what Simpson believes is the apocalyptic vision of total

annihilation rather than reform. Instead of taking the serial murderer as a starting point

for a broad critique, deploying it to understand and undermine strategies that are

exacerbated in the form of the killer, he is depicted in ways that serve to reify and renew

existing standards and beliefs.

The serial killer, as I have shown in this chapter, is rarely presented explicitly in

terms of his racial status, yet it informs much of his characterisation and representation.

This racial status, which exists in a strange zone of being both an implicit part of serial

killer discourse and yet is openly acknowledged in the profile of the serial murderer,

mirrors some of the broader patterns of representations of whiteness, such as whiteness

174

being neutralised as a racially specific designation. In pursuing the ramifications of this

underplaying of whiteness as a constitutive element of the serial killer in representation,

I followed Arendt and Halberstam in examining the banality of the monster in an

attempt to explore the connection between white ethnicity and the seeming neutrality of

the serial killer. In the more overt and exaggerated examples of white ethnicity as

‘white trash’ killers, I deployed Newitz’s insights into white aggression and degradation

and found a self-consciousness operating in these films that belied the notion of

whiteness unilaterally being represented as universal, neutral, or invisible. Whereas the

serial killer is a bland, quotidian presence, who is (falsely) perceived as ‘anyone and

everyone,’ in the next chapter I examine a different kind of banality – a monster who

comes from a very particular place, who isn’t just anyone from anywhere, and yet who

is also considered to be commonplace, quotidian, and by virtue of his very banality to

be an unsettling, threatening face of contemporary monstrosity – the monster next door.

175

CHAPTER 6

‘The Monsters Next Door’: Columbine, Suburbia,

and White Monstrosity

In this chapter I examine the connections between whiteness, monstrosity, and

marginality through the lens of the Columbine massacre. As part of my broader project

of investigating the denaturalisation and specification of white identities as hegemonic

and dominant, I seek here to interrogate a particular example of violent white

subjectivity and examine the presence of marginality within an ostensibly dominant

identity position, itself replete with normative assumptions and ideals. As such, I

consider the conditions surrounding the specificity of these white identities and, in the

denaturalising gesture that I foregrounded in the chapter on whiteness, mark these

identities as firmly situated in terms of race, gender, and class rather than as

representative of the generic ‘human.’ Unlike my previous examples of complicated

white identity, the representation of the serial killer, and ‘white trash’ citizenry, this

chapter examines the high school killer as exemplifying a more intimate conception of

violent and negative white identity.

More than half a decade after they occurred, the shootings at Columbine High

School in Littleton, Colorado remain a significant event in the North American cultural

landscape. If one measure of cultural salience is the attribution of a shorthand

description to an idea, moment, or incident, then the siege that took place on

April 20, 1999 has become a touchstone of contemporary North American culture.

As the most notorious example of high school massacres, with the highest death toll of

comparable episodes in North America (at the time that this project took form), the

murderous spree has come to symbolise all such school-based violence for the public

and in the media. In addition, the ubiquity, and widespread comprehension, of a term

176

such as ‘to do a Columbine’ indicates that the ramifications of the events of that day

will continue to resonate for a long time.

The significance of the event is not purely statistical; it is not just the number of

people who died that renders it such an important cultural landmark. While the

Columbine death toll remains the highest number of fatalities to occur in a high school

siege in the United States, on average more Americans die from drunk driving each

week. Nor is it the age of the perpetrators that makes them significant. Indeed, at 17

and 18 respectively, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were old in comparison to other

known child murderers, even amongst the perpetrators of other school shootings (for

example, Michael Carneal, of West Paducah, Kentucky, was 14 when he killed three

and wounded five). Nor were Klebold and Harris the first males to team up to commit

crime, as they followed the duo of Andrew Golden, 11, and Mitchell Johnson, 13, who

murdered five people and injured ten in a siege in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The spree at

Columbine High School was not the first school killing, the first gun fatality at a high

school or on a campus, or even the first mass shooting to occur in North America. The

Littleton shootings, however, became a flashpoint for all these elements, and created an

instant reference point for the myriad (and cathected) issues condensed in high school

massacres. Immediately, the siege generated an enormous amount of interest in the

United States media, making headlines and provoking a critical outpouring of responses

that culminated in the cover of Time magazine, which featured photographs of Harris

and Klebold superimposed over the title: ‘The Monsters Next Door.’

Who were the individuals responsible for the worst high school massacre in North

American history? Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were two white, male, middle class

teenagers from the conservative, upper middle-class, predominantly white town of

Littleton. In focusing in this chapter on the mass media representation of Harris and

Klebold (and more broadly on the pattern of recent high school shootings in the United

States), I examine some of the various and competing ways in which the boys were

depicted in the mainstream media both at the time of the event and subsequently, and I

will assess the various broad cultural compulsions that arguably underlie these efforts.

I will argue that the representation of high school mass murderers downplays their

statistically overwhelmingly white, male, and middle class status, and that this aligns

with broader forces guiding representation, such as erasure and normativity. The

177

complicated nature of the Columbine case reveals some of the way in which strategies

of neutralisation and normalisation function by showing the effects of marginalisation in

an otherwise nominally privileged and hegemonic body. In this instance, the process of

marginalisation occurs through the act of monstrification. The case shows that even the

most privileged nexus of subject positions (that is, youthful, heterosexual, middle class,

able bodied, affluent, white, and male) is not only able to be rendered as abject and

peripheral, but is formed through the interimplication of the hegemonic and the

marginal. That is, it is equally traced by power relations, and named as a specific

subject, and as able to be ‘known’ as other, marginalised identities and positions. The

high school killer has become a potent contemporary icon. Part of the reaction to these

acts of violence was manifested in a public act of monstrification, in the utilisation of

this mythologising and excessive representation and name, which culminated in the

cover of Time magazine.

My examination is concerned with the media reports on the Columbine and other

high school killing sprees, internet web sites, online journals, and television programs

that arose in the aftermath of the crime. In tracking the interplay of monstrosity and

whiteness in them, I offer neither a criminological perspective on the case nor a

psychological examination of the perpetrators. Instead, I endeavour to provide a

feminist and anti-racist interpretation of the mass media representation of the

Columbine killers and demonstrate how their case connects to the broader

representational strategies that I have already discussed. The media reports helped to

coalesce the perception of the event in very particular ways. There were well-publicised

details from the Columbine case – such as Harris and Klebold’s alleged membership in

the ‘Trench Coat Mafia’ – that have subsequently been proven to be either erroneous or

exaggerated.508 It is striking, however, that many of these early impressions remain at

the foreground of public consciousness of the event and exercised a great deal of power

in determining the teens’ public reception,509 even though a more complicated

understanding of the boys and their milieu emerged in articles written in the months

after the attack.510

It is important to acknowledge the overt display of racialised monstrosity in this

case for two reasons. One is that the version of monstrosity that serial and high school

killers are seen to embody is informed by a rhetoric of banality. In other words, it is a

178

rhetoric of ‘ordinary’ monstrosity that achieves significance in part because it is

‘unmarked’ by identity codes. This is in direct contrast to the way that monstrosity

arises from the racially encoded body of the monster when the monster is seen as

non-white. Secondly, the overdetermined association of the monster and

non-whiteness, as stigmatised and always coded as being ‘other’ racial characteristics

effaces whiteness in general, and white monstrosity in particular.

The resonance of the high school killer

When the sun set that night, it was on a different Littleton. Everyone in the town was to be affected by the tragic and frightening events of Tuesday, 20 April 1999. They were no longer innocents. No longer could they live secure in the knowledge that such things could never happen to them. It had happened.511

When two students went on a shooting spree at their high school in the suburb of

Littleton, Colorado on April 20, 1999, the story resonated not just throughout a shocked

United States of America, but made headlines across the world.512 As noted previously,

the siege at Columbine High School remains the most lethal act of school ground

violence perpetrated by students. 15 people died, including the two teen shooters who

committed suicide, and left scores seriously wounded.513 The massacre, widely

considered a national tragedy, even drew commentary from Pope John Paul II, who

asked that the world’s youth be provided with ‘moral vision.’514 Then-US President

Bill Clinton urged Americans to become more aware of the possibility of school

violence in their community, and to reach out to isolated and struggling adolescents. He

had, only several months earlier, sponsored research at a summit on the growing

phenomenon of student initiated school violence, prompted not only by the spate of

school killing sprees but by the high level of violent acts in schools that had already

necessitated widespread use of strategies such as metal detectors and security guards.515

As a measure of the national significance of the event, then-Vice President Al Gore

attended the public memorial service held in Columbine, which attracted an estimated

70, 000 mourners. The Columbine massacre functions as what FBI agent John Douglas

has labelled a ‘watershed’ moment of violence, an event ‘after which nothing, and none

of us, would ever be exactly the same again,’ and which serve to define or characterise

an era.516

179

One month after the killings, Time magazine noted that ‘the Littleton shooting is

one of the most closely followed stories of the decade,’ highlighting both the story’s

widespread impact and to the extraordinary initial and ongoing level of interest in the

story.517 While I have included a detailed description of the siege in an appendix, I will

briefly discuss some of the salient factors of the event that inspired this interest and

outcry. These include the high death toll, the calculated and cold manner of the attack

and the behaviour of Harris and Klebold during the siege, the way that some students

were singled out by the pair, and the live broadcasting of the siege on television. Other

factors include the debate about Cassie Bernall, a student who was asked whether she

believed in God and when she replied that she did, was shot. Though some sources

attribute this conversation to a different student, Cassie’s alleged affirmation of her faith

turned her into a modern-day martyr in the eyes of some, ensuring that the Columbine

massacre turned into a wider discussion of faith in contemporary life.518 Likewise, the

alleged racial slur hurled by one of the killers at the one African American student

killed in the siege, Isaiah Shoels, sparked discussion of the presence of racism in a

predominantly white state, white neighbourhood, and white school (where Shoels was

one of only a dozen African American pupils).

As noted, the initial media reportage was somewhat confused and sensationalistic,

with the early profile of the boys riddled with inaccuracies that nonetheless remain as

part of the general public understanding of the teens. Yet the early media depiction and

the popular image of the occurrence are an important component of what I describe as

the monstrification of the perpetrators, and of the moment in culture that these boys

symbolise. This is not to imply that the media reportage of the school massacre was

homogenous, but that certain elements were seized upon and popularised, even though

some were later proven to be incorrect. In particular, the widespread public perception

of Harris and Klebold, fostered by early media reports, remains that they were members

of a notorious clique of students at the school that identified themselves as the ‘Trench

Coat Mafia;’ that they were gay, Satanists, neo Nazis, fans of rock star Marilyn

Manson, and aficionados of violent video games; that they wore make up and all black

clothing; were medicated with prescribed antidepressants, and had a ‘hit list’ of

students to kill that included athletes and students who had bullied them. Not

surprisingly, Harris and Klebold generated a variety of responses from the media and

other commentators. They were variously described as poster children for a new,

180

affectless generation, as ‘all American heroes,’ as symbols of a moral laxness and lack

of character sweeping North America, as outcasts fighting back, and, finally, as

monsters. While some of these claims have later been demonstrated to be true, or true

to some extent, others stem more from conventional and exaggerated assumptions

regarding criminals and disaffected adolescents. In addition to their sensationalistic

portrayal, part of the pair’s media appeal is that other types of school violence are not as

compelling to the mass media as the high school siege. As with the serial killer, the

impact of and attention paid to high school sieges is out of proportion to their statistical

anomalousness. Yet this scarcity of events increases the impact of the story, for out of

the mass of stories about other school based violence, such as bullying and hazing, the

rare but explosive example of high school shootings stands out with jarring clarity.

Yet the impact of the Columbine massacre is also directly related to who its

perpetrators were and where they came from. It touches on a particularly revealing line

of thought best expressed as ‘if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere,’ a

refrain echoed in many articles and analyses in the aftermath of the shooting. Part of

the collective distress at this event, and immediate denunciation of it as a broad

‘condemnation’ of society, was that the United States population (as represented by the

media and signalled in ‘vox populi’ responses to the event) appeared to feel that it had

happened within an emblematic and symbolic community – as though Columbine High

School were a synecdoche for the entire United States. The school was depicted by the

media as wholesome, untroubled, all-American – in other words, a white, suburban,

public school, which was viewed as the standard for ‘average.’ But as the title of this

chapter indicates, other issues were involved that demarcate the significance of the

event in a broader context. These specifically relate to considerations of race,

masculinity, violence, and privilege.

The impact of the Columbine massacre has also extended to popular culture. A

number of novels, films, documentaries and games have been inspired either by the

massacre itself or focus more broadly by the phenomenon of high school shootings in

North America, most tending to examine the aftermath of trauma rather than provide

explanations or re-enactments of the crime. The most recognised of these is Michael

Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine (2002) which won numerous awards

(including the Academy Award for Best Documentary, Features in 2003, the 55th

181

Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and the 2003 César Award for Best

Foreign Film) and was a critical and commercial success. It focused on issues such as

gun control and the systematic process of scapegoating that occurs after an act of

significant violence. Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel We Need to Talk about Kevin, about

the aftermath of a son’s murderous rampage as told from a mother’s perspective, was a

slow-burning success, culminating in the 2005 Orange prize and bestseller status a year

after its release.519 Gus Van Sant’s controversial, elliptical 2003 film Elephant won the

2003 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It was loosely inspired by the Columbine

shooting rather than purporting to be a realistic depiction of the event. Like other texts,

it doesn’t focus on the spree itself so much as the lead up to it and the environment

surrounding and enabling it. DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy

in the Presence of Death (2003) was a surprise winner of the prestigious 2003 Man

Booker Prize with its ferocious and energetic satire of the contemporary mass media

and culture of violence in the United States as experienced by the best friend of an

alleged high school shooter.520 All these examples demonstrate the way in which the

phenomenon of high school shootings has become a shared experience and touchstone

for contemporary anxieties.

Media Impact: ‘[S]o average, so middle-American.’

Kate Kompas, in her 2000 article ‘Revisiting Columbine High: The Aftermath,’ asked

Randy Essex, editor of the Des Moines Register, why the Columbine story resonated so

deeply. She notes that Essex believes that Harris and Klebold were ‘two alienated

middle-class young men who are into video games and have their own Web pages’ and

adds that

there are a lot of kids like them out there; you don’t know what’s going on in their minds … You don’t know who’s going to be a brooding teen-ager in a trench coat and be OK. They weren’t poor kids; they were bored white kids who were ridiculed. They were like the children of most of our readers ... that says something big about our society.521

When Kompas also interviewed Tom Emmerson, a professor of journalism in the

Greenlee School of Communication, he offered a similar perspective on some of the

reasons for the story’s salience. Kompas notes that Emmerson believes that

182

he isn’t sure the actual shooting is that important in terms of significance; it’s the stories behind the two killers who captivated America – namely, that these kids weren’t much different from anybody else’s. ‘If you want to talk about a story that really shook up America, millions of people could visualize it – it could have been their kids,’ he says. ‘It really reaches right down into the guts, heart and soul of many Americans. It’s just so shocking; [Littleton] is so average, so middle-American.’522

Both points focus on the similarity and uncanniness of the perpetrators of the

crime, detailing the way in which the case reflects back onto North American society as

a way of explaining its extraordinary impact.

The case, absorbing and redirecting the momentum generated by prior high school

sieges, symbolised the moment when the crisis of school violence became recognised

by a nation. The Columbine siege, believes journalist John Cloud, ‘was not the first

mass killing at a school, but it was so ornately gory and so profoundly heartbreaking

that it became a cultural reference point.’ He cites Franklin Zimring, a professor of

legal studies at the University of California at Berkeley, as describing the impact of the

Columbine massacre as a ‘model’ for subsequent shootings as it served to ground and

cohere previously discrete ideas and actions.523 For example, in one of the recent

incidents of student-generated fatalities on school grounds, Charles ‘Andy’ Williams,

15, shot and killed two fellow students, and injured 13 others, before surrendering to

San Diego County sheriff’s deputies in a boys’ bathroom at Santana High in Santee,

California. The following week the cover of Time magazine featured a digital

illustration of a blue backpack unzipped slightly to reveal school books. Prominently

positioned in the front pocket, nestled next to a pen and pencil, is a handgun. The

headline proclaims this to be ‘The Columbine Effect.’524 In a related vein, Williams’

friends were reported to have asked him if he was going to ‘do a Columbine’ in

response to his frequently stated desire to get revenge on those who had bullied him,

and so turned the Columbine massacre from a single event into an action and a stance.

Likewise, when Jeff Wiese shot and killed nine people (including his

grandparents) and wounded seven others on March 21, 2005, in Minnesota, virtually all

news reports called the shooting at Red Lake High School ‘the worst school shooting

since Columbine,’ exemplifying the fashion in which the massacre has seeped into

mainstream culture as a reference point. ‘He looks like one of those guys at the

183

Littleton school,’ a classmate said of Wiese.525 Significantly, Wiese was also targeted

by the same representational strategies and forms of interpellation as the Columbine

murderers as the title of an article attests: ‘Aunts: Wiese was no monster.’ In it,

Wiese’s relatives argue that their nephew was not the dour, evil presence as depicted in

mass media accounts, and he is explicitly contrasted with the Columbine duo.526

School Violence: a lineage:

My Honor Student Killed Your Senior Class – bumper sticker, circa 2000.527

This slogan, a parody of the ‘My Child is on the Honor Roll’ bumper stickers often

distributed by schools to families of high achieving students in the United States,

signals more than the ghoulish ‘gallows’ humour that typically accompanies significant

acts of violence or upheaval. It also demonstrates, rather flatly, that school shootings

have, in a relatively short period of time, become so widespread and taken for granted

that they are part of popular culture and a shared set of assumptions and knowledge. In

this section I will detail some of the parameters of the crime, as well as outline the

public ‘profile’ of the high school shooter in order to contextualise and specify the

phenomenon and its participants against a broader field of school-based violence.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this profile is limited and contradictory, given the reasonably

small number of participants. I will address some of the media interpretations of these

statistics in later sections, and question some of the elements of the profile.

The shooting spree at Columbine High School did not occur without precedents,

and may be contextualised within a broader milieu of aggression in culture. As noted

briefly in my discussion of whiteness and terror in Chapter Four, violence is prevalent

in the United States. Violent acts, and the looming spectre of violence, have

characterised many of the important cultural moments of the last several decades in

North America. Various historians and cultural theorists, such as Ovid Demaris and

Christopher Sharrett, argue that the United States has a long history of violence in

which the formation of the nation and its general character are reflected, mostly baldly

presented in Demaris’ title – America the Violent.528 Indeed, historian Richard Maxwell

Brown, in ‘Historical Patterns of Violence,’ argues that ‘so great has been our

involvement with it over the long sweep of American history that violence has become a

compelling, though unacknowledged, element in our values and in our culture.’529

Rebellions, strikes, and assassinations are some of the overt forms in which aggression

184

and force appear, and which have transformed nations and citizenship. Violence, too,

may take more subtle forms, such as the denial of human rights, white collar crime, or

the perpetuation of negative stereotypes.

The spectacular nature of violence typically ensures that the perpetrators and their

acts are seared into public consciousness in memorable ways. Violent acts, and

criminality, help to define eras and are part of the zeitgeist. What counts as a crime,

who or what was the target, and how the matter was handled in the media and by the

law are all key components of a case’s cultural significance. Many acts of aggression

occur each day, but not all are considered to be newsworthy, much less to comprise a

major story of national relevance. In addition, violence is somewhat contextual in

nature, as new forms of criminality eventuate over time – in accordance with new civil

rights, new behaviours, new uses of technology, and new parameters of safety come

new laws. Recently developed areas that have required the development of new laws

include date rape drugs, privacy issues with mobile phone cameras, and internet

censorship. The harbingers of new laws and crimes are, by default, inextricably tied to

that point in time, to the historical definition of that moment. Yet the first case is not

always the most notorious, as the Columbine example shows.

School violence is a surprisingly broad and varied topic, even when restricted to

examples of homicide. Violence at school is a distinct subset within the wider concerns

of youth violence and homicide, and multiple forms of violence occur regularly on

school grounds. They encompass, for example, on-campus suicides and rapes, drive-by

shootings, children being kidnapped by their parents, gang warfare, and paedophiles

preying on victims, as well as bigger and more notorious examples such as the siege in

Beslan in which hundreds of people died.530 Less dramatically, and more consistently,

there are everyday – and less quantifiable but nonetheless crucial – acts of intimidation

and bullying.531 Although various types of violence in school settings have been

recorded since the start of the century, they have, in general, intensified and become

increasingly fatal in recent decades, and are frequently perpetrated by the students

themselves.532 The recent shooting spree at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Technical

School on April 16, 2007, perpetrated by Seung-Hui Cho, qualifies as the worst

on-campus massacre in North America, with 33 dead and 25 injured.533 There are a

number of types of on-campus homicides and acts of violence perpetrated by students,

185

such as the murder of a romantic partner, revenge attacks (particularly towards faculty),

or gang related territorial disputes.534

In addition, the school shootings that I am examining must be contextualised

within the broader context of juvenile homicide. As Kathleen M. Heide notes in her

impressive study of contemporary juvenile homicide, the rate of youth homicide has

increased dramatically in the last few decades.535 While the rate of homicide in general

has decreased slightly in recent years, a study of homicide arrests by juveniles aged 18

and under reveals that the overall level of murders by youths had tripled from 1984 to

1993.536 Although other types of school violence were decreasing in general in the

1990s, by 1996 the number of sporadic and relatively rare school shootings occurred

with increasing regularity within the suburbs and small towns of North America.537

In its definition of the public parameters of the school siege phenomenon, the

massacre in Littleton, Colorado has become a touchstone of what some have labelled,

perhaps prematurely and cynically, ‘the Columbine generation.’538 Media

commentators spoke of a ‘post-Columbine’ society in terms of individuals now

recognising danger in previously unthreatening arenas, and the increasing level of

random and sporadic violence in society. The vast majority of students have

experienced or engaged in violence in the past year, with approximately one quarter

taking a weapon to school regularly. The term locates a jaded and pervasive awareness

of imminent terror from a familiar and intimate source.539 Post-Columbine, a certain

world-weary awareness of danger seemed to be recognised by students, many of whom

were pragmatic about the possibility of a similar event occurring. Attesting to the

impact of the event, efforts were made to transform the multiple potential negative

influences that helped precipitate high school killings. These range from school-based

initiatives targeting bullying and isolated youth to attempts to toughen juvenile gun

laws.540

The killings in Littleton, Colorado followed other highly publicised school

shootings. Although school shootings have occurred in various forms since the 1970s,

there was a dramatic rise in particular siege-style incidents in the mid-1990s that was

soon recognised as conforming to a recognisable pattern.541 The first of these linked

events is generally held to have occurred on February 2, 1996, when 14 year old

186

Barry Loukaitis ushered in a new age of school based violence. Loukaitis, a high school

sophomore from Moses Lake, Washington, opened fire with a stolen .30-.30 rifle at

Moses Lake Junior High and killed a teacher and two students, and wounded another

student.542 His motives were said to include depression, extreme incidents of teasing

that included homophobic slurs by his classmates (one of whom was a victim), and a

suicidal mother in the middle of a divorce who treated Loukaitis as her confidante.

Since this incident, lethal acts of school violence in the form of extensive shooting

sprees have become a depressingly regular feature of North American life, with at least

18 similar incidents having occurred after Loukaitis’ rampage.543

Several of the more lethal and publicised examples of high school killers since

Loukaitis include Luke Woodham, a 16 year old high school sophomore at Pearl High

School in Pearl, Mississippi, who stabbed his mother to death at home and then went to

school and killed two students and wounded seven on October 1, 1997. Almost six

months later, on March 24, 1998, Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden, 11 of

Jonesboro, Arkansas made the cover of Time magazine when they killed one teacher

and four female students, and injured another teacher and nine students at Westside

Middle School.544 They used guns stolen from Golden’s family. Andrew Wurst, 14, an

eighth grader from Edinboro, Pennsylvania, killed a teacher and wounded two students

and another teacher at a school dance on April 25, 1998. Kip Kinkel of Springfield,

Oregon, in the last major pre-Columbine incident, killed two classmates and wounded

25 at Thurston High School on May 21, 1998. The previous night the 15 year old high

school freshman had murdered his parents, using guns that his father had purchased for

him.545

Akin, as some experts believe, to the phenomenon of workplace violence, in

which individuals unleash their aggression and pent up emotions into unsuspecting

fellow employees and authority figures, the shooter chooses the intensely symbolic

arena of their high school as the locus of the spectacle of their hostility, revenge, and

assertion of control. Although a broad range of acts of violence have been slowly if

steadily increasing in recent decades in the United States, the perception of the sanctity

and inviolability of school as a public realm remains. Moreover it is this same idea of

sanctity and inviolability that is attacked with each fresh incident of reported

brutality.546 It is not coincidental that adolescents choose their schools as the ground for

187

their murderous actions. A cathected locale, it is for some a chance to ‘show’ their

peers and tormentors, for others a crucial place to destroy, and for others still a symbolic

arena in which to exert their new attainment of power and status through weapons and

extreme aggression. Although experts argue that children and teenagers are three times

more likely to die at the hands of an adult than another child and that schools are

actually statistically safer than the home or other public arenas, this invasion of virulent

and lethal aggression into schools has proven to be of a quantitatively different nature

than the other models of school ground aggression and consequently has been depicted

differently in the mass media. The perception of the violation of the previously serene

and safe arena of the school yard was an important factor in the representation of all

school shootings as it underpinned the incredulity and horror that greeted these events.

Whether this view of tarnished innocence was ever accurate or deserved is rarely

debated; rather, the North American population is instead confronted with a graphic

dissolution of a core belief concerning the inviolability and purity of childhood and

adolescence, a fantasy that, however flawed, remained incredibly potent. Yet it is

relevant that many of the perpetrators of these sieges reported being the targets of

bullying and claimed that their actions were frequently in response to this situation at

school, which in itself works to disprove the notion that school is a sphere of innocence

and security. In the next section I will turn from this broader consideration of the

parameters of school violence to a more detailed examination of some of the

characteristics of school shootings and delineate some of the more vital components of

the ‘profile’ of the high school shooter.

‘[B]oys explode in violence’: profiling and school-based aggression

Journalist Lisa Popyk, the creator of a thoughtful series on school yard violence in the

Cincinnati Post in late 1998, argues that the image of the ‘quiet youngsters next door’

who become killers exploded nation-wide in the media treatment of the Columbine

case, precisely for its juxtaposition of their violent acts and innocent façade. Popyk’s

analysis of school yard violence commenced by describing the dominant patterns in the

behaviour, attitudes, and ‘warning signs’ of the boys involved.

In small towns across America, the quiet, the meek, the mild-mannered are striking out with deadly, premeditated violence. A twisted view of reality tells them that killing is the best way to speak up. The quiet youngsters next door have become today’s school yard shooters – 13 of them in the last five years. The unpredictable, unforgiving and senseless force of the crimes, and the

188

youthful faces behind them, have scarred America’s image of childhood innocence.547

Written after Kip Kinkel’s lethal rampage, but preceding the Columbine killings

by several months, Popyk’s article accurately predicts many of the core components of

the Columbine case. These include the lack of prediction of the event, the

mild-mannered and youthful nature of the killers, and the use of premeditated violence

as a solution to a problem. Popyk’s assessment summarises both the elements focused

on by the popular media as well as the relevant personal details of the individuals. She

notes that

[i]n each recent school yard slaying, the gunman was a young male, viewed by peers as weak and by himself as isolated, alone. He found an outlet in violence in movies, on television, on the internet, in his own life. Often he began collecting weapons, writing about violence, torturing animals. In his confused mind, the image of him with a gun and his tormentors cowering at his feet began to loom large. He experienced a power surge beyond understanding.548

In each instance, a young white male took a firearm to school and fired upon

classmates or faculty, or both. Several worked in pairs, and most took multiple

weapons to school. Each boy had relatively easy access to weapons, either already

owning or using guns, or knowing where to obtain them, and several made explosives as

well. Some, however, stole weapons from family and neighbours, and in several of the

copycat cases a single weapon was used (such as TJ Solomon, who shot at people’s legs

instead of trying to kill them). Many were from secure, two parent home structures in

small rural communities or suburban centres. The killers were from middle to

upper-middle class homes, were frequently good students if occasionally

underachievers, and often possessed above the norm intelligence. They were frequently

depressed and suicidal, and were undergoing therapy or were diagnosed with

psychological problems (Kinkel reportedly heard voices, and Harris was on Luvox, an

anti-depressant).

Frequently, the perpetrators had been bullied and subjected to extreme stress in

the school environment. This bullying was often perpetrated by the school’s athletes,

who occupied a higher level in the school’s social hierarchy. Most often it took the

form of verbal abuse but often escalated into physical violence, such as being pushed

into lockers, not allowed to pass by in halls, having objects thrown at them, being spat

upon, or being beaten up.549 This aggressive behaviour was meted out to students

189

deemed being ‘weak,’ nerdy, intelligent, interested in academic or artistic endeavours,

for dressing differently, being overweight or too skinny, for wearing glasses; in short,

not being adequately athletic and masculine.550 On top of this continual torment, the

perpetrator frequently suffered a pre-incident trigger event, such as the break up of a

relationship or loss of status (such as public humiliation), that served to precipitate the

events.

These were not random or motiveless crimes, nor were the targets chosen

aimlessly. Their targets typically included other students, particularly those perceived

to have mistreated the perpetrator, but also encompassed principals and teachers,

particularly if the student had been receiving poor grades or had been failed. There was

extensive planning prior to the event, which was fantasised about at length. In almost

every case the perpetrator discussed his plans prior to the attack, usually with friends

who either did not take the threats seriously or with peers who escalated the sieges by

daring the perpetrator to act. These school friends occasionally became willing

bystanders or passive participants by encouraging the attack or offering advice. For

Evan Ramsey’s siege in Bethel, Alaska, a fellow student brought a camera to school to

record the carnage. Other students helped him create a hit list of potential victims, with

one of those eventually slain not even of personal interest to Ramsey.551

There were multiple pre-incident warnings of disturbance in the perpetrator, often

an increase in anti-social or aggressive behaviour, although adults in his life might not

perceive and act upon these changes. There had frequently been recent concern over

certain disturbing and violent trends in his school work (such as topics for English

compositions or talks given in class). Although several teens were considered

somewhat dangerous prior to the attacks, such as Harris, who made threats against

specific individuals on his website, or Kip Kinkel, voted ‘Most Likely to start WWIII’

by his classmates, no one anticipated that they would or could create the level

destruction that they wrought. The teens were, however, all noted to have poor coping

strategies, and viewed their rampages as effective problem solving techniques.

The teens shared a belief that the siege would win them the respect that they

deserved from peers, school administration, and family alike, and exhibited a dramatic

190

lack of care towards or awareness of the possible consequences of their actions. John

Nicoletti, a Colorado Police psychologist, believes that

[t]hey all feel victimized, picked on, unjustly treated and ultimately they want, need, to strike back … The idea of committing a violent act is very empowering – it’s very seductive to them.552

An extreme act of violence, then, was perceived as an adequate rejoinder to

perceived slights and as a perfectly legitimate mode of self-expression, as the only way

for the teenagers to resolve their conflict.553 How it is that these severe and striking acts

of violence come to be seen as not just the appropriate, but the only mode of redemption

and vengeance? In addition, not only do they perceive violence to be the most effective

and desirable mode of communicating their pent-up emotions, but the boys also evince

little regard for the potential ramifications of their actions in terms of what will happen

to them after the siege. Never, Popyk asserts, ‘is escape the ultimate goal … it is almost

never given serious consideration. The only real objective is power.’ She then cites

Dewey Cornell, director of the University of Virginia Youth Violence Project, who

believes that for these teen killers, ‘It doesn’t matter what the cost is. They need to show

these people who they are.’554

In the wake of the events at Columbine High School there have been many

threats, expulsions, and averted or non-lethal sieges. Schools that previously did not

employ security devices now utilise strategies such as employing sheriff’s deputies,

having random locker searches or no lockers at all for students, installing security video

cameras and metal detectors, and requiring that students use clear book bags that cannot

hide weapons.555 Schools have also begun to use behavioural checklists and

psychological warning signs to isolate troubled youth. The results of this last measure,

conventionally termed profiling, are utilised to assess the danger of the student prior to a

potentially violent outburst, and to recommend counselling, transferral, or expulsion.

Yet there is another side effect of the profile: its inefficacy. Some experts warn that

profiling may be a quick fix solution to a much broader problem, arguing that ‘[p]rofiles

are not specific enough, failing to discern which students pose a threat. Many school

shooters studied by the Secret Service would not have been identified by any profile.’556

The checklists, sometimes drawn up by a variety of experts but often by security

companies who market specially designed software programs of outsider profiling, are

considered controversial by some individuals who believe that their usage will cause

191

further alienation and stigmatisation of already marginalised students.557 These profiles

are also strikingly reminiscent of the FBI’s widely circulated serial killer profile in

several ways – not just in terms of the (white, middle-class male) parameters but also, as

I discussed in Chapter Five, its general banality and inefficacy.

There is one factor that the various commentators agree is present in each case:

the perpetrators gender. In virtually all the cases the perpetrators were teenaged white

males. Yet at the same time there is no systemic analysis of the ramifications of this

aspect of the killer’s profile, nor any broader connection to how it is that male teenagers

are, with increasing frequency, driven to desperate and vengeful acts of extreme

aggression against others that mirror (in an exaggerated fashion) other, condoned forms

of response to tension and injury. In the next section I will address some of the

ramifications of this point.

‘[A]lmost always a boy’: gender specificity and crime:

In a curious gesture, shortly after the Columbine massacre occurred, veteran 60 Minutes

reporter Andy Rooney commented:

Why did this happen? It happened because some bad, screwed-up, mentally unstable teen-age boys were consumed with hate … I don’t even like calling them boys. It’s too good a word for what they were.558

This quote from Rooney embodies the intense outpouring of anger displayed

towards Harris and Klebold in the immediate aftermath of the Columbine massacre. His

comment illustrates some of the broad strategy of dehumanisation that occurs to

individuals who perpetrate extreme acts of aggression and violence, and also points to

the deep connections between ‘proper’ forms of identity and assignations of

humanity.559 How is it, exactly, that these male teens are not good enough to be called

boys? If they aren’t boys, if they aren’t human, then what are they? While Rooney

does not go so far as to call the teens monstrous, it is not difficult to stretch his

terminology when asking how do we reconcile monstrous acts with human perpetrators?

Rooney’s comment, however, underscores an important part of the high school killer’s

public face – that he is, underneath it all, a boy.

In her germane discussion of senate inquiries into the negative impact of violence

in popular culture on impressionable youth, JoAnn Wypijewski notes that

192

[w]ith nearly 90 percent of murders committed by men, the uproar over media violence is a circus distraction from male violence and from the common, everyday, barely noticed wallpaper of the culture that defines strength and weakness, masculine and feminine, right-acting and wrong-acting and that smothers the sweet side of boys forced to choose between power and failure.560

Likewise, the handful of boys who commit shooting sprees captured the interest

of the nation with their statistically insignificant acts. The attention paid to these

random, sporadic forms of violence effaces more ingrained and subtle aggression, such

as that each week more women and children are killed through domestic abuse than

during that one day at Columbine, and that the amount of school fatalities is far

outweighed by the volume of bullying and harassment in schools that occurs every

day.561 With the extraordinary level of male-initiated violence in the world, as the

statistics for a broad range of violent acts universally demonstrates, it seems

disingenuous to assume that violent behaviour is something that only adult males may

participate in, and that the men who commit adult crimes did not pass through a critical

adolescence. There is a genuine element of surprise in texts dealing with these boys

‘turning to’ these specific modes of empowerment in society, conventionally rendered

as aggressive, wounding, and dramatic. These boys, whose masculinity has been

challenged, react in conventionally acceptable and gendered ways.

One of the more famous examples of school shootings is Brenda Spencer, the 16

year old schoolgirl who fired upon the primary school opposite her house, killing the

principal and custodian, and wounding eight children and a police officer. When asked

why she did it, Spencer famously replied ‘I don’t like Mondays,’ sparking the title of

the well-known pop song that helped to immortalise the event. Yet since it occurred on

January 29, 1979, there was not another female-initiated school shooting until March 8,

2001, just two days after the Andy Williams shooting in California. 14 year old

Elizabeth Bush yelled ‘[n]o one thought I would go through with this,’ and shot the

head cheerleader in the shoulder.562 This is not to imply that young females never kill,

or that there has been no female-initiated violence on campus, but to confirm that none

of the significant siege cases of recent years have had female perpetrators.563

The tendency to perceive school-based shootings as gender neutral is displayed in

two strikingly similar articles. An article that appeared in Time immediately after the

Jonesboro killings evinced a tacit awareness of this gender dynamic in the high school

193

shooter profile when the author Richard Lacayo noted that ‘[s]choolboy massacres may

be an aberration. But the question remains: Why do kids kill?’564 The initially accurate

description of these events turns into an investigation of generic humanity; there is no

space to ask how it is that all the ‘kids’ who kill just all happen to be ‘schoolboys.’ This

is later made explicit when, towards the end of the article, in a single paragraph

detailing the overwhelming gender bias, Lacayo notes:

There is a special problem for boys, who were the shooters in all the 11 multiple killings at American schools in the past five years. When boys are ready to detonate, the signs are harder to read. Girls are more likely to decline into such inward-directed aggressions as depression or eating disorders. They are also more likely to put their feelings into words, an early warning that boys don’t always offer. The signals of boys tend to be discipline problems.565

In her otherwise perceptive series on school violence, Popyk echoes Lacayo in

arguing that:

[f]illed with rage, the child – almost always a boy – suppresses his emotions until he explodes in a bid to take control of his life and be heard. Girls in such situations develop control through eating disorders and turn their rage inward; boys explode in violence.566

As this quote signals, gender is a crucial factor in considering the representation

and composition of the high school killer. Yet their points are incorrect on several

levels. In terms of ‘practicing’ and discussing details with friends, the boys revealed

their plans and desires many times over. In addition, many of the boys expressed their

desperate unhappiness and conflicted emotions in artwork, essays, or journals, often

drawing attention to their increasing preoccupation with violence and aggression at

school. Several of the boys were undergoing counselling. Perhaps what Lacayo and

Popyk meant, however, is that girls are often able to cope with and defuse stressful

situations through strategies such as talking and sharing emotionally before they let the

situation escalate.567 Females, in addition, typically use violence in instrumentally

different ways, and when they attack it is with less lethal weapons (if any) and with

fewer fatalities.568 Yet neither article does little to explain how it is that, in all the

documented cases of school shootings, only two featured a female perpetrator. At what

point, then, does the qualification of ‘almost always a boy’ reveal the gender dynamics

at work in this phenomenon?

194

High school sieges confirm the broader statistical pattern of males as perpetrating

85–95% of all violent acts. Yet the mere presence of the statistically insignificant or

anomalous percentage of violent females is deployed in a way that suggests,

erroneously, that males and females are just as likely to commit violent crimes.569

There is little analysis of the ramifications of the events beyond a simple naming of the

salient shared characteristics, and little examination of other relevant factors. While

high school sieges have thusfar predominantly been interpreted by journalists and

cultural theorists in terms of masculinity, aggression, and acculturation, these studies

ignore or downplay several crucial elements. The ostensible emphasis on gender is

problematic for potentially reifying gender formations without questioning why

contemporary forms of masculinity produce these types of violent outcomes. Nor do

these studies deal with the broader ramifications of this implicit critique of masculinity,

or examine how gender is connected to other forms of subject creation and

marginalisation.

I want to augment this work by not focusing exclusively on gender and sexuality,

as others already have in terms of the connections between male violence, masculinity,

and criminality (both in terms of the Columbine case and in general), but on the sections

that I feel have been overlooked. I want to focus on a smaller segment: the public

reception and media depiction of the killers, the particular example of Columbine High

School, and the complicated understanding of race that is found within it. Masculinity

is, of course, an important component to examine, but the representation of high school

sieges accrued importance for many other reasons. At the same time I intend to link

race and whiteness to other forms of hegemonic identity. As I will soon discuss, other

elements of identity and representation, such as whiteness, suburbia, intimacy and

normativity comprise the distinctive factors that contribute to the imbrication of

masculinity and monstrosity.

Whiteness and the high school shooter:

As Scott Pelley bluntly notes in his article detailing the Secret Service’s examination of

the high school shooting phenomenon, ‘[a]ll the shooters are boys and nearly all are

white,’ in a view endorsed by other analysts.570 The recent examples of white male

violence are rarely named as emanating from particular subject positions marked by

race, gender, class, and sexuality, and especially as constituting the crossroads of these

195

various forms of hegemonic identity. The teenagers are instead considered to be

individual and rare. When these events are taken as part of a broader pattern by

analysts, this overwhelming bias towards underplaying whiteness and masculinity is

considered to be undercut by the inevitable statistical difference within the killers, as the

exception proving the rule (such as high school shooters Brenda Spencer, who is

female, and Evan Ramsey, who is Native Alaskan).571

In his examination of a study done by the Secret Service into 37 cases of school

shootings since the 1970s involving 41 perpetrators, Bill Dedman notes that ‘[o]ne

academic paper identified all “schoolhouse avengers” as white, when three have been

African-American, one Hispanic and one Native Alaskan.’572 The remaining 36 were

presumably white, as are all the better publicised and known cases of the last few years.

The mere presence of a female serial killer or a non-white high school shooter does not

immediately undermine the overwhelmingly white and male number of participants,

although it does point out the importance of accuracy in reporting. Instead, the cases of

white males are individualised, and are represented as having no links to broader

societal concerns such as the erosion of communities or the debate concerning gun

control. The refusal to ascribe significance to the whiteness of the perpetrators of these

high school shootings fits into a broader pattern of the effacement of whiteness as

particular, in which whiteness is instead neutralised into being the template of humanity.

As discussed in Chapter Four, whiteness is a particular racial formation that gains

energy and potency from being positioned as ‘neutral’ and normative. These strategies

of neutralisation and effacement of whiteness are the other side of what Toni Morrison

calls ‘race talk.’ There is a reluctance to specify the whiteness of individuals instead of

an ‘explicit insertion into everyday life of racial signs and symbols that have no

meaning other than pressing African Americans to the lowest level of the racial

hierarchy.’573 This is particularly true of criminality. The corollary of the deliberate

insertion of otherwise unnecessary data is the erasure and evasion of specification of

similar qualities. My contention is that a strategy of articulation and recognition, of

specifying and interrogating difference through reinscribing these effaced and

neutralised identities is what is required by theorists in order to begin to analyse the

significance of these formulations.

196

I turn now to a consideration of a particular embodiment of the connection

between whiteness and terror: the contemporary configuration of the monster. The

links between whiteness, terror, and normality are secured through the process of

monstrification by which the monster and the boy come to be seen as interchangeable in

ways that complicate earlier incarnations of the monstrous and which have significant

effects on marginality discourse. Some of the ramifications of the conjunction of the

norm and the ‘monster next door’ include, for one thing, a way of strategising the

connections between the hegemonic and the outcast somewhat differently.

‘Terror from Within’: New Cultural Icons:

Before undertaking a more detailed consideration of the perpetrators of the siege, I want

to briefly examine an important precedent to the coverage that the Columbine case

received. The example of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh is important for several

reasons. Firstly, McVeigh’s actions and the ways in which he was depicted in

mainstream media reports display a conflicted portrayal of whiteness in contemporary

North America, signalling a ‘crisis’ in white ethnicity that is apparent to both cultural

theorists and media commentators. The form of this whiteness is characterised by its

terrorising and violent qualities that work on several levels. I will explore some of the

connections between whiteness, terror, and the media’s depiction of white criminals,

particularly those whose specific racial, gender, and class configuration contrast with

the stereotypical face that violence is ‘supposed’ to wear.

Time magazine labelled Timothy McVeigh the ‘Face of Terror’ in the wake of the

Oklahoma Bombing.574 This terror was further specified on the contents page of the

special issue of Time devoted to the ‘Heartland Bombing’ as ‘When the Terror Comes

from Within.’575 This illustrates the impact and resonance of the Oklahoma Bombing,

not only for the sheer waste of human life but in terms of the widespread perception of

the perpetrator. The terrorist is figured in terms partially reminiscent of an archaic,

B-movie monster (‘The Terror’), and the charge of the words is derived from the

location of this threat from ‘within.’ As an explicitly internal dilemma, the generalised

term immediately suggests a string of possible locations where the terror may arise,

such as the nation, the body, or the self. These locations are linked through the

vagueness of the phrasing, a point that is not coincidental in terms of the ability to

substitute them and give them equal metaphorical value. A crucial component of the

197

disbelief and horror that the bombing in Oklahoma evoked was that an American citizen

had perpetrated this act of terrorism. Less explicitly, it was also that the criminal

responsible was a middle-class, heterosexual, white male, a constituency so firmly

‘within’ the fantasised norm of the American nation as to be coexistent with it. The

sense of violation and contamination was widespread. The United States, it seemed,

had produced a mutant son, an offspring who was normal enough to have been in the

military and served in the Gulf war, and who had a clean arrest record.

Mike Hill, a contemporary cultural theorist interested in whiteness, examined

McVeigh and his representation within the media. He offers a useful analysis of the

Time cover that featured a close-up photograph of McVeigh with the title ‘The Face of

Terror.’ In tandem with the main article inside detailing the ‘sense of guilty

introspection’ prevalent in the United States when the police portraits of the assumed

bombers released by the FBI revealed two white males as primary suspects, Hill notes

that whiteness became an implicit focal point of the public reception of the crime. He

argues that the cover exemplifies

the persistent surprise that whiteness is ‘distinct’ and, moreover, that white ‘terror’ is an effect of distinguishing it. To come face to face with ‘the face of terror’ is ostensibly terrifying for Time’s implied (white) readers because white subjectivity is fully implicated in what it thought exterior to and univocally differentiated from itself. But one wrongfully assumes that what McVeigh allegedly did is incommensurate with his ‘Caucasian’ looks.576

The sense of surprise from citizens at McVeigh’s appearance stems, in part, from

the fact that not only was he an American and not ‘foreign,’ as early reports indicated,

but that he was a former soldier, and was, from all appearances, a normal white male.

The ostensible lack of fit between white perpetrators and violent crime that Hill remarks

upon is the less visible component of the popular racial stereotype that aligns particular

crimes and non-white individuals with crime.

Indeed, Hill again returns to the connections between McVeigh, whiteness, and

terror in a different article. In ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other

Ordinary Terrors,’ Hill’s introduction to Whiteness: A Critical Reader, he discusses the

iconicity and importance of McVeigh. He believes that it is

part of the popular white register that to be an ‘American’ is to be in various proportions both terrified and terrifying, oscillating between muted ‘defense’

198

and panicked aggression. The WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) militant next door is surely one of our most salient contemporary political icons.577

For Hill, the juxtaposition of white normativity and the overtly racialised terrorist

attacks brought to the fore certain widespread assumptions that undergird white

America’s self-conception. He seeks to investigate what happens when whiteness is

foregrounded as a source of terror in the white racist imagination, and in his analysis

connects ‘the phrases “face of terror” and “all-American defendant”’ in order to

‘suggest a certain redundancy in the latter term.’578 This redundancy has several

ramifications, the most relevant being that the ‘all-American defendant’ bearing the

‘face of terror’ has created complications for the portrayal of whiteness and in

particular, portraying whiteness as criminal, diseased, and violent. When the former

paragon of normativity now doubles as a potential threat, then new strategies of

representation and assessment must be deployed in response.579

Hill locates two distinct forms of white terror as a way of discussing the

fundamental misrecognition of the lethal possibilities of white culture and of white

processes of self-identification. Firstly, white terror is concretised in light of the FBI’s

initial description of the (white male) suspect of the bombing of the 1996 Summer

Olympics as ‘undistinguished.’580 That is, white terror was made ‘distinct because we

suddenly realize that it was always right here,’ even when its potency and resilience is

covered up.581 This lack of distinction, as I discussed in previous chapters, is on both a

false neutralisation of particular subjects as universal and invisible, and accompanied by

an overt and often hyperbolic particularisation of the norm’s ‘other’ as a grounding

mechanism. Hill locates the chill of finding the unmarked to be precisely as delineated

as any of the multiple others against which whiteness has historically been organised,

and that it is just as susceptible to investigation and profiling. The FBI’s seemingly

innocuous terminology is thrown into new relief when the suspected terrorist does not

fit the conventional parameters of his accepted identity, and in doing so calls into

question the beliefs surrounding these notions.

The second component of white terror that Hill discusses concerns the kind of

discursive effort required to maintain the hegemonic and effaced elements of whiteness.

He believes that

199

‘white terror’ is terrifying because the struggle to remain ‘undistinguished’– the struggle to be ordinary, to be an essential feature of everyday life and yet unaccountable – is something white folk are finding less and less winnable.582

Hill encapsulates several key, and often contradictory, convictions of whiteness

studies. The internal contradiction present in this assumption of attempting to remain

neutral when one has already been specified and has always been a particular racial

configuration compels the shocked recognition, and denial of this recognition, that

attends media coverage of significant white criminals. The ‘sudden’ recognition of the

always-present form of whiteness as terror is contrasted with the terrifying antics of

whiteness attempting to maintain its cultural hegemony and neutrality through a denial

of the racial specificity and accountability of white criminals.

As I discussed in the last chapter, this latter formulation of the location of the

foreign and the despised within the ostensibly neutral white façade relies upon

increasing and hysterical specification of traits and characteristics looking for the

‘cause’ of the violence. This is most apparent in terms of class and sexuality,

particularly of the term ‘white trash.’ The term ‘white trash’ works to complicate

whiteness and to point to a possibility of reworking the primary meaning on the basis of

instability contained within the term. In the previous chapter, I examined some of the

ramifications of liminal versions of whiteness that are conventionally represented in

terms of other marginalised identities. I also looked at the banal monster as a way of

addressing the problematisation of dominant categories through their hyperbolic

enactment. In the next section I address a different conceptualisation of white

monstrosity when I examine the role played by an influential magazine cover that

helped to cohere and shape the representation of the perpetrators of the massacre. This

particular monstrosity differs from that evinced by the serial killer, despite their shared

qualities of whiteness, masculinity, and banality – while the serial murderer is known

and understood as a random threat, the high school shooter is explicitly from a highly

particular community. The monster, in this case, has become the monster next door.

Time Magazine and the ‘Monsters Next Door’:

It’s so hard to see my son portrayed as a monster when that isn’t the boy I know.583

200

As this quote suggests, Susan Klebold, the mother of Dylan Klebold, was well aware in

the days immediately following the Columbine massacre that popular opinion held her

son to be a ‘monster.’ Her opinion underscores some of the ambiguity of the depiction

of two ostensibly normal and ordinary boys as subhuman and alien. The contradictory

terms and impulses in this act of naming offer insight into the process of monstrification

and the way in which a 17 year old boy may become the contemporary embodiment of

cultural fears and anxieties. How is it that some of the most privileged members of

society – young, middle class, intelligent, able-bodied, heterosexual white males – have

so frequently come to occupy and embody the most pressing and iconic configurations

of alterity? How was it that an ordinary teen from the affluent suburb of Littleton,

Colorado, could become a monster reviled across a nation? How did Kip Kinkel,

Andrew Wurst, and Luke Woodham, for example, manage to commit similar crimes

without being similarly demonised? As with the example of the serial killer that I

examined in my previous chapter, there are an unusually high number of often unrelated

media references to Klebold and Harris as monstrous. Monstrosity takes several forms

in relation to the Columbine siege: in terms of its status as defining humanity, and as a

barometer for broader social tensions. In particular, monstrosity engages with a specific

image of negative whiteness. The monstrosity of the boy who lays siege to his high

school is, as with the example of the serial killer, conditioned by his nominally

hegemonic positioning within contemporary social hierarchies of value. That is, the

high school killer’s race, gender, socioeconomic and class status have a bearing on his

portrayal as a monster, as I will soon discuss.

Mrs. Klebold’s bewildered horror and confusion at hearing her son described as

inhuman and evil was doubtless magnified when Time featured a story on the killings at

Columbine High School that secured Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s place in the

pantheon of contemporary monstrosity.584 The May 3, 1999 cover of Time magazine

that circulated in the United States crystallised and hyperbolised the initial tone of

popular opinion and media attention generated by the events of April 20.585 It

condenses many of the issues that are present in high school shootings and their

representation into one volatile image and term. The cover prominently featured

individual photographs of the siege perpetrators Harris and Klebold, and underneath

was emblazoned with the heading ‘The Monsters Next Door’ (subtitled ‘A special

report on the Colorado school massacre’). The immediate shock involved in the

201

juxtaposition of these inflammatory and contradictory words with the images that they

ostensibly describe generates a notion of defiled intimacy and a complicated terror of

the ‘ordinary.’ The magazine cover and its widespread impact underscore the

increasingly intimate trajectory of teratological inquiries, this time locating monstrosity

in the familiar and vulnerable terrain of the neighbourhood, albeit in a completely

unpleasant and jarring register (and not, for example, in the different-but-lovable,

friendly neighbourhood ghoul status of the Addams Family or the Munsters).

The magazine’s cover is striking. On it, Harris and Klebold are positioned in the

middle of the page, side by side, in separate colour photographs. The prominence of the

position of the photos is enhanced by their size – they are significantly larger than the

other images. The photographs used were taken from the Columbine High School

yearbook, which had not been released at this point. As is customary for seniors in

many high schools, the yearbook’s photos were images of the students about to graduate

that they have chosen themselves. These individuated photographs are designed to be

the most attractive and pleasant possible, and so depart from the impersonal and

unflattering, assembly line images of earlier, regulation school photos. The photographs

of Klebold and Harris were taken outdoors, where they utilise natural light and feature

plentiful hazy greenery in the background, thereby creating a wholesome and inviting

atmosphere. The pair gaze into the camera, smiling, and this eye contact with the reader

establishes a connection that is initially friendly rather than threatening. Unlike some

early images used by other media outlets, the photos on the Time cover accurately

reflected the age and demeanour of the pair, and underscored their bright normality,

their ability to fool others, and their apparent lack of overt difference from other

students.586

Time magazine, in choosing these yearbook photographs of Klebold and Harris to

accompany their dramatic heading, attempt to underscore the horror of the

‘monstrification’ of North American suburbia by emphasising the apparently friendly

and unmistakably pleasant qualities of the two boys. As such, the cover doesn’t feature

a conventional image of criminals or monstrosity, and does not depict glowering,

depraved icons. Indeed, the boys aren’t even wearing their infamous trench coats or

posed in pseudo-Satanic garb; the overall impact is of two healthy, wholesome,

contented, and average white male teenagers. In a different context, it would not be

202

difficult to imagine these photos framed, on someone’s desk or living room wall. In a

heavy handed act of irony, the colourful images of Klebold and Harris are contrasted

with the bleak black and white, almost depersonalised I.D. photographs of their victims.

The photographs of their victims form a frame along the left and top border of the

magazine, with some partially obscured underneath the Time banner. The magazine’s

dramatic headline runs immediately below the photographs of the boys. The typeface is

coloured all in white except for the word ‘monster,’ which is a counterpoint in red.

Although the cover also promises an explanation of ‘what made them DO IT’ in

smaller font, the intention of the cover seems to be less of a genuine investigation of

why this event occurred than finding the culprits and excoriating them in the most

sensationalistic fashion possible. The focus is squarely on their threat to ‘us,’ on the

assumed reader who would instinctively recoil from the boys and not attempt to

interrogate the conditions enabling their actions. While other magazine covers dealing

with the school siege phenomenon follow a more conventional line of inquiry into the

roots of the problem, the ‘Monsters Next Door’ cover functions more as a comment on

the situation, as an examination and summation of the tensions unique to this case.

The cover, in this respect, does an excellent (if not entirely deliberate) job of

pinpointing some of the contemporary anxieties that these teens embody, such as their

suburban location and their apparently ‘normal’ qualities. Yet the hyperbolic

terminology, and the dramatic, stark manner in which the cover is designed, introduces

a mythologising element that turns the cover into less an investigative exposé or ‘special

report’ than a continuation of the teratological rhetoric conventionally utilised to shore

up and maintain boundaries of acceptability. When Time followed up their coverage of

the Columbine case several months later, it was with a much less controversial, if more

overtly glamorising, cover.587 The ‘Columbine Tapes’ issue from December, 1999,

featured another photograph of Harris and Klebold. This time their image was taken

from footage taken by the school’s video surveillance cameras during the siege: guns in

hands, wearing combat boots, camouflage pants, and gloves to protect their ‘gun hands’

from becoming injured when firing.588 The slightly fuzzy black and white image, which

looks like an image from any number of contemporary action films, shows the teens as

they move through what is recognisably the school’s cafeteria as they seek victims

under tables and wait for all the bombs they planted in the school to explode.

203

The Columbine related covers are not the first sensationalistic ones run by Time

magazine. Roughly a year before the Columbine massacre, Time addressed the school

shooting phenomenon when it featured another set of school killers on its cover. In

March 1998, Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden of Jonesboro, Arkansas killed four

female students and a teacher and injured ten others. The Jonesboro murders were also

termed ‘monstrous’ by Time, but the individual boys were not depicted in the same

fashion as the Columbine killers.589 Instead, the main photograph on the cover features

a full page colour photograph of Golden dressed in camouflage gear, holding a rifle and

smiling. He is perhaps 3 or 4 years old, and is described as a ‘toddler.’ The headline

reads ‘Armed and Dangerous,’ and the subtitle offers to give the reader ‘[a]n up-close

look at the lives of two gun-happy kids and the murderous ambush of their Arkansas

classmates.’ There are also two small and current photographs of the two boys, aged 11

and 13 at the time of the shooting.590 The accompanying article, titled ‘The Hunter and

the Choirboy,’ features another image of a gun-toting Golden, this time dressed in

cowboy hat and long gunslinger coat. His age is not given, but he appears to be no

older than five.

The noteworthy difference in the emphasis of the covers offers a curious comment

on the representation of the perpetrators. While both sets of killers are firmly grounded

within a specific environment, Golden and Johnson are depicted in terms of a social

problem, as a comment on the saturation of violence in culture and on the lack of proper

weapon control. Their desensitised view of aggression, and the poor coping skills that

led them to see the siege as a viable, worthwhile act, were contextualised within the

broader concerns of male violence, gun control debates, and warning signs for disturbed

youth. As such, Johnson and Golden were not considered in the exaggerated and

slightly mythologised terms that conditioned the depiction of Klebold and Harris. It is

striking that they are depicted as products of their environment, and that their extreme

youth is deployed more as a sign of a flawed upbringing than an inherent evil.

Impact of the magazine cover:

The impact of Time’s ‘Monsters Next Door’ cover was considerable. The Time cover,

appearing on an influential magazine with a large nationwide circulation, was a key

element in the media saturation and coverage surrounding the Columbine siege,

attracting widespread attention within the media and the general population for the

204

acidity and inaccuracy of the coverage, and for its sensationalistic and scapegoating

perspective. In these diverse accounts, very few refer to Harris and Klebold as

‘monsters’ without some framing device. For example, Kompas, in her article on high

school life post-Columbine, casually references the Time title by questioning the alleged

tolerance of bullying at the school as contributing to the massacre. She asks ‘Was it

Columbine High’s reported worship of the “jock culture,” a different world in which

student athletes could throw the “fags” and the “dirties” – often-used epithets for Harris

and Klebold’s friends –into lockers without being reprimanded? Were school officials

as much to blame as “The Monsters Next Door,” as Time magazine labeled Harris and

Klebold?’591

While the cover has an impact on the popular perception of the teen killers,

helping to shape their public persona and continuing to ghost the ongoing coverage, it

also provoked a spirited backlash against the magazine.592 The individuals who

comprised this defence ranged from parents and friends of the deceased to participants

on the television program Oprah, from individuals posting on message boards to

journalists assessing the magazine’s accuracy and impact. The ‘Monsters Next Door’

title bestowed upon the boys was reviled for a variety of reasons, several of whom

believed the cover sensationalised and glamorised the boys and their actions, while

others decried the unsympathetic and irresponsible stigmatisation sustained by this act

of aggressive naming. Matthew Heimer argued that

Time’s cover may have undermined its lead story’s sensitivity to the anguish of the Columbine survivors. Families of two victims objected that the cover photos of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had the effect of glorifying the killers, even though the coverline called them ‘Monsters.’593

Time’s scapegoating and dehumanising efforts, it seemed to those who explicitly

refuted the interpellation ‘monster’, obfuscated the very human source of misery and

isolation that helped to cause the Columbine siege, and instead served to illustrate and

perpetrate the type of brutalisation allegedly experienced by the pair. The opinion that

the Time cover replicated the stigmatising treatment of ‘difference’ that perpetuates the

kind of scapegoating impulse that contributed to the massacre was frequently expressed

on websites or message boards that offered a more sympathetic understanding of the

situation. This view was typically expressed by teenagers who were undergoing

persecution or stigmatisation similar to what was reportedly experienced by Klebold

205

and Harris.594 A widespread and dramatic crackdown was reported in the immediate

aftermath of the siege by online journalist and cultural commentator Jon Katz, who was

overwhelmed by e-mails from teenagers whose rights had been eroded and whose

privacy invaded as a precautionary measure. Some of these actions, such as banning of

music, movies, the confiscation of computers, or suspension from school for wearing

inappropriate clothing, caused the affected adolescents to feel a bond of understanding

with the teen killers.595

Yet for others, the magazine’s term was mild. The boys were alternately called

hell spawn, outcasts, terrorists, and aliens. A personal perspective is found in Lynn

Burke’s analysis of web sites devoted to the Columbine massacre. She cites the

response that one angry visitor left in the message book of a web site that attempts to

promote a more tolerant understanding of the event, that ‘My friend was killed by these

two monsters … As it stands, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling just thinking about those two

jerks roasting in Hell.’596

Others, however, illustrated a more overt, and worrying, identification with the

pair. In an example drawn from Misty Bernall’s book about her daughter Cassie’s

unexpected enshrinement as a modern-day martyr, she describes a t-shirt slogan

witnessed in the weeks after her daughter’s murder – ‘We’re still ahead, thirteen to

two.’597 Other adolescents who felt similarly ostracised and abused at school, cheered

on Klebold and Harris for bringing their fantasies of revenge to fruition.598 The

groundswell of internet-based support soon after the event illustrated that people were

actively supporting Harris and Klebold, provoked not just by the Time cover but the

impulses and reactions it condensed. The attempted monstrification does not permit this

kind of (most often willing, but occasionally reluctant) identification.

The ubiquity of the term ‘monster’, and the widespread impact of the Time cover,

were illustrated during an episode of the syndicated talk show Oprah that was devoted

to the Columbine massacre. This program was one of several Oprah shows to focus on

Columbine, including one devoted to remembering the victims of the massacre, that

were devoted to analysing the aftermath of the Columbine murders.599 The following

exchange took place between host Oprah Winfrey and one of her guests, violence

206

prevention expert Gavin de Becker. In the course of discussing school massacres and

their prevention, de Becker discussed the representation of Columbine in the media.

Gavin de Becker: ‘You know, I saw the Time magazine cover that said “The Monsters Next Door,” and that’s a very disappointing cover to me.’

Oprah Winfrey: ‘Yeah, I thought so too.’

De Becker: ‘These, these are two boys –’

Winfrey: ‘Two boys!’

De Becker: ‘– and many factors came together to cause this.’

Winfrey: ‘And you know what? By making them monsters then everybody can say: not my kid.’

De Becker: ‘That’s right.’

In a point that echoes some of the criticisms of the Time cover, Winfrey and de

Becker isolate a crucial portion of the ideological assumptions underpinning its imagery

and message. The effort to scapegoat, to contain the impact and resonance of these

privileged boys behaving in this way, is to stigmatise them as atypical, as mutant

offspring, and to clearly separate Time’s readership (and their communities) from these

boys. As Winfrey crystallised the presumed effect of viewing the cover in Time’s

intended audience, there is little effort made to understand the underlying causes to

understand and to prevent these types of events. Instead, this is replaced with a generic,

classic response to anomaly: ‘not my kid.’ The comments by both participants were

offered in an attempt to localise and confront the phenomenon, by humanising the pair

and through recognising the limits of scapegoating impulses. Winfrey’s comment (‘By

making them monsters then everybody can say: not my kid’) attempts to re-integrate the

pair through recognising, against all efforts made to demonise them, that these were two

teenagers whose suffering brought this tragedy about.

Journalists Bill Briggs and Jason Blevins echo this sentiment as they interrogate

the overwhelming impression created by mainstream media of the boys’ public persona:

Eric Harris was a killer, certainly cold-blooded, probably deranged. But to simply boil an 18-year-old high school senior down to a soulless, Nazi-loving

207

monster is too easy, too clean. It misses the point: If most kids have two sides, Harris had 10 – some charming, some spiteful, one lethal.600

The monstrification of the teens even extended to the Klebold and Harris families,

who were subjected to a series of demystifying articles in which friends, neighbours,

and relatives all protested their normality and niceness. Stories were filled with

testimonies such as ‘“They raised their boys just like the rest of us,” said Vicki Dehoff,

a former neighbor of the Klebolds, who has known the family for 15 years. “The

parents are not monsters.”’ Indeed, the parents of the boys were most frequently

characterised as ‘the family next door,’ whose utter banality is stunning in itself:

Friends say what is extraordinary about the two families is how very ordinary they are: quiet people who celebrated Easters with neighbors, mowed their lawns, played hoops with their sons, and sat on bleachers on long summer nights watching Little League.601

Indeed, the title of Carla Crowder’s June, 1999 article is explicit and dramatic:

‘Harrises didn’t see a monster in their midst.’ Extending this thought, Crowder states

that ‘[o]ne son grew into a role model, the other a monster. And many who know the

parents say it isn’t their fault.’602

I will now turn to a consideration of why this act of aggressive naming occurred,

what it means as a cultural response and a deliberate strategy, and how it transforms

both monster discourse and the representation of the killers. As noted in my chapter on

monstrosity, the figure of the monster functions as a barometer for social tensions and

embodies some of the specific historically located anxieties of an age. Though the

monster is not an automatic window into a particular time (an idea that is problematic

both in presenting the past as easily accessible, and in terms of seeing the monster as

able to embody all facets of strife and tension within an epoch), its form is often

conditioned by dominant arguments and beliefs concerning the role and function of

nature, knowledge, and morality. The form of the monster and the manner in which it is

named and apprehended are, as I have argued, important considerations when

examining teratology. I find that these concerns are particularly relevant in the case of

the widespread perception of the monstrosity of the Columbine killers, as they

exemplify a contemporary monstrosity that is deeply imbricated in its immediate

surroundings and manifests some of the less overt tensions that accompany the

208

presentation of contemporary definitions of the entwined values of normality and

neutrality.

Contemporary monstrification

I will briefly contextualise the boys’ inhabitation of the term monster within more

conventional parameters, and explore some of the ways in which they either rework or

endorse dominant elements of teratological discourse. Monster, as I have argued, is a

term that encompasses a range of possibilities, and that includes being the dominant and

topical ‘nightmare’ of a particular age. The form of this negativity need not be

consigned to more conventionally accepted images or ideas. The high school killers are

not fantastic creatures or supernatural beings, and are not brought into being by gods or

even the human imagination.603 Though named as monstrous, they are not obvious

monsters whose size, juxtaposition or excess of attributes is found in visual

difference.604 The boys, however, are seen as monstrous progeny,605 they are created

through explicit acts of naming and with reference to the history of monstrosity,606 and

they are a sign of contemporary culture and unease.607 Above all, they signal and

embody dissonance, juxtaposition, and category crisis: they encapsulate and are

constituted through anomaly and fusion, pollution and disorder, all of which are

enduring and important components of monstrosity.608

The treatment of Klebold and Harris follows other precedents in which

noteworthy criminals have been monstrified in public. It is not coincidental that

McVeigh and other notorious killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer have also been called

monstrous on magazine covers. A 1995 issue of The Australian magazine termed

McVeigh ‘The Monster of Oklahoma.’609 The headline of a 1994 issue of Who Weekly

magazine, which featured the story of the death of Dahmer at the hands of a fellow

inmate, was ‘Death of a Monster.’610 Yet the popularity of the term monster points to

more than its widespread ease of usage, as it is only used in terms of crimes that serve to

define an age and that capture the public imagination. It is used, in a sense, in crimes

that offend against broader societal terms and definitions so that the otherwise ordinary

originator of violence is cast beyond the human, and forms its exterior. This forms a

strikingly literal interpretation of Butler’s analysis of the process of subjectivation that

includes the necessary expulsion of those who do not count as human. She describes

the ‘construction’ of the notion of the human as

209

a differential operation that produces the more and the less ‘human,’ the inhuman, the humanly unthinkable. These excluded sites come to bound the ‘human’ as its constitutive outside, and to haunt those boundaries as the persistent possibility of their disruption and rearticulation.611

Although Butler is referring to the creation of hierarchically valued subject

positions and not to monster discourse specifically, her understanding of how some

identities are formed though a fraught, even dangerous, relationship to the dominant

term human is useful to explore. While Butler’s examples, such as the reworking of the

term ‘queer,’ examine the isolation and pain of being deemed abject and socially

unacceptable, I want to reverse this focus and examine other subjects whose constitution

also relies upon being rendered distinct from the human norm, but from far less tenable

and recuperable vantage points. The persistence of the trope of the monstrous points to

the ongoing importance of these boundary creatures, and how dangerous it is to be part

of the margins. The process of monstrification traces the fine line dividing the

acceptable and the outcast, and has ramifications for other forms of identity creation and

processes of representation, particularly those that deal with systemic marginalisation

and access to forms of privilege.

The traditional parameters of the term ‘monster’ also countenance perhaps the

most troubling aspect of the case for many, which was the question of Harris and

Klebold’s genesis and meaning. What do they foretell and symbolise, what part of

society are they mirroring for us, and what do they signify? In addition, the case

provoked the oldest and most enduring teratological query: ‘how did they get here?’ a

question made even more pressing due to the seemingly picture perfect locale and

heritage of the pair. Like the proverbial wolves tucked securely beneath appropriate

sheep exteriors, the duo had dubiously plausible facades, and weren’t considered to be

overtly dangerous and threatening.612 As with other monsters, there was the

retrospective focus on warning signs, on what people ‘should’ have seen.613

Contemporary monstrification is perceptibly different to previous incarnations,

and has several main lines running through it. Above all, our new monsters are moral

and ethical figures, they are banal and systemic, they kill, are deemed ‘psychotic’ and

not supernatural in powers or qualities, and come to us in human flesh. This is not to

suppose that the older stereotypical or archetypal monsters in culture have vanished or

210

been completely replaced, but to propose instead that these explicitly human monsters

have been added to the pantheon as more convenient and appropriate versions of fears

and anxieties to express contemporaneous nuances.

Embedded in the cover is an ironic awareness that the boys, especially as depicted

in the photos, are the exact opposite of what is conventionally understood to be

monstrous. They appear to be the epitome of American normality, to embody all the

hallmarks of ideal and normative masculinity, and yet crystallise and cohere its

opposite. On the Time magazine cover, the term ‘monster’ was explicitly juxtaposed

with extremely ordinary, mild, and non-supernatural photographs of the boys

responsible for the deaths of thirteen people. The energy created by this conjunction of

supposedly unlikely and unthinkable terms relies in part upon a presumed inability to

comprehend individuals and acts that oppose or do not conform with dominant cultural

stereotypes and expectations concerning race and gender. In this context, white

violence, male violence, and suburban violence, particularly in their intermingled form,

are offered up as something inexplicable, new, and unpredictable. The galvanising term

‘monster’ is intended to obliterate the codes of normalcy found in the boys’ dress and

demeanour whilst simultaneously, paradoxically, relying upon them for shock value.

The juxtaposition of the identities of these killers, their given title, and the images

chosen to represent them, creates an ambiguous and unstable terrain. The notion of a

monster next door is not clear cut, and the emphasised imbrication of normality and

deviance is not as straightforward as it might initially seem. As such, the scope of the

conjunction of title and image is open to multiple, simultaneous, and contradictory

interpretations. In some senses, the boys are exemplary contemporary monsters, as they

fulfil the function of warning and portent, a demonstration of potential dangers and

further trauma. In other respects, the term monster is denied and seems insufficient, and

appears as an exacerbated and ritualistic scapegoating strategy and cliché.

To reiterate a point made in Chapter Three, monstrification may seem like a

relatively easy discursive step, and yet the term monster implies a history of abuse and

defilement. All names, as many theorists working in the field of queer, feminist, and

critical race studies have noted, have particularised histories and undeniable

associations that cannot, despite revamping and rearticulation, be completely removed.

211

The taint of the originary impulse remains imbedded even within the reworking and

appropriation of hate-filled signifiers.

Many of our contemporary monsters are now housed in the shape of those who

formerly would have been heroes and possess otherwise normative identities, and have

explicitly human forms. This harks back to earlier versions of the monster, only here

the monster is not foreign, speaks the native tongue and belongs to the dominant ethnic

group, is male, heterosexual, is not a ‘freak’ or physical anomaly, and has no special

powers or traits. As such, these boys are directly implicated in their environment and

social hierarchy, and in modes of social comprehension and categorisation, in ways that

other monsters typically are not. The instability of the term monster and the jarring,

blank façade of the human face presented as the visual limit of this monstrosity combine

to portray a forceful reminder that the monster signals, above all, category confusion

and the limit of ‘unthought’ that traces discursive intelligibility.614

This focus on human monstrosity emphasises not the supernatural and physical

realms, but the psychological, moral, and ethical dimensions, of a monstrosity defined

in terms of behaviour, actions, and beliefs. The figure of the high school killer in many

respects is similar to the serial killer but offers an even more intimate and disturbing

perspective on contemporary culture and some of the representations of marginality and

difference within it.

A prominent and intriguing facet of the mass media representation of the

perpetrators is that they would not be considered to be quite so monstrous without the

identities that rely on their hegemonic positioning, and that their acts must be

considered in tandem with their otherwise acceptable façade of normality. As discussed

in my chapter on race and monstrosity, the contemporary figure of monstrosity is

increasingly figured as distinctly human. The example of the serial killer demonstrates

that the monster has become a recognisable and ‘banal’ creature, one whose white,

middle class, heterosexual masculinity is a core component of his identity and

correspondingly, his monstrosity.

Much of the then-contemporary and ongoing depiction of high school massacres

depends on an unstable monstrification of the individuals involved, a process of

212

rendering and depicting a human as monstrous in ways that are similar to the serial

killer’s representation. Yet the boy who enters his high school with the intention of

killing his classmates and the faculty is concretely different from the serial murderer in

several important ways. These include the increasingly intimate and domestic sphere in

which these crimes occur, the specificity of the racialised, classed, and gendered nature

of these acts, and the unique geographic and social tensions embodied in the killer’s

representation.

The Time cover emblematises the problem of articulation that lay at the core of

the horror of the Columbine massacre – the inability to contend with, and enunciate, the

specific identity of killers who were supposed to be the ‘boys next door.’ These are boys

from a middle-class, wealthy, virtually all-white environment, and yet participate in this

inconceivable violence against their community, their peers, their school. As

Randy Essex, editor of the Des Moines Register in Iowa noted, the perpetrators of the

massacre, Klebold and Harris, both seniors at Columbine High, ‘were like the children

of most of our readers,’ which, he believes, ‘says something big about our society.’615

Unlike the example of the serial killer, the threat implicit in this proximity to the

adolescent murderers relies upon the positioning of the homicidal adolescents as

products of very particular environments and upbringings. The increasingly intimate

scope of these violent acts reflects a new level of simultaneous evasion of, and

implication in, monstrosity, in which the normality and average qualities of the

perpetrators are recognised and yet are hyperbolised in a distancing gesture. Yet these

boys would not be considered quite so unusual and monstrous were they from an inner

city or an ethnically and racially marked locale, so the lure of the suburb and small

town, implicated in ‘next door,’ is looped back into the killer’s configuration. As such,

the whiteness of the killers is a crucial component of their presumed normality and

threatening intimacy.

I will pursue Halberstam’s notion of the ‘banality of monstrosity’ in a different

way than in my previous chapter: here, I will focus upon the sense in which banality is

implied in community, in what is familiar and known. Unlike the manifestations of

white ethnicity discussed in my previous chapter, these boys are neither ‘white trash’

nor urban drifters. While they share many qualities with the banal monstrosity of the

serial killer and their representation participates in many similar strategies of effacement

213

and normalisation, these boys are instead located as emerging from (and enacting

violence against) a highly particular community and environment. Unlike the ‘anyone

and anywhere’ rhetoric of much serial murderer literature, the high school killers are

typically from suburban locations or small towns, from communities that are not only

predominantly white but that also are consciously crafted and maintained as ethnically

homogenous. The shock of Klebold and Harris is partially the manner in which they

undermine the normative impulses guiding white communities, suburbia, and criminal

identities even as they, paradoxically, embody it.

Strategies of effacement and marginalisation:

The naming of these adolescent killers as monstrous has various ramifications. As

noted by some media in relation to Time magazine’s ‘Columbine Tapes’ cover, there is

the possibility of glorifying Harris and Klebold’s actions (connecting them, for

example, to the tradition of the gunslinger and vigilante as hero). In addition, monsters

are frequently sympathetic figures, and the pair have been appropriated and

romanticised by some individuals who share their outsider status and claim to

understand their motives, if not their behaviour. However, what other aspects are there

to this active monstrification of individuals? Does monstrification, in shrouding the

teens in myth and connecting them with other fantastic, supernatural or extraordinary

creatures, erode the specificity of their identities? That is, does this act make them into

beings whose actions have no bearing upon the broader patterns of behaviour and

ethical issues that were raised in relation to the massacre, such as violence in popular

culture, the question of gun control, and adolescent civil rights in the face of censorship

and security concerns? Does this particular act of stigmatisation remove the individual

from the social sphere and from personal culpability?

This is legal theorist Richard Collier’s argument in Masculinities, Crime and

Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality and the Criminal(ised) Other, in which he focuses

upon the effaced role of masculinity in the construction of the public face of criminality

and the widespread normalisation of masculinised aggression. He discusses the

shocking massacre in the small town of Dunblane, Scotland in 1996, in which

Thomas Hamilton entered the school grounds of Dunblane Primary School and fatally

shot a teacher and 16 children aged 5 and 6, and wounded 17 others. The unprovoked

and unanticipated act generated much media attention through its cruel and deliberate

214

focus on some of the most vulnerable targets in society, and provided a harsh reminder

of the omnipresence of violence in contemporary life, even in the most seemingly

unlikely locales. The media and public response to Hamilton, not surprisingly, was

couched in demonising terms reminiscent of the Columbine siege’s reception. As with

other contemporary ‘monsters’ such as Jeffrey Dahmer and Timothy McVeigh, Thomas

Hamilton’s depiction as monstrous was premised upon the savagery of his attack, the

vulnerable targets he attacked, and the public’s lack of comprehension of both the siege

and the reasons behind it.

In a broader analysis concerning the interimplication of masculinity and

heterosexuality in the construction of the male criminal that pre-dates the Columbine

massacre, Collier briefly touches upon the media’s recourse to tropes of evil and

monstrosity when attempting to portray the meaning of and motivation for a crime as

seemingly incomprehensible and pointless as the slaying of a class of children and their

teacher by a stranger.616 His analysis of the tragic spree killing case in Dunblane offers

several insights into the alignment of criminality and an undifferentiated masculinity in

media depictions of crime and criminals. Drawing explicitly from contemporary

feminist and queer theory, Collier argues that the masculinity of the criminal is

considered to be such a core element of the individual that it is effaced as being a

specific gender. He notes that

[t]he vast majority of spree killers, like offenders generally, are men. Yet the ontology of Hamilton as ‘inhuman’ robs both the act of the murders and the body of the murderer of its sexual specificity … Hamilton is transformed into something ‘beyond human’, his actions seen as emblematic of an inhumanity beyond comprehension and understanding.617

Naming the perpetrator of the Dunblane massacre as a monster, he believes,

removes him from a continuum of male violence and renders him extraordinary, which

works to ‘individualise crime.’618 This mitigates broader trends in culture, specifically

the overwhelming statistics detailing males as the perpetrators of virtually all violent

acts.

While this welcome interrogation of representational strategies concerning

violence is highly beneficial, Collier has ignored the long history of representations of

monsters and their complicated relationship to defining ‘humanity.’ I acknowledge that

215

Collier is not investigating teratology per se, and uses the term ‘monster’ somewhat

loosely and interchangeably, and includes other generic negative terms in his analysis,

such as ‘inhuman’. Nevertheless, several points of qualification need to be taken into

account. The first is that Collier does not appear to see individuals such as Hamilton to

function as contemporary examples of monstrosity but instead to be named monstrous

in a fit of misguided hyperbole, which ignores both the lineage of human monsters, as

well as the monster’s embodiment of contemporary tensions and fears. Secondly,

contemporary versions of monstrosity rely upon the humanity implicit in the

formulation. I argued in my chapters on monstrosity that, as many other theorists have

demonstrated, monstrosity is not just replete with references to gender, sexuality,

ethnicity, and other elements of identity. Rather, monstrosity is configured through

them, and accrues its relevance from their interimplication. It is not coincidental that

many forms of stigmatised identity are easily located in the monster and, as Halberstam

argues, the monster ‘bears the marks of the constructions of femininity, race, and

sexuality.’619 Collier’s understanding cannot countenance that it is for the supposedly

aberrant configuration of their racial, sexual, or gendered components that, for example,

native inhabitants, ‘freaks,’ and homosexuals have been labelled monstrous.

It is also ironic that Collier chooses the neutralisation of difference as the strategy

through which to expose the deployment of monstrification as a process that negates

specificity. For a criminal to be seen as ‘just a man,’ in a reversal of Collier’s terms, is

itself precisely the same kind of strategic effacement of alterity and it displays the type

of universality that he sought to critique. No one is ever ‘just’ a man. As many

feminists, critical race theorists, and cultural theorists have argued, forms of

marginalisation are often connected in highly significant ways, and are deployed in

mutually reinforcing fashions.

Yet can this privilege attributed to masculinity or whiteness ever be entirely

eradicated by qualifying terms, even ones as potent as ‘monster’? While Collier is

correct in many respects, in that the term monster effaces some of the specificity of the

males responsible for violent crimes, monstrification remains an incomplete gesture.

This is because signs of gender, class, ethnicity, and race may be measured through

their attempted erasure or on-going denial as much as through their overt and remarked

presence. In this respect, I re-invoke a quote that I used towards the start of my chapter,

216

in which journalist Andy Rooney said, of Klebold and Harris, that ‘I don’t even like

calling them boys. It’s too good a word for what they were.’620 This is, in a sense,

almost a reversal of Collier’s point. Rooney is judging the teens for their actions and he

believes that what the pair did was so horrendous that it prevents them from being

known as human boys. This carries an implicit awareness of their gender as being

betrayed and denigrated by their actions, and does not explicitly preclude or ignore their

gender in the manner that Collier assumes is part of the general and unhelpful

demonisation of male violence.

While I agree with Collier’s view on the strategic deployment of a rhetoric of

monstrosity, I also believe that the Columbine case, and the particular congruence of

constitutive elements it contains, show a greater implication in cultural norms and ideals

than just the rejection of the humanity of an individual as a way of avoiding culpability.

The values, environment, and forms of subjecthood embodied by the two teens are, I

argue, part of the massive impact that their actions caused. Their identity is not only an

inescapable part of their status as monstrous, as it is with any monster, but it uniquely

provokes their situation.

The Columbine case and race:

The depiction and analysis of race in the Columbine case shares several characteristics

with the complicated presence of whiteness in serial killer representation. The

whiteness of the vast majority of the perpetrators of high school sieges was an

important, though rarely analysed, point. Very few articles on the phenomenon discuss

the whiteness of the killers as an important component of the crime and their

representation in the media, although the majority of articles were cognizant of the boys

status as white, middle-class, suburban teens. When race was interrogated as informing

the Columbine case, it was primarily in response to the murder of one particular

African-American student, and in terms of the boys’ apparent neo-Nazi leanings. It is

striking that the majority of discussions of race do not occur in terms of the Klebold and

Harris’ ethnicity. Rather, the ‘racialisation’ of Columbine occurred through a much

more conventional measure: through an act of direct racism against a minority member

who was one of the few non-white students at the school.

217

When African American student Isaiah Shoels was killed, allegedly after being

called a racial slur according to witnesses who survived the attack in the library, it

raised the spectre of several issues: the remarkably white population of Columbine

High as resistant to integration or any multicultural influences, perhaps reflecting the

broader makeup of Colorado, as well as Klebold and Harris’ alleged and inconsistently

proven racism and admiration of fascism and Nazism.621 Shoels was reportedly one of

only a dozen or so African American students in a school population of approximately

1,900.622 According to survivors, the duo entered the school’s library and taunted the

students who were trapped there, and made cruel remarks to all their victims before

shooting them.623

Reporters from Time magazine allege to have seen homemade videotapes that

Klebold and Harris made in the week prior to the siege in which the teens boast about

their intended targets and plans.

Harris and Klebold have an inventory of their ecumenical hatred: all ‘niggers, spics, Jews, gays, f_ing whites,’ the enemies who abused them and the friends who didn’t do enough to defend them.624

It is curious that although they used racially specific epithets to describe people

that they despised and wanted to murder in video tapes, they also spoke of ‘fucking

whites’ who should die. Other targets of their hatred included athletes, religious people,

girls who snubbed them, classmates that irritated them, and anyone who ever attacked,

or was considered to have offended, them. Paradoxically, an avowed hatred of racism

and racists was present on the long list of likes and dislikes that Harris posted on his

web page.625

Some commentators asked how two normal white suburban boys could express

such opinions, while others used this veneer of racism as a convenient scapegoating tool

to explain the events. Others chose to see this racism as just another sign that the pair

were bad seeds. The shooting and denigration of Shoels were perceived to racialise the

event, to bring race into the equation of school ground violence, suggesting that the

event of Columbine, like all the other sieges, wasn’t considered to be automatically

racialised already. In particular, the perpetrators (and their milieu) were not considered

to be conditioned by race, much less whiteness. Yet it is vital that this event was

already racialised, and it was always important that these boys were white. In addition,

218

it is crucial that Columbine High School and its surrounding environs are a

predominantly white community.

The whiteness of the school shooters has not gone unnoticed in the media. Yet

the people who have commented on this are, by and large, Africa-American, or are

academics involved in anti-racist projects. The mainstream media does not, or cannot,

see whiteness as a predictor of violence. What does it mean for the high school killer to

be a white male in contemporary society, in which the whiteness of criminals is treated

in a vastly different way to that of non-white criminals, in which race and monstrosity

are considered to be mutually exclusive, and when the value of whiteness is premised,

in part, on its ability to be perceived as ‘neutral’? How is it, then, that the white

criminal is rarely described as white, much less held accountable as a threatening white

citizen, within this rigidly demarcated system of racialised agency and morality? What

investment do we have in treating the white criminal as an aberration, as uninflected by

race, and how do we perceive his masculinity, heterosexuality, and whiteness working

in tandem not just to accord with, but perpetuate white hegemony?

Whiteness, monstrification, and the boy next door:

‘If Dylan can do this, who isn’t capable of it?’626

As attested by Randy Brown, father of a lifelong friend of Dylan Klebold, the actions of

Klebold and Harris represented, for some, an indictment on society, a sign that if even

the most seemingly pleasant and privileged individual was capable of such violence,

then anyone could have committed the massacre. The pair also inspired fear: if these

ostensibly normal boys could commit this crime, then what other people were also

capable of doing something similar, and when? The implicit message for Time’s

readers is one of encroaching urban dread, of the now-tainted status of the suburbs and

the very real threat of cultural transformation. What happens when these boys, who

looked very much like ‘us’ (as the ideal white, middle class, male readership) turn

against us? This gesture is not a genuine questioning of values by Time and others, but

an apportioning of blame: for example, against the parents for raising ‘monsters’ and

not even knowing it, against the neighbourhood for permitting these monsters to

flourish, and against the increasingly desensitised and violence-saturated culture. In this

segment I locate some of the specificity of these late twentieth century crimes with

219

reference to the explosion of suburban life in post-war North America and the more

symbolic elements of geography and proximity in this particular case.627 In the last

section I examined some of the ways in which race was seen to infuse or be exempted

from the case by the media. I explore some of the links between racial stereotypes and

geographic location, seeking to specify the whiteness of the suburban experience and

how it informs the depiction of the high school killer. The suburbs (and to a lesser

degree, rural America) are explicitly contrasted with the demonised inner-city and its

residents, who are most often portrayed in racially inflected ways. This is part of the

‘white flight’ phenomenon of the escape of white residents to the suburbs. It is perhaps

ironic that these communities and locales, not conventional ‘hot spots’ for trouble, are

the locations to which other people retreated in order to escape the problems of urban

life, and which typically do not exhibit high levels of violence.628

‘Crimes,’ as Collier suggests, ‘even the worst and most seemingly inexplicable,

do not happen in a vacuum.’629 Some crimes are so horrendous and incomprehensible

that we reject any attempt to interrogate the possible reasons behind them or do not

believe that there is a rational explanation for them.630 Crimes are contextualised within

particular environments and historical moments, which affects their social significance

and public reception. The location of the high school killers as the ‘boys next door’

turned monsters highlights several points. One is that they are immediately located in at

least two locations: the American cultural imaginary, as discussed, and a more literal

physical presence of suburbia and small towns across the United States. The

magazine’s title is a play on the term ‘the boy next door,’ which refers to a wholesome,

pleasant, and friendly type of boy. The term, typically used in a positive fashion,

describes someone who is, above all, a known and familiar quantity, someone who is

trustworthy and decent because he is from the same area and social milieu as the

speaker. When taken literally, who is the cover meant to address with its designation of

‘next door’? Who, exactly, has neighbours like these boys? Is this cover meant to

address specific individuals, or are the boys supposed to be generic neighbours that

everyone and anyone could have? This is an erroneous assumption, not only for

arguing that high school shootings can happen anywhere (when they have been

restricted to predominantly all-white enclaves thus far) but that everyone has neighbours

like these; specifically, white, upper middle class, wealthy suburbanites. Yet the

qualifying sense of ‘next door’ also functions as a comment upon the presumed reader

220

of the magazine, upon those who feel personally addressed by the phenomenon.631 One

approach to this implication of the reader in the cover is that the overt demonisation and

expulsion found in the monstrification of the teens is counterbalanced by the veiled

similarity and familiarity of the reader and the monster, a classic ambivalent response in

teratology.

What is the nature of the teens’ familiarity, their ability to pass for the boy next

door? There is, embedded within the cover, an ironic awareness that these boys are the

opposite of what is conventionally accepted as monstrous. From all appearances, and in

many respects in terms of behaviour and attitude as well, they were so ostensibly

normal. They should have embodied all of the traits of normative white masculinity,

but instead crystallise its opposite. Yet the conjunction of these terms has already been

proved possible in the Time cover. If these perpetrators can simultaneously be the boys

and the monsters next door they offer a more complicated understanding and example

of the ways in which norms, ideals, and moments of subjectification function. Their

familiarity and their overt humanity provide the irony that the cover trades upon for its

impact, given that monstrosity is most often delineated through palpable physical

difference. Indeed, it is their lack of anonymity, their explicit and uncanny

contextualisation within such a specific, homogenous, and idealised setting, that

separates them from other contemporary monsters.

The pair’s indistinguishability, and the privileged milieu the teens enjoyed, was

underscored in a comment made by a fellow Columbine High School student in the

weeks following the event.

‘They shot at everybody,’ says senior Nick Zupancic, ‘including the preps, the jocks and the people who wore Abercrombie & Fitch clothes. But it would be hard to say they singled them out, because everyone here looks like that. I mean, we’re in white suburbia. Our school’s wealthy. Go into the parking lot and see the cars. These kids have money. But I never thought they’d do this.’632

This testimony signals that there was, within the surrounding community, an awareness

of the privilege and wealth that the school enjoyed. Zupancic’s words also point to the

conformity of Columbine, where ‘everyone looks like that,’ that is, looks the same.633

221

Whiteness and suburbia

The suburbs occupy a particular zone in the American cultural imagination, one as

important for its mythic resonance as for the history of segregation and aspiration that it

exemplifies. I briefly discuss both these qualities in this section, which details some of

the reasons behind suburbia’s image in culture, and what it means for these boys to be

positioned in the public’s view as privileged suburbanites. Their figuration as ‘monsters

next door’ and as coming from middle-class, ostensibly normal homes in Denver,

Colorado, turns on the spectre of suburbia in several ways.

Suburbia is itself prey to widespread generalisation and assumptions, or what, in a

1972 article, Bennett M. Berger termed ‘The Myth of Suburbia.’ The image of

suburban life has generated fantasies of unlimited homogeneity and oppressive

conformity. This is what John Kramer called the image of ‘identical houses occupied

by similar people’ with an attendant quality of ‘complacency and conformity.’634 Yet

there is some truth in this depiction. For all the complexity of the process of settling

within suburban neighbourhoods, for all the disparity between various suburbs and the

lifestyles of their occupants, suburbs are structured by race, class, wealth and ethnic

affiliation. Marc L. Silva, and Martin Melkonian, in their introduction to Contested

Terrain: Power, Politics, and Participation in Suburbia, argue that

[f]ew social factors have affected suburban development, and have themselves been affected by suburban development, than racial and ethnic relations. Late twentieth century racial segregation in the United States has been historically inseparable from the process of suburbanization.635

The suburbs are not strictly ethnically and racially homogenous, but neither are

they particularly diverse.636 Recent statistics display this continuing trend to whiteness

in suburbia:

From 1960 to 1977 4 million whites moved out of central cities, while the number of whites living in suburbs increased by 22 million; during the same years, the inner-city black population grew by 6 million, but the number of blacks living in suburbs increased by only 500,000. By 1993, 86 percent of suburban whites still lived in places with a black population below 1 percent.637

In other words, the population in the suburbs is not only predominantly white,

there is also an under-representation of ethnic diversity in the suburbs, and significant

ethnic populations tend to be restricted to major urban locations.638

222

George Lipsitz, in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People

Profit from Identity Politics, argues that white identities are crucially structured by a

number of systemic and institutionalised forces, such as the economic policies and

regulations concerning property and housing in North America in the last century.

Multiple strategies have been used over time to illicitly and tacitly preserve the racial

makeup of communities and to restrict the possibilities for the co-existence of

individuals variously positioned in society in terms of wealth, class, ethnicity, and

sexuality.639 Indeed, Lipsitz contends that the racial composition of suburbia is hardly

coincidental. After World War II, he believes, ‘the FHA [Federal Housing Agency] and

private lenders after World War II aided and abetted segregation in U.S. residential

neighborhoods’ by ‘channeling loans away from older inner-city neighborhoods and

toward white home buyers moving into segregated suburbs.’640 This was accomplished

in part, he argues, with simultaneous urban renewal programs that disproportionately

encompassed minority neighbourhoods and displaced many citizens.

Not only did the suburbs help to sustain racial divides, but they also helped

consolidate whiteness as a social identity by providing a sense of community and unity.

Lipsitz contends that

[a]s increasing numbers of racial minorities into cities, increasing numbers of European American ethnics moved out. Consequently, ethnic difference among whites became a less important dividing line in U.S. culture, while race became more important. The suburbs helped turn Euro-Americans into ‘whites’ who could live near each other and intermarry with relatively little difficulty. But this ‘white’ unity rested on residential segregation, on shared access to housing and life chances largely unavailable to communities of color.641

In addition, the ‘white flight’ phenomenon of migration defined by the shift by

white citizens to more ethnically homogenous areas is characterised by McCarthy et al

as an explicit move away from ‘America’s increasingly black, increasingly immigrant

urban centers’ after the 1960s. This trajectory of retreat and the development of the

suburbs

created settlements and catchment areas that fanned out farther and farther away from the city’s inner radius, thereby establishing the racial character of the suburban-urban divide. As tax-based revenues, resources, and services followed America’s fleeing middle classes out of the city, a great gulf opened between the suburban dweller and America’s inner-city resident.642

223

This imbrication of privilege and homogeneity that accrued with the shift from the

city to rural states is accompanied by a motivation that Joel Kotkin terms the ‘Valhalla

syndrome, a fin de siècle yearning for a heavenly retreat, with the promised reward of a

simpler, less complex existence.’643 This stated ‘complication’ involves issues such as

race relations, of the threat of diverse neighbourhoods, of heterogeneity.644 This

conservative trend is not just based on economic concerns and a desire for homogeneity,

but evinces the desire to return a nostalgic, idealised perception of the United States. It

is, Kotkin believes, a ‘cultural movement back to an earlier, perhaps largely imagined

past of small towns, safe streets, clean air and common cultural values.’645

Significantly, Colorado was one of the states mentioned by Kotkin as a particular

destiny for the recent influx of Christian and anti-gay groups.646 An article in the

Boulder, Colorado based newspaper The Daily Camera from August 30, 1998 details

the acknowledged desire of some Colorado residents to enrol their children in the local

public schools with the least amount of minority students. This fear or hatred of

difference and diversity is a continuation of the type of impulses that undergird white

flight segregation and provide the ongoing resources for the fantasised monolithic,

homogenous environment of the suburbs.647

This fantasy of racial segregation connects with the notion of ‘myth of the

suburbs’ as being conservative, homogenous, and banal. This is encouraged by the

simultaneous recognition of the allure of these very qualities, with the suburbs as the

ideal domestic setting for many as it represents security, comfort, and stability. This

mythologisation extends to what Benedict Anderson terms the ‘imagined communities’

of social bonds and operative ideals. For Anderson, the importance of these

communities is that they are the ones desired and attempting to be realised, and which

are ‘conceived in language, not in blood.’648 Their guiding fantasies and ideals, such as

the escape from the perils and pollution of the city, condition the idealised white

community in suburbia. Yet the suburbs have also been depicted as a hotbed of anxiety,

resentment, and turmoil in a range of texts from the 1960s onwards, often in reaction to

conformism and insularity.649 Much like the representation of the monsters next door, it

is the perception of being too ordinary and oppressively normal, of lacking distinctive

qualities and yet simultaneously functioning as a nominal cultural ideal, that

paradoxically limns suburbia’s identity. The representation of Harris and Klebold as

white middle-class male suburbanites reflects a similar pattern of fantasy and

224

undermined expectations, of mystification and idealisation. They, too, participate in the

ambivalence surrounding the suburbs, at once derided and cherished for their complex

relations to normality and banality.

Yet the lingering shock caused by the massacre at Columbine High was not just in

response to the privileged suburban setting per se, for as I just noted the suburbs have

previously been subject to demystifying exposés and critiques. Beyond the horrific

death toll and the needless violence, there was also the awareness that the siege

functioned as something of a harbinger, an event that extended beyond the realm of

usual, everyday violence. It was a specifically white form of violence, enacted by white

teens in a predominately white community, inside a highly demarcated zone of

quarantine and isolation. Unlike the unknown denizen of an anonymous city (as with

the general profile of the serial killers), or the unremarkable product of a generic town

(such as McVeigh), these high school shooters were defiantly linked to particularised

communities. These communities were, in addition, often touted as ‘ideal’ places to

raise children, as being particularly security conscious and, due to their generally

affluent and middle class inhabitants, not prey to the same levels of crime and violence.

The charge generated by the high school killer’s actions is precisely due to this link

between community and crime. Instead of being an anonymous threat, these boys were

too familiar, too close. They were uncanny in their lack of distance and in their already

known familiarity, their simulation and ghosting of intensely private and domestic

desires and tensions. In contrast, Timothy McVeigh’s unprecedented actions as a

domestic terrorist engendered a hitherto untapped sense of violation and infiltration in

the public, marking a seismic shift in an awareness of vulnerability and random violence

in the United States perhaps matched only in recent times by the events of September

11, 2001. Although not comparable, the shootings at Columbine High School follow a

similar trajectory that marks an increasingly intimate sense of betrayal and horrified

recognition could be located at even less of a distance.

The high school killer became, at the turn of the century, an icon of infiltrated and

unstable suburbia and segregated communities that were betrayed by their guiding

principles. In their white communities scattered across the country, their predominantly

white schools, their carefully white neighbourhoods, these boys haemorrhaged the

fantasy mingling race and criminality. Their defiantly terroristic acts dissolved the

225

carefully preserved façade that white individuals, and white males in particular, are not

only not racially distinguished but racially accountable; and by participating in this

string of school sieges Harris and Klebold affirmed the racial dimension of this

particular crime. More blatantly, they firmly implicated their neighbourhood, their

suburb, and of course their school, within the scope of their actions.

‘Not here?’: race and community

An article by African American journalist Earl Ofari Hutchinson discusses the events of

April 20 in some detail, and neatly summarises many of the most relevant points about

Littleton’s public image and the reception of the news about the siege.

The murderous rampage by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris left many parents, school officials, local politicians, and the police shaking their heads in puzzlement that it happened in Littleton and not some other place. After all Littleton is a mostly white middle-class suburb with two-story modern homes, neat lawns, and well-attended PTAs where it’s a major scandal when a neighborhood kid is caught shoplifting, stealing a tire, or driving drunk. But behind their puzzlement is a huge presumption that their neighborhood is a cordon sanitaire against the murderous violence that is thought to occur exclusively in the ghettoes and barrios. This ignores the fact that the recent teen shooting sprees at high school campuses across America did not occur at a predominantly black or Latino inner-city school but at predominantly white high schools in Jonesboro, Paducah, Edinboro, and Springfield. It denies the harsh reality that there are plenty of negligent parents, indifferent teachers, lackadaisical school officials, and emotionally tortured students in the suburbs too.650

Hutchinson, one of the few analysts to address the spectre of whiteness in the

representation of the siege, isolates several important elements. A crucial one is the

functioning of racial stereotypes in terms of violence and criminality. As the cover

story for US News online noted,

If a criminologist was to predict where adolescents might be murdered in the United States, one of the last places he would pick is an affluent high school like that in Littleton, Colo., where one of the assailants shows up in a BMW. Statistically speaking, white kids are less at risk for homicide than black kids, suburban kids less than urban, wealthy less than poor. And kids in school are less at risk there than almost anywhere else. Amherst College Prof. Jan Dizard, editor of a new book, Guns in America, says, ‘You can’t play the odds in this case.’651

Yet this statement ignores that it is, always, somewhere like Columbine. As

Angie Cannon, Betsy Streisand, and Dan McGraw note, Littleton, Colorado was one of

226

the ostensibly least likely locales for violent school crime according to statistics, which

perhaps created a false sense of security and insularity.652 After detailing some of these

statistics, including that ‘white kids are less at risk for homicide than black kids,

suburban kids less than urban, wealthy less than poor. And kids in school are less at risk

there than almost anywhere else,’ they question some of the assumptions undergirding

the reception of violence:

Not here? This exaggerated sense of safety and invulnerability makes it harder for school officials to recognize and weed out dangerous kids. ‘People were saying, “I can’t believe it happened here,” and that’s just why it happened,’ says Northeastern University Prof. Jack Levin. ‘People in Boston, New York, or Los Angeles would never say it can’t happen here … But these [suburban] communities have felt immune to big-city problems. They didn’t prepare for this onslaught, and now they are playing catch-up.’653

In response to the spate of school shootings, Republican lawyer Michael

Horowitz, a member of the ‘conservative lawyers’ group The Federalist Society’ and

former aide of President Reagan, attempts to play catch up by endorsing increased

authority for faculty and more effective punitive measures against, and increased

regulation of, potential aggressors. This is because, as he bluntly notes, ‘Columbine

brings home to the American middle class what has been happening in the ghetto

schools for the past 20 years.’654 In doing so, Horowitz contrasts what he terms ‘ghetto

schools’ with the middle class schools and exhibits an extraordinary tacit awareness of

some of the core issues undergirding the representation of the phenomenon.

Wittingly or not, and in the least appealing way possible, Horowitz named a

crucial factor of the general media and public response to high school killings: that this

rash of high school violence was primarily a white, middle class phenomenon. His

comment raises the spectre of ingrained racial inequity, of substandard educations for

the impoverished, inadequate funding for public and inner-city schools, a broad white

tolerance of inner-city dilemmas, and the ‘white flight’ solution of retreat to the

suburbs. Although Horowitz might argue that his reference to the plight of

disadvantaged inner city schools is a mere echoing of fact (such as limited funding,

schools being located in notorious areas not conducive to education, the high rates of

crime and poverty amongst students), his phrasing indicates a horror at finding out that

‘the American middle class’ has now been infected with the same pervasive violence as

urban dwellers.

227

This vision of racialised violence, endemic poverty and white ignorance of

racially inflected urban problems signals, first of all, that the awareness of the

frequently disadvantaged state of inner-city schools is ignored, and consequently

naturalised as a regrettable component of urban life. Secondly, implicit in Horowitz’s

cavalier reference to the violence perceived to be endemic in ‘ghetto schools’ is the

perspective that it is tolerable for these inner-city schools to be inadequate and unsafe,

but that it is unacceptable that poverty, racism, and violence occur in the schools of

white, middle class America. It implicitly recognises that suburbs like Littleton and

schools such as Columbine High School are created precisely to escape, not address,

these problems. Horowitz, however, conflates all types of school violence as mere

violence, and ignores that the school massacre phenomenon has been a primarily

white-generated problem, not a ‘ghetto school’ issue.

This race-blind presumption also ignores that other children of other races are

killed each year in high schools; these events are not deemed newsworthy, however, as

violence in urban environments is naturalised by the media and in popular culture.

There are non-white killers, but they are classified as ‘gang members,’ as ‘terrifying

urban youth,’ as wild and out of control. In Hutchinson’s view,

[t]here is also deep doubt that if the perpetrators of the murderous assault were black or Latino that they would have been characterized simply as two kids gone haywire and the bunch they hung out with benignly labeled a ‘clique.’They almost certainly would have been lambasted as gangsters, thugs, terrorists, and predators.655

Wendy Kaminer, in her 1995 book It’s All the Rage: Crime and Culture, details a

recent change in the social perception of crime that, while preceding the Columbine

furore, nonetheless accurately describes some of its components:

Violent crime became a preeminent problem in the 1990s not because fundamentally decent middle-class people, who set the political agenda, had an awakening of conscience; they were awakened by fear. Crime began to seem less contained in the inner cities as it spilled out on rare occasion onto highways, shopping centers, and suburban schools. Violence in impoverished, urban communities had been more or less ignored for many years because middle-class people didn’t feel threatened by it … crime became a priority when middle-class people began living in fear of it.656

228

Though written at a time that prefigured the major examples of high school

violence, Kaminer locates two core elements of their cultural impact and resonance.

Namely, that particular types of crime are ignored by the mainstream until they are a

problem for the white middle-class, and that violent crime now occurs in areas that were

conventionally deemed the safest.

The ‘containment’ of violence in inner-cities, and localised in particular in the

bodies of racialised urban youth, is secured through a careful lack of investigation of the

particularities of their lives beyond a general and sensationalised awareness of

difference. ‘Containment’ in this context, as Kaminer suggests, implies a lack of care

concerning perilous urban dynamics, a pathologising response of erecting boundaries to

keep the contagious element away from vulnerable hosts. The implicit fragility of this

scenario of awareness of corrosive difference – present in the dramatic policing of

divisions with little effort to alter the situation, and the deliberate mass migration away

from dangerous and polluted cities to these newly carved out suburban havens – is

encapsulated in this sense of cocooning, in the construction of a façade premised upon

the disavowed awareness of the suffering of others. Barricading and inoculating

oneself, but also hermetically sealing oneself in, contributes to this crisis of whiteness

articulated through outbursts of sporadic if predictable violence.

The representation of the inner-city resident is a key component of the discourse

on crime and justice. The popular ‘face’ of the urban locale and its residents is

designed, as McCarthy et al argue, for a mainstream white audience for whom the

depiction of ‘gritty’ inner-city despair and naturalised poverty and crime are acceptable

images, offered in juxtaposition to their wholesome middle class, gated communities.657

As they note in ‘Race, Suburban Resentment, and the Representation of the Inner City

in Contemporary Film and Television,’

the filmic and electronic media play a critical role in the production and channelling of suburban anxieties and retributive morality onto its central target: the depressed inner city.658

Urban existence has a particular aesthetic and mode of representation, they argue,

that accords with ‘realist’ modes of depiction that shore up the favoured, damning

images of pestilence, lawlessness, and horror. ‘The inner-city,’ they believe, ‘is sold as

a commodity and as a fetish – a signifier of danger and the unknown that at the same

229

time narrows the complexity of urban working-class life.’659 This image is insistently

linked to crime and in particular, the criminalised bodies of the racial ‘other’ of the

suburbs and small towns throughout the United States that comprise its imaginary topos.

McCarthy et al, as I noted before, argue that ‘a great gulf opened between the suburban

dweller and America’s inner-city resident.’660 Part of this gap, they contend, was filled

and fuelled by the contemporary strategies of representation in popular culture, such as

television, popular media, and cinema. These served to disseminate and uphold

suburban middle class values as central to culture and as normative through creating a

vision of urban existence for their white, middle class consumption, a ‘most poignantly

sordid fantasy of inner-city degeneracy and moral decrepitude.’661

The white consumption and perpetuation of this fantasy helped maintain and

solidify dominant and crucial negative racial stereotypes, images and terms that persist

in the media rhetoric surrounding the high school killings. Hutchinson notes the

connections between racial stereotyping. He argues that

[t]he presumption that the violence at Columbine High School happens only in other places also rests on a heavy foundation of racial stereotypes and myths about African-Americans and Latinos. Suburban kids and their parents are fed a bloated diet of reports, news, and features on crime, drugs, gangs, violence, and family dysfunctionality in the ghettoes and barrios.662

This ‘presumption that inner-city neighborhoods equals bad kids,’ he argues,

‘comforts, soothes, and ultimately deludes many parents into turning a blind eye’ when

their children engage in anti-social and disturbing behaviour, such as drug taking,

bullying, or being racist and displaying an interest in Nazism, that would otherwise

signal a cause for concern.663

McCarthy et al discuss the ‘suburban fear of encirclement by difference’ where

the suburban view of urban life is primarily received through mass media

representations. In this depiction of the suburban dread of encroachment, alterity is

figured as the urban other, an emphatically racially specific and criminalised icon (or as

they term it, the ‘coming invasion of the abstract racial other’). The ‘suburban

middle-class subject,’ they argue, ‘knows its inner-city other through an imposed

system of infinitely repeatable substitutions and proxies: census tracts, crime statistics,

tabloid newspapers, and television programs.’

230

Similarly, Tim Wise, in ‘Color-Conscious, White-Blind: Race, Crime and

Pathology in America,’ argues that racial perceptions of non-white citizens are

pervasively entwined with negative, criminalised assumptions without substantial

support. Violence against white individuals, he notes, is overwhelmingly perpetrated by

other whites.664 Wise notes the mainstream media’s persistent denial of meaning of the

specificity of this racial formation. This is not to suggest that demonising white

ethnicity would cause improvements in any area, but that an attempt to illustrate the

unfair and lopsided terrain that current criminal appraisals rest upon is necessary when

considering the ramifications of white ‘invisibility.’

Renowned race and legal theorist Patricia J. Williams muses about the

significance of racial stereotyping and its impact on whiteness in the Columbine

massacre. Williams’ article ‘Smart Bombs’ compares the treatment of white suburban

and inner-city neighbourhoods and their inhabitants in terms of racial stigmatisation.

Her focal point of comparison is the black BMW that Klebold drove to school.

I think about Dylan Klebold tootling around town in his BMW with its trunk full of bombs, and I can’t help thinking about the black dentist in New Jersey who was stopped by the highway patrol more than a hundred times over four years before he finally traded in his BMW for something more drably utilitarian. Perhaps the power of ‘the normative’ to induce moral blind spots can be appreciated for its depth and complexity only when the world for some reason gets turned upside down.665

The improbability of police randomly stopping a white teen’s car to search for

bombs and guns is contrasted with the reality of white police continuously targeting

minority members driving vehicles that don’t ‘fit’ their racial stereotype. In the next

section I will address some of the ramifications of addressing the racial configuration of

crimes in order to explore the resonance of Columbine.

Threatening intimacy: proximity and monstrification

People were saying their parents had to know what they were doing, that they should have seen this coming. That’s wrong, too … They didn’t know, because no one knew. No one but Dylan and Eric. Everyone in America wants to believe that there were warning signs, so they can believe it would never happen to them, to their children.666

231

In this final section I will briefly examine some of the ramifications of the impact of the

Columbine massacre in terms of what they reflect about then-contemporary assumptions

of sanctity and threat. The events of Columbine were particularly damaging because

they offered a debased view of the cherished icon of middle America, the implicitly

racially segregated suburbs, and the symbol of progress, the school. School, as an

interesting amalgam of public and private space, is an intensely symbolic space for

violation. School reflects community in ways that workplace and cities do not.

President Clinton crystallised a key component of the interest in the Columbine

story, the horror of the violence occurring in this particular community, when he noted:

If it can happen here, then surely people will recognise that they have to be alive to the possibility that it can occur in any community in America, and maybe that will help us to keep it from happening again.667

Part of the fear and horror generated by the attack at Columbine High School was

due precisely due to the interimplication of the seeming perfection of Littleton, and the

indistinguishability of the perpetrators. If these two ostensibly normal boys in a

predominantly white, middle to upper-class, suburban community could go on such a

deadly and above all unanticipated rampage, then who or what was to blame, and who

would be the next target? In a refrain that, as noted earlier, recurred in literature on the

Columbine shootings, it was noted across North America: this could be my community,

this could be my school, and these boys could have been my pupils, friends, or children.

Many citizens were shocked to realise their horrific similarity to the perpetrators, and

the boys’ apparent simulation of their values and norms as well. If these boys, who

were so similar to many other citizens, were able to be corrupted and at such an early

age, then how close was this threat to the rest of North America? How susceptible were

other communities and other adolescents, and how contagious was their monstrosity?

Tom Emmerson, as cited earlier, believed that the key factor of the event was the

familiarity of Harris and Klebold, that what caused it to be ‘a story that really shook up

America’ was that ‘millions of people could visualize it –it could have been their kids

… It really reaches right down into the guts, heart and soul of many Americans. It’s just

so shocking; [Littleton] is so average, so middle-American.668 Or is it? How is it that

these middle class, predominantly white, relatively wealthy enclaves are representative

of all the United States?

232

Many of the salient components of the importance of, and enduring interest in, the

story. The sensational violence was easily comprehensible, and was something that

many people dread and must acknowledge as a possibility. Yet there was a distinctly

parental slant, as alluded to in the section on the often hysterical reaction and safety

measures to Columbine, with much of the rhetoric being couched in terms of a threat to

(their) children. The boys were virtually indistinguishable, were so similar to the rest of

the population, and could easily have been part of their neighbourhood, their school,

their block. This uneasy awareness of the narrowing distance between a rebellious teen

and a murderous one was now thoroughly imbricated in the fantasy of ‘middle

America,’ in the vision of a degraded and perverted suburbia. This terror of similarity,

this inability to properly distinguish the monstrous from the norm, would recur in

literature on the killing, most notably in the Time cover. This encapsulates some of the

fearsome and contradictory source of their power and capacity to incite horror; namely,

their intimate knowledge of, and positioning within, privileged locales, their implicit

commentary on the safety measures of these white flight bastions of sanctity, and the

very domestic brand of terror that they inspire. These ‘bored white kids’ shocked the

nation through cutting the nation at its very core, its fantasy of an inviolable,

indestructible, and invisible whiteness.

The level of shocking intimacy and the sense of fractured equilibrium are

exacerbated with the figure of the adolescent killer of peers and faculty, for now, the

level of impetus and blame, of the ‘cause’ and the nurturing environs, can be located in

the comfortable heart of middle class achievement and solidity. The small towns and

quiet suburbs that house so many of these teenage murderers are not accustomed to

being implicated in the production of stigmatised criminality and being directly

involved in the conditions enabling this trajectory of violence. The outrage, horror, and

disbelief that greeted this pattern of killings, but particularly the massacre at Columbine

High School, arose in part from this juxtaposition of unwholesome and undesirable

elements with this fantasy of non-urban, white life.

Unlike the example of the serial killer, the high school shooter, in the nebulous

and early stages of his public recognition, is a drastic implication of the norm in the

monster. The term monster has been deployed throughout history to signal the extreme

233

nature of abjection. Monstrification is a common response to phenomena – events or

individuals – that run counter to the norm. In these cases, and particularly in terms of

Columbine, the spectre of monstrosity was raised and negotiated as way of dealing with

the complicated and thwarted expectations and beliefs that this shooting embodied. By

examining some of the media’s depiction of the teens, by looking at some of the popular

understandings and mainstream representations of the event, I have tried to analyse

some elements of the manner in which inflammatory rhetoric slides into the territory of

teratology, and what this means for our perceptions of humanity.

This threatening conjunction of ostensibly ‘All-American’ boys and proximate

danger implicates the (failure of the) hegemonic and normative, the alienating and

ruthless social hierarchies premised on exclusion and derogation. Above all, the Time

magazine cover illustrates and undermines the undeniable and ongoing constitutive

tension between the norm and the monster. This occurs primarily through the struggle it

traces between the conflicting reports detailing the boys ‘outsider’ status, both willed

and unwilled, and the claims that they were friendly, undistinguished, and ‘normal,’ as

sworn by close friends, their parents, and acquaintances. The representation of Harris

and Klebold as monsters illustrates one facet of this uncomfortable mesh of ideas and

modes of depiction. When these hegemonic forms of identity were made visible as

subject positions they were gothicised and demonised in order to be comprehensible and

viable white subjects within this attenuated schema. Although they were the ‘Monsters

Next Door,’ creatures of apparent normality and deceptive facades, Eric Harris and

Dylan Klebold were now also subject to a paradoxical hyper-normativity, their very

‘banality’ and undetectable potential for violence were exploited and exaggerated. Yet

these boys are also undeniably also a potent and unmanageable threat as they represent

the system breaking down in ways that it couldn’t even imagine or anticipate. This is,

as Haraway concisely put it, the hallmark of the monster.

Throughout my thesis I have traced several interwoven elements: a trajectory of

extreme acts of violence committed by white males that I have linked to a discourse of

monstrosity, and that centres on the mutual constitution of normality and marginality.

These elements culminate in the figure of the high school killer for several reasons. The

representation of the high school killer condenses and intensifies some of the

intersecting strands of contemporary North American culture that I have already

234

considered in my thesis, such as whiteness and gender. In particular, the perpetrators of

the Columbine massacre offer a uniquely focused insight into the tensions governing the

representations of an ambivalent white racial identity. It is through their uneasy

occupation of dual subject positions, namely the unassuming all-American boy become

evil incarnate, as summarised by Time magazine’s cover as ‘The Monsters Next Door,’

that their simultaneous representation as banal and terrifying undermines any claims of

whiteness as neutral and invisible. The four words on the Time cover permanently

marked the teens, and influenced their broad representation and interpretation by both

the media and individuals, but they also unwittingly served to pinpoint the flaw in the

perception of these boys as other, and different. The ‘monsters next door,’ as I

discussed in this chapter, offer a new slant on the ongoing trajectory of monstrosity.

Unlike previous versions of the monster, the high school killer is deeply imbricated in

his community, his environment, and the norms and regulations of his milieu but as part

of it, as opposed to being its conventional ‘Other’ or foil. One reason why Harris and

Klebold have been so threatening and have occupied such a large, and disproportionate,

place in recent media reportage is that they are perceived to function as a comment on

their culture in ways that other monsters, killers, or teens cannot or do not. It is perhaps

helpful to recall, at this point, that the monster, as Braidotti notes, is a creature of

simultaneity and confusion, as ‘to be significant and to signify potentially contradictory

meanings is precisely what the monster is supposed to do.’669 The complicated,

ambiguous media representation and public perception of Klebold and Harris goes some

way to demonstrating this.

235

CONCLUSION

In this thesis I have investigated what is at stake in the connections between race and

monstrosity, with a particular focus on white monstrosity and the fissuring of

white ethnicity. This has been part of a broader strategy of accountability that insists on

the specificity of a subject position in lieu of the notion of the subject as neutral, and

that adds nuance to nominally hegemonic and vague terms such as whiteness. White

ethnicity in general, as a term and in representation, has benefited from this vagueness,

and taken strength from the definitional ambiguity that enables it to be ‘everything and

nothing.’ In order to specify and render whiteness as a highly particular formation, I

have deployed the notion of monstrosity as a way of marking and investigating

difference, an exaggerated mode of tracking processes of marginalisation and the

constitution of the socially abject subject. Whiteness and monstrosity, and my

particular examples of serial murderers and high school killers, have something in

common: they all exhibit multiple and contested definitions. This is not just a

by-product of all attendant issues with classification, of the philosophical implications

of taxonomy, reason, and language. These issues are intensified through their

interimplication, and are brought to a particularly vivid crisis point of problematised

normativity in the figures of the serial murderer and high school killer. As I argued in

the chapter on marginalisation, borders are always a complicated site of meaning and

reconfiguration that are, above all, productive.

The monster, as a border creature that displays constitutive ambiguity, disturbs

categories, processes, and meaning. The political role of the monster-figure, broadly, is

to locate and condense salient contemporary fears and anxieties. In this way, it is

absolutely crucial that both contemporary icons of monstrosity are white, and that their

conflicted representation is conditioned by the ambivalent functioning of contemporary

racial discourse. That is, in many ways their status as white enables them to pass as

neutral, universal subjects. Yet it is the way in which the serial and the high school

killer diverge that provides an interesting comment on this form of neutralisation. The

236

serial killer shows the operation of invisibility and neutrality in the form of a criminal,

in which his race rarely ‘matters’ despite being an important, and constantly stated,

component of his profile. Yet when the serial killer is depicted in negative terms, it

tends to occur in accordance with pre-existing, stigmatising patterns of representation

that come into play when grappling with the issue of making the monster-figure of the

serial killer monstrous, particularly in overt, visible fashion. The historical drive to

perceive whiteness as innocent, as neutral and untouched by racial markers, impedes

and complicates the portrayal of this process, so that the notion of ‘white trash’ is often

deployed and thereby ensures that the serial killer demonstrates a far more conventional

mode of negotiating the representation of negative whiteness by allowing the deviance

to be pushed onto already stigmatised others.

I turn, at this point of closure, to a comparison of the figure of the serial killer and

the perpetrator of the high school siege, and examine the ways in which they reflect on

contemporary culture in order to summarise some of the main tensions and ideas in the

thesis. I find it highly significant that the two contemporary icons are, in so many ways,

so similar, particularly in terms of their crude statistical outline, or what Sedgwick

called the ‘tiny number of inconceivably coarse axes of categorization [that] have been

painstakingly inscribed in current critical and political thought.’670 As if to prove

Sedgwick’s point, these figures are two faces of the same subset of humanity,

two versions of the apex of the same set of norms. Both have chosen to express

themselves through violence, have sought pleasure or fulfilment in harming others, and

both have been, apart from this propensity for violence, relatively unremarkable and

ordinary. Both figures are (predominantly) white, middle class, heterosexual,

able-bodied, male criminals, and yet the scope of this interpellation merely points out

how empty these categories are, and how inefficacious they are as descriptors.

The representation of the serial killer is marked by class distinctions in an entirely

different way to the high school shooter. The depiction of the high school killer shows

a less comfortable, and more incriminating, fusion of whiteness, youth, criminality, and

suburbia underpinned by a solidly middle class value system. The high school killers,

and Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in particular, prove to be a more tricky prospect than

the serial killer. Apart from their violent impulses, including their interest in issues such

as guns, video games and industrial music that are in fact shared by many adolescents

237

(not all of whom could be termed even remotely ostracised or angry), these youth were

unremarkable. Their murderous siege was not anticipated or expected, even though

both teens had displayed escalating disturbing behaviour in the lead up to the crime.

While the serial killer is often portrayed as a random force, able to strike anywhere,

equally able to concentrate on a single area or go on a murderous spree, the high school

killer, by contrast, is from a highly specific locale, and the terror and emotion that he

generates are entirely different in scope as they are premised on a particular register of

intimacy and implication. Yet the manner in which they separately inhabit the mantle

of ‘monster’ is productively different, and points not only to the infinite malleability and

broad scope of the term monster, but also to the way that terror and violence are

inscribed across bodies in such a variety of ways to produce a range of effects. Their

varying occupation of the term ‘banal,’ for example, illustrates the way in which their

alterity is conceived and organised.

At certain points, both figures display what Arendt termed the ‘banality of evil’ in

that their quotidian nature, their lack of remarkability, appears to function as much as a

comment on broader forms of representation and subject creation in culture as upon

their seeming normality. Unlike the serial killer, whose banality manifests itself as a

bland, quotidian presence, the high school shooter is a monster who comes from a very

particular place. He isn’t a random individual, and is considered to be commonplace,

quotidian, and, by virtue of his very banality, to be an unsettling, threatening face of

contemporary monstrosity – the monster next door. Unlike previous versions of the

monster, the high school killer is deeply imbricated in his community, his environment,

and the norms and regulations of his milieu but as part of it, as opposed to being its

conventional ‘other’ or foil. One reason why these teens have been so threatening and

have occupied such a large, and disproportionate, place in recent media reportage is that

they are perceived to function as a comment on their culture in ways that other

monsters, killers, and teens do not. The very monstrosity of the ‘monsters next door’

implicitly rests upon their status as privileged and hegemonic, and requires that they, in

the fantasy of Time magazine’s readership, are a plausible metaphorical neighbour. The

seeming ordinariness of the pair, therefore, provides much of the energy behind the

magazine’s cover, and the resonance of the term ‘monster next door.’

238

One productive topic for future analysis would be to examine the few individuals

who buck the trend of both forms of violence – to explore the media representation of

Native Alaskan Evan Ramsey, for example, or to undertake an examination of the

representations of non-white killers in a way that manages to also account for the

conventionally stereotypical depictions of race. Media depictions of Jeff Wiese, for

example, not only mentioned that he lived on the Red Lake Indian Reservation of the

Chippewa people in Minnesota, but emphasised the fact that he was Native American in

a way that seemed markedly different to the depiction of white high school killers

whose parents’ ethnicities are rarely mentioned, and whose suburb or small town are

rarely subjected to demographic analysis (certainly it is anomalous that, as in Wiese’s

case, media notes that the percentage of non-Native American inhabitants in the killer’s

town equalled roughly one percent of the population).

It is unlikely that there will be no more sieges or acts of serial murder. Monsters,

too, will continue to mutate and to flourish, and continue to show us who we are, who

we fear we are, and who we cast out and despise. To return to the definition of the

monster, the monster serves to horrify but also to warn, to mark a barrier against

particular behaviours or beliefs. The form of, and the conditions enabling, the monster

are not just informed by a broader social and cultural context but function as a comment

on them as well. As part of this contextualisation, these conditions and forms change

over time and accrue new and different meanings, as the figures of the monstrous serial

killer and high school shooter attest. This constitutive unpredictability and mutability of

monstrosity means that the monster always remains one step ahead of us and its new

and changing forms cannot be anticipated and warded off. We cannot prevent this

transformation because monstrosity is always on the move, and consequently the

monster, as Braidotti warned, ‘will always get us.’671

239

APPENDIX

THE EVENTS OF APRIL 20, 1999

I will briefly set out some of the most important events in a chronological order. This

information is drawn from a wide range of available material, including the official

report of events, eyewitness descriptions, and various news articles, some of which

present conflicting or ambiguous information. The siege lasted for several hours, much

of which was shown on live television feeds.

The events of April 20, 1999, apparently did not accord with the handwritten time

lines set out by both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. A law enforcement reconstruction

of the crime scene that included the separate handwritten plans of both teens

hypothesised that the boys had originally intended to blow up the school’s cafeteria

during its busiest period. A decoy bomb, located several miles from the school, was set

to detonate and draw the attention of law enforcement away from the scene. After this a

series of bombs in duffel bags were supposed to ignite in the large cafeteria at a time

when most students were present. Once the bombs had detonated, Harris and Klebold

would be waiting outside to shoot any escaping survivors of the blast. However, the

majority of the homemade explosives failed to detonate on cue, and no students were

fatally injured by these blasts.

At approximately 11.15 a.m., Harris and Klebold left their school car park and

began to cross their high school campus, as they randomly fired upon students. When

the homemade bombs failed to detonate at the correct time, Harris and Klebold

improvised by walking towards the school and spontaneously shot at students. They

were armed with 2 rifles, a semi-automatic weapon (the sale of which is banned in many

states in the Unites States), and a shotgun, with a range of small homemade explosives

240

(such as pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails) and multiple rounds of ammunition.

Several students were shot at this point, with two fatally wounded. These were Patrick

Rohrbough, who held open a door for other students, and Rachel Scott. Teacher Dave

Sanders was also shot in the chest and neck as he evacuated the cafeteria and died

several hours later, shortly after his rescue. An alarm was raised, and most students and

staff fled the scene.

When the pair reached the school, they entered the cafeteria in which they had

placed the bombs, and which had been evacuated by staff after initially hearing the

gunshots. Had the bombs had detonated on time at the peak of the lunch break, the

death toll would have been far greater. The boys then went through the school and fired

at students and faculty, many of whom were trapped in classrooms. The pair proceeded

to the library, where the majority of deaths occurred, as the teens wounded 12 students

and killed 10 others, in approximately ten minutes. At this point the duo exchanged

shots with law enforcement officers stationed outside, and who were comprised of a

mixture of local sheriff department members, SWAT tactical response members,

members of the FBI, and others. Earlier they had exchanged fire with the lone sheriff’s

deputy on duty at their school.

Leaving the dead and wounded in the library, Klebold and Harris went back to the

cafeteria, where they attempted to blow up some of the undetonated bombs. They also

tormented some of the students who remained barricaded in classrooms before returning

to the library. There the pair set another bomb to detonate after their deaths (it was

extinguished by the sprinkler system) and committed suicide, both shooting themselves

in the head.

241

1 Herman Melville, Moby Dick or, The Whale. Penguin Books: New York, 1992 (first published

1851); p. 204.

Melville devotes an entire chapter, ‘The Whiteness of the Whale,’ to a consideration of the horror

involved in Moby Dick’s notorious appearance and potential meaning. He offers a long list of positive

qualities associated with whiteness and then adds:

… yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.

This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds. Witness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the tropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the transcendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which imparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific, to the dumb gloating of their aspect.’ (pp. 205-6)

This provocative analysis of the negative qualities of whiteness captures some of the horror and

blankness that I will describe and analyse in subsequent chapters. 2 It would be remiss not to mention the terrible events of September 11, 2001 in a thesis concerned

with acts of public violence and the public’s response to them; however, this thesis was initiated and

defined prior to the September attacks. In the 1990s there was a shift from the dominant perception of

monstrosity from the increasingly intimate and familiar public faces of domestic terrorism and sensational

murders, such as Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the Oklahoma bombing, and serial killer Jeffrey

Dahmer, back to more conventional forms of ‘Othering’ following the terrorist attacks. 3 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 141. 4 Danny Ledonne, the creator of the video game, which has been available free online since the

2005 anniversary of the siege, argued that the game was an ‘indictment of our society at large.’ In it,

players initially assume the role of Eric Harris, then switch to Dylan Klebold for the second half, and are

equipped with the same weapons used by the pair in the massacre. The game is allegedly unsatisfying to

play, and concludes with the realisation that there is no way to win. Unsurprisingly, the game was both

condemned by the families and supporters of those killed or hurt in the massacre, and yet had been

downloaded over 30, 000 times once information about the game were published by the media. Jose

Antonio Vargas, ‘Shock, Anger over Columbine Video Game.’ The Washington Post, May 20, 2006.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901979.html.5 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney,

1994; p. 20.

242

6 This is not to homogenise their different forms of knowledge, or to suggest easy parallels

between these different fields, but merely to acknowledge the ways in which a productive focus on the

process of articulation from a minority position has influenced me. 7 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney,

1994; p. 20. 8 I discuss teratology in greater depth in my second chapter. 9 Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (translated by Leon S. Roudiez).

Columbia University Press: New York, 1982; Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and

Modernity. Routledge: New York and London, 1994; Rosemary Garland Thomson, ‘Introduction: From

Wonder to Error – A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the

Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland Thomson). New York University Press: New York and

London, 1996. 10 See, for example, Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado). Temple

University Press, Philadelphia, 1995; and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Subject:

Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed. Sarah Harasym), Routledge, New York and London, 1990. 11 David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell:

Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993; p. 4. 12 Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg, ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Reconfiguring

White Identity in a Pedagogy of Whiteness’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L.

Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press:

New York, 1998; p. 5. 13 This is feminist philosopher Genevieve Lloyd’s term. 14 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney,

1994; p. xi. 15 This general point has been argued by a variety of important feminist philosophers such as

Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Moira Gatens. 16 Braidotti describes this at one point: ‘[i]n classical dualism, Woman is the sign for immanence,

matter, that which is amorphous and inanimate.’ In Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in

Contemporary Philosophy (translated by Elizabeth Guild). Polity Press: Oxford, 1996 (first published in

1991); p. 141. 17 This is not to imply that Braidotti’s critique is entirely negative or that she does not want to

retain insights and trajectories found in the work of these theorists. 18 In a move echoed by many other feminist theorists, she argues that this shift in focus is not

coincidental, but that

at the precise historical moment when women start to speak in their own name, and to articulate their particular relation to discourse and theoretical production, it is no accident that male thinkers appropriate their language and begin to women-speak, to speak ‘as’ women.

Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy

(translated by Elizabeth Guild). Polity Press: Oxford, 1996 (first published in 1991); p. 122. Wiegman

243

also discusses this debate concerning postmodern theories and the various ways in which they are

attacked and defended by various feminists. Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race

and Gender. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1995. See also McDowell on identity politics

and theory in ‘Transferences: Black Feminist Discourse: The “Practice” of “Theory”’ in Feminism

Beside Itself (eds Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman). Routledge: New York and London, 1995. 19 The result of this is, she believes, that ‘modern thought is indeed in mourning, but the death in

question concerns less the subject than his fantasy of universality and immortality.’ Rosi Braidotti,

Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary Philosophy (translated by Elizabeth Guild).

Polity Press: Oxford, 1996 (first published in 1991); p. 143. 20 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney,

1994; p. 188.

This view of universalism is echoed by Wiegman as what she perceives as ‘the unmarked and

invisible, but no less specific, corporeality that hides under the abstraction of universality.’ Robyn

Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1995; p. 6. 21 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 241. 22 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Theory in the Margin: Coetzee’s Foe Reading DeFoe’s

Crusoe/Roxana’ in Consequences of Theory: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1987-88 (eds

Jonathon Arac and Barbara Johnson). The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, 1991:

p. 158, original emphasis. 23 This ambiguity and incoherence, these necessarily impure tools and locus of interest, need not

be seen as disenabling or negative, but may be viewed as highlighting the importance of negotiation and

as examples of constitutive instability. I will address this point later in terms of Deutscher’s view of

‘productive ambiguity.’ 24 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 265. 25 See, for example, bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. South End Press:

Boston, Massachusetts, 1990; Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (ed. Diana Fuss). Routledge:

New York and London, 1991; Evelynn Hammonds, ‘Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female

Sexuality’ in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 6.2 & 3, 1994; Critical Race Theory:

The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado). Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1995; and Barbara

Smith, The Truth that Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom. Rutgers University Press:

New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London, 1998. 26 This is contrasted with a ‘feminism of equality’ that stresses, within the philosophical tradition,

the recuperation of rationality and a focus on locating moments of misogyny and phallocentrism. It

evinces suspicion of deconstruction in particular, as part of what is ‘understood as an anti-humanist genre

which rejects reason because of its masculine connotations and remetaphorises women as ‘different’

244

rather than equally rational.’ Deutscher goes on to convincingly argue against this rejection of

deconstruction, discussing the many misuses and characterisations and then demonstrating how a more

fruitful understanding can be deployed by feminists. Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism,

deconstruction and the history of philosophy. Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 2. 27 Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman, ‘Introduction’ to Feminism Beside Itself (eds Diane Elam and

Robyn Wiegman). Routledge: New York and London, 1995; p. 2. 28 Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman, ‘Introduction’ to Feminism Beside Itself. Routledge: New

York and London, 1995; p. 2. 29 Jennifer DeVere Brody addresses some issues concerning the hyphenated subject in

‘Hyphen-Nations’ in Cruising the Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity,

Nationality, and Sexuality (eds Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster). Indiana University

Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995. 30 Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman, ‘Introduction’ to Feminism Beside Itself. Routledge: New

York and London, 1995; p. 3. 31 David Savran details a number of incidents concerning the adoption of minority strategies and

arguments by white individuals and males that seek to reverse recent shifts in attitudes and regulations,

such as Robert Bly’s notorious ‘men’s movement,’ or the move to abolish affirmative action for placing

white citizens at a disadvantage for allegedly being ‘discriminatory.’ Taking it Like a Man: White

Masculinity, Masochism, and Contemporary American Culture. Princeton University Press: Princeton,

New Jersey, 1998. 32 David Carroll locates a questioning of the limits of theory in the work of philosophers such as

Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-François Lyotard, though not as part of a discarding or dissolution of

theory as in the contemporary critical trend to be ‘against theory.’ Instead, Carroll believes that their

‘awareness of the limitations of theory has led them not to reject theory but rather to work on and at the

borders of theory in order to stretch, bend, or exceed its limitations.’ David Carroll, Paraesthetics:

Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida. Methuen: New York and London, 1987.

It is interesting then, that Bill Readings considers Lyotard as ‘not a theorist,’ and as demonstrating

that ‘theory ought to be recognized as part of the problem, not as a potential solution.’ Readings then

terms Lyotard’s work as not a ‘naïve affirmation of experience,’ but as ‘a deconstructive disruption of

conceptual reduction.’ Bill Readings, Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics. Routledge: New York and

London, 1991, p. xxix.

This refusal to locate the limits as something to be transcended or ignored is also present in

Spivak’s work, as she constantly argues that we must constantly negotiate with existing structures and

ideas, but in wilful and strategic fashion. See her discussion of strategic essentialism in ‘In a Word:

Interview’ with Ellen Rooney in Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge: New York and London,

1993. See also her interview with Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Criticism, Feminism, and The Institution’ in The

Post-Colonial Subject: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed. Sarah Harasym). Routledge: New York

and London, 1990.

245

33 Donna Haraway in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge:

New York, 1991 (a). Also see Rosi Braidotti, Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in

Contemporary Philosophy (translated by Elizabeth Guild). Polity Press: Oxford, 1996 (first published in

1991), and also Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist

Theory. Columbia University Press: New York, 1994. 34 Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1995; p. 2. 35 Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1995; p. 1. 36 Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1995; p. 1. 37 David Carroll believes the one of the most powerful aspects of Lyotard’s work was to illustrate

that

no critical aesthetics, no critical theory, can be satisfied with being critical; it must constantly be made to confront the limitations of the critical and the theoretical. At the same time … no position can pretend that it has reached the culmination point of criticism or already transcended the critical - for the critical condition must be one of constant dissatisfaction and unfulfillment.

David Carroll, Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida. Methuen: New York and London,

1987; pp. 51-2. 38 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Subject: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed.

Sarah Harasym). Routledge: New York and London, 1990; pp. 40-1. 39 Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1995; p. 6. 40 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney,

1994. 41 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Subject: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed.

Sarah Harasym). Routledge: New York and London, 1990; p. 57. 42 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Subject: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed.

Sarah Harasym). Routledge: New York and London, 1990; p. 166. 43 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Theory in the Margin: Coetzee’s Foe Reading DeFoe’s

Crusoe/Roxana’ in Consequences of Theory: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1987 – 88 (eds

Jonathon Arac and Barbara Johnson). The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, 1991;

p. 158, original emphasis. 44 In a Word: Interview’ with Ellen Rooney in Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge:

New York and London, 1993; p. 19. 45 ‘In a Word: Interview’ with Ellen Rooney in Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge:

New York and London, 1993; p. 19. 46 ‘In a Word: Interview’ with Ellen Rooney in Outside in the Teaching Machine. Routledge:

New York and London, 1993; p. 19.

246

47 Sedgwick describes her deconstructive methodology as follows:

to demonstrate that categories presented in a culture as symmetrical binary oppositions - heterosexual/homosexual, in this case - actually subsist in a more unsettled and dynamic tacit relation according to which, first, term B is not symmetrical with but subordinated to term A; but, second, the ontologically valorized term A actually depends for its meaning on the simultaneous subsumption and exclusion of term B; hence, third, the question of priority between the supposed central and the supposed marginal category of each dyad is irresolvably unstable, an instability caused by the fact that term B is constituted as at once internal and external to term A.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press: Berkeley

and Los Angeles, California, 1990; pp. 9-10. 48 Sedgwick adds that the ‘oppressive sexual system of the past hundred years’ was, if anything,

created through some of ‘the most notorious and repeated decenterings and exposures,’ in lieu of being

disabled or eroded by ambiguity. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. University of

California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1990; pp. 10-11, original emphasis. 49 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press: Berkeley

and Los Angeles, California, 1990; p. 8. 50 Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of philosophy.

Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 7, original emphasis. 51 Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of philosophy.

Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 13, original emphasis. 52 Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of philosophy.

Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 15. 53 See, for example, bell hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. Routledge: New

York and London, 1994. 54 Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of philosophy.

Routledge: New York and London, 1997; pp. 15. 55 Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of philosophy.

Routledge: New York and London, 1997; pp. 14-5. 56 Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of philosophy.

Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 25. 57 Butler’s line of inquiry focuses on what she terms the socially abject individual, using Julia

Kristeva’s formulation of abjection in a primarily social sense of intelligibility and articulation. Judith

Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York and London,

1993 (a). 58 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. xi. 59 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. xi. 60 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 3.

247

61 This range of subjects includes historical claims of monstrosity for people who would now be

termed differently abled or genetically altered. Most categories of physical human anomaly formerly

understood as freakish, such as conjoined twins and hermaphrodites, have been recuperated by changing

scientific understandings of the possibilities of the self and body. 62 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); pp. 126-7. 63 This constitutive gap between the norm and the approximation of the norm is akin to what

Foucault termed resistance, the inbuilt component of a power relation that guaranteed the possibility of

reversal, or change, or resignification. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 (translated

by Robert Hurley). Penguin Books: London, 1990 (a) (first published 1976). 64 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 123.65 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 95, original emphasis. 66 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 123. 67 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 124. 68 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 123.69 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 122. 70 These feminists offer a dynamic approach to the subject being situated across multiple axes that

is summed up in Matsuda’s title, which asks ‘where is your body?’ in a direct social and political

challenge. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands: The New Mestiza/La Frontera (second edition). Aunt Lute

Books: San Francisco, 1999 (first published in 1987); Mari J. Matsuda, Where Is Your Body? And Other

Essays on Race, Gender, and the Law. Beacon Press: Boston, 1996; Patricia J. Williams, The Alchemy

of Race and Rights. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1991. 71 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 21. 72 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 14.73 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 14. 74 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 10. 75 Indeed, Spivak would likely warn of the danger of assuming that the subject is too easily

presented as able to be known, particularly to the investigating subject.

248

76 In this sense, it is reminiscent of Lyotard’s view of the matrix figure that underlies all forms of

signification but that is never able to be accessed. 77 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 8. 78 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 8. 79 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Subject: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed.

Sarah Harasym). Routledge: New York and London, 1990; p. 72. 80 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney,

1994; p. 195.81 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 282. 82 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Preface: In a Time of Monsters’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (a); p. viii. 83 In cinema, the monster-figure is often known better known than the hero and becomes a

household name – for example, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Norman Bates, or Hannibal Lecter. 84 While these examples mostly reflect contemporary popular culture, monsters are also culturally

esteemed artifacts as they straddle the divide between high art (such as in paintings, literature, and

classical mythology) and what is conventionally considered to be ‘low brow’ (such as comic books and

horror movies). 85 Ismene Lada-Richards, ‘“Foul monster or Good Saviour”? Reflections on Ritual Monsters’ in

Monsters and Monstrosity in Greek and Roman Culture (ed. Catherine Atherton). Bari: Levante, 1998;

p. 49. 86 Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge:

New York, 1991 (a); p. 2. 87 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 281. 88 This particular theory of monstrosity is what David Williams terms the ‘negative theology of

Pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite.’ Williams considers the basis of the theory to be

that God transcends human knowledge utterly and can be known only by what He is not … Thus the monstrosity of a human figure with three heads or a tree with the power of speech functions to upset the mental expectations about the relation of the sign to what it is supposed to signify and to underscore the element of the arbitrary in the relation of the two.

David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and

Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 1996; p. 5. 89 Haraway, Cohen, and Benedict note these meanings. Benedict argues that the term monstrous

was ‘a term itself coined only in the eighteenth century as a colloquial intensive to mean excessive or

249

iniquitous.’ Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. The

University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2001; p. 5. 90 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 136.

Elsewhere, Braidotti connects teras to the ‘in between, the mixed, [and] the ambivalent’ status of

the monster, emphasising the hybrid and partial state of the monster and its predisposition to boundary

crossing. Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary

Feminist Theory. Columbia University Press: New York, 1994; p. 77. 91 This compounds the often paradoxical nature of the focus on frequently mythological and

fantastic creatures from a rational, empirical, and scientific perspective. The monster thus perpetuates

official and sanctioned forms of discourse whilst remaining what Braidotti calls ‘an “impure” non-object

of scientific inquiry.’ Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 137. 92 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 135. 93 René Girard, Violence and the Sacred (translated by Patrick Gregory). The John Hopkins

University Press: Baltimore and London, 1977 (originally published 1972). 94 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 136. 95 Frankenstein’s Monster and King Kong remain two of the most enduringly popular monsters in

cinema, and continue to inspire remakes and parodies. 96 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 141. 97 Friedman summarises some of the pertinent issues concerning monstrosity for Christians:

Did the monstrous races, for example, have souls? Were they rational? Were they descended from the line of Adam as were all other members of the human family, or did they have another and separate lineage? How had they survived the Flood? Could they be converted to Christianity? Was their existence a portent of God’s intentions toward mankind? If so … what was their significance in the Christian world scheme?

250

John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 2. 98 David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and

Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 1996; p. 13. 99 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 3. 100 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 3. 101 Williams is careful to note that the monster is never uniformly perceived across any particular

era, and that he is dealing in the dominant perceptions of an age. David Williams, Deformed Discourse:

The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press:

Montreal, 1996; p. 13. 102 For example, in early modern culture monsters were viewed ‘as evidence of God’s

omnipotence, since by violating the natural law of species reproduction, they demonstrated God’s power

over nature itself.’ Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. The

University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2001; p. 6. 103 David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and

Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 1996; p. 3. 104 Friedman cites Céard’s view, that ‘all monstrous forms fascinate and terrify because they

challenge our understanding, showing the fragility and uncertainty of traditional conceptions of man’

[sic]. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 3. 105 David Williams; p. 329. Williams also points out that the ‘superstitious’ Middle Ages gave a

place of prominence in the world to the monster, while the ‘enlightened’ Renaissance exiled the

disordered and imperfect from its world.’ Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in

Mediaeval Thought and Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 1996; p. 16. 106 David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and

Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 1996; p. 329. 107 Huet offers a definition:

Instead of reproducing the father’s image, as nature commands, the monstrous child bore witness to the violent desires that moved the mother at the time of conception or during pregnancy. The resulting offspring carried the marks of her whims and fancy rather than the recognizable features of its legitimate genitor. The monster thus erased paternity and proclaimed the dangerous power of the female imagination.

Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1993; p. 1. 108 Huet notes:

Another tradition, the one adopted by current etymological dictionaries, derived the word monster from monere, to warn, associating even more closely the abnormal birth with the prophetic vision of impending disasters. These etymologies gave monstrosity a pre-inscribed

251

interpretation. They also justified its existence by including the monster within the larger order of things.

Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1993; p. 6. 109 Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1993; p. 6. 110 Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. The University

of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2001; p. 216. 111 See also Clyde R. Taylor’s ‘The Master Text and the Jeddi Doctrine’ for a truly excoriating

interpretation of the racial dimensions of the Star Wars universe. Clyde R. Taylor, ‘The Master Text and

the Jeddi Doctrine’ in Screen. Vol. 29, No. 4, Autumn 1988. 112 For an examination of this motif of punishment, particularly of females and sexually active

behaviour in films such as Halloween and Friday the 13th, see Carol J. Clover in Men, Women, and

Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey,

1992. 113 Patricia J. Williams, The Rooster’s Egg. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts,

and London, England, 1995; p. 82. 114 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Preface: In a Time of Monsters’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (a); p. ix.

Cohen’s project is to chart the margins and tensions of a culture through examining its monsters as

opportunities to investigate the dystopian, corrupt, and excluded. He describes this as ‘a method of

reading cultures from the monsters they engender.’ In ‘Monster Theory (Seven Theses)’ in Monster

Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and

London, 1996 (b); p. 3. 115 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); pp.

19-20. 116 To this she adds: ‘In a certain sense, I think there is nothing that is central. The centre is

always constituted in terms of its own marginality.’ Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, The Post-Colonial

Subject: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed. Sarah Harasym). Routledge: New York and London,

1990; pp. 40-1. 117 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Theory in the Margin: Coetzee’s Foe Reading DeFoe’s

Crusoe/Roxana’ in Consequences of Theory: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1987 – 88 (eds

Jonathon Arac and Barbara Johnson). The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, 1991;

p. 159, original emphasis. 118 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 150.

252

119 See Deutscher for an analysis of Derrida and the ways in which his work and deconstruction

have been assessed by feminists in Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of

philosophy. Routledge: New York and London, 1997. 120 Braidotti then asks ‘[C]an we free difference from these normative connotations? Can we learn

to think differently about difference?’ Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual

Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. Columbia University Press: New York, 1994; p. 78. 121 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; pp. 138-9. 122 For example, Huet opens her book Monstrous Imagination with the following analysis of the

creation and meaning of the monster:

Where do monsters come from, and what do they really look like? In the Renaissance, answers to these puzzles were as numerous and varied as the physiological prodigies they sought to elucidate. Monsters came from God and the Devil, they were caused by stars and comets, they resulted from copulation with other species and from flaws in their parents’ anatomies. The cosmic range of speculations also tried to account for the physical aspect of the marvelous beings observed in nature. Some monsters lacked as essential part of the body, others claimed an extra member, some looked like mythical animals, and a few were born with hermetic symbols imprinted on their strange physiology.

Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1993; p. 1. 123 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses) in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); p. 13. 124 Cohen adds:

‘[t]he monster is difference made flesh, come to dwell among us. In its function as dialectical Other or third-term supplement, the monster is an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond – all of those loci that are rhetorically placed as distant and distinct but originate Within.’

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); p. 7. 125 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995, p. 92. 126 See Steven Schneider for an attempt to balance a universal theory of horror with a focus on the

specificity of the cultural moment and monstrosity. ‘Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff,

and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror’ in Other Voices. Vol. 1, No. 3, January

1999. 127 Butler’s primary examples include ‘queer’ sexuality and the status of humans who are ‘passing’

racially. Her designation implies both a metaphorical rendering of these people and identities as ‘other,’

but also includes their status as legally protected (eg. the criminal punishment of same-sex relationships).

In Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York and London, 1993 (a);

p. 190, original emphasis.

253

128 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies. Routledge: New York and London, 1994; Mary Russo,

The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity. Routledge: New York and London, 1994, and

Maurizia Boscagli, Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early Twentieth Century. Westview

Press: Boulder, Colorado, 1996. 129 For example, see bell hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. Routledge: New

York and London, 1994; Mari J. Matsuda, Where Is Your Body? And Other Essays on Race, Gender, and

the Law. Beacon Press: Boston, 1996; and Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands: The New Mestiza/La

Frontera (second edition). Aunt Lute Books: San Francisco, 1999 (first published in 1987). 130 This tendency appears in theory as well, in which broad terms like monster and human are

deployed as if they are singular in meaning, not to mention stable entities. Even when the characteristics

of monstrosity are specified in feminist or critical race accounts, humanity is rarely simultaneously

interrogated for the manner in which it is constructed and represented. 131 Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary

Feminist Theory. Columbia University Press: New York, 1994; p. 78. 132 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995; p. 8. 133 She continues: ‘The monstrous body, more than an object, is a shifter, a vehicle that constructs

a web of interconnected and yet potentially contradictory discourses about his or her embodied self.’

Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences’ in

Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and

Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey, 1996; p. 150. 134 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995, p. 92. 135 The denaturalisation of components of the monstrous body augments another point made by

Halberstam, that the discussion of racism necessarily partakes in racist tropes and rhetoric. One always

runs the risk of reinstating that which one opposes, and to oppose racist images also keeps them in

circulation. This, in terms of monster discourse, is the association of, or articulation of monstrosity

through, for example, tropes of the feminine, the homosexual, or the racially ‘other.’ Highlighting and

discussing these connections serves, in some ways, to reify these meanings and formations. This is not

the same as naturalising or accepting them, but serves as a constant reminder of the ramifications and

dangers of analysis. 136 ‘Monsters are never created ex nihilo, but through a process of fragmentation and

recombination in which elements are extracted’ and reassembled into a new whole. Jeffrey Jerome

Cohen, ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome

Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); p. 11. 137 Cited in Barbara M. Benedict, Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. The

University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2001; p. 248. 138 Eric White, ‘“Once They Were Men, Now They’re Land Crabs”: Monstrous Becomings in

Evolutionist Cinema’ in Post Human Bodies (eds Judith Halberstam and Ira Livingston), 1995; p. 244.

254

139 According to some theories of the werewolf myth, the notion of a human changing into a wolf

(or another animal) was generated by the inability to understand the violence enacted by some individuals

as being perpetrated by ordinary, rational humans. Thus, these superhuman desires and powers were

attributed to the creature responsible for maiming and killing so horrendously. Another interpretation of

the werewolf is more symbolic, and perceives the shape shifting to be representative of repressed desires

and frustrated animalistic drive, a release of the ‘beast within.’ 140 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 267. 141 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 266. 142 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 265. 143 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 265. 144 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; pp. 265-6. 145 Uebel cites Foucault in this passage. Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster:

Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome

Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 264. 146 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); p. 6. 147 Marina Warner, Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. Vintage: London, 1994. 148 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b), p. 5. 149 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 150, original emphasis. 150 Haraway’s wide ranging concerns are spearheaded by the concept of the monster as a trope

which acts for her as a mode through which to dispel romantic and utopian prospects of revisioning

alternative or possible selves. Her primary interest in the feminist interventions in scientific fields of

study is framed as a desire not to repeat the fiction of ‘innocent’ knowledge and disavowed subject

positions, by which she means claims to neutrality, impartiality, and objectivity. Haraway emphasises the

protean, threatening, and ambiguous potential of the monster as a way of signalling a reworked

255

relationship with knowledge and accountability. Donna Haraway, ‘The Promises of Monsters: A

Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others’ in Cultural Studies (eds Lawrence Grossberg, Cary

Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler). Routledge: New York and London, 1992. 151 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995; p. 6. 152 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 281. 153 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Preface: In a Time of Monsters’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (a); p. xi. 154 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a), p. 8, original emphasis. 155 In many senses, monstrosity is determined by the perception of the individual. The ambiguous

and complicated portrayal of Frankenstein’s creation, known variously as the Creature and the Monster

and just as frequently as ‘Frankenstein’ in a wild misnomer, bears this out. In the many films and books

devoted to him, but particularly in Mary Shelley’s original text, the Creature is obsessed with humanity

and with becoming more human. He ponders the nature of divine intervention and existence, creativity,

and the sanctity of life. Yet the monster also offends, he is partial, compromised, and unholy, he is

stitched together and putrid, and cannot obtain ‘appropriate’ subjecthood. 156 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); p. 12. 157 Ismene Lada-Richards, ‘“Foul monster or Good Saviour”? Reflections on Ritual Monsters’ in

Monsters and Monstrosity in Greek and Roman Culture (ed. Catherine Atherton). Bari: Levante, 1998;

pp. 55-6, original emphasis. 158 Ismene Lada-Richards, ‘“Foul monster or Good Saviour”? Reflections on Ritual Monsters’ in

Monsters and Monstrosity in Greek and Roman Culture (ed. by Catherine Atherton). Bari: Levante,

1998; pp. 58, original emphasis. 159 This assessment follows other work on normality discourse, from disability rights to freakery

studies to the influential work of Foucault on our ‘society of normalization.’ A core tenet of these

analyses is that difference is always defined as located from or against the norm. Michel Foucault,

‘Disciplinary Power and Subjection’ in Power: A Radical View (ed. Steven Lukes). Blackwell: London,

1986; p. 241. 160 Ismene Lada-Richards, ‘“Foul monster or Good Saviour”? Reflections on Ritual Monsters’ in

Monsters and Monstrosity in Greek and Roman Culture (ed. Catherine Atherton). Bari: Levante, 1998;

p. 46. 161 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 141.

256

162 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 141. 163 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a), p. 8. 164 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 (translated by Robert Hurley). Penguin

Books: London, 1990 (a) (first published 1976). 165 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; n. 6, p. 283. 166 I am temporarily assuming the coherence and self-evidence of ‘race’ as a term. The instability

of race will be discussed in the next chapter. 167 Chris J. Cuomo and Kim Q. Hall, ‘Introduction: Reflections on Whiteness’ in Whiteness:

Feminist Philosophical Reflections (eds Chris J. Cuomo and Kim Q. Hall). Rowman & Littlefield

Publishers, Inc.: Lanham, Boulder, New York, and Oxford, 1999; p. 2. 168 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995, p. 88. 169 This is not to imply that ‘race,’ within a given era, always has a coherent and singular meaning

that is shared by all individuals. 170 See, for example, Harry M. Benshoff, Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror

Film. Manchester University Press: Manchester and New York, 1997.

In her analysis of the ‘jungle-horror’ genre of films of the 1930s, Berenstein writes of Ann

Darrow, the white female protagonist in King Kong: ‘Like other white jungle heroines, Ann serves a

contradictory racial function. She both invokes and warns against the monstrous possibilities of

miscegenation … Like so many horror heroines, then, most women in jungle films are both conventional

icons of female fear and the vehicles through which social boundaries are transgressed.’ Rhona

Berenstein, Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror

Cinema. Columbia University Press: New York, 1996; p. 164. 171 See, for example, Jeffrey A. Weinstock, ‘Freaks in Space: “Extraterrestrialism” and

“Deep-Space Multiculturalism”’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed.

Rosemary Garland Thomson). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996. 172 Noël Carroll traces a pattern of negative images of certain races and ethnicities being refracted

through the image of the monster, and in particular the trope of ‘simianization,’ which is the process of

either suggesting the individual to have either monkey-like attributes or to be the ‘missing link’ for

humanity. This degrading portrayal is most often associated with African-Americans in contemporary

North America, but Carroll also notes an anti-Irish cartoon of 1881 and anti-Japanese propaganda of

World War II that feature similar exaggerated imagery of long arms dragging to the ground, outsize jaw,

grotesque teeth, hairiness, and ape-like facial features. Noël Carroll, ‘Ethnicity, Race, and Monstrosity:

257

The Rhetorics of Horror and Humor’ in Beauty Matters (ed. Peg Zeglin Brand). Indiana University Press:

Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2000.

In a related vein, Abby L. Ferber locates the persistence of these animalistic images and rhetoric in

current white supremacist propaganda in White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy.

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford, 1998. 173 Harry M. Benshoff, Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester

University Press: Manchester and New York, 1997, and Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African

American Image in Film. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1993. 174 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 1. 175 The rationale behind this interest in the monstrous was spurred in part by what Friedman terms

‘fantasy, escapism, delight in the exercise of the imagination, and – very important – fear of the

unknown.’ John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard

University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 24. 176 Other examples include Troglodytes (cave dwellers who lack speech), Astomi or Apple Smellers

(mouthless men who live on scent), and the Donestre, ‘whose name means “divine” in their own language

… (they) pretend to speak the language of traveller they meet and claim to know his relatives. They kill

the traveller and then mourn over his head.’ John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art

and Thought. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 24.

In addition, I have followed Friedman’s lead in designating the gender of the races, as some appear

to be specifically male or female. 177 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 24. 178 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 15. 179 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 12. 180 Other possibilities include the creative description of religious and social practices being taken

as fact, such as in the example of behaviour (yoga as both exercise and a form of worship) and beliefs

(such as vegetarianism). John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought.

Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; pp. 24-5. 181 John Block Friedman. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 1. 182 David Williams also briefly discusses the monstrous races in terms of their necessary

geographic distance in Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and

Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 1996. 183 In ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences’ in

Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and

Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey, 1996; p. 142.

258

184 John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; p. 26. 185 According to Friedman, the ancient Greeks considered the ability to form cities to be not just a

condition of inclusion for citizenship, but for humanity. John Block Friedman, The Monstrous Races in

Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England,

1981; p. 30. 186 This is not to homogenise the various readings across the ancient and Middle Ages, for

Friedman clearly illustrates various interpretations and shifts in thinking within these eras. However, a

key component of monstrosity remains its uneasy occupation of both mythic and official, or scientific,

knowledge. 187 David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell:

Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993; p. 21. 188 David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell:

Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993; n. 18, p. 240, original emphasis. 189 David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell:

Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993; p. 21, original emphasis. 190 Goldberg argues that

[t]he primary objects of Greek discrimination and exclusion were slaves and barbarians, indeed, relatedly so. (Significantly, women were conceived in representational terms not dissimilar to slaves and barbarians.). As a general category of discriminatory sociolegal exclusion, barbarianism was the invention of fifth-century Hellenism. A barbarian was one of emphatically different, even strange, language, conduct, and culture and lacking in the cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. The principle distinction was political. Hellenic democracy was contrasted with barbarian despotism and tyranny.

Greek culture, he believes, was premised on exclusion, with slaves and barbarians being the

primary form of outcasts. This distinction was largely political and social in nature, and was

‘ethnocentric and xenophobic’ rather than racial. David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and

the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell: Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993; p. 21. 191 In ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences’ in

Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and

Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey, 1996; p. 142 192 Anne Lake Prescott, ‘Rabelaisian (Non)Wonders and Renaissance Polemics’ in Wonders,

Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture (ed. Peter G. Platt). University of Delaware Press:

Delaware, 1999; p. 133. 193 It is a significant trend in recent ‘postmodern’ horror that this element has been somewhat

reversed, and that previously inviolate realms (one’s country, one’s home, or even one’s own mind and

body) became both source and site of increasingly intimate horror. 194 Indeed, this connection between the distant and the inhuman is continued today in the form of

fantasies about extraterrestrials and space in cinema, in which alien creatures from impossibly far away

planets are imagined as anything from giant insects (Starship Troopers [1997]) to a mimetic creature

capable of physically imitating humans or anything else in its environment (The Thing [1982]).

259

195 William Sayers, ‘The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 257. 196 William Sayers, ‘The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 257. 197 He notes: ‘In the family sagas the indigenous social ills of the thirteenth century seem recast in

a xenophobic mode in which the uncanny and suspect Scot and Swede are the obverse of the royal

Norwegian patron and host: they are foreign, and the outcomes of their contributions are disruptive.’

William Sayers, ‘The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders’ in Monster

Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and

London, 1996; p. 257. 198 William Sayers, ‘The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; pp. 257-8. 199 Joanna Overing, ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador in Piaroa

Images of Alterity and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American

Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 51. 200 Joanna Overing, ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador in Piaroa

Images of Alterity and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American

Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996;

pp. 50-1. 201 Overing further argues that ‘the Europeans, in conquering the Americas, fixed the status of

Native Americans at the level of the lower echelons of their own society, placing them alongside the mad,

the wild, the child, the lower classes.’ In ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador

in Piaroa Images of Alterity and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and

American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London,

1996; p. 51. 202 In ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador in Piaroa Images of Alterity

and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A.

James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 50. 203 Joanna Overing, ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador in Piaroa

Images of Alterity and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American

Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 51. 204 He notes that ‘Orientalism is a style of thought based on an ontological and epistemological

distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident.”’ Edward Said, Orientalism.

Vintage Books: New York, 1979; p. 2. 205 Edward Said, Orientalism. Vintage Books: New York, 1979; p. 3. 206 Edward Said, Orientalism. Vintage Books: New York, 1979; p. 5.

260

207 Edward Said, Orientalism. Vintage Books: New York, 1979; p. 3. 208 Joanna Overing, ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador in Piaroa

Images of Alterity and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American

Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 53. 209 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 143. 210 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds by Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New

Jersey, 1996; p. 143. 211 Michael Palencia-Roth, ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of Conquest’ in

Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold).

University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 36. 212 Palencia-Roth reports that Christopher Columbus, for example, anticipated that the native

population of the Americas would conform to wild mythical narratives of monstrosity. Palencia-Roth

notes that ‘monstrous men became an obsession for Columbus’ though he did not encounter any, despite

peppering his diary with accounts of one-eyed or dog-headed men of myth. Columbus’ subsequent

analysis of the cultures he encountered insists on their cannibalism and savagery to an extreme, and

unlikely, degree. Michael Palencia-Roth, ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of Conquest’ in

Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold).

University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 23. 213 Michael Palencia-Roth, ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of Conquest’ in

Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold).

University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 24. 214 Michael Palencia-Roth, ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of Conquest’ in

Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold).

University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 24. 215 Michael Palencia-Roth, ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of Conquest’ in

Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold).

University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; pp. 44-5 216 Michael Palencia-Roth, ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of Conquest’ in

Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold).

University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; p. 45. 217 Leonard Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and

Culture. Columbia University Press: New York, 1997; p. xiii. 218 Leonard Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and

Culture. Columbia University Press: New York, 1997; p. 6.

261

219 Leonard Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and

Culture. Columbia University Press: New York, 1997; p. xvii. 220 Cassuto notes: that ‘[t]he grotesque has a peculiar disruptive power – it is a conflicting mixture

of signals that intrudes upon the desired order of the world.’ He is quick to qualify, however, that this

‘order’ is based as much in anticipation and desire as it is in a feasible or actual existence. Leonard

Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture. Columbia

University Press: New York, 1997; pp. 8-9. 221 Cassuto uses the term ‘Indian’ in keeping with then-contemporary classifications. Leonard

Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture. Columbia

University Press: New York, 1997; p. 26. 222 Leonard Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and

Culture. Columbia University Press: New York, 1997; p. xiv. 223 Leonard Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and

Culture. Columbia University Press: New York, 1997; p. 24. 224 Leonard Cassuto, The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and

Culture. Columbia University Press: New York, 1997; p. 6. 225 See, for example, Paula Gunn Allen’s ‘Introduction’ to Spider Woman’s Granddaughters:

Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women (ed. Paula Gunn Allen). The

Women’s Press: London, 1990. 226 Leslie Marmon Silko, ‘Introduction’ to Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on

Native American Life Today. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996; p. 22. 227 Leslie Marmon Silko, ‘Introduction’ to Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on

Native American Life Today. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996; p. 21.

She extends this line of thought, altering the charge of ‘not fully human’ to a more explicit

description of the perception of the indigenous people as ‘savages’:

In 1540, the great libraries of the Americas were burned by the European invaders, most of whom were illiterate but not stupid. They burned the great libraries because they wished to foster the notion that the New World was populated by savages. Savages could be slaughtered and enslaved; savages were no better than wild beasts and thus had no property rights. International law regulated the fate of conquered nations but not of savages or beasts.

Leslie Marmon Silko, ‘Books: Notes on Mixtec and Maya Screenfolds, Picture Books of

Preconquest Mexico’ in Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native American Life

Today. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996; p. 157. 228 Leslie Marmon Silko, ‘Introduction’ to Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on

Native American Life Today. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996; p. 22. 229 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Preface: In a Time of Monsters’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (a); p. vii. 230See, for example, Barbara Creed on gender and abjection in The Monstrous-Feminine: Film,

Feminism, Psychoanalysis. Routledge: New York and London, 1993; Cynthia Freeland on class in

‘Realist Horror’ in Philosophy and Film (eds Cynthia Freeland, and Thomas Wartenberg). Routledge:

262

New York and London, 1995; Harry M. Benshoff on sexuality in Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality

and the Horror Film. Manchester University Press: Manchester and New York, 1997; and Isobel Pinedo,

Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasure of Horror Film Viewing. State University of New York

Press: New York, 1997. 231 Elizabeth Young, ‘Here Comes the Bride: Wedding Gender and Race in Bride of Frankenstein’

in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (ed. Barry Keith Grant). University of Texas

Press: Austin, Texas, 1996; p. 322-3. 232 See, for example, the work of Berenstein, Guerrero, or James A. Snead in White Screens, Black

Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side (eds Colin McCabe and Cornel West). Routledge: New York

and London, 1994. 233 Elizabeth Young, ‘Here Comes the Bride: Wedding Gender and Race in Bride of Frankenstein’

in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (ed. Barry Keith Grant). University of Texas

Press: Austin, Texas, 1996; p. 322. 234 Elizabeth Young, ‘Here Comes the Bride: Wedding Gender and Race in Bride of Frankenstein’

in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (ed. Barry Keith Grant). University of Texas

Press: Austin, Texas, 1996; p. 322. 235 Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1995. 236 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture: Seven Theses’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); p. 17. 237 Heidi Kaye and I.Q. Hunter, ‘Introduction’ to Alien Identities: Exploring Difference in Film

and Fiction (eds Deborah Cartmell, I.Q. Hunter, Heidi Kaye, and Imelda Whelehan). Pluto Press:

London and Sterling, Virginia, 1999. 238 She adds: ‘[t]hey also highlight, however, the messianic or divine undertones of the monstrous

other, thus reflecting the systematic dichotomy of the teras as both god and abjection.’ Rosi Braidotti,

‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences’ in Between Monsters,

Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina

Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey, 1996; p. 144. 239 Jeffrey A. Weinstock, ‘Freaks in Space: ‘Extraterrestrialism’ and ‘Deep-Space

Multiculturalism’’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland

Thomson). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996; p. 330.

He further notes:

Although the freak show may be all but extinct in contemporary America, it remains alive and kicking on the big screen, where Wookies, Draks, Klingons, [and] Ewoks … enthrall and disturb viewers with a vast array of somatic forms and divergent cultures. The freak show, the exhibition of difference for amusement, the apex of ‘political incorrectness,’ is alive and well in space.

In ‘Freaks in Space: “Extraterrestrialism” and “Deep-Space Multiculturalism”’ in Freakery:

Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland Thomson). New York University

Press: New York and London, 1996; p. 328.

263

240 Weinstock cites Gregory Benford in ‘Freaks in Space: “Extraterrestrialism” and “Deep-Space

Multiculturalism”’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland

Thomson). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996; p. 330. 241 Jeffrey A. Weinstock, ‘Freaks in Space: “Extraterrestrialism” and “Deep-Space

Multiculturalism”’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland

Thomson). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996; p. 336. 242 Weinstock’s article appeared before the release of Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), the

‘prequel’ to the first Star Wars films, and so deals with the ‘classic trilogy’ of Episode IV: A New Hope

(1977), Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983). It is

worth noting, however, that at the time of its release The Phantom Menace drew public criticism for what

was perceived to be racist and anti-Semitic stereotyping in the depiction of various aliens, in particular the

characters Jar Jar Binks, Watto, and the Neimoidians. 243 Jeffrey A. Weinstock, ‘Freaks in Space: “Extraterrestrialism” and “Deep-Space

Multiculturalism”’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland

Thomson). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996; p. 333. Weinstock, however,

neglects to fully address the impact of the character of Yoda, whose positive and decidedly

non-anthropomorphic appearance does not necessarily ‘undo’ the negativity of the other representations,

but who complicates their presence by appearing as a grammar-challenged, mischievous troll who is

simultaneously the most powerful of all the Jedi. 244 Jeffrey A. Weinstock, ‘Freaks in Space: “Extraterrestrialism” and “Deep-Space

Multiculturalism”’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland

Thomson). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996; p. 333. Even though neither the

Jedi nor Han Solo are human or even from Earth as they are from a ‘galaxy far, far away.’ 245 Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University

Press: Philadelphia, 1993; p. 2, original emphasis. 246 Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University

Press: Philadelphia, 1993; pp. 56-7, original emphasis. 247 He argues that ‘[t]he social and political meanings of “race,” of course, are not fixed but are

matters of ongoing construction and contestation; whether in volatile debate or subtle transactions, the

negotiation of racial images, boundaries, and hierarchies has been part of our national life from its

beginning.’ Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University

Press: Philadelphia, 1993; p. 41. 248 Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University

Press: Philadelphia, 1993; p. 57, original emphasis. 249 Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University

Press: Philadelphia, 1993; p. 57, original emphasis. 250 Marina Warner, Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. Vintage: London, 1994; p. 8. 251 Marina Warner, Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. Vintage: London, 1994; p 14. 252 Marina Warner, Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. Vintage: London, 1994; p xiii.

264

253 In Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), for example, one of the gremlins refers to his fellow

creatures as an ‘ethnic group.’ 254 Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Temple University

Press: Philadelphia, 1993; p. 58. 255 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press: Berkeley

and Los Angeles, California, 1990, p. 3. 256 Richard Dyer, White. Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 10. 257 My analysis of whiteness takes place within a specifically North American context, although it

is influenced by the differences exhibited in, for example, South African and Australian views on

whiteness. ‘Introduction’ to Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader (eds Rodolfo D. Torres, Louis F.

Mirón, and Jonathon Xavier Inda). Blackwell Publishers: Massachusetts and Oxford, 1999; p. 2. 258 Thomas F. Pettigrew, ‘Preface’ to Impacts of Racism on White Americans (second edition) (eds

Benjamin P. Bowser, and Raymond G. Hunt). Thousand Oaks Press: Sage Publications, 1996; p. ix. 259 ‘Introduction: Reflections on Whiteness’ in Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical Reflections

(eds Chris J. Cuomo and Kim Q. Hall). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: Lanham, Boulder, New

York, and Oxford, 1999; p. 2. 260 ‘Introduction’ to Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader (eds Rodolfo D. Torres, Louis F.

Mirón, and Jonathon Xavier Inda). Blackwell Publishers: Massachusetts and Oxford, 1999; p. 7.

This point is similar to Goldberg’s concerns about the mutability and historical contextualisation

of racial signifiers that were discussed in the second chapter. David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture:

Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell: Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993. 261 Cornel West, Race Matters. Beacon Press: Boston, 1993. 262 Penelope Deutscher, Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the history of philosophy.

Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 15. 263 ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in Whiteness: A

Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London, 1997 (a); p. 2. 264 This is not to suggest that whiteness was not analysed or labelled as problematic by theorists of

race or that whiteness was not a topic of discussion in popular culture. However, it has only been in

recent decades that whiteness has been considered a legitimate site of inquiry in itself. 265 Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Picador:

London, 1992. 266 The examination of racial configurations in contemporary North America follows a general and

continuous critique of the multiple forms and historical variations of whiteness from a non-white

perspective. In terms of African American culture, a brief exploration of literature by key members

involved in the struggle for civil rights, for example, reveals a trenchant and persistent awareness and

criticism of white culture. W.E.B. Du Bois, for example, addressed whiteness as a crucial component of

the ‘race problem,’ and a convoluted and dynamic relationship to varying forms of whiteness in terms of

identification and belonging can be found in Malcolm X’s autobiography. Zora Neale Hurston, Alice

Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Langston Hughes, for example, express highly critical

265

perspectives concerning how racial formations are all implicated in one another, so that any discussion of

race necessarily requires a discussion of whiteness. See Jane Davis for an overview of the ways in which

whiteness is figured in the African American imagination that include whiteness as weak, spiritually

lacking, and foolish. The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American Literature.

Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, and London, 2000. 267 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press: Boston, Massachusetts,

1992. 268 Richard Dyer, White. Routledge: New York and London, 1997; Ian F. Haney López, White By

Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York University Press: New York and London, 1996;

David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class

(revised edition). Verso: London and New York, 1999 (first published 1991); and Whiteness: Feminist

Philosophical Reflections (eds Chris J. Cuomo and Kim Q. Hall). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.:

Lanham, Boulder, New York, and Oxford, 1999. 269 Henry A. Giroux, Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth. St.

Martin’s Press: New York, 1997; p. 96. 270 The questioning and analysis of ‘race’ in recent critical theory is too broad an area to

satisfactorily summarise, so I will instead acknowledge white studies’ debt to the multiple forms of

interrogation and the possibilities for rearticulation opened up and employed by theorists such as Patricia

Williams, bell hooks, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. 271 Some theorists fear that the critical attention currently being paid to whiteness may usurp or

further exclude other conventionally marginalised or silenced configurations of race that have only

recently begun to be explored, even though they recognise that to leave the status quo unexamined

perpetuates existing systems of domination. The question of identification remains a tricky and

complicated site for theorists of whiteness. This is perhaps most forcefully articulated by Mike Hill, who

describes the negative potential of interrogating whiteness as ‘identity politics made safe for the silent

majority.’ In ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in Whiteness: A

Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London, 1997 (a); p. 3.

Whiteness studies has been accused of returning the white heterosexual middle class male, only

recently ‘deposed’ as central figure of discourse, under the guise of critique. David Savran, for example,

details the case of a white male student who sued to be admitted to a California university on the basis of

being discriminated against by the affirmative action policies that were designed to assist the individuals

conventionally denied systematic access to adequate options and resources. David Savran, Taking It Like

A Man: White Masculinity, Masochism, and Contemporary American Culture. Princeton University

Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 1998. 272 Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong, ‘Preface’ in Off-White:

Readings on Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun

Wong). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. vii.

266

273 Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong, ‘Preface’ in Off-White:

Readings on Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun

Wong). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. ix. 274 This is not to efface the steady and continuing critical race work that interrogates whiteness

from non-white perspectives. It is important to acknowledge an ongoing critical look at whiteness from

non-white sources, particularly some of those who may be considered the informal forebears of white

studies. In addition, an acute awareness of white privilege may be found in various forms of

representation, such as literature, photography, and music. This is found, for example, in North American

authors like Betty Louise Bell, Beth Brant, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, Audre Lorde, and Gloria

Naylor. They offer depictions of contemporary culture that express a consistent and critical perception of

white people and white culture with a simultaneous depiction of them as dominant and oppressive. Even

when not directly dealing with whiteness, their work necessarily involves a sharp awareness of racial

difference and the value of whiteness from a vital perspective of alterity. For example, an excerpt from

Native American author’s Leslie Marmon Silko’s celebrated novel Ceremony, first published in 1977:

He wanted to scream at Indians like Harley and Helen Jean and Emo that the white things they admired and desired so much – the bright city lights and loud music, the soft sweet food and the cars – all these things had been stolen, torn out of Indian land: raw living materials for their ck’o’yo manipulation. The people had been taught to despise themselves because they were left with barren land and dry rivers. But they were wrong. It was the white people who had nothing; it was the white people who were suffering as thieves do, never able to forget that their pride was wrapped in something stolen, something that had never been, and could never be, theirs. The destroyers had tricked the white people as completely as they had fooled the Indians, and now only a few people understood how the filthy deception worked; only a few people knew that the lie was destroying the white people faster than it was destroying Indian people. But the effects were hidden, evident only in the sterility of their art, which continued to feed off the vitality of other cultures, and in the dissolution of their consciousness into dead objects: the plastic and neon, the concrete and steel. Hollow and lifeless as a witchery clay figure. And what little still remained to white people was shriveled like a seed hoarded too long, shrunken past its time, and split open now, to expose a fragile, pale leaf stem, perfectly formed and dead.

Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony. Penguin Books: New York, 1986 (first published 1977),

p. 204. 275 On homophobia, masculinity, and whiteness see David Savran, Taking it Like a Man: White

Masculinity, Masochism, and Contemporary American Culture. Princeton University Press: Princeton,

New Jersey, 1998, and on connections between sexism and white racism see Ruth Frankenberg, White

Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. University of Minnesota Press:

Minnesota, 1993. 276 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism. (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 3. 277 Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong, ‘Preface’ in Off White:

Readings on Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun

Wong).. Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. viii, original emphasis.

267

278 Cited in David R. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and

Working Class History. Verso: London and New York, 1994; p. 12. 279 Clyde R. Taylor, The Mask of Art: Breaking the Aesthetic Contract – Film and Literature.

Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indiana, 1998. 280 Within discourse there are not singular but, Foucault noted, a ‘plurality of resistances,’ or

instances that are built into the constitutive power relations; p. 96. This follows from his belief that

‘[w]here there is power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a

position of exteriority in relation to power.’ Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: Volume 1

(translated by Robert Hurley). Penguin Books: London, 1990 a (first published 1976); p. 95. 281 Henry A. Giroux, Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth. St.

Martin’s Press: New York, 1997; p. 96. 282 White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg,

Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998; Displacing

Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1997; George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People

Profit from Identity Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998; and Off White: Readings on

Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong)..

Routledge: New York and London, 1997. 283 They continue: ‘[s]ituationally specific, whiteness is always shifting, always reinscribing itself

around changing meanings of race in the larger society.’ In ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness:

Reconfiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of Whiteness’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in

America (eds Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault).

St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998; p. 4. 284 Ian F. Haney López, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York University

Press: New York and London, 1996; David R. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on

Race, Politics, and Working Class History. Verso: London and New York, 1994; and George Lipsitz,

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Temple

University Press: Philadelphia, 1998. 285 These range from John Hartigan Jr.’s account of the articulation of white identity in working

class neighbourhoods in Detroit, Michigan to Barbara Ching’s interrogation of connections between

whiteness, abjection, and country and western music. John Hartigan Jr., ‘Locating White Detroit’ in

Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University

Press: Durham and London, 1997; and Barbara Ching, ‘The Possum, the Hag, and the Rhinestone

Cowboy: Hard Country Music and the Burlesque Abjection of the White Man’ in Whiteness: A Critical

Reader. New York University Press: New York and London, 1997. 286 For example, Trina Grillo and Stephanie M. Wildman, ‘Obscuring the Importance of Race:

The Implication of Making Comparisons between Racism and Sexism (or Other-isms)’ in Critical Race

Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado). Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1995.

268

287 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 12. 288 Ian F. Haney López, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York University

Press: New York and London, 1996; p. xiv. 289 See, for example, Vicki K. Carter on racism in cyberspace in ‘Computer-Assisted Racism:

Toward an Understanding of “Cyberwhiteness”’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds

Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s

Press: New York, 1998. 290 ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Reconfiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of

Whiteness’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg,

Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998; p. 4. 291 See Dyer for a discussion of the instability of whiteness as a signifier. Richard Dyer, ‘White’ in

Screen. Vol. 29, No. 4, Autumn 1988.

This confusion is not restricted to academic work, as texts that rely upon the permanence and

stability of racial formations, such as legal and scientific documents or white supremacist texts, are full of

romanticising assumptions, historical inconsistencies, and semantic contradictions. The alleged ‘Aryan

race’ and the term ‘Caucasian’ are notable examples of an investment in fiction and inconstancy. The

notion of a ‘white race’ is internally inconsistent for multiple reasons, such as the hybridity involved in

the historical assimilation of disparate ethnic groups into its scope. See Matthew Frye Jacobson,

Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998. 292 As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has wryly noted, to believe that something is culturally constructed

and disseminated is not to perceive this condition as automatically reversible or mutable, or even be able

to be reworked beneficially. See Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press: Berkeley

and Los Angeles, California, 1990; pp. 10-11. 293 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the

Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998;

p. 7.

In addition, in White By Law Haney López discusses the legislation that, depending on the biases,

whims, and prevailing scientific knowledge of the judges, legalised white citizenship in the United States.

He documents the strategies and power relations utilised to retain the fantasy of a racially pure nation

through examining the contradictory and capricious assessments of applications for citizenship at the start

of the century. Ian F. Haney López, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York

University Press: New York and London, 1996. 294 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the

Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998;

p. 7.

269

295 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the

Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998;

p. 26, original emphasis. 296 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the

Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998;

p. 25. 297 David R. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and

Working Class History. Verso: London and New York, 1994. Also Eric Lott, Love and Theft:

Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford,

1993 (a), and Ian F. Haney López, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York

University Press: New York and London, 1996. 298 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from

Identity Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998; pp. 4-5. 299 Dyer argues that whiteness is frequently defined in terms of exclusion from whiteness, citing

the example of the ‘one-drop rule’ once prevalent in the United States by which any individual with

demonstrable African American ancestry was not considered white. He also acknowledges that other

races and ethnicities are typically valued in terms of how well they approximate the white norm, a belief

that is echoed by various African American feminists who have analysed the manner in which the white

female is upheld as the as ideal of feminine beauty in North American. See, for example, Skin Deep:

Women Writing on Color, Culture, and Identity (ed. Elena Featherstone). The Crossing Press: Freedom,

California, 1994, and Ann DuCille, Skin Trade. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts,

and London, England, 1996. 300 Richard Dyer, White. Routledge: New York and London, 1997. See hooks for a discussion of

the role of the ‘exotic Other’ in the white imagination in Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations.

Routledge: New York and London, 1994. 301 James Baldwin, ‘The Price of the Ticket’ in The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-Fiction

1948-1985. New York: St. Martin’s-Marek, 1985; pp 834-5. 302 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the

Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998;

p. 9. 303 In addition, the notion of a ‘price’ carries with it the implication that whiteness is not inherently

or instantly beneficial, or the automatically preferred subject position for all subjects. Not everyone

endorses and seeks whiteness, and those positioned as the ‘other’ of whiteness consistently offer a critical

approach to its various formations, institutions, and experiences. bell hooks offers some considerations of

a critical non-white gaze at whiteness in Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press:

Boston, MA, 1992. 304 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 126.

270

305 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 124. 306 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 8. 307 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 8. 308 Or, as Frankenberg says, ‘[i]t is only in those times and places where white supremacism has

achieved hegemony that whiteness attains (usually unstable) unmarkedness.’ Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local

Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism

(ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1997; pp. 3-4. 309 Richard Dyer, ‘White’ in Screen. Vol. 29, No. 4, Autumn 1988; p. 45. 310 The ambiguity of the trope of invisibility is rarely discussed. Invisibility often connotes

disempowerment within discourse, and it is interesting that when it is connected to rationality, objectivity,

and universality invisibility becomes powerful. Invisibility is viewed as positive in this instance, as

indicating an escape from a stigmatising specificity, whereas in many other examples it represents

marginalising and impoverished situations. For example, the question of being silenced and the ability to

command the means of expression are important themes within much feminist theorising. See Evelynn

Hammonds, ‘Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality’ in differences: A Journal of

Feminist Cultural Studies. 6.2 & 3, 1994. 311 Richard Dyer, White. Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 45. 312 ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Reconfiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of

Whiteness’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg,

Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998; p. 5. 313 ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Reconfiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of

Whiteness’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg,

Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998; p. 5. 314 David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell:

Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993; p. 118. 315 Richard Dyer, ‘White’ in Screen. Vol. 29, No. 4, Autumn 1988; p. 45. 316 Richard Dyer, White. Routledge, New York and London, 1997; p. 1. 317 This is not, of course, to unproblematically erase forms of resistance to this belief, nor to

homogenise the multiple communities and cultures that organise around non-Western and non-white

principles. 318 ‘In this sense, then, the subject is constituted through the force of exclusion and abjection, one

which produces a constitutive outside to the subject, an abjected outside, which is, after all, “inside” the

subject as its own founding repudiation.’ Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of

‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York and London, 1993 (a); p. 3. 319 This attempted neutralisation of ethnicity functions more as a metaphorical gesture in

Baldwin’s essay to signal the process of adaptation than to indicate a necessary or inevitable step. The

271

contemporary prevalence of a variety of ethnically diverse last names alone belies this point, though it

does not negate the historical occurrence of this act. 320 Butler argues: ‘It is the space of this ambivalence which opens up the possibility of a

reworking of the very terms by which subjectivation proceeds – and fails to proceed.’ Judith Butler,

Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York and London, 1993 (a);

p. 124. 321 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); pp. 126-7. 322 Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg, ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Reconfiguring

White Identity in a Pedagogy of Whiteness’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L.

Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press:

New York, 1998; p. 4.

This connection between white ethnicity and power relations is also described by Frankenberg as

‘the fundamental coconstitution of whiteness and racial domination.’ In ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing

Whiteness,’ her introduction to Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth

Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1997; p. 4. 323 For example, White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray).

Routledge: New York and London, 1997, and David Savran, Taking it Like a Man: White Masculinity,

Masochism, and Contemporary American Culture. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey,

1998. 324 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 5. 325 It is interesting that these individuals, who are mocked in a range of media from popular songs

(such as ‘Pretty Fly for a White Guy’ by the Offspring) to cinema (Bringing Down the House [2003]), are

clear descendents of the mostly-defunct tradition of minstrelsy. While a white person’s love for rap,

basketball, and African-American women is often depicted as pitiful and embarrassing, it is rarely

accompanied with an awareness of how this depiction closely mimics the convention a century or so

earlier of white people adopting blackface to imitate the songs and appearance of African American

people onstage as comic entertainment. Even the farce White Chicks (2004), the rare film to take a

critical analysis of whiteness as its topic, doesn’t acknowledge the history or dangers associated with

minstrelsy despite continuing the tradition of racial mimesis by having two African-American actors

portray wealthy white heiresses in full body make up. Despite occasionally displaying juvenile humour,

the film satirises and undermines whiteness in a particularly devastating manner that far outstrips more

ponderous considerations of race in cinema. 326 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 4.

272

327 Mike Hill comments that ‘[o]ur newfound attention to the quintessentially unremarkable is

itself a remarkable phenomenon.’ In ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary

Terrors’ in Whiteness: A Critical Reader. New York University Press: New York and London, 1997 (a);

pp. 2-3. 328 See Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford

University Press: New York and Oxford, 1993 (a); David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and

the Making of the American Working Class (revised edition). Verso: London and New York, 1999 (first

published 1991); and Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants

and the Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England,

1998. 329 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from

Identity Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998; p. vii. 330 Lipsitz states later:

Despite intense and frequent disavowal that whiteness means anything at all to those so designated, recent surveys have shown repeatedly that nearly every social choice that white people make about where they live, what schools their children attend, what careers they pursue, and what policies they endorse is shaped by considerations involving race ... white supremacy is usually less a matter of direct, referential and snarling contempt that a system for protecting the privileges of whites by denying communities of color opportunities for asset accumulation and upward mobility.

George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity

Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998; p. viii. 331 Richard Dyer, White. Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 1. 332 Giroux is one of a number of educators whose students have evinced feelings of absence and

loss in terms of white culture, and who perceive their adoption of signs of ‘other’ ethnicities to be gaining

race in the first instance. This occurs in tandem with the explicit mimesis of distinct and vibrant ‘other’

cultures and ethnicities that seem more ‘authentic’ , vital, and interesting. See Gubar on the phenomenon

of ‘wiggaz’, primarily male white adolescents who absorb and appropriate African American-identified

language, clothing, and music, mostly in relation to the hip hop sub-culture. Susan Gubar, Racechanges:

White Skin, Black Face in American Culture. Oxford University Press: New York and London, 1997. 333 David R. Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and

Working Class History. Verso: London and New York, 1994; p. 12. 334 hooks, bell, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. Routledge, New York and London,

1994. 335 Lola Young, Fear of the Dark: ‘Race,’ Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema. Routledge: New

York and London, 1996. 336 Even a more ostensibly respectful term such as African American or Native American still

leaves the designation ‘American’ as implicitly white, with the other identity added, and still

marginalised. See Jennifer DeVere Brody in ‘Hyphen-Nations’ in Cruising the Performative:

Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality (eds Sue-Ellen Case, Philip

Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster). Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995.

273

337 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 4. 337 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 6. 338 As mentioned in Chapter One, this is what Elizabeth Grosz refers to as ‘the universalist and

universalizing assumptions of humanism, through which women’s – and all other groups’ – specificities,

positions, and histories are rendered irrelevant or redundant.’ They are, she notes, defined in relation to

the white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle class male. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A

Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney, 1994; p. ix. 339 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 9. 340 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998; p. 9. 341 Linda Alcoff, cited in Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race,

and Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and

London, 1998; p. . 342 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press: Boston, MA, 1992;

p. 167. 343 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press: Boston, MA, 1992;

p. 167-8. 344 Henry A. Giroux, Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth.

St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1997; pp. 94-5. 345 Henry A. Giroux, Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth.

St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1997; p. 89. 346 Abby L. Ferber, White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy. Rowman and

Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford, 1998. 347 David Savran, Taking it Like a Man: White Masculinity, Masochism, and Contemporary

American Culture. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 1998; p. 4. 348 The negative possibilities of a singular and totalising view in white ethnicity studies are also

discussed by Giroux, who believes that insufficiently complex critical attention is paid to the vast array of

differences that exist within white identities and culture. Giroux believes that

the new scholarship is troubling in its inability to capture the complexity that marks ‘whiteness’ as a form of identity and cultural practice. The distinction between ‘whiteness’ as a dominating ideology and white people who are positioned across multiple locations of privilege and subordination is often sacrificed in this work.

In Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth. St. Martin’s Press: New

York, 1997; p. 90.

274

Alastair Bonnett also analyses the unwitting reification and lack of interrogation of dominant white

racial formations within anti-racist discourse. Alastair Bonnett, ‘Constructions of Whiteness in European

and American Anti-Racism’ in Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader (eds Rodolfo D. Torres, Louis

F. Mirón, and Jonathon Xavier Inda). Blackwell Publishers: Massachusetts and Oxford, 1999. 349 On white shame and a self-articulated apparent ‘lack’ of significant white culture, see Susan

Gubar, Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture. Oxford University Press: New York

and London, 1997. On white poverty see Roxanne Dunbar, ‘Bloody Footprints: Reflections On Growing

Up Poor White’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz).

Routledge: New York and London, 1997. 350 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997. 351 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 4. 352 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 1. 353 Ruth Frankenberg, ‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness:

Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1997; p. 4. 354 Derek de Koff, ‘Waters’ Sports: Exercises in Poor Taste’ in Next. April 11, 1997.

http://www.panix.com/%7Ejackson/Dreamland/print/articles/nextintvw.html.355 The general poverty of those deemed such is taken for granted to such a degree that the

qualification ‘poor’ is often dropped. 356 Cited by Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray in their ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and

Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 1. 357 According Brown, marginal whites have often experienced violence at the hands of vigilante

groups from White Caps to lynch mobs. The economically disadvantaged, the transient, and liminally

white individuals become targets of aggression. Richard Maxwell Brown, ‘Historical Patterns of

Violence’ in Violence in America, Volume 2: Protest, Rebellion, Reform (ed. Ted Robert Gurr). Sage

Publications: Newbury Park, London, and New Delhi, 1989. 358 Constance Penley, ‘Crackers and Whackers: the White Trashing of Porn’ in White Trash:

Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London,

1997; p. 90. 359 Gael Sweeney, ‘The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the Aesthetics of Excess’

in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New

York and London, 1997; p. 249.

275

360 Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and Class in America

(eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 2. 361 Constance Penley, ‘Crackers and Whackers: the White Trashing of Porn’ in White Trash:

Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London,

1997; p. 90. 362 Constance Penley, ‘Crackers and Whackers: the White Trashing of Porn’ in White Trash:

Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London,

1997; p. 90. 363 This dynamic is articulated by Newitz and Wray in terms of how ‘it refers to actually existing

people living in (often rural) poverty, while at the same time it designates a set of stereotypes and myths

related to the social behaviors, intelligence, prejudices, and gender roles of poor whites.’ Annalee Newitz

and Matt Wray, ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and

Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 7. 364 The notion of a white trash aesthetic, for example, broadens the scope of white demonisation to

encompass less overt markers of privilege such as access to cultural resources such as museums and art.

Sweeney’s litany of white trash items includes ‘prints over solids,’ ‘lime green stretch pants,’ and

‘Hawaiian shirts over the beer belly, and high-heeled snakeskin boots.’ White trash ‘lives in a trailer, but

aspires to a deluxe double-wide with purple shag carpeting, red crushed velvet sofas, and gold foil

wallpaper.’ Gael Sweeney, ‘The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the Aesthetics of

Excess’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997; p. 250. 365 Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and Class in America

(eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 2. 366 Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and Class in America

(eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 1 367 Roxanne Dunbar, ‘Bloody Footprints: Reflections On Growing Up Poor White’ in White

Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz), Routledge, New York and

London, 1997, p. 76. 368 Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and Class in America

(eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 2. 369 Constance Penley, ‘Crackers and Whackers: the White Trashing of Porn’ in White Trash:

Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London,

1997; p. 90. 370 ‘Violence’ is a broad term that encompasses the ideological and institutional as well as

individual instances and practices. 371 Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray, ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race and Class in America

(eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997, p. 5. 372 Jane Davis, The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American Literature.

Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, and London, 2000.

276

373 For example, Roediger cites Ralph Ellison, who ‘likewise found white identity to be premised

on and maintained through terror. Whiteness, for Ellison, was a “form of manifest destiny which

designated Negroes as its territory and challenge.”’ David R. Roediger, ‘Introduction’ to Black on White:

Black Writers on What It Means to be White (ed. David R. Roediger). Schocken Books: New York,

1998, pp. 14-5. 374 Newitz notes that depictions of race and class mobility often ‘sustai[n] the notion that the only

power the disenfranchised have is to bring the powerful down to a horrific, animalistic level.’ This also

serves to justify the more violent retribution meted out by the formerly powerful to the disenfranchised as

punishment for their actions. Annalee Newitz, ‘White Savagery and Humiliation, Or a New Racial

Consciousness in the Media’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt

Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997; p. 144. 375 David R. Roediger, ‘Introduction’ in Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to be

White (ed. David R. Roediger). Schocken Books: New York, 1998, p. 15. 376 Lynching is generally associated with the Reconstruction period, but continued until the

twentieth century. It was just one of multiple forms of coercion and manipulation that combined to retain

white supremacy through strategies of ‘intimidation’ that were utilised to ‘keep Blacks contained

politically and socially.’ Harris insists that ‘[t]he history of lynchings and burnings in this country is the

history of racial control by a specific form of violence.’ Trudier Harris, ‘White Men as Performers in the

Lynching Ritual’ in Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to be White (ed. David R.

Roediger). Schocken Books: New York, 1998, p. 299. 377 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press: Boston, MA, 1992;

p. 170. 378 Dyer offers a helpful description of the various ways in which whiteness, as colour and racial

designation, has consistently and extensively been symbolically associated with purity, light, and

goodness in representation. See White. Routledge: New York and London, 1997. 379 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press: Boston, MA, 1992;

p. 169. These words are printed as if quoting Richard Dyer; see Dyer for a clarification of the

misattribution of hooks’ words to him. Richard Dyer, White. Routledge, New York and London, 1997. 380 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press: Boston, MA, 1992;

p. 166. 381 Ted Robert Gurr, ‘The History of Protest, Rebellion, and Reform in America: An Overview’ in

Violence in America, Volume 2: Protest, Rebellion, Reform (ed. Ted Robert Gurr). Sage Publications:

Newbury Park, London, and New Delhi, 1989. 382 ‘Violence is strongly rejected for inclusion in the American creed, but so great has been our

involvement with it over the long sweep of American history that violence has become a compelling,

though unacknowledged, element in our values and in our culture.’ Richard Maxwell Brown, ‘Historical

Patterns of Violence’ in Violence in America, Volume 2: Protest, Rebellion, Reform (ed. Ted Robert

Gurr). Sage Publications: Newbury Park, London, and New Delhi, 1989; p. 51

277

383 Richard Maxwell Brown, ‘Historical Patterns of Violence’ in Violence in America, Volume 2:

Protest, Rebellion, Reform (ed. Ted Robert Gurr). Sage Publications: Newbury Park, London, and New

Delhi, 1989; p. 24. 384 Hent de Vries, and Samuel Weber, ‘Introduction’ to Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination

(eds Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber). Stanford University Press: Stanford, California, 1997; p. 2. 385 Hent de Vries, and Samuel Weber, ‘Introduction’ to Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination

(eds Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber). Stanford University Press: Stanford, California, 1997; p. 2. 386 Hent de Vries, and Samuel Weber, ‘Introduction’ to Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination

(eds Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber). Stanford University Press: Stanford, California, 1997; p. 2. 387 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 141. 388 Martin Rubin, ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and Its Impact on

Psychokiller Cinema’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett).

Wayne State University Press: Detroit. 1999; p. 42. 389 This is not to say that serial killing is a uniquely recent occurrence but that the manner in which

the knowledge concerning it is disseminated and comprehended is charged by contemporary fears and

perceptions. In addition, my focus is on the cinematic representation of the serial killer, a motivated and

highly mediated portrayal of violence and identity. 390 Martin Rubin, ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and Its Impact on

Psychokiller Cinema’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett).

Wayne State University Press: Detroit. 1999; p. 42.

Rubin’s choice of ‘preferred,’ instead of ‘most prevalent’ or ‘most important,’ indicates that the

nightmares of a particular age are to some degree accepted and endorsed as they are the most palatable

and the most open to manipulation. Some aspects of this notion will be addressed later in terms of what

Halberstam calls the ‘comfort of monstrosity.’ Yet I also want to stress that the nightmares of an age are

not chosen voluntarily, nor are they simplistically validated. 391 Robert K. Ressler and Tom Schachtman, I Have Lived In The Monster. St. Martin’s

Paperbacks, New York, 1997; p. 1. 392 Barry Keith Grant, ‘American Psycho/sis: The Pure Products of America Go Crazy’ in

Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press:

Detroit, 1999; p. 23. The term permeated popular culture in the 1970s and led to a flood of articles and

books on the phenomenon, including newspaper and magazine articles, popular and academic books,

psychological analyses, mainstream and independent films, documentaries, talk show topics, board

games, web sites, and even trading cards, fanzines, and t-shirts (one example featured a photo of Dahmer

accompanied by the slogan ‘Jeffrey Dahmer: Fine Young Cannibal’). This interest has shifted the status

of the phenomenon from marginal to, as the authors of The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers note, the

278

realm of ‘serial chic.’ See Harold Schechter and David Everitt, The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers.

New York: Pocket Books, 1996; p. 1. 393 Throughout this chapter I will be referring to the serial killer as male. This is not to deny that

women have participated in serial murder, proven by notorious examples such as Myra Hindley and Karla

Homolka who assisted their respective partners to commit crimes, but is intended to more accurately

reflect the overwhelming statistical scarcity of female serial murderers who act alone. While there have

been many women who have killed numerous individuals, and women who have killed over time, they do

not qualify as serial killers. Even the case of Eileen Wuornos, deemed by some to be the ‘first female

serial killer,’ is debatable as her murders arguably occurred more from expediency than pleasure. 394 Caputi discusses the notion of the serial killer as both heroic and sacred at length, and her

analysis offers insight into some of the compulsions underlying the representation of the serial killer in

cinema. Serial killers

are regularly proclaimed heroes – given folk nicknames; immortalized in every manner of story, song, and image; and characterized as geniuses, preternatural entities, and charismatic sexual dominators. The serial killer functions as a cultural hero, one who ritually enacts and enforces male supremacy. He represents an extreme of traits associated with masculinity: aggression, individualism, violence, and eroticized domination (over the ‘feminine,’ which can be embodied in females or males). He sacrifices scapegoats, often in highly symbolic and public ways. He provides for those who identify with him a pornographic fantasy of unlimited excess and absolute power, and he serves to terrorize those who identify with the victims. Ultimately, he acquires a sacred aura, that of a being who transcends normal human existence.

Jane Caputi, ‘Small Ceremonies: Ritual in Forrest Gump, Natural Born Killers, Seven, and

Follow Me Home’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne

State University Press: Detroit, 1999; p. 150. 395 Andrew Tudor, Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Basil

Blackwell, Oxford and Massachusetts, 1989. 396 Earlier films that display the specific psychology of the killer include Psycho (1960) and The

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), both of which were both loosely based on the case of Milwaukee

farmer Ed Gein, who killed women and kept their body parts (fashioning them into utilitarian objects, in

several cases) and who was also an inspiration for The Silence of the Lambs. Other earlier films that

specifically utilised the term ‘serial killer’ included Shocker (1989) and Manhunter, a 1986 film based on

Red Dragon, Thomas Harris’s first book to feature Hannibal Lecter. Although Alfred Hitchcock’s

Psycho is typically cited as ushering in a new standard of villains and deranged protagonists, the lineage

of on-screen serial killers that accords with contemporary definitions stretches farther back to films such

as M (1931). M is based on the case of Fritz Haarman, a notorious real life German killer who fits current

evaluations of serial killer criteria. 397 This spate of films that featured serial killers as their focal point and monster-figure is part of

the cyclical and self-reflexive nature of the horror genre, of which the serial murderer film comprises a

thriller hybrid subplot. In particular, it echoes the prevalence of anonymous, violent killers in slasher

horror films for several years following the box office success of Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th

(1980).

279

398 Harold Schechter and David Everitt, The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York:

Pocket Books, 1996; p. 68, original emphasis. 399 Other commentators have also specified the criminological terminology used in literature on

mass multiple homicide as they recognise the importance of distinguishing between types of murder,

particularly in terms of then-current terms. Maria Tatar, Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany.

Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 1995. 400 Although there is a ‘wide variety of motivation and behavior amongst serial killers,’ researchers

tend to focus upon their shared characteristics, drawn from information gathered at crime scenes,

interviews with killers, and various psychological assessments. John Douglas and Mark Olshaker,

Journey Into Darkness. Heinemann: London, 1997; p. 36. 401 This cooling off period may be several hours or take up to several years as it is not a precise

term. See Harold Schechter and David Everitt, The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York,

Pocket Books, 1996; p. 69.

The ‘cooling off’ period of a return to composure and pre-kill ‘normality’ institutes a temporal

element to the behaviour evinced by the killer. The murderer, having enacted his fantasy, does not

escalate into further violence or action. Their responses and shifting emotions may vary from depression

to numbness to curiosity, but they are not sated. The ‘seriality’ of the term is constituted through these

discrete acts that take place over time. Instead of a singular event, the serial killer is interested in

activities that will continue, as they desire to repeat the experience and refine their techniques as well as

re-experience the emotions. As Ressler notes in relation to the learning curve displayed by killers, they

learn from their mistakes and they seek to perfect their abilities. Their compulsion is not spent with the

murder. Other components of serial killing, such as the collecting of souvenirs, often body parts or items

of personal importance to the victim, and the revisiting of murder or dumping sites in order to recapture

the thrill of the event, also point to a process of continuity and the long term involvement on the behalf of

the killer. The cooling off period, then, reflects the motives behind the killing – for even when locating

an ideal victim or fortuitous locale the serial killer is not acting from some finite burst of passion or anger,

but from a steady and grounding rationale. The fantasy compels, and will continue to compel, him. The

cooling off period signals a structural component of the killing, as it marks the desire for ongoing activity

that separates the serial killer from sprees or singular events. Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, would let

potential victims go or not pursue them further when he didn’t find them attractive enough or if the

situation wasn’t opportune, demonstrating the ability to restrain impulses when necessary. 402 Investigators typically find at least one but usually multiple examples of what they term the

‘homicidal triangle’ (or ‘triad’). Research into serial killers childhood experiences revealed that virtually

all included ‘enuresis – or bed-wetting – at an inappropriate age, starting fires, and cruelty to animals or

other children.’ Although these are not automatic guarantees, they function as classic indicators of future

behavioural problems. John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, Journey Into Darkness. Heinemann: London,

1997; p. 36. 403 Harold Schechter and David Everitt, The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York:

Pocket Books, 1996; p. 115.

280

404 Robert K. Ressler and Tom Schachtman, Whoever Fights Monsters. St. Martin’s Paperbacks:

New York, 1992; p. 51. 405 Ressler offers an account of his participation in the resolution of some cases in South Africa

and Japan, for example, and addresses the differing cultural values and social structures involved. I Have

Lived In The Monster. St. Martin’s Paperbacks: New York, 1997. 406 Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial

Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997; p. 4.

Germany, Britain, France, Australia, Russia, and South Africa have reported multiple cases of

serial killing, with Japan, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Brazil, Mexico, China, Italy, and Sweden all

containing at least one widely reported case. 407 Robert K. Ressler and Tom Schachtman, Whoever Fights Monsters. St. Martin’s Paperbacks:

New York, 1992; p. 46. 408 See, for example, Samantha Helsham, ‘The Profane and the Insane: An Inquiry into the

Psychopathology of Serial Murder’ in Alternative Law Journal. Vol. 26, No. 6, December 2001. 409 This sensationalism is hardly restricted to serial murder trials but also attends other high profile

criminal cases, such as that of OJ Simpson and Timothy McVeigh. 410 Harold Schechter and David Everitt, The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York:

Pocket Books, 1996. 411 Maria Tatar, Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton University Press:

Princeton, New Jersey. 1995; p. 23. 412 Tatar examines some of the contradictions and tensions of the multiple approaches to the serial

murder phenomenon across various media, and believes that it not only necessitates an ‘interdisciplinary

approach’ but also an awareness of the highly compromised border between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in serial

killer rhetoric. This involves

trying to establish a kind of cultural intertextuality in which case studies illuminate artistic production even as fictional accounts broaden our understanding of social realities. If we reflect on the way in which Jack the Ripper has been featured in so many films, plays, and novels that he is now as much literary construct as cultural case history or consider the way in which Norman Bates has found his way into legal arguments and psychiatric studies, it becomes clear that the study of sexual murder requires an approach that recognizes the controversial ‘textuality of history and historicity of texts’ without, however, dissolving the line between historical fact and imaginative construct.

Maria Tatar, Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton University Press:

Princeton, New Jersey. 1995; p. 7. 413 Maria Tatar, Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton University Press:

Princeton, New Jersey. 1995; p. 30. 414 This is not to imply that these stories and images have an unmediated access to ‘reality,’ or that

such an uncomplicated and straightforward relationship to a discourse of truth effects and realism is

entirely possible. As Foucault argues, ‘truth isn’t outside power.’ He notes:

Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true;

281

the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.

In other words, the discourse of truth effects is a complex, variegated, and mobile production that

spans multiple areas and types of knowledge. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews

and Other Writings 1972-1977 (ed. Colin Gordon). Pantheon Books: New York, 1980; p. 131. 415 Annalee Newitz, ‘Serial Killers, True Crime, and Economic Performance Anxiety’ in

Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press:

Detroit. 1999; p. 66. 416 Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. Routledge: New

York and London, 1998; p. 1, original emphasis. 417 Jane Caputi, ‘American Psychos: The Serial Killer in Contemporary Fiction’ in Journal of

American Culture. Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1993; p. 103, original emphasis; Brian Simpson, ‘Murder,

Prostitution, and Patriarchy: Why Serial Killing is a Feminist Issue’ in Alternative Law Journal. Vol. 26,

No. 6, December 2001; and Elizabeth Young, ‘The Silence of the Lambs and the Flaying of Feminist

Theory’ in Camera Obscura. No. 27, September 1991. 418 Cited by Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture.

Routledge: New York and London, 1998; p. 10. 419 This is not to suggest that the representation of the serial killer is not subject to mythologising

impulses in popular culture or that a term such as ‘true crime’ can be taken completely at face value. As

Foucault argued in an interview, in terms of his ongoing engagement with the delinquent and the deviant,

‘the history of the West cannot be disociated [sic] from the way its “truth” is produced and produces its

effects.’ In ‘Power and Sex’ in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1984

(ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman). Routledge: New York and London, 1990 (b) (first published in 1988);

p. 112.

The serial killer’s presence in ‘true crime’ texts does not mean that his representation is

unmediated. Yet neither does he occupy the same level of suspended belief in the popular imagination as,

for example, a story concerning dragons. The demands of quantifiable and verifiable proof required by

scientific discourse, particularly criminological investigations in popular representations (such as the

television programs that focus entirely on the gathering and analysis of such information, such as the

successful CSI series), gives the serial killer the veneer of being more ‘real’ than his counterparts, even

though his construction in the popular imagination is necessarily filtered through narrative tropes. The

broader issue of the construction and dissemination of truth regimes, in Foucault’s more complicated

point, is bound up in the legitimation of scientific discourse and knowledge. 420 Other horror films that feature popular protagonists who are virtually or literally supernatural

such as Freddy Krueger (the Nightmare on Elm Street series), Michael Myers (the Halloween series), and

Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th series), are comparable to serial killer films as they feature murderers

who exist solely to kill repetitively, until they are forced to stop. These films are different due to their

heightened, almost cartoonish, qualities.

282

Jeffrey Sconce usefully contrasts the reception of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as an

‘arthouse’ independent film with that of the more mainstream and popular Nightmare on Elm Street

series. Despite having ostensibly similar subject matter, the wildly different approaches of the films

enables Henry to be critically appreciated and the Nightmare on Elm Street series to be seen as amusing

kitsch. Jeffrey Sconce, ‘Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and Contemporary Horror’ in

Film Theory Goes to the Movies (eds Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava Preacher). Routledge: New

York and London, 1993. 421 Monster is based on the life of Eileen Wuornos, who is often termed the world’s first female

serial killer. The film sympathetically portrays her as more of an opportunistic killer rather than someone

who enjoys the act of murder itself. 422 John Waters has a habit of filling his films with anti-heroines. In films such as Pink Flamingos

(1972) and Female Trouble (1974) he continues a tradition of strong, uncompromising, if often scary and

grotesque, female and criminal protagonists. Serial Mom differs from many other serial killer films with

its light tone and parodic nature, as the film plays with generic strategies and expectations so that serial

killing is presented more as a compulsion to correct behavioural and fashion mistakes than a desire to

cause harm. 423 This association of aggressive sexuality and ‘blackness’ is itself an overdetermined and clichéd

one, as theorists from Clyde Taylor to James A. Snead have noted, and is part of a long history of

typically degrading stereotypical depictions of African American males. African American males are

often represented as hypersexual and violent in cinema, reduced to an animalistic sentience. See James

A. Snead, White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side (eds Colin McCabe and Cornel

West). Routledge: New York and London, 1994, and Clyde R. Taylor, The Mask of Art: Breaking the

Aesthetic Contract – Film and Literature. Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indiana, 1998. 424 See, for example, Vanessa Friedman, ‘Over His Dead Body: Female Murderers, Female Rage,

and Western Culture’ in States of Rage: Emotional Eruption, Violence, and Social Change (eds Renée R.

Curry and Terry L. Allison). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996; Patricia

Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence. Viking: New York, 1997;

and Michele Aaron, ‘The Exploits of the Female Sexual Killer: Taking the Knife to Body of Evidence’ in

Sisterhoods: Across the Media/Literature Divide (eds Deborah Cartmell, I.Q Hunter, Heidi Kaye, and

Imelda Whelehan). Pluto Press: London and Sterling, Virginia, 1998. 425 Diana Fuss, ‘Monsters of Perversion: Jeffrey Dahmer and The Silence of the Lambs’ in Media

Spectacles (eds Marjorie Garber, Jann Matlock, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz). Routledge: New York and

London, 1993. 426 Other signs of this more extravagant mode of depiction include more supernatural, though often

once-human killers, who tend to have striking physical appearances such as Freddy Krueger, who is

covered in a twisting mass of burns and who sports a razor-edged glove, and Jason Voorhees, whose

iconic hockey mask mocks the wholesome nature of sport with its blankness.

283

427 Interestingly, although the overall majority of victims in serial killer cinema are female, the

grotesquely tortured, dead body on display is often male. The living victims, and the heroine-victim, are

always female. 428 See Douglas and Ressler, two originators and proponents of the system of analysis. Other

predictors, depending on the crime, include the perpetrator having applied to and been rejected from the

police academy, the army, or other law enforcement institutions; a history of criminal endeavours such as

rape, assault, and burglary that have steadily escalated in severity; and, curiously, owning an Alsatian or a

similarly large and aggressive dog that is typically used in law enforcement. Many serial killers have a

strong interest in the police force and the military, and drive the same model cars, attend the same firing

ranges, or socialise at the same off-duty bars and cafes as police. John Wayne Gacy and Edmund

Kemper, for example, befriended off-duty officers. Kemper eventually surrendered to one of his friends

who initially assumed that Kemper was joking when he confessed to murder. 429 He continues to describe the killer: ‘He’ll be middle class, a loner, not married. Those who

know him will find him aloof but cordial. Though he prefers isolation, he has the ability to navigate in

social settings when he has to. He will have strong moral and religious convictions.’ 430 This twist follows the plot development of the earlier and influential serial killer film Se7en,

which also features the murderer as a religious protagonist who poses as a journalist in order to infiltrate

the police investigation and to gain crucial access to the detectives working on his case. 431 Perhaps not surprisingly, this is also true of some real life killers, such as Peter Kürten. They

not only voraciously read their own press but often ‘study’ other case histories, as they seek to learn from

their mistakes but also to compete with other murderers. The film Copycat illustrates particularly vividly

how such a study and re-enactment of serial murder would be possible. 432 Many other monsters and figures of horror, from John Doe in Se7en to Michael Myers in

Halloween, are barely given a legitimate history or much of an explanation in terms of motivation or

genesis, and when it occurs it is often ritualistically trite and highly questionable. Some token

explanation is typically given, but is usually inadequate or flawed. Cynthia Freeland discusses this

insincere gesturing as a generic convention designed not to further our understanding of the monster’s

compulsion or meaning, but as a display of cynicism and the repetitive structure of narratives. She

considers the various versions of his horrendous childhood and subsequent murder of his mother that

Henry gives in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, to demonstrate an acknowledgment of generic

expectations (that something caused Henry’s actions) in addition to a sign of Henry’s untrustworthiness.

Henry provides a standard and clichéd psycho-film explanation for the behavior of its monster … the fact that there are three different versions of this story marks it as a generic explanation and undermines its authenticity. The pathogenic role of the mother has become a familiar empty formula to us, a vague sort of hand waving in the direction of ‘here’s why he is the way he is.’ We notice this and then blithely move on, ready for the next murder or scene of mayhem.

Cynthia Freeland, The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Westview Press:

Boulder, Colorado, 2000, pp. 179-80. 433 As Spivak notes: ‘Such is the strange “being” of the sign: half of it always “not there” and the

other half always “not that.” The structure of the sign is determined by the trace or track of that other

284

which is forever absent.’ In the ‘Introduction’ to Of Grammatology (translated by Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak). The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, 1976 (first published 1967);

p. xvii. 434 Freeland is considering the ramifications of a classical, or Platonic, approach to horror, and in

particular the limits of film theorist Noël Carroll’s understanding of the genre. Her work explicitly

counters his belief that the monster-figure must be supernatural or fictitious, as Freeland, like David J.

Russell, argues that many significant films in the past several decades have featured monstrous

protagonists who are explicitly human. To ignore them removes many examples that most people would

intuitively classify as horror films. Russell argues:

Carroll’s work seriously falters in its blanket omission of an entire obvious subcategory of horror: the psychokiller horror film. His reliance on ‘fantastic biology’ privileges mere visual extraordinariness as the sole defining trope for all monster characters, a descriptive rigidity that finally leads Carroll to observe … [that] ‘Norman Bates is not a monster. He is a schizophrenic.’ Though Carroll goes to great lengths to rationalize this astonishing elision of psycho horror, his system cannot be considered comprehensive if it fails to include what everyone else would indisputably define as a horror film (Halloween, Friday the 13th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

David J. Russell, ‘Monster Roundup: Reintegrating the Horror Genre’ in Refiguring American

Film Genres: History and Theory (ed. Nick Browne). University of California Press: Berkeley, Los

Angeles, and London, 1998; p 238.

Carroll’s understanding of the monster ignores the many examples of ‘human monstrosity’ that

have existed throughout history, and some of which I detailed in my second chapter. 435 It is perhaps ironic that Henry Lee Lucas, though he confessed to dozens if not hundreds of

murders, was considered to have fabricated almost all of these. 436 Freeland argues that Henry is eroticised in the film by the romantic attention of one of the

female characters and through the film’s representational strategies. She notes that the ‘film conspires in

this, as the camera lingers on the good-looking young actor, Michael Rooker, who plays Henry. He is

treated iconographically as a Marlon Brando/James Dean angry young rebel, complete with pout,

mumbles, short curly hair, square jaw, and white T-shirt.’ In ‘Realist Horror’ in Philosophy and Film

(eds Cynthia Freeland and Thomas Wartenberg). Routledge: New York and London, 1995; p. 131. 437 As noted earlier, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is one of several films to utilise a gritty and

distinctly quotidian approach to its subject matter that some viewers perceived as a lack of mediation or

raw immediacy, such as the notoriously jarring scene where an on-screen murder segues without warning

into a videotape of the event that Henry and Ottis have made of the crime and are re-watching, so that the

audience is instinctively, if fleetingly, aligned with Henry and his compatriot as they are enjoying the

assault again. Others, such as Newitz and Freeland, argue that the stylistic choices behind these

seemingly flat, random, and unspectacular images are highly artificial and motivated, with ‘realism’

functioning as another aesthetic mode of representation. 438 Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial

Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997; p. 6.

285

439 Cited by Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. Routledge,

New York and London, 1998; p. 10. 440 It is interesting that Tithecott reports the claim that the FBI has strategically misrepresented the

nature and statistics concerning the serial killer. He cites a CNN program Murder by Number as

suggesting that ‘the FBI is knowingly involved in the exaggeration of the serial killer phenomenon.’ This

is in order to seek the continued funding for their program, as well as to justify criminological techniques.

Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. The

University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997. 441 Motive is a core component of criminological procedures and the popular understanding of a

crime, and intentionality is implicated in the foundations of approaches to law enforcement in the West. 442 The power and sense of identity the serial experiences that stems from this perception, Ressler

argues, is at odds with theie compensatory behaviour and inadequacy. The sense of potency, assurance,

or invulnerability that the killer may feel that arises from the subjugation and domination of others is a

necessarily temporally limited and contingent power. Robert K. Ressler and Tom Schachtman, I Have

Lived In The Monster. St. Martin’s Paperbacks: New York, 1997.

Tithecott quotes British serial murderer Dennis Nilsen’s understanding of his violent acts as

proceeding from a self-described ‘feeling of inadequacy, not potency.’ Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey

Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997;

p. 6. 443 Ressler notes, after a series of conversations with Jeffrey Dahmer, the fluidity of motive:

‘Dahmer condensed the acts of premeditation, hunting, and murder into the following terse statement: “I

was going out to look for someone, but didn’t know if I’d meet anyone; and I did, and then I planned it.”’

Robert K. Ressler and Tom Schachtman, I Have Lived In The Monster. St. Martin’s Paperbacks: New

York, 1997; p. 155. 444 John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, Journey Into Darkness. Heinemann: London, 1997; p. 29. 445 Robert K. Ressler and Tom Schachtman, Whoever Fights Monsters. St. Martin’s Paperbacks:

New York, 1992; p. 45. 446 Richard Maxwell Brown, ‘Historical Patterns of Violence’ in Violence in America, Volume 2:

Protest, Rebellion, Reform (ed. Ted Robert Gurr). Sage Publications: Newbury Park, London, and New

Delhi, 1989.

In addition, Gavin de Becker, an expert in violence prevention, stresses in his book The Gift of

Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence that violence is, above all, predictable. Despite the

emphasis in culture on perceiving violent acts motiveless and unexpected, de Becker argues precisely the

opposite; namely, that acts of violence have precedents and always occur after warning signals. Violence

is ingrained in everyday actions, behaviours, and patterns, and it forms a crucial constitutive component

and defining characteristic of contemporary life. He argues that ‘[t]he human violence we abhor and fear

the most, that which we call “random” and “senseless” is neither. It always has a purpose and meaning,

to the perpetrator, at least.’ Gavin De Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us From

Violence. Bloomsbury: Great Britain, 1997; p. 15.

286

447 Martin Rubin, ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and Its Impact on

Psychokiller Cinema’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett).

Wayne State University Press: Detroit. 1999; p. 42. 448 Cited by Mark Seltzer in Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture.

Routledge: New York and London, 1998; p. 10. 449 See in particular ‘The Profile of the Serial Killer’ in Serial Killers: Death and Life in

America’s Wound Culture. Routledge: New York and London, 1998. 450 It is interesting that here are at least two books with the title The Killer Next Door, one that

analyses several different murderers and the other an assessment of the ‘Sydney Granny killer.’ Joel

Norris, The Killer Next Door. Arrow Books: London, 1993 (first published by Bantam Books in 1992);

and Lindsay Simpson and Sandra Harvey, The Killer Next Door. Random House: Sydney, 1994.

Rubin notes that

[t]he modern multiple murderer frequently confounds the notion of a ‘criminal type’ or behavioural predictability. Typical statements used to describe modern multiple murderers include ‘the All-American boy’ (applied to Charles Whitman), ‘voted most likely to succeed’ (Herbert Mullin, an especially demented multiple murderer of the 1970’s), and ‘the nicest boy in Wolcott’ (Kansas family killer Lowell Lee Andrews).’

Martin Rubin, ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and Its Impact on Psychokiller

Cinema’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State

University Press: Detroit. 1999; p. 42. 451 Dispatches From the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion (ed. Robert Siegel). Three Rivers

Press: New York, 2001; p. 34. 452 I do not endorse these views but attempt to articulate some of the ways in which they operate.

As bell hooks and others have demonstrated, as I discussed in the chapter on whiteness, those individuals

who are considered to be marginal are often highly aware of their ostensibly non-normative and excluded

status, and are able to return a critical gaze back onto this supposedly neutral identity in a way that reveals

its particularity. 453 In what Foucault termed a ‘society of normalization,’ the marginalised and abject are defined in

terms of their difference, and in particular in terms of their distance from the norm. Michel Foucault,

‘Disciplinary Power and Subjection’ in Power: A Radical View (ed. Steven Lukes). Blackwell: London,

1986; p. 241. 454 bell hooks, Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. Routledge: New York and London,

1994. 455 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and Unwin: Sydney,

1994; p. ix. 456 Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1995; p. 6. 457 Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us From Violence.

Bloomsbury: Great Britain, 1997; p. 15.

287

458 This is echoed in de Becker’s discussion of a conversation he had with FBI behavioural

scientist Robert Ressler. De Becker noted:

Ressler knew that nothing human is foreign. He had learned enough about so-called monsters to know that you don’t find them in gothic dungeons or humid forests. You find them at the mall, at the school, in the town or city with the rest of us.

The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us From Violence. Bloomsbury: Great Britain,

1997; p. 47. 459 Salah el Moncef, ‘Lecter Knows Worst: Justice as Marginal Value and the Law of Series in

Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs’ in Genders. Vol. 30, 1999.

http://www.genders.org/g30/g30_moncef.html.460 Mark Pizzato, ‘Jeffrey Dahmer and Media Cannibalism: The Lure and Failure of Sacrifice’ in

Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press:

Detroit, 1999; p. 87. 461 Jane Caputi, ‘Small Ceremonies: Ritual in Forrest Gump, Natural Born Killers, Seven, and

Follow Me Home’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne

State University Press: Detroit, 1999; p. 150. 462 Philip L. Simpson, ‘The Politics of Apocalypse in the Cinema of Serial Murder’ in Mythologies

of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press: Detroit,

1999; p. 119. 463 Rubin, however, does not distinguish between examples are drawn from cinema and from ‘real

life’ killers, or discuss the complications of comparing the two. 464 Martin Rubin, ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and Its Impact on

Psychokiller Cinema’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett).

Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 1999; pp. 42-3. 465 Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial

Killer, The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997; pp. 3-4. 466 Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial

Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997; p. 3, original emphasis. 467 Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial

Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997; p. 5. 468 Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial

Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997; p. 7, original emphasis. 469 Richard Tithecott, Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial

Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin, 1997; p. 4. 470 Rosemary Garland Thomson, ‘Introduction: From Wonder to Error – A Genealogy of Freak

Discourse in Modernity’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary

Garland Thomson). New York University Press: New York and London, 1996; p. 2. 471 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the

Collection. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1993; pp. 132-3.

288

472 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995; p. 47. 473 Elizabeth Grosz, ‘Intolerable Ambiguity: Freaks and/as the Limit’ in Freakery: Cultural

Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland Thomson). New York University Press:

New York and London, 1996; p. 55, original emphasis. 474 Martin Rubin, ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and Its Impact on

Psychokiller Cinema’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett).

Wayne State University Press: Detroit. 1999; p. 42. 475 Arendt did not focus on monsters per se, but they cropped up in her broader investigation of

evil and human actions. 476 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995, p. 161. 477 Claudia Roth Pierpont, Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World. Scribe Publications:

Melbourne, 2000; p. 279. 478 C. Fred Alford, What Evil Means To Us. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1997;

p. 130. 479 Robert Servatius was Eichmann’s defence lawyer. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A

Report on the Banality of Evil. Faber and Faber: London, 1963; p. 226, parentheses in original. 480 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Faber and Faber:

London, 1963; p. 253. 481 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Faber and Faber:

London, 1963; p. 253.

This inability to know that one is committing a crime or behaving improperly is a central

component of the trial for Arendt, as she argues that ‘[f]oremost among the larger issues at stake in the

Eichmann trial was the assumption current in all modern legal systems that intent to do wrong is

necessary for the commission of a crime.’ Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the

Banality of Evil. Faber and Faber: London, 1963; p. 254. 482 Roth Pierpont notes that ‘[t]he Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith issued bulletins

against it; the Council of Jews from Germany pleaded with her to stop publication.’ (pp. 278-79). She

continues:

Few, indeed, could understand what the diminished notion of evil meant to Arendt. Walter Laqueur wrote that she had been duped by the simple fact that all men ‘tend to be banal in prison.’ Gershom Sholem accused her of replacing a profound philosophy with a ‘catchword,’ and lamented what her called her ‘heartless’ tone and her obvious lack of love for the Jewish people …

In defense of Arendt’s intentions, it is clear from her earliest writings that, for her, even the awful burden of responsibility was preferable to the humiliation of the helpless victim. To deliver blame to one’s people was to deliver control; if we allowed this to happen, then we can prevent it from happening again. And yet, Arendt’s pitiless righteousness toward those whose choices she had never faced, and the tone that Scholem all too accurately described as ‘almost sneering and malicious,’ make reading her judgments, even today, an unnerving experience.

289

Claudia Roth Pierpont, Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World. Scribe Publications:

Melbourne, 2000; pp. 281-2. 483 C. Fred Alford, What Evil Means to Us. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1997;

p. 135, original emphasis. 484 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995; p. 162. 485 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995; p. 161. 486 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995; p. 162. 487 De Becker articulates a similar view of the comfort of monstrosity in which the distancing

impulse acts as a defensive strategy. The term ‘monster’ is used, he believes, as part of an othering

strategy that stops individuals from having to acknowledge shared characteristics with violent killers,

rapists, and other criminals.

We use the word inhuman to describe these murderers, but I know them both, and they are not inhuman – they are precisely human. I know many other people like them; I know their parents and the parents of their victims. Their violent acts were repugnant, to be sure, but not inhuman.

When a bank robber shoots a security guard, we all understand why, but with aberrant killers, people resist the concept of shared humanness. That’s because US and THEM is far more comfortable.

Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us from Violence. Bloomsbury:

Great Britain, 1997, p. 44, original emphasis. 488 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b); p. 17. 489 As discussed in my first chapter, this perception of the white, heterosexual, middle to upper

class, propertied male as the ‘template’ of humanity in post-Enlightenment culture has been roundly

criticised on multiple fronts, notably recently by feminists, critical race theorists, and post-colonial

theorists.490 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge: New

York and London, 1990. 491 This is a quote from Peter Kürten, known as the ‘Monster of Düsseldorf’ and the ‘Vampire of

Düsseldorf.’ Kürten also studied the case of Jack the Ripper, which provides another link to the movie in

which the eponymous Copycat killer has studied (and emulated) other murderers. Harold Schechter and

David Everitt, The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York: Pocket Books, 1996; p. 153. 492 Hudson, as an expert on serial murderers, testified at the trial of Darryl Lee Cullum.

Immediately following the lecture, despite a police guard, Cullum brutally attacks Hudson while she is

alone in a bathroom. This attack triggers the agoraphobia that will plague Helen for the rest of the film

and which forms an important plot point as she is, essentially, trapped in her apartment. The Copycat

killer plans, as the denouement of his string of replicated famous crimes, to re-enact Cullum’s assault on

290

Hudson. He plans to kidnap Hudson and to re-enact her torture as his grand finale, not just one-upping

Cullum but also, in a pointed assault on her status as lecturer/writer/expert, to strike back at Hudson as an

authority on serial killers who nonetheless cannot protect herself from them. 493 This strategy was adopted directly by Thomas Harris in The Silence of the Lambs for the

character of Jame Gumb (a composite of Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, and Gary Heidnik, amongst others), who

uses a fake injury to lure victims to his van. It is found in Copycat when Peter, during his re-enactment of

David ‘Son of Sam’ Berkowitz’s crimes, asks his female victim for directions. Edmund Kemper, who

killed several female hitchhikers, would deliberately consult his watch when they asked for a ride, to

appear both busy and distracted. It is also part of Barney Cousin’s kidnapping strategy in The Vanishing,

when he trawls for potential victims whilst wearing a cast on his arm and asking for directions. The cast

is also subsequently used as a weapon when beating victims in a surprise attack. Many serial murderers

coerce their victims into unfortunate situations, or attack when their victims are at their most defenceless,

such as when asleep or alone. Indeed, serial killers frequently murder prostitutes who are easier targets

given that the job demands constant contact with strangers in seclusion and typically includes an alienated

relationship with law enforcement. 494 Cynthia Freeland, ‘Realist Horror’ in Philosophy and Film (eds Cynthia Freeland and Thomas

Wartenberg). Routledge: New York and London, 1995; Steven Schneider, ‘Monsters as (Uncanny)

Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror’ in Other Voices.

Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1999; Jeffrey Sconce, ‘Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and

Contemporary Horror’ in Film Theory Goes to the Movies (eds Jim Collins, Hilary Radner, and Ava

Preacher). Routledge: New York and London, 1993. 495 Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton

University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 1992. 496 Annalee Newitz, ‘Serial Killers, True Crime, and Economic Performance Anxiety’ in

Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press:

Detroit, 1999; p. 80. 497 Annalee Newitz, ‘Serial Killers, True Crime, and Economic Performance Anxiety’ in

Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press:

Detroit, 1999; p. 80. 498 Pinhead from the Hellraiser films offers a more spectral, hyperbolic form of whiteness, unlike

the more quotidian menace of the Tall Man from the Phantasm series. 499 These examples given by Peggy McIntosh are cited by Richard Dyer in White, Routledge: New

York and London, 1997; p. 8. 500 The predictive nature of this statistic has been somewhat qualified in recent years due to

interracial killers such as Gary Heidnik and Jeffrey Dahmer. However, they remain rare. 501 Sherene H. Razack, Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and Culture in

Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1998.

291

502 There is a tendency to individualise crime if a white perpetrator is involved, and to downplay

environmental influences. Wendy Kaminer, It’s All the Rage: Crime and Culture. Addison-Wesley

Publishing Company: Reading, Massachusetts, 1995. 503 This escape motif is found more broadly in the film and includes Starling’s interview with a

friend of Fredrica Bimmel, Gumb’s first victim. The friend affectionately mocks Bimmel for thinking

that her job at a local bank was ‘hot shit’ and asks Starling about joining the FBI as a potential career, as a

way of getting out of her small town. The focus on transformation and escape is, of course, more vividly

echoed in Gumb’s desire to change himself, literally, by donning a suit made from the skin of women. 504 Annalee Newitz, ‘White Savagery and Humiliation, Or a New Racial Consciousness in the

Media’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997; p. 134. 505 Annalee Newitz, ‘White Savagery and Humiliation, Or a New Racial Consciousness in the

Media’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997; p. 134. 506 Annalee Newitz, ‘White Savagery and Humiliation, Or a New Racial Consciousness in the

Media’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997; p. 136. 507 Annalee Newitz, ‘White Savagery and Humiliation, Or a New Racial Consciousness in the

Media’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997; p. 144. 508 The ‘Trench Coat Mafia’, which I will discuss later, were a loose affiliation of teenagers at

Columbine High School united by their trademark long black coats and outcast status. The group was

featured one year in the Columbine yearbook in a photograph under the title Trench Coast Mafia, though

Harris and Klebold were not in the photo. 509 Dave Cullen, ‘Inside the Columbine High investigation.’ Salon, September 23, 1999.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/23/columbine/index.html.510 The contradictory nature of these various accounts is confusing, with this confusion a reminder

of how it is often difficult to be accurate when dealing with such mediated information. 511 Fiona Steel, ‘Calm Before The Storm: The Littleton School Massacre.’ The Crime Library,

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/littleton/index_1.html.512 For example, local Australian newspapers such as The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald,

and The Canberra Times all featured extensive coverage of the Columbine shootings including front page

headlines and prominent photographs on April 22, 1999. 513 The victims were fellow students Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly

Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel Rohrbough, Rachel Scott, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin,

Lauren Townsend and Kyle Velasquez, and teacher and coach Dave Sanders. 514 ‘Clinton urges US to wake up, help youth vent anger.’ AP report, The Canberra Times. April

22, 1999, p. 5.

292

Misty Bernall, mother of slain student Cassie Bernall, confirms that ‘Columbine was a national

news from the minute it broke’ and that she had to ‘respond to a steady barrage of reporters, news editors,

and photographers’ from the moment her daughter was identified as a victim (p. 32). She further notes

the widespread impact of her daughter’s depiction in mass media as a modern-day martyr, which

stemmed from an apocryphal story in which one of the gunmen held a gun to Cassie’s head and asked if

she believed in God. When Cassie affirmed that she did, she was shot. Misty Bernall notes:

One thing Brad and I were totally unprepared for after Cassie’s death was the extent of its impact beyond Littleton. Letters poured in from every state, as well as from countries all over the globe – England, Jamaica, France, Germany, Australia, and Peru. At one point the flood of mail grew so large that our entire living room was swamped with gifts and letters and cards.

Misty Bernall, She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. The Plough Publishing

House: Farmington, Pennsylvania, 1999; p. 132. 515 The summit was convened in October, 1998, following other incidents of school violence. On

April 1, 1999, the U.S. Education, Justice, and Health and Human Services departments ‘began soliciting

applications for $US180 million’ in funding for anti-school violence programs. These ‘include $US80

million to hire community police officers and $40 million for counselling youth deemed at risk of violent

behaviour’ as well as ‘hiring security guards and [funding] after-school programs.’ Mark Riley, ‘Agony

of Unstoppable School Violence’ in The Sydney Morning Herald. April 22, 1999; p. 12. 516 Douglas is not specifically referring to the incident at Columbine High School but more broadly

to acts such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, The

Anatomy of Motive. Scribner: New York, 1999, p. 260. 517 Nancy Gibbs, ‘Time Special Report.’ Time, No. 22, May 31, 1999, p. 21. 518 According to Dave Cullen, it is likely that a different student, Valeen Schnurr, was asked this

question by the pair, and was then shot but survived. ‘Inside the Columbine High investigation.’ Salon,

September 23, 1999. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/23/columbine/index.html.519 Shriver explicitly contextualises her fiction within the realm of actual killers, offering an

accurate list of the main school killers and their crimes as part of the mother’s narrative, with her son

Kevin’s rampage occurring a mere ten days prior to the Columbine incident, which subsequently

overshadowed his story. She refers to these other teens as Kevin’s ‘colleagues’ in ‘Littleton, Jonesboro,

[and] Springfield’ and how he is typically dismissive of their actions (p. 168). Of Harris and Klebold,

Kevin says: ‘Morons. Gave mass murderers a bad name.’ Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk about Kevin.

Counterpoint: New York, 2003; p. 240. 520 DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death. Faber and

Faber: London, 2003.

Other novels that dealt, in various ways, with the phenomenon of school shootings include Dennis

Cooper, My Loose Thread. Canongate Books: Edinburgh and New York, 2001; Douglas Coupland, Hey

Nostradamus! Flamingo: London, 2003; and Francine Prose, After. Joanna Cotler Books: New York,

2003. The film Home Room (2002) examines the impact of surviving a high school massacre for various

students.

293

521 Kate Kompas, ‘Revisiting Columbine High: The Aftermath.’ Ethos. Vol. 51, Issue 3,

February 2000. http://www.ethos.iastate.edu/FEB00/COLUMBINE/columbine.html.522 Kate Kompas, ‘Revisiting Columbine High: The Aftermath.’ Ethos. Vol. 51, Issue 3,

February 2000. http://www.ethos.iastate.edu/FEB00/COLUMBINE/columbine.html; original

parentheses. 523 John Cloud, ‘The Legacy of Columbine’ in Time (Australian edition). No. 11, March 19, 2001,

p. 31. 524 Time (Australian edition). No. 11, March 19, 2001. 525 The story focused heavily on the theme of warning signs. For example:

Weise, who routinely wore a long black trench coat, eyeliner and combat boots, has been described by several classmates as a quiet teenager. Some of them knew about his troubled childhood.

Despite those characteristics which classmates and acquaintances point to as warning signs, Dr. William Pollack of Harvard Medical School cautioned against stereotyping young men for potentially violent behaviour …

‘If we said the typical school shooter was an adolescent who wore black, was a male, listened to weird music, and got upset all the time, that would be 90 percent of all male adolescents,’ Pollack told Brzezinski. ‘It’s just not useful.’ …

Fellow student Ashley Morrison, 17, said Weise liked heavy metal music and dressed like a ‘goth,’ with black clothes, chains on his pants and black spiky hair.

‘He looks like one of those guys at the Littleton school,’ Morrison said, referring to the two teen gunman, members of the so-called Trench Coat Mafia, who killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves at Columbine near Littleton, Colorado, in 1999.

‘Troubled Life Of Minnesota Shooter.’ CBS/AP report. CBS News, March 22, 2005.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/22/national/main682257.shtml.526 The article’s sub-title continues ‘Or loner, either; Similarities to Columbine Shooters emerge.’

‘Aunts: Wiese was no monster.’ CBS News, March 24, 2005.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/24/earlyshow/main682795.shtml.527 The bumper sticker was reported by Terry L. Estep in ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ 13 February,

2000. http://www.mysterysteps.com/randomnotes/2000/02-13-00.htm.528 Ovid Demaris, America the Violent. Penguin Books Inc.: Baltimore, Maryland, 1970;

Christopher Sharrett (ed.). Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Wayne State University Press:

Detroit, 1999. 529 This is despite violence being ‘strongly rejected for inclusion in the American creed.’ Richard

Maxwell Brown, ‘Historical Patterns of Violence’ in Violence in America, Volume 2: Protest, Rebellion,

Reform (ed. Ted Robert Gurr). Sage Publications: Newbury Park, London, and New Delhi, 1989; p. 51 530 The Beslan siege occurred at Middle School No. 1 in North Ossetia in Russia in 2004, and was

staged by the Chechen militia. It lasted for several days, at the end of which approximately 335 people

were killed and 704 were wounded, many of them children who attended the school. 531 It is not inconsequential that chronic bullying was mentioned in all reports of school shootings

with the perpetrators predominantly the recipients (though, in the cases of Kip Kinkel, and Mitchell

294

Johnson and Andrew Golden, they were considered to be the instigators of bullying). Debate about the

consequences of bullying also formed a significant component of the public’s response to the crimes. The

Columbine High School, in particular, was considered to have a ‘toxic culture’ of bullying by popular and

influential athletes, with the faculty having ignored and downplayed incidents between students. 532 Loosely defined, ‘school’ violence could also encompass universities (such as Charles

Whitman, the sniper at the University of Texas in 1966, or the shooting of students by the military at Kent

State in 1970), vocational or special education colleges (such as Gallaudet University, a learning facility

for the hearing impaired in Washington, D.C., where a student was murdered on-campus in 1980, and

another in 2000), and primary schools (from Brenda Spencer’s spree in San Diego, California, 1979 to the

shooting of six year old Kayla Rolland by a classmate at Buell Elementary School in Michigan, 2000).

However, I will focus on violence that occurs in middle and high schools and that is perpetrated by

students.

In addition, I will not address the various types of systemic abuse or acts of physical punishment

that were common practice in schools until recent decades, such as caning. Nor will I address broader

notions of violence in schools in the United States, such as the treatment of Native American children, in

which children were forcibly removed from their homes to attend boarding schools and were forbidden to

speak in any language other than English, were made to cut their hair, were treated as servants, and were

frequently sexually and physically assaulted. Nor do I have the space to address in depth the impact of

the racial integration of schools across the United States following the overturning of the ‘separate but

equal’ rule. While these acts provide an intriguing background to the contemporary shock of racially

marked violence occurring in a school environment, I am focusing on individual acts of aggression. 533 Cho was reportedly greatly influenced by the Columbine massacre. In his ‘manifesto’ of

written and video taped messages sent to sent to a major news outlet he called Harris and Klebold

‘martyrs.’ 534 While drive-by shootings and individual confrontations display the same intention to wound or

kill, and feature the same easy access to lethal weapons as shooting sprees, their focus on gang activity

and interpersonal situations do not occur in the same register as high school shootings. In this sense, it is

possible to distinguish between on-campus violence in which the setting is coincidental, and then

school-specific violence, in which the rationale behind the aggressive act is somehow engendered by, or

is particular to, the school environment. 535 The term youth requires clarification for legal purposes as it ‘encompasses both juveniles and

adolescents.’ Heide therefore adopts the following distinctions: ‘[j]uvenile or minority status is

determined on the basis of age and is a legislative decision,’ with most states and the federal government

considering those 18 and under to be juveniles. The FBI also considers individuals aged 17 and under to

be juveniles. In contrast, adolescence, Heide notes, ‘is based on human development and varies across

individuals’ and ‘typically commences by age 12 or 13 years but may start earlier.’ This is significant as

the homicide rate increases with each subsequent age group. A study from 1996 revealed that killers aged

15-17 committed 88% of all youth homicides that year, with those under 10 years committing just 0.8%.

295

Kathleen M. Heide, Young Killers: The Challenge of Juvenile Homicide. Sage Publications: Thousand

Oaks, London, and New Delhi, 1999; p. 5. 536 In addition, the percentage of youths charged with homicide has significantly risen in the last

two decades, from 7.3% of the overall number of homicide arrests that year to 15% in 1996. Kathleen M.

Heide, Young Killers: The Challenge of Juvenile Homicide. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks,

London, and New Delhi, 1999; p. 6. 537 Bill Dedman, ‘Examining the psyche of an adolescent killer.’ Chicago Sun Times, October 15,

2000 (a). http://treas.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/shoot15.htm.

In recent decades, the overall level of high school violence, and high school fatalities, had steadily

increased overall. This general rise in school ground violence was reflected in Colorado, the home state

of Harris and Klebold, in the years prior to the shooting:

According to a survey conducted in 1997 by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, ten percent of the participating high school students said they had carried a weapon onto school property. In Colorado, 506 students were expelled during the 1997-98 school year for taking weapons to school. This is an 18 percent increase from the previous year.

Fiona Steel, ‘Calm Before The Storm: The Littleton School Massacre.’ The Crime Library,

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/littleton/index_1.html.

Yet juvenile arrests and crime rates have dramatically fallen, with the violent crime arrest rate

down by 30% since 1994, and murder arrests down by almost 50%. In addition, ‘[r]obberies are down by

45% since 1994; aggravated assaults are off by 20%; rape is down by 25%.’ David Westphal, ‘Predicted

teen-age crime wave failed to occur, numbers show.’ The Fresno Bee, December 13, 1999.

http://www.fresnobee.com/localnews/story/0,1724,121127,00.html.538 Alan Prendergast, ‘The Enemy Within: the lessons – and lies – of the Columbine Massacre.’

Newtimes, Broward-Palm Beach. http://www.newtimesbpb.com/extra/columbine1-6.html.539 Matt Kelley investigates the conservative depiction of the Columbine killers as ‘poster boys’

for a wanton, apathetic, and dangerous generation:

The discussion focused on one thread of the conservatives’ reaction to the slayings at the high school in Littleton: The idea that beginning in the 1960s, government and social policies toward children became increasingly lax, spawning a generation of selfish, nihilistic and violent youngsters.

To conservatives, the poster children for that lost generation are Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, who killed a dozen students and a teacher at Columbine High School and injured 23 others before they committed suicide.

Matt Kelley, ‘Conservatives: Schools lacking discipline: Lawyers’ group says fear of lawsuits has

contributed to violence.’ Boulder Daily News, August 14, 1999.

http://www.bouldernews.com/shooting/14ccolum.html.540 See, for example, David Crary’s article on the funding and implementation of anti-bullying

strategies across the United States in a ‘post-Columbine’ era. David Crary, ‘Californian shooting prompts

a new look at bullying.’ The Canberra Times, March 12, 2001, p. 13.

296

541 Colorado police psychologist John Nicoletti considers the form and style of these crimes to

comprise a distinct new category. Lisa Popyk, ‘Violence is seductive to new breed of killers.’ Cincinnati

Post, November 9, 1998 (c). http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/2kill110998.html.542 Previous incidents of similar school violence included Gary ‘Scott’ Pennington, 17, who killed

an English teacher and a janitor and held a class of 22 hostage at East Carter High School in Kentucky on

January 18, 1993. On January 23, 1995, John Sirola, 14, of Redlands, California, shot his high school

principal in the face at Sacred Heart School. Sirola tripped and accidentally shot and killed himself when

fleeing the scene. On November 15, 1995, a 17 year old senior from Tennessee, Jamie Rouse, killed a

teacher and a student, and wounded another teacher. As mentioned earlier, Barry Loukaitis is generally

considered to be the start of this particular form of school violence. 543 In addition, there have been reports of numerous foiled siege attempts, not of all of which are

reported and published in the media. The actual number of attempted or planned incidents is impossible

to verify. 544 I will address the Time magazine cover later in my chapter. 545 Kinkel’s parents were not uncritical proponents of gun ownership. Kinkel, moreso than other

school shooters, was considered to be fanatical about weaponry and violence, and his parents bought him

the guns rather than have him purchase illegal weapons on his own. They also tried to limit his access to

the weapons by locking them away, and took him to shooting ranges to control his usage of the weapon

and to try to teach him responsibility concerning weapons. 546 Charles Patrick Ewing, Kids Who Kill. Avon Books: New York, 1990. 547 Lisa Popyk, ‘Blood in the School Yard.’ Cincinnati Post, November 7, 1998 (b).

http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/1kill110798.html.548 Lisa Popyk, ‘Blood in the School Yard.’ Cincinnati Post. November 7, 1998 (b).

http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/1kill110798.html.

The Secret Service study disputes the claim concerning violence against animals and argues that

the boys are just as likely to have an interest in, but little actual involvement with, violence, apart from

through popular culture or a fascination with weapons. Bill Dedman, ‘School shooters: Secret Service

findings.’ Chicago Sun Times, October 15, 2000 (b).

http://www.treasury.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/find15.htm.

Several shooters, however, were proven to have committed violence against animals. Kip Kinkel

was known to torture animals, and when Luke Woodham’s graphic description of the sadistic murder of

his dog was read aloud in court it apparently left jurors visibly shaken. Clifford L. Linedecker, Babyface

Killers: Horrifying True Stories of America’s Youngest Murderers. St. Martin’s Paperbacks: New York,

1999, p. 47. 549 Stacie Oulton, ‘Tales of Bullying Outlined.’ The Denver Post, 2 December, 2000.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/col1202.htm.

Jessica Hughes, who graduated from Columbine High School in 1999, defined the school this way:

‘There’s basically two classes of people. There’s the low and the high. The low sticks together and the

high sticks together, and the high makes fun of the low and you just deal with it.’ Quoted in Lynn Bartels

297

and Carla Crowder, ‘Fatal Friendship: How two suburban boys traded baseball and bowling for murder

and madness.’ Denver Rocky Mountain News, August 22, 1999.

http://www.denver-rmn.com/shooting/0822fata1.shtml.

The rigid nature of social hierarchies at high schools is typically enforced by components such as

popularity, wealth, physical appeal, and athletic ability. While these elements are difficult to theorise,

they have an undeniable and quantifiable effect. For example, it is not coincidental that a variety of films

in recent decades depict negotiating the social environment in high school as akin to a inhabiting a war

zone or as an unmitigated and on-going trauma, such as Carrie (1976), The Chocolate War (1988),

Heathers (1989), and Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995). 550 The teens’ difficulties with their peers does not mean that they had no friends or were socially

awkward. Kip Kinkel was popular at school, and Harris and Klebold had a wide circle of friends. Harris

in particular was considered charming and sociable by adults such as his employers. 551 Lisa Popyk, ‘Killers gave plenty of warning signs.’ Cincinnati Post, 10 November, 1998 (d).

http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/3kill111098.html. See also Lee Sherman, ‘Emotional Lessons:

Out on the Tundra, Kids Learn to Better Understand Their Own and Others’ Feelings’ in The Northwest

Education Magazine. Spring 1998. http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/spring_99/article4.html.552 Lisa Popyk, ‘Violence is seductive to new breed of killers.’ Cincinnati Post. November 9, 1998

(c). http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/2kill110998.html.553 Bill Dedman, ‘School shooters: Secret Service findings’. Chicago Sun Times, October 15,

2000 (b). http://www.treasury.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/find15.htm.

The Secret Service examined the school shooting phenomenon following the Columbine incident,

analysing 37 cases featuring 41 perpetrators from 1974 to 2000, and conducted interviews with 10 killers.

As Pelley summarises, they discovered that ‘[a]ll the shooters are boys and nearly all are white. Together

they killed 59 people and wounded 124.’ Scott Pelley, ‘Secret Service Studies Shootings: Agency Is

Researching Causes Of Violence.’ CBS News, August 15, 2000.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/03/14/60II/main171898.shtml.554 Lisa Popyk, ‘Violence is seductive to new breed of killers.’ Cincinnati Post. November 9, 1998

(c). http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/2kill110998.html.555 Other measures include encouraging the use of anonymous ‘tip off’ boxes for threats or actions,

restricting visitors, and banning body piercings, unusual hair colours and ‘offensive’ hairstyles, and

‘inflammatory’ or negative items of apparel ranging from Marilyn Manson t-shirts to black trench coats. 556 Bill Dedman, ‘Schools may miss mark on preventing violence.’ Chicago Sun Times, October

16, 2000 (c). http://www.treasury.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/shoot16.htm.557 Steel cites the reaction of several critics:

Many critics of ‘student profiling’ programs believe there is a danger that children who do not reflect a desired image may be unfairly labelled. American Civil Liberties Union spokeswoman, Emily Whitfield says ‘Not only are students being unfairly targeted but, in some cases, there’s not a whole lot of thought going into it.’ Recognizing such dangers, Elizabeth Kuffner, spokesperson for the National Association of School Psychologists warns, ‘Definitely there are warning signs. Definitely, there are things to look for. But to just say a kid fits this profile, we don't think this is a good idea.’

298

Fiona Steel, ‘Calm Before The Storm: The Littleton School Massacre.’ The Crime Library,

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/littleton/index_1.html.

Jon Katz also notes the potentially stigmatising effect of these profiles:

Federal agencies like the FBI and ATF distribute ‘geek profiles’ and profit-making corporations peddle software security programs to maintain secret lists of ‘potentially dangerous’ students who also happen in some cases to be outspoken … and individualistic. The war against these kids has become a crusade for conformity, intimidation and exclusion.

Katz also notes the importance of preventing incidents of bullying and creating a culture of

tolerance:

This is a point that educators, journalists and politicians have almost criminally refused to consider: Perhaps the best way to keep kids from turning on their classmates is to protect them in the first place, to create humane, create educational environments in which it is as unacceptable to push dog feces into somebody's face as it is to threaten to blow up your school.

Jon Katz, ‘Eric, Dylan, and Mary of Doom.’ Slashdot. 15 December, 1999.

http://www.slashdot.org/features/99/12/14/1221243.shtml.

In addition, Ann Beeson of the American Civil Liberties Union believes that the United States has

‘become a nation of fear’ to the extent that schools are now ‘dealing with all students as if they were

potential killers. It is making schools suspicious, fearful places where students often have fewer rights

than prisoners.’ Cited by Matt Kelley, ‘Conservatives: Schools lacking discipline: Lawyers’ group says

fear of lawsuits has contributed to violence. Boulder Daily News, August 14, 1999.

http://www.bouldernews.com/shooting/14ccolum.html.

The rampant fear and public perception is, as David Westphal illustrates, more important than

information proving otherwise. He cites Vincent Schiraldi, director of the Justice Policy Institute, who

believes that there has been ‘an overreaction by the public and politicians to youth violence’ in the face of

this sharp reduction in juvenile crime.

‘You’ve got metal detectors showing up in schools where they don’t even have a stoplight in town,’ he says. ‘Somehow Americans have been persuaded that our kids are animals out there with guns, headed to school.’

David Westphal, ‘Predicted teen-age crime wave failed to occur, numbers show.’ The Fresno Bee,

December 13, 1999. http://www.fresnobee.com/localnews/story/0,1724,121127,00.html.558 Rooney’s full quote runs: ‘Why did this happen? It happened because some bad, screwed-up,

mentally unstable teen-age boys were consumed with hate. Hating is such a satisfying emotion. It’s easy

to enjoy hating. Kosovo again. Most of us deny ourselves the pleasure of it. These people did not. I

don’t even like calling them boys. It’s too good a word for what they were.’ Andy Rooney, online

transcript of 60 Minutes, April 25, 1999. http://sobek.colorado.edu/~glenn/media/60min/425b.html.559 This illustrates Butler’s point concerning the ways in which the necessarily ‘inhuman’

individual functions as a boundary for regulated and appropriate humanity, and that this humanity is

achieved, in part, through access to sanctioned forms of sexuality and gender, amongst other elements of

identity. 560 JoAnn Wypijewski, ‘Blaming the Messenger’ in Ms. Vol. XI, No. 1, December 2000/January

2001; p. 33.

299

561 As Gavin de Becker says of the public interest in the Oklahoma City Bombing:

We all watched as bodies were carried away from the Oklahoma City bombing, and by the end of that week we learned to our horror that nineteen children had died in the blast. You now know that seventy children died that same week at the hands of a parent, just like every week - and most of them were under five years old.

Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us from Violence. Bloomsbury:

Great Britain, 1997; p. 9. 562 Jodie Morse, ‘Girlhoods Interrupted.’ Time (Australian edition). No. 11, March 19, 2001;

p. 28. 563 Charles Patrick Ewing, in Kids Who Kill, has a chapter entitled ‘Girls Who Kill.’ None of the

examples involve school shootings. Kids Who Kill. Avon Books: New York, 1990. 564 Richard Lacayo, ‘Toward the Root of the Evil’ in Time (Australian edition). No. 14, April 6,

1998; p. 34. 565 Richard Lacayo, ‘Toward the Root of the Evil’ in Time (Australian edition). No. 14, April 6,

1998; p. 35. 566 Lisa Popyk, ‘Blood in the School Yard.’ Cincinnati Post, November 7, 1998 (b).

http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/1kill110798.html.567 In addition, it is difficult to prove a genuine correspondence between what compels an eating

disorder and a killing siege, much less to convincingly argue that, simply with the proper socialisation,

girls would also commit massacres. 568 Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence. Viking:

New York, 1997. 569 This is, in part, Collier’s point about examples of male violence being neutralised as gender

specific, as they are never contrasted with the paucity of equivalent acts by females. These figures show

how difficult it is to connect masculinity and violence as violence has such an implicitly gendered

connotation already.570 Scott Pelley, ‘Secret Service Studies Shootings: Agency Is Researching Causes Of Violence.’

CBS News, August 15, 2000. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/03/14/60II/main171898.shtml.

Others concur. Dedman, after detailing the limits of profiling in terms of preventing further

massacres, adds:

Although there is no profile, the shooters do share one characteristic.

‘I believe they’re all boys because the way we bring up boys in America predisposes them to a sense of loneliness and disconnection and sadness,’ said William S. Pollack, a psychologist and consultant to the Secret Service.

‘When they have additional pain, additional grievances, they are less likely to reach out and talk to someone, less likely to be listened to. Violence is the only way they start to feel they can get a result.’

Bill Dedman, ‘Examining the psyche of an adolescent killer.’ Chicago Sun Times, October 15,

2000 (a). http://treas.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/shoot15.htm.

300

571 Legal theorist Patricia J. Williams commented on the treatment of statistics in the Columbine

media coverage:

The last time I can remember so much national soul-searching was around the Jeffrey Dahmer case. Dahmer, as you will recall, murdered and cannibalized at least seventeen men, mostly black, Hispanic or Asian, in Milwaukee. As in the Littleton case, there was lots of evidence that Dahmer had expressed intense hatred for very specific categories of humanity, particularly blacks and gays, yet, again as in Littleton, a kind of randomized, free-enterprise denial tended to diffuse the significance of that. As one commentator on the Dahmer case put it, ‘only’ ten of his victims were black. Or, as one Milwaukee resident put it, ‘He could have hated women, he could have hated whites, he just happened to hate men.’

Patricia J. Williams, ‘Smart Bombs.’ The Nation, June 7, 1999. 572 Bill Dedman, ‘Schools may miss mark on preventing violence.’ Chicago Sun Times, October

16, 2000 (c). http://www.treasury.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/shoot16.htm.573 Cited by bell hooks in Killing Race: Ending Racism. Henry Holt and Company: New York,

1995, p. 23. 574 Time (Australian edition). No. 17, May 1, 1995. 575 Time (Australian edition). No. 17, May 1, 1995.

There are several articles within the special edition devoted to the phenomenon, and each article’s

title page features an image of a dramatically frayed United States flag emblazoned with the words ‘The

Terror From Within.’ In addition, the title of the lead article is called ‘Who Are They?’ The next edition

of Time reveals a continuing preoccupation with themes of invasion and deception with the lead article on

the bombing called ‘Enemies Within.’ Time (Australian edition). No. 18, May 8, 1995. 576 Mike Hill, ‘Can Whiteness Speak?’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee

Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997 (b), p. 172. 577 Mike Hill, ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in

Whiteness: A Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London,

1997 (a); pp. 1-2. 578 Mike Hill, ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in

Whiteness: A Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London,

1997 (a), p. 1. 579 Mike Hill, ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in

Whiteness: A Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London,

1997 (a); pp. 1-2. 580 Mike Hill, ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in

Whiteness: A Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London,

1997 (a), n. 4, p. 14. 581 Mike Hill, ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in

Whiteness: A Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London,

1997 (a), p. 2.

301

582 Mike Hill, ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary Terrors’ in

Whiteness: A Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University Press: New York and London,

1997 (a), p. 2. 583 This comment was reported by Ms. Dee Grantz, Mrs. Klebold’s hairdresser, who spoke to Mrs.

Klebold when preparing her for Dylan’s funeral. Ms. Grantz gave the interview in order to address the

condemnation of the parents. Ms Grantz added, to the comments concerning Klebold’s mother, that:

She expressed real surprise, came across very shocked and numb, confused, in disbelief … She said she didn't know who that boy was, and now she wasn't going to be able to find out.

Tillie Fong, ‘Klebold’s mom “shocked and numb”: Hairdresser tells of a mother’s pain after son

goes on rampage.’ Denver Rocky Mountain News, April 24, 1999.

http://broncomania.com/shooting/0424mom3.shtml.584 Time magazine is estimated to have a weekly circulation of 4.3 million in North America,

though its potential audience is much wider, particularly with its online presence. 585 Time (U.S.). May 3, Vol. 153, No. 17, 1999. The Australian edition featured a different cover. 586 This contrasts with some of the first images of Harris and Klebold published, and that were

taken from their freshman and junior yearbooks. These official school photos revealed them to look

much younger, but also much preppier and somewhat geeky and awkward. 587 Nancy Gibbs and Timothy Roche, ‘The Columbine Tapes’ in Time (Australian edition). No.

51, December 20, 1999; p. 24. 588 Time’s second cover devoted to the Columbine killings focussed on police evidence called the

‘Columbine tapes.’ These were video tapes left behind by Harris and Klebold in which they detailed their

intentions, hopes, and motivation and which the Time reporter was allegedly shown in confidence. 589 The article commences, rather luridly:

Childhood should be a game of waiting in the wings, of playing at hearts, broken then mended, of rehearsing life, falling but protected. But the news out of Jonesboro, Arkansas, last week was a monstrous anomaly: a boundary had been crossed that should not have been.

One major function of the monster, as noted in the previous chapters, is to break down categories

and borders, so it is perhaps unsurprising to find monstrous rhetoric being used to describe the

perpetrators. Nayda Labi, ‘The Hunter and the Choirboy’ in Time (Australian edition). No. 14, April 6,

1998, p. 25. 590 Nayda Labi, ‘The Hunter and the Choirboy’ in Time (Australian edition). No. 14, April 6,

1998. 591 Kate Kompas, ‘Revisiting Columbine High: The Aftermath.’ Ethos, Vol. 51, Issue 3, February

2000. http://www.ethos.iastate.edu/FEB00/COLUMBINE/columbine.html.592 Curiously, Time published a small article on the Gothic subculture with which the boys were

erroneously aligned. Titled ‘We’re Goths and Not Monsters,’ the brief piece attempts to distinguish

Harris and Klebold from the true members of the gothic subculture, but also to separate the broader gothic

community from the stigmatising association with violence. The irony of protesting that the subculture is

comprised of ‘Goths’ not ‘Monsters’ within a magazine that previously termed the teens ‘monsters’ on its

302

cover is not recognised by Time. Chris Taylor, ‘We’re Goths and Not Monsters’ in Time (Australian

edition). No. 18, May 3, 1999, p. 43. 593 Matthew Heimer, ‘Adding Up The Facts.’ Brill’s Content, August 1999.

http://www.brillscontent.com/1999aug/features/addingup.shtml.

Yet this belief presupposes that the act of monstrification explicitly excludes the glamorisation that

comes with the attainment of infamy, and that monsters are not often strangely sympathetic and the focal

point of the texts they inhabit (as the popularity of the character Hannibal Lecter attests, or the

rehabilitation of monsters from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein onwards to Monsters Inc.). 594 Several web pages were set up by supporters in memorial for the two teens, such as ‘Tears for

Eric and Dylan,’ ‘A Columbine Memorial,’ and the ‘Reb-Vodka page.’ They were constructed and run

by individuals, not official organisations, and were typically quickly removed from the internet.

The text of the main body of the ‘Tears for Eric and Dylan’ page ran as follows:

‘Who could memorialize two monsters?’

So goes the usual battle cry of most people. Since the horrible events first unfolded on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have become the epitome of evil in the eyes of many...TOO many.

Those of us who have created and are contributing to this web site are not memorializing monsters. We are memorializing two bright, funny, and sadly misjudged and misunderstood teenage boys who somehow became horribly lost along the way...so lost that they did the unthinkable on their final day.

Dylan and Eric were not monsters. They were in pain.

There is a very large difference between the two.

You will find no stereotype to attach to those of us who, in remembering Eric and Dylan, have decided to form this tribute for them. We are not ‘murderers’, ‘sick’, ‘crazy’, or anything else of the type.

We come from all across the country and all around the world. We range in age from 13 to 50. We are guys and girls, students and professionals, daughters, sons, and parents. We feel deeply for the loss of the 13 other victims of the Columbine shootings; we do not condone the violence that took their lives away so prematurely.

And we mourn, miss, and remember Eric and Dylan. We did not know them in life, but we feel we know something of them now. They were two very human individuals with emotions, promise, and potential. They, too, had hopes and dreams. They, too, had families who loved them and miss them unbearably. They, too, left the world that much emptier when they exited it.

The difference is that so many have chosen to make them caricatures based upon the horrible decisions they made at the end of their lives, rather than looking past their tragic and hate-filled last actions to see the feelings, despair, and overwhelming sadness inside them.

You do not have to agree with our decision to mourn Eric and Dylan’s deaths and remember their lives. You may continue to fear, hate, and malign them. This web site cannot and likely will not change your mind for you.

We do, however, hope that it might open it.

http://www.angelfire.com/co2/tearsforericanddylan/; original emphasis.

303

595 Jon Katz, ‘Eric, Dylan, and Mary of Doom.’ Slashdot. 15 December, 1999.

http://www.slashdot.org/features/99/12/14/1221243.shtml596 Lynn Burke, ‘Some Sites Devoted to Killers’ at Wired, April 26, 2000.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,35784,00.html.597 Bernall offers another example:

At Cassie’s memorial-a white tent set up by our church with candles and flowers and tables piled high with letters and mementos and gifts-someone left a large, yellow Mylar ‘happy face’ balloon. One evening Chris [Cassie’s younger brother] was standing there with some friends and noticed that someone had taken a black marker and made it look as if it had been shot. Sickened, Chris destroyed the balloon. But we haven’t forgotten. How can we?

Misty Bernall, She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. The Plough Publishing

House: Farmington, PA, 1999; p. 28. 598 The popular line of questioning best expressed as ‘Why here? How could this happen?’ was

met with disbelief by some individuals who had also suffered through incidents of bullying similar to

those reported to have been experienced by Harris and Klebold. While many expressed a shared

understanding of the feelings they assumed that the pair felt, most individuals were careful to distinguish

between understanding an emotion and endorsing it. Perhaps not surprisingly, Klebold and Harris

became heroes to a small group of individuals who had similar experiences and felt as though their pain

was vindicated in the pair’s actions. 599 The other guests on the program were the Brown family, who had registered complaints with

the local sheriff after having been the target of physical violence by Harris. Their son Brooks was also

the recipient of online threats. The Browns believed that the siege could have been prevented had their

warnings taken more seriously. Brooks Brown, a childhood friend of Klebold, had subsequently

reconciled with Harris, which possibly led to Harris sparing his life on the morning of the massacre. 600 Bill Briggs and Jason Blevins, ‘A Boy with Many Sides’ in The Denver Post, May 2, 1999.

http://extras.denverpost.com/news/shot0502b.htm.601 Sharon Cohen, ‘Did parents ignore warning signs?’ The Daily Camera, April 26, 1999.

http://web.dailycamera.com/shooting/26apart.html.

Misty Bernall quotes from the letter that the Klebold family sent her:

We will never understand why this tragedy happened, or what we might have done to prevent it. We apologize for the role our son had in your Cassie’s death. We never saw anger or hatred in Dylan, until the last moments of his life when we watched in helpless horror with the rest of the world. The reality that our son shared in the responsibility for this tragedy is still incredibly difficult for us to comprehend.

Misty Bernall, She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. The Plough Publishing

House: Farmington, PA, 1999, p. 130. 602 Carla Crowder, ‘Harrises didn’t see a monster in their midst.’ Denver Rocky Mountain News,

21 June, 1999. http://www.denver-rmn.com/shooting/0621harr1.shtml.603 See, for example, John Block Friedman on the role of portents and warnings by deities in

The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

304

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981; and David Williams, Deformed Discourse: The Function of

the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal, 1996. 604 Rosi Braidotti notes that ‘[t]he monster is the bodily incarnation of difference from the basic

human norm; it is a deviant, an a-nomaly; it is abnormal … the very notion of the human body rests

upon an image that is intrinsically prescriptive: a normally human being is the zero-degree of

monstrosity.’ Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory.

Columbia University Press: New York, 1994, p. 78. 605 Marie-Hélène Huet examines monsters as the product of the female imagination in Monstrous

Imagination. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1993. 606 Joanna Overing, ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador in Piaroa

Images of Alterity and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American

Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996; and

Edith Porada. 607 See Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’ in Monster Theory: Reading

Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996 (b),

and Elizabeth Young, ‘Here Comes the Bride: Wedding Gender and Race in Bride of Frankenstein’ in

The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (ed. Barry Keith Grant). University of Texas

Press: Austin, Texas, 1996. 608 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996. 609 The Australian magazine, October 28-29, 1995. 610 Who Weekly, No. 146, December 12, 1994. 611 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a); p. 8, original emphasis. 612 This is despite the Brown family’s attempts to report Harris’ threats towards their son Brooks

made on Harris’ website to authorities. Klebold’s participation particularly shocked friends and family

who had never seen him act in any significant or warning ways prior to the event. 613 This is despite the boys themselves boasting of near-misses, and claiming that even the

discovery of their plans would not have deterred them. 614 Michael Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to Saracen Alterity’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996; p. 282. 615 Kate Kompas, ‘Revisiting Columbine High: The Aftermath.’ Ethos, Vol. 51, Issue 3, February

2000. http://www.ethos.iastate.edu/FEB00/COLUMBINE/columbine.html.616 Collier approaches the mass media interpretation of the spree killing phenomenon with some

trepidation given the fraught and often contradictory state of media representation. He recognises that

‘constructing a reading from something as diffuse and complex as press discourse is notoriously

305

problematic.’ Richard Collier, Masculinities, Crime and Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality and the

Criminal(ised) Other. Sage Publications: London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi, 1998, p. 105. 617 Richard Collier, Masculinities, Crime and Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality and the

Criminal(ised) Other. Sage Publications: London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi, 1998, p. 107. 618 Richard Collier, Masculinities, Crime and Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality and the

Criminal(ised) Other. Sage Publications: London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi, 1998, p. 107. 619 Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press: Durham and London, 1995, p. 92. 620 Andy Rooney, online transcript of 60 Minutes, April 25, 1999.

http://sobek.colorado.edu/~glenn/media/60min/425b.html.621 The evidence is somewhat ambiguous. Some reports show little or no evidence of significant

Nazi paraphernalia, while other articles mentioned a videotape of Harris displaying a knife with a symbol,

perhaps a swastika, etched onto it. April 20 was the 110th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, though

subsequent investigations revealed that the boys had originally planned the massacre for April 19, which

would then coincide with both the FBI’s siege at the Branch Davidian ranch in Waco, Texas, and the

Oklahoma bombing (which Timothy McVeigh had deliberately scheduled to occur on Waco’s

anniversary). The boys allegedly exhibited an interest in specific Nazi beliefs concerning evolution and

destruction. Their friends, however, often dispute this opinion. Klebold’s mother, herself Jewish, was

said to be stunned at her son’s apparent interests and activities. 622 Terra Oglesbee, who shared a creative writing class with the boys, was asked about their

apparent racism.

Oglesbee, who is black, said neither Harris nor Klebold showed signs of being racist – an element that came into focus during the shootings, when one of the gunmen reportedly used a racial epithet before shooting a black student in the face.

Joel Achenbach and Dale Russakoff, ‘Teen Shooter’s Life Paints Antisocial Portrait.’ Washington

Post, April 29, 1999.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/april99/antisocial04299.htm.

In a single paragraph devoted to the question, Oglesbee is transformed into a ‘native informant’, as

though she would have known their racism intuitively or automatically would have been their target. It

also positions white students and white journalists as untouched by race and unable to fathom whether a

fellow white individual is either racist or acting in a racist and anti-Semitic manner. 623 Eyewitness accounts are contradictory. Some alleged that Shoels was shot multiple times and

that Harris and Klebold said ‘Cool, look at the black kids’ brains,’ yet the Shoels family released Isaiah’s

autopsy report, which stated that he died of a single gunshot wound to the chest. 624 Nancy Gibbs and Timothy Roche, ‘The Columbine Tapes’ in Time (Australian edition).

No. 51, December 20, 1999, p. 24. 625 Although his user profile was taken down by AOL immediately following the massacre, Harris’

web page was downloaded and copied before it was deleted. Cached copies exist on various web sites

and include a range of material, such as a simultaneously comical and disturbing list of things that Harris

hated and loved. He follows the relatively innocuous

306

YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE?

--STAR WARS FANS! GET A FRKIN LIFE YOU BORING DICKHEADS!

with

YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE?

--RACISM! Anyone who believes that blacks, asians, mexicans or people from any other race besides white-american..people who think that should be drug out into the street, have their arms ripped off, be burnt suht at the stumps, then have every person from the race that YOU hate come out and beat the shit out of you. and if you are female, then you should be raped by a male from the race you hate and be forced to raise the child! You people are the scum of society and arent worth a damn piece of worm shit. You are all trash. And dont let me catch you making fun of someone just because they are a different colour because i will come in and break your fucking legs with a plastic spoon, i dont care how long it takes and thats both legs mind you.

Other targets of his ire include people who mispronounce words such as ‘espresso,’ liars, people

who claim to be marital arts experts, the OJ Simpson and JonBenét Ramsey trials, and schoolwork

(though ‘school’ is on the list of things he loves). This material was found at

http://ericanddylan.homepage.com/wisdom.html, which is no longer online. 626 Randy Brown is the father of Brooks Brown, who was a friend of Klebold’s since childhood.

Cited by Eric Pooley in ‘Portrait of a Deadly Bond.’ Time (Australian edition). No. 19, May 10, 1999,

p. 25. 627 A brief note of qualification: not all the boys who perpetuated these high school massacres

were from the suburbs. In this section I am referring in particular to the Columbine case, and to several

of the more publicised recent examples. Ramsey in Alaska, and Johnson and Golden in Arkansas, for

example, hailed from small rural communities. 628 This is not to imply that the suburbs have not been prey to multiple forms of violence. 629 Richard Collier, Masculinities, Crime and Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality and the

Criminal(ised) Other. Sage Publications: London, Thousand Oaks, and New Delhi, 1998, p. 107. 630 In addition, as noted in my chapter about serial murderers, these may seem like ‘motiveless’

and ‘random’ killings, but they make sense to the person committing them, and arise from his particular

concerns and beliefs. 631 This gesture echoes what McCarthy et al term the process by which the ‘needs of the suburbs

therefore become “the national interests”.’ Cameron McCarthy, Alicia Rodriquez, Shuaib Meecham,

Stephen David, Carrie Wilson-Brown, Heriberto Godina, K.E. Supryia, and Ed Buendia, ‘Race, Suburban

Resentment, and the Representation of the Inner City in Contemporary Film and Television’ in Off White:

Readings on Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun

Wong). Routledge: New York and London, 1997, p. 234. 632 Abercrombie and Fitch is a popular fashion label that provides conservative, expensive clothing

favoured by wealthy teenagers. Nancy Gibbs, ‘Special Report: The Littleton Massacre’ in Time

(Australian edition). No. 18, May 3, 1999, p. 40.

307

633 This perception of Littleton as a solid, secure enclave is echoed by Misty Bernall when she

expresses surprise that ‘supposedly peaceful middle-class suburbs like ours are breeding children capable

of such things’ as the siege. Bernall, in her book about the perceived ‘martyrdom’ of her daughter Cassie

during the siege at Columbine, discusses the downplaying of seemingly idle threats of violence and acts

of aggression by her daughter’s peers prior to the event. It is interesting that she believes that Littleton

did not already contain forms of violence. Given that much of the book is devoted to detailing how

Cassie was a reformed ‘troubled teen’ whose life had turned around after embracing religion, it is slightly

disingenuous for Bernall to acknowledge her daughter’s problems and then assume that adolescent

violence is something that can (only) happen somewhere else. Misty Bernall, She Said Yes: The Unlikely

Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. The Plough Publishing House: Farmington, PA, 1999, p. 61. 634 John Kramer, ‘Introduction’ to North American Suburbs: Politics, Diversity, and Change (ed.

John Kramer). The Glendessary Press: Berkeley, California, 1972, p. xvi. 635 Marc L. Silva and Martin Melkonian, ‘Introduction’ to Contested Terrain: Power, Politics,

and Participation in Suburbia (eds Marc L. Silva and Martin Melkonian). Greenwood Press: Westport,

Connecticut, and London, 1995, p. 4. 636 Andrew Wiese makes several points in his article ‘Racial Cleansing in the Suburbs: Suburban

Government, Urban Renewal, and Segregation on Long Island, 1945-1960’ that demonstrates that the

suburban population has never been uniformly white, but that there have been systematic efforts of a

variety of fronts to ensure that it is as white as possible. He looks at the role played by white residents on

Long Island between 1945 and 1960 and argues that ‘[w]ith federal, state, and real estate industry support,

they worked not only to exclude racial minorities, but even endeavored to expel black enclaves that were

already there. Among the most intrusive of these efforts was an activity typically associated with central

cities; slum clearance and urban renewal.’ He lists several salient points.

First, African Americans have lived in suburbs for as long as whites. Second, where large numbers of middle class African-Americans moved to suburbs after 1960, it was usually an older black suburban community that provided the anchor. Finally, politics played a crucial role in shaping the suburban racial pattern. Specifically, local municipalities and elites used land control, eminent domain, and the disposition of state and federal funds to craft a style of racial exclusion in the suburbs that was far more effective than was possible in the atomized housing market of most central cities.

Andrew Wiese, ‘Racial Cleansing in the Suburbs: Suburban Government, Urban Renewal, and

Segregation on Long Island, 1945-1960’ in Contested Terrain: Power, Politics, and Participation in

Suburbia (eds Marc L. Silva and Martin Melkonian). Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, and

London, 1995, p. 61. 637 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from

Identity Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998, p. 7. 638 Robin D. G. Kelley also affirms this ‘white flight’ trend of fleeing increasingly decaying or

polluted urban centres, with a concomitant pooling of resources around the newly developed suburbs. In

his chapter on the necessity of government sponsored welfare, Kelley argues against the stigmatising

perspective that government support can be considered handouts or undeserved charity when he notes that

‘[w]e often forget that state supports have been essential for the creation of suburbia and the success of

308

big capital, and rarely are those subsidies described as ‘handouts’ or ‘welfare.’ Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’

Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America. Beacon Press: Boston, 1997,

p. 10. 639 Lipsitz traces acts of overt racism in the selling and renting of property, but also locates the

regulation of unofficial segregation through examples such as the near impossibility by non-white

applicants in securing loans for properties in predominantly white areas, or if attained, at a decent price.

Other tactics by real estate developers include the implementation of government regulated guidelines

that made it extremely difficult to complain about systemic discrimination and the highly overpriced

properties offered to non-white consumers. George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness:

How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998. 640 In addition, ‘federal and state tax monies routinely funded the construction of water supplies

and sewage facilities for racially exclusive suburban communities in the 1940s and 1950s.’ George

Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics.

Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998, pp. 5-6.

In accordance with Lipsitz’s view, Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg assert that ‘[a]s with

race in general, whiteness holds material/economic implications’ and detail several related strategies that

demonstrate this:

The Federal Housing Administration, for example, traditionally has favored housing loans for white suburbs instead of ‘ethnic’ inner cities. Banks have ensured that access to property ownership and capital acquisition for Blacks is severely limited compared to Whites. Over the decades following World War II, unions ignored the struggle for full employment and universal medical care, opting for contracts that provided private medical coverage, pensions, and job security to predominantly white organized workers in mass-production industries.

Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg, ‘Addressing the Crisis of Whiteness: Refiguring White

Identity in a Pedagogy of Whiteness’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L.

Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press:

New York, 1998; p. 4. 641 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from

Identity Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998, p. 7. 642 Cameron McCarthy, Alicia Rodriquez, Shuaib Meecham, Stephen David, Carrie

Wilson-Brown, Heriberto Godina, K.E. Supryia, and Ed Buendia, ‘Race, Suburban Resentment, and the

Representation of the Inner City in Contemporary Film and Television’ in Off White: Readings on Race,

Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997, p. 230. 643 The four main cities cited were Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago. Joel

Kotkin, ‘White Flight to the Fringes’ in The Washington Post, March 10, 1996, archived at the Pacific

Research Institute. http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.610/pub_detail.asp.644 The manner in which homogeneity is prized is expressed succinctly:

Like the new migrants, many relocating executives openly express the desire to be in a region with a highly homogenous, relatively well-educated work force. ‘One thing people don’t want to worry about is race relations,’ notes Brad Bertoch, president of the Wayne Brown Institute,

309

an organization dedicated to developing Utah’s high-tech industries. ‘Companies think if they go to a neighborhood where everyone is like me, it makes it easier. It takes away from stress. People want to remove some of the variables of their lives.’

The automatic equation of ‘race’ with problems is highly significant in this context, and

underscores some of the prejudices at work in these broad designations of stigmatised difference as

inevitably negative. The lure of a community where everyone is ‘like me’ is an important sentiment in

considering the impact of the suburbs on the American self-representation and the false security that it

derives from this fantasy of unthreatening homogeneity. Joel Kotkin, ‘White Flight to the Fringes’ in

The Washington Post, March 10, 1996, archived at the Pacific Research Institute.

http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.610/pub_detail.asp.645 Kotkin later memorably phrases this impulse as America ‘seek[ing] to freeze itself’ in ‘the

comforting outlines of its imagined past.’ This trajectory is also found echoed in the conservative

religious, political, and social values held by many emigrating to these predominantly white communities,

as ‘the entire Northwestern region, as well as Arizona, has become something of a bastion for all sorts of

far-right, antisemitic and anti-black organizations.’ In addition, many ‘survivalist’ and extremist

movements are based in the states that attract more of the white settlers, such as North Carolina, Utah,

Idaho, Arizona, and Colorado. Joel Kotkin, ‘White Flight to the Fringes’ in The Washington Post,

March 10, 1996, archived at the Pacific Research Institute.

http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.610/pub_detail.asp.646 He notes: ‘Similarly, in recent years Colorado Springs has become a hotbed for right-wing

Christian organizations and the national epicenter for anti-gay movements. Today the city of 300,000 has

more than 50 national Christian religious groups; nearly half have arrived in the last decade.’ Joel

Kotkin, ‘White Flight to the Fringes’ in The Washington Post, March 10, 1996, archived at the Pacific

Research Institute. http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.610/pub_detail.asp.647 Margie McAllister and Monte Whaley, ‘Lafayette’s student drain: White Flight.’ The Daily

Camera, August 30, 1998. http://www.broomfieldnews.com/extra/flight/flight3.html.648 Benedict Anderson cited by Judith Halberstam in Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the

Technology of Monsters. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1995, p. 14.

It is significant that she details the construction of these desired spaces of interpersonal connection

and physical location as occurring through the negation of monsters, which ‘are defined both as other than

the imagined community and as the beings that cannot be imagined as community.’ Judith Halberstam,

Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke University Press: Durham and

London, 1995, p. 15. 649 The exposure and analysis of middle class mores and attitudes continues, in recent films such as

Happiness and Safe.650 It is also interesting that Hutchinson described the massacre as a ‘monstrous tragedy.’ Earl

Ofari Hutchinson, ‘It Happened at Columbine, Not An Inner-City School.’ Black Editorial Network.

http://www.ben.net/Main/editorial/hutchinson/columbine/columbine.htm.

310

651 Angie Cannon, Betsy Streisand, and Dan McGraw, ‘Why? There were plenty of warnings, but

no one stopped two twisted teens.’ US News and World Report, May 3, 1999.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/990503/archive_000876.htm.652 They assert ‘[i]f a criminologist was to predict where adolescents might be murdered in the

United States, one of the last places he would pick is an affluent high school like that in Littleton, Colo.,

where one of the assailants shows up in a BMW.’ This assessment ignores that other high school

massacres tend to accord with the Columbine profile. Angie Cannon, Betsy Streisand, and Dan McGraw,

‘Why? There were plenty of warnings, but no one stopped two twisted teens.’ US News and World

Report, May 3, 1999. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/990503/archive_000876.htm.

In addition, Klebold’s father restored BMW’s as a hobby and the car in question was a 1982

model – in other words, a year younger than Klebold. As was reported in the Denver Rocky Mountain

News, ‘Dylan drove an older BMW. It was already so beat up that when a classmate bumped into it with

her car he told her it was no big deal.’ This is not to downplay the economic privilege implicit in having

a father whose hobby is to restore old cars or for a student to have their own vehicle but I want to

somewhat qualify the imagery that the term ‘BMW’ immediately conjures up. Lynn Bartels and Carla

Crowder, ‘Fatal Friendship: How two suburban boys traded baseball and bowling for murder and

madness.’ Denver Rocky Mountain News, August 22, 1999.

http://www.denver-rmn.com/shooting/0822fata1.shtml.653 Angie Cannon, Betsy Streisand, and Dan McGraw, ‘Why? There were plenty of warnings, but

no one stopped two twisted teens.’ US News and World Report, May 3, 1999.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/990503/archive_000876.htm; original ellipses. 654 Matt Kelley, ‘Conservatives: Schools lacking discipline: Lawyers’ group says fear of lawsuits

has contributed to violence.’ Boulder Daily News, August 14, 1999.

http://www.bouldernews.com/shooting/14ccolum.html.655 Earl Ofari Hutchinson, ‘It Happened at Columbine, Not An Inner-City School.’ Black Editorial

Network. http://www.ben.net/Main/editorial/hutchinson/columbine/columbine.htm.656 Wendy Kaminer, It’s All the Rage: Crime and Culture. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company,

Reading, Massachusetts, 1995, p. 239. 657 Cameron McCarthy, Alicia Rodriquez, Shuaib Meecham, Stephen David, Carrie

Wilson-Brown, Heriberto Godina, K.E. Supryia, and Ed Buendia, ‘Race, Suburban Resentment, and the

Representation of the Inner City in Contemporary Film and Television’ in Off White: Readings on Race,

Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997, p. 236. 658 They add that ‘the inner-city other is known through the very ground of the displaced

aggressions projected from suburban moral panic itself: it is held to embody what the center cannot

acknowledge as its own.’ Cameron McCarthy, Alicia Rodriquez, Shuaib Meecham, Stephen David,

Carrie Wilson-Brown, Heriberto Godina, K.E. Supryia, and Ed Buendia, ‘Race, Suburban Resentment,

and the Representation of the Inner City in Contemporary Film and Television’ in Off White: Readings

311

on Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong)..

Routledge: New York and London, 1997, pp. 230-4. 659 Cameron McCarthy, Alicia Rodriquez, Shuaib Meecham, Stephen David, Carrie

Wilson-Brown, Heriberto Godina, K.E. Supryia, and Ed Buendia, ‘Race, Suburban Resentment, and the

Representation of the Inner City in Contemporary Film and Television’ in Off White: Readings on Race,

Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong). Routledge:

New York and London, 1997, p. 236. 660 Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.

Beacon Press: Boston, 1997, p. 230. 661 Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America.

Beacon Press: Boston, 1997, p. 230. 662 Earl Ofari Hutchinson, ‘It Happened at Columbine, Not An Inner-City School.’ Black Editorial

Network. http://www.ben.net/Main/editorial/hutchinson/columbine/columbine.htm.663 Hutchinson continues:

The presumption that savage rampages aren’t supposed to happen in places such as Littleton also allowed school officials, teachers, the police and probation officials to miss the glaring signs that Harris and Klebold were time bombs waiting to go off. When a monstrous tragedy like the Columbine massacre happens it shouldn’t matter what the income, status or color of the victims are. Their deaths should evoke the same reaction of grief and compassion. But the nagging suspicion is that if the dead and wounded had been African-American or Latino kids at an inner city school there would not have been the intense and prolonged national agony and outrage. A small army of psychologists and educators would not saturate the news endlessly analyzing troubled youth. There would not have been the instant clamor by Congress and a bevy of state legislators for tougher gun control. The NRA would not have called off nearly all of its convention activities scheduled for Denver. The vice-president and parade of dignitaries would not have trooped to the memorial services for the victims.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, ‘It Happened at Columbine, Not An Inner-City School.’ Black Editorial

Network. http://www.ben.net/Main/editorial/hutchinson/columbine/columbine.htm.664 ‘Only 1.86% of Black men, and less than eight-tenths of one percent of all African-Americans

will commit a violent crime in a given year, and only a minuscule percentage of these will choose white

victims. Only 17% of the attackers of whites in a given year are Black, while 75% are non-Hispanic

whites.’ He adds: ‘by encouraging whites to fear Black folks, the prevailing discourse paints a highly

unrealistic picture of danger, which leaves people less safe.’ Tim Wise, ‘Color-Conscious, White-Blind:

Race, Crime and Pathology in America’ at Znet. http://www.zmag.org/racewatch/colcons.htm.665 Patricia J. Williams, ‘Smart Bombs’ at The Nation, June 7, 1999.

http://past.thenation.com/cgi-bin/framizer.cgi?url=http://past.thenation.com/issue/990607/0607williams.s

html.666 Victor Good is the stepfather of Nathan Dykeman, a friend of Klebold and Harris. Cited by

Dan Luzadder in ‘Columbine claims another “victim”.’ Denver Rocky Mountain News, June 28, 1999.

http://www.denver-rmn.com/shooting/0628nate2.shtml.667 ‘Clinton urges US to wake up, help youth vent anger.’ AP report, The Canberra Times. April

22, 1999; p. 5.

312

668 Kate Kompas, ‘Revisiting Columbine High: The Aftermath.’ Ethos. Vol. 51, Issue 3,

February 2000. http://www.ethos.iastate.edu/FEB00/COLUMBINE/columbine.html; original

parentheses. 669 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 135. 670 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press: Berkeley

and Los Angeles, California, 1990; p. 22. 671 Rosi Braidotti, ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science,

Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey,

1996; p. 150.

313

BIBLIOGRAPHY

‘Aunts: Wiese was no monster.’ CBS News, March 24, 2005.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/24/earlyshow/main682795.shtml.

‘Clinton urges US to wake up, help youth vent anger.’ AP report, The Canberra

Times. April 22, 1999.

‘Live TV turns deadly serious.’ The Australian. April 22, 1999.

‘Troubled Life Of Minnesota Shooter.’ CBS/AP report. CBS News, March 22,

2005. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/22/national/main682257.shtml.

‘Warm-up for a massacre: Video shows chilling target-practice exercise.’ The

Canberra Times. October 24, 2003.

Aaron, Michele. ‘The Exploits of the Female Sexual Killer: Taking the Knife

to Body of Evidence’ in Sisterhoods: Across the Media/Literature Divide

(eds Deborah Cartmell, I.Q Hunter, Heidi Kaye, and Imelda Whelehan). Pluto Press:

London and Sterling, Virginia, 1998.

Achenbach, Joel, and Russakoff, Dale. ‘Teen Shooter’s Life Paints Antisocial

Portrait.’ The Washington Post, April 29, 1999.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/april99/antisocial04299.htm.

Alford, C. Fred. What Evil Means To Us. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and

London, 1997.

Allen, Paula Gunn. ‘Introduction’ to Spider Woman’s Granddaughters:

Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women (ed. Paula

Gunn Allen). The Women’s Press: London, 1990.

–‘Introduction’ to Song of the Turtle: American Indian Literature 1974 - 1994

(ed. Paula Gunn Allen). Ballantine Books: New York, 1996.

Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race, Volume One: Racial

Oppression and Social Control. Verso: London and New York, 1994.

314

Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands: The New Mestiza/La Frontera (second

edition). Aunt Lute Books: San Francisco, 1999 (first published in 1987).

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Faber and Faber: London, 1963.

Atherton, Catherine (ed.). Monsters and Monstrosity in Greek and Roman

Culture. Bari: Levante, 1998.

Baldwin, James. ‘The Price of the Ticket’ in The Price of the Ticket: Collected

Nonfiction 1948 – 1985. St. Martin’s-Marek: New York, 1985.

Bambara, Toni Cade. Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions (ed. Toni Morrison).

The Women’s Press: London, 1997.

Bartels, Lynn, and Crowder, Carla. ‘Fatal Friendship: How two suburban boys

traded baseball and bowling for murder and madness.’ Denver Rocky Mountain

News, August 22, 1999. http://www.denver-rmn.com/shooting/0822fata1.shtml.

Baxandall, Rosalyn, and Ewen, Elizabeth. Picture Windows: How the Suburbs

Happened. Basic Books: New York, 2000.

Bell, Derrick. ‘Property Rights in Whiteness – Their Legal Legacy, Their

Economic Costs’ in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado).

Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1995.

Benedict, Barbara M. Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry.

The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2001.

Benjamin, Andrew (ed.). The Lyotard Reader. Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1989.

Benshoff, Harry M. Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror

Film. Manchester University Press: Manchester and New York, 1997.

Berenstein, Rhona. Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality, and

Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema. Columbia University Press: New York,

1996.

Berger, Bennett M. ‘The Myth of Suburbia’ in North American Suburbs:

Politics, Diversity, and Change (ed. John Kramer). The Glendessary Press:

Berkeley, California, 1972.

315

Bernall, Misty. She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. The

Plough Publishing House: Farmington, PA, 1999.

Bernardi, Daniel (ed.). The Birth of Whiteness: Race and the Emergence of

Cinema. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick and New Jersey, 1996.

Bonnett, Alastair. ‘Constructions of Whiteness in European and American

Anti-Racism’ in Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader (eds Rodolfo D. Torres,

Louis F. Mirón, and Jonathon Xavier Inda). Blackwell Publishers: Massachusetts

and Oxford, 1999.

Boscagli, Maurizia. Eye on the Flesh: Fashions of Masculinity in the Early

Twentieth Century. Westview Press: Boulder, Colorado, 1996.

Bowser, Benjamin P., and Raymond G. Hunt (eds). Impacts of Racism on

White Americans (second edition). Thousand Oaks Press: Sage Publications, 1996.

Braidotti, Rosi. Patterns of Dissonance: A Study of Women in Contemporary

Philosophy (translated by Elizabeth Guild). Polity Press: Oxford, 1996 (first

published in 1991).

–Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary

Feminist Theory. Columbia University Press: New York, 1994.

–‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied

Differences’ in Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist

Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace (eds Nina Lykke and Rosi

Braidotti). Zed Books: London and New Jersey, 1996.

Briggs, Bill, and Blevins, Jason. ‘A Boy with Many Sides’ in The Denver Post.

May 2, 1999. http://extras.denverpost.com/news/shot0502b.htm.

Brody, Jennifer DeVere. ‘Hyphen-Nations’ in Cruising the Performative:

Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality

(eds Sue-Ellen Case, Philip Brett, and Susan Leigh Foster). Indiana University Press:

Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995.

Brooke, James. ‘Diary of a Gunman Reveals Broad Plan to Kill Hundreds’ in

The New York Times. April 27, 1999.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/pop/articles/042799colo-school-shoot.html

.

316

Brown, Richard Maxwell. ‘Historical Patterns of Violence’ in Violence in

America, Volume 2: Protest, Rebellion, Reform (ed. Ted Robert Gurr). Sage

Publications: Newbury Park, London, and New Delhi, 1989.

Bruchac, Joseph, and Bruchac, James. When the Chenoo Howls: Native

American Tales of Terror. Walker and Company: New York, 1998.

Burke, Lynn. ‘Some Sites Devoted to Killers’ at Wired. April 26, 2000.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,35784,00.html.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.

Routledge: New York and London, 1990.

–Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex.’ Routledge: New York

and London, 1993 (a).

–‘Endangered/Endangering: Schematic Racism and White Paranoia’ in

Reading Rodney King, Reading Urban Uprising (ed. Robert Gooding-Williams).

Routledge: New York and London, 1993 (b).

–Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. Routledge: New York and

London, 1997.

Cannon, Angie, Streisand, Betsy, and McGraw, Dan. ‘Why? There were plenty

of warnings, but no one stopped two twisted teens.’ US News and World Report.

3 May, 1999.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/990503/archive_000876.htm.

Caputi, Jane. ‘American Psychos: The Serial Killer in Contemporary Fiction’

in Journal of American Culture. Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1993.

–‘Small Ceremonies: Ritual in Forrest Gump, Natural Born Killers, Seven, and

Follow Me Home’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher

Sharrett). Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 1999.

Carroll, David. Paraesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida. Methuen: New

York and London, 1987.

Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart.

Routledge: New York and London, 1990.

317

–‘Ethnicity, Race, and Horror: The Rhetorics of Race and Humor’ in Beauty

Matters (ed. Peg Zeglin Brand). Indiana University Press: Bloomington and

Indianapolis, 2000.

Carson, Diane, Dittmar, Linda, and Welsch, Janice R. (eds). Multiple Voices in

Feminist Film Criticism. University of Minnesota Press: Minnesota and London,

1994.

Carter, Vicki K. ‘Computer-Assisted Racism: Toward an Understanding of

“Cyberwhiteness”’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L.

Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault).

St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998.

Cartmell, Deborah; Hunter, I.Q.; Kaye, Heidi; and Whelehan, Imelda (eds).

Alien Identities: Exploring Difference in Film and Fiction. Pluto Press: London and

Sterling, Virginia, 1999.

Case, Sue-Ellen; Brett, Philip; and Foster, Susan Leigh (eds). Cruising the

Performative: Interventions into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and

Sexuality. Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995.

Cassuto, Leonard. The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American

Literature and Culture. Columbia University Press: New York, 1997.

Chennault, Ronald F. ‘Giving Whiteness a Black Eye: An Interview with

Michael Eric Dyson’ in White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L.

Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault).

St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998.

Ching, Barbara. ‘The Possum, the Hag, and the Rhinestone Cowboy: Hard

Country Music and the Burlesque Abjection of the White Man’ in Whiteness: A

Critical Reader. New York University Press: New York and London, 1997.

Cloud, John. ‘The Legacy of Columbine’ in Time (Australian edition). No. 11,

March 19, 2001.

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror

Film. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 1992.

318

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. ‘Preface: In a Time of Monsters’ in Monster Theory:

Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and London, 1996 (a).

–‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture

(ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and

London, 1996 (b).

Cohen, Sharon. ‘Did parents ignore warning signs?’ The Daily Camera,

April 26, 1999. http://web.dailycamera.com/shooting/26apart.html.

Collier, Richard. Masculinities, Crime and Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality

and the Criminal(ised) Other. Sage Publications: London, Thousand Oaks, and New

Delhi, 1998.

Cooper, Dennis. My Loose Thread. Canongate Books: Edinburgh and New

York, 2001.

Corliss, Richard. ‘Bang, You’re Dead: Revenge fantasies are proliferating in

movies and on TV. But should they be blamed for Littleton?’ Time, May 3, Vol. 153,

No. 17, 1999.

Coupland, Douglas. Hey Nostradamus! Flamingo: London, 2003.

Crary, David. ‘Californian shooting prompts a new look at bullying.’ The

Canberra Times, March 12, 2001.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis.

Routledge: New York and London, 1993.

Crowder, Carla. ‘Harrises didn’t see a monster in their midst.’ Denver Rocky

Mountain News, 21 June, 1999.

http://www.denver-rmn.com/shooting/0621harr1.shtml.

Cullen, Dave. ‘Inside the Columbine High investigation.’ Salon,

September 23, 1999.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/09/23/columbine/index.html.

Cuomo, Chris J., and Hall, Kim Q. ‘Introduction: Reflections on Whiteness’ in

Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical Reflections (eds Chris J. Cuomo, and Kim Q.

319

Hall). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: Lanham, Boulder, New York, and

Oxford, 1999.

Dalrymple, James. ‘Nightmare USA’ in The Australian Magazine.

October 28-29, 1995.

Davis, Jane. The White Image in the Black Mind: A Study of African American

Literature. Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, and London, 2000.

De Becker, Gavin. The Gift of Fear: Survival Signs that Protect Us From

Violence. Bloomsbury: Great Britain, 1997.

De Koff, Derek. ‘Waters’ Sports: Exercises in Poor Taste’ in Next. April 11,

1997. http://www.dreamlandnews.com/print/articles/nextintvw.shtml.

De Vries, Hent, and Weber, Samuel. ‘Introduction’ to Violence, Identity, and

Self-Determination (eds Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber). Stanford University

Press: Stanford, California, 1997.

Dedman, Bill. ‘Examining the psyche of an adolescent killer.’ Chicago Sun

Times, October 15, 2000 (a). http://treas.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/shoot15.htm.

–‘School shooters: Secret Service findings.’ Chicago Sun Times, October 15,

2000 (b). http://www.treasury.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/find15.htm.

–‘Schools may miss mark on preventing violence.’ Chicago Sun Times,

October 16, 2000 (c). http://www.treasury.gov/usss/ntac/chicago_sun/shoot16.htm.

Delgado, Richard (ed.). Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge. Temple

University Press: Philadelphia, 1995.

Demaris, Ovid. America the Violent. Penguin Books Inc.: Baltimore,

Maryland,1970.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology (translated by Gayatri Chakravorty

Spivak). The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, 1976 (first

published 1967).

Deutscher, Penelope. Yielding Gender: Feminism, deconstruction and the

history of philosophy. Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

Diawara, Manthia (ed.). Black American Cinema. Routledge: New York and

London, 1993.

320

Diaz, Leticia M. ‘Regulating the Administration of Mood Altering Drugs to

Juveniles: Are We Legally Drugging Our Children?’

http://www.pegasus.rutgers.edu/~record/drugs.html#N_3_.

Dickerson, Debra. ‘Crazy as They Wanna Be.’ Salon, May 4, 1999.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/1999/05/04/crazy/.

Docherty, Thomas. Alterities: Criticism, History, Representation. Clarendon

Press: Oxford and New York, 1996.

Douglas, John, and Olshaker, Mark. Mindhunter. Heinemann: London, 1996.

–Journey Into Darkness. Heinemann: London, 1997.

–The Anatomy of Motive. Scribner: New York, 1999.

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and

Taboo. Routledge and Kegan Paul: London, 1966.

DuCille, Ann. Skin Trade. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1996.

Dunbar, Roxanne. ‘Bloody Footprints: Reflections On Growing Up Poor

White’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Matt Wray and Annalee

Newitz). Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

Dyer, Richard. ‘White’ in Screen. Vol. 29, No. 4, Autumn 1988.

–White. Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

Elam, Diane, and Wiegman, Robyn, ‘Introduction’ in Feminism Beside Itself

(eds Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman). Routledge: New York and London, 1995.

Erens, Patricia (ed.). Issues in Feminist Film Criticism. Indiana University

Press: Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1990.

Estep, Terry L. ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ 13 February, 2000.

http://www.mysterysteps.com/randomnotes/2000/02-13-00.htm.

Ewing, Charles Patrick. Kids Who Kill. Avon Books: New York, 1990.

Featherstone, Elena (ed.). Skin Deep: Women Writing on Color, Culture, and

Identity. The Crossing Press: Freedom, California, 1994.

321

Ferber, Abby L. White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy.

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: Lanham, Boulder, New York and Oxford,

1998.

Fine, Michelle; Powell, Linda C.; Weis, Lois; and Wong, L. Mun. ‘Preface’ to

Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle Fine, Linda Powell,

Lois Weis, L. Mun Wong). Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

Fisher, David. Hard Evidence: How Detectives Inside the FBI’s Sci-Crime Lab

have Helped Solve America’s Toughest Cases. Simon and Schuster: New York,

1995.

Fong, Tillie. ‘Klebold’s mom “shocked and numb”: Hairdresser tells of a

mother’s pain after son goes on rampage.’ Denver Rocky Mountain News, April 24,

1999. http://broncomania.com/shooting/0424mom3.shtml.

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings

1972 – 1977 (ed. Colin Gordon). Pantheon Books: New York, 1980.

–‘Disciplinary Power and Subjection’ in Power: A Radical View (ed. Steven

Lukes). Blackwell: London, 1986.

–The History of Sexuality: Volume 1 (translated by Robert Hurley). Penguin

Books: London, 1990 (a) (first published 1976).

–‘Power and Sex’ in Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other

Writings 1977 – 1984 (ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman). Routledge: New York and

London, 1990 (b) (first published in 1988).

Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of

Whiteness. University of Minnesota Press: Minnesota, 1993.

–‘Local Whitenesses, Localizing Whiteness’ in Displacing Whiteness: Essays

in Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1997.

Freeland, Cynthia. ‘Realist Horror’ in Philosophy and Film (eds Cynthia

Freeland and Thomas Wartenberg). Routledge: New York and London, 1995.

–The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Westview Press:

Boulder, Colorado, 2000.

322

Friedman, John Block. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought.

Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1981.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. ‘Beyond White and Other: Relationality and

Narratives of Race in Feminist Discourse’ in Signs: Journal of Culture and Society.

Vol. 21, No. 1, 1995 (a).

–‘Making History: Reflections on Feminism, Narrative, and Desire’ in

Feminism Beside Itself (eds Diane Elam and Robyn Wiegman). Routledge: New

York and London, 1995 (b).

Friedman, Vanessa. ‘Over His Dead Body: Female Murderers, Female Rage,

and Western Culture’ in States of Rage: Emotional Eruption, Violence, and Social

Change (eds Renée R. Curry and Terry L. Allison). New York University Press:

New York and London, 1996.

Fuss, Diana (ed.). Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Routledge:

New York and London, 1991.

–‘Monsters of Perversion: Jeffrey Dahmer and The Silence of the Lambs’ in

Media Spectacles (eds Marjorie Garber, Jann Matlock, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz).

Routledge: New York and London, 1993.

Gaines, Jane. ‘White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in

Feminist Film Theory’ in Screen. Vol. 29, No. 4, Autumn 1988.

Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (ed.). ‘Race,’ Writing, and Difference. The University

of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 1986.

Gibbs, Nancy. ‘Time Special Report.’ Time, No. 22, May 31, 1999.

Gibbs, Nancy, and Roche, Timothy. ‘The Columbine Tapes’ in Time

(Australian edition). No. 51, December 20, 1999.

Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred (translated by Patrick Gregory). The

John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, 1977 (originally published

1972).

Giroux, Henry A. Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth. Routledge:

New York and London, 1996.

323

–Channel Surfing: Race Talk and the Destruction of Today’s Youth.

St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1997.

Gleick, Elizabeth. ‘The Final Victim’ in Who Weekly. No. 146, December 12,

1994.

Goldberg, David Theo. Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of

Meaning. Blackwell: Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, USA, 1993.

Grant, Barry Keith (ed.). The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror

Film. University of Texas Press: Austin, Texas, 1996.

–‘American Psycho/sis: The Pure Products of America Go Crazy’ in

Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne

State University Press: Detroit, 1999.

Grillo, Trina, and Wildman, Stephanie M. ‘Obscuring the Importance of Race:

The Implication of Making Comparisons between Racism and Sexism (or

Other-isms)’ in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado).

Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1995.

Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Toward A Corporeal Feminism. Allen and

Unwin: Sydney, 1994.

–Space, Time and Perversion: the Politics of Bodies. Allen and Unwin:

Sydney, 1995.

–‘Intolerable Ambiguity: Freaks and/as the Limit’ in Freakery: Cultural

Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland Thomson). New York

University Press: New York and London, 1996.

Gubar, Susan. Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture.

Oxford University Press: New York and London, 1997.

Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film.

Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1993.

Gurr, Ted Robert. ‘The History of Protest, Rebellion, and Reform in America:

An Overview’ in Violence in America, Volume 2: Protest, Rebellion, Reform (ed. Ted

Robert Gurr). Sage Publications: Newbury Park, London, and New Delhi, 1989.

324

Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of

Monsters. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1995.

Hammonds, Evelynn. ‘Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female

Sexuality’ in differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 6.2 & 3, 1994.

Haney López, Ian F. ‘The Social Construction of Race’ in Critical Race

Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado). Temple University Press:

Philadelphia, 1995 (a).

–‘White By Law’ in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard

Delgado). Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1995 (b).

–White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York University Press:

New York and London, 1996.

Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature.

Routledge: New York, 1991 (a).

–‘Cyborgs at Large: Interview with Donna Haraway’ in Technoculture

(eds Constance Penley and Andrew Ross). University of Minnesota Press:

Minneapolis and Oxford, 1991 (b).

–‘The Actors are Cyborg, Nature is Coyote, and the Geography is Elsewhere:

Postscript to “Cyborgs at Large”’ in Technoculture (eds Constance Penley and

Andrew Ross). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and Oxford, 1991 (c).

–‘The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d

Others’ in Cultural Studies (eds Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A.

Treichler). Routledge: New York and London, 1992.

Harris, Angela P. ‘Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory’ in Critical

Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado). Temple University Press:

Philadelphia, 1995.

Harris, Cheryl. ‘Whiteness as Property’ in Black on White: Black Writers on

What It Means to be White (ed. David R. Roediger). Schocken Books: New York,

1998.

325

Harris, Trudier. ‘White Men as Performers in the Lynching Ritual’ in Black on

White: Black Writers on What It Means to be White (ed. David R. Roediger).

Schocken Books: New York, 1998.

Hartigan, John Jr. ‘Locating White Detroit’ in Displacing Whiteness: Essays in

Social and Cultural Criticism (ed. Ruth Frankenberg). Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1997.

Heide, Kathleen M. Young Killers: The Challenge of Juvenile Homicide. Sage

Publications: Thousand Oaks, London, and New Delhi, 1999.

Heimer, Matthew. ‘Adding Up The Facts.’ Brill’s Content, August 1999.

http://www.brillscontent.com/1999aug/features/addingup.shtml.

Helsham, Samantha. ‘The Profane and the Insane: An Inquiry into the

Psychopathology of Serial Murder’ in Alternative Law Journal. Vol. 26, No. 6,

December 2001.

Henwood, Doug. ‘Trash-O-Nomics’ in White Trash: Race and Class in

America. (eds Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz). Routledge: New York and London,

1997.

Hill, Mike. ‘Vipers in Shangri-La: Whiteness, Writing, and Other Ordinary

Terrors’ in Whiteness: A Critical Reader (ed. Mike Hill). New York University

Press: New York and London, 1997 (a).

–‘Can Whiteness Speak?’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America

(eds Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz). Routledge: New York and London, 1997 (b).

hooks, bell. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. South End Press:

Boston, Massachusetts, 1990.

–Black Looks: Race and Representation. South End Press: Boston,

Massachusetts, 1992.

–Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. Routledge: New York and

London, 1994.

–Killing Race: Ending Racism. Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1995.

–Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies. Routledge: New York and

London, 1996.

326

Hueng, Marina. ‘The Family Romance of Orientalism: From Madame

Butterfly to Indochine’ in Forming and Reforming Identity (eds Carol Siegel and Ann

Kibbey). New York University Press: New York and London, 1995.

Huet, Marie-Hélène. Monstrous Imagination. Harvard University Press:

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1993.

Hutchings, Peter. ‘Tearing Your Soul Apart: Horror’s New Monsters’ in

Modern Gothic: A Reader (eds Victor Sage and Allan Lloyd Smith). Manchester

University Press: Manchester and New York, 1996.

Hutchinson, Earl Ofari. ‘It Happened at Columbine, Not An Inner-City

School.’ Black Editorial Network,

http://www.ben.net/Main/editorial/hutchinson/columbine/columbine.htm.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European

Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Harvard University Press: Cambridge,

Massachusetts, and London, England, 1998.

Jury, Louise. ‘Sweet Orange Win for Courageous Author’ in The Canberra

Times, 11 June, 2005.

Kaminer, Wendy. It’s All the Rage: Crime and Culture. Addison-Wesley

Publishing Company: Reading, Massachusetts, 1995.

Katz, Jon. ‘Eric, Dylan, and Mary of Doom.’ Slashdot. 15 December, 1999.

http://www.slashdot.org/features/99/12/14/1221243.shtml.

Kaye, Heidi, and Hunter, I.Q. ‘Introduction’ to Alien Identities: Exploring

Difference in Film and Fiction (eds Deborah Cartmell, I.Q. Hunter, Heidi Kaye, and

Imelda Whelehan). Pluto Press: London and Sterling, Virginia, 1999.

Kelley, Matt. ‘Conservatives: Schools lacking discipline: Lawyers’ group says

fear of lawsuits has contributed to violence. Boulder Daily News, August 14, 1999.

http://www.bouldernews.com/shooting/14ccolum.html.

Kelley, Robin D. G. Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in

Urban America. Beacon Press: Boston, 1997.

Kincheloe, Joe L., and Steinberg, Shirley R. ‘Addressing the Crisis of

Whiteness: Refiguring White Identity in a Pedagogy of Whiteness’ in White Reign:

327

Deploying Whiteness in America (eds Joe L. Kincheloe, Shirley R. Steinberg, Nelson

M. Rodriguez, and Ronald E. Chennault). St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1998.

Kincheloe, Joe L., Steinberg, Shirley R., Rodriguez, Nelson M., and Chennault,

Ronald E. (eds). White Reign: Deploying Whiteness in America. St. Martin’s Press:

New York, 1998.

Kingsolver, Barbara. ‘Life Is Precious, or It’s Not’ in Small Wonder: Essays.

Faber and Faber: London, 2002.

Kompas, Kate. ‘Revisiting Columbine High: The Aftermath.’ Ethos. Vol. 51,

Issue 3, February 2000.

http://www.ethos.iastate.edu/FEB00/COLUMBINE/columbine.html.

Kotkin, Joel. ‘White Flight to the Fringes’ in The Washington Post, March 10,

1996, archived at the Pacific Research Institute.

http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/publications/id.610/pub_detail.asp.

Kramer, John. ‘Introduction’ to North American Suburbs: Politics, Diversity,

and Change (ed. John Kramer). The Glendessary Press: Berkeley, California, 1972.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (translated by Leon

S. Roudiez). Columbia University Press: New York, 1982.

Labi, Nayda. ‘The Hunter and the Choirboy’ in Time (Australian edition).

No. 14, April 6, 1998.

Lacayo, Richard. ‘Toward the Root of the Evil’ in Time (Australian edition).

No. 14, April 6, 1998.

Lada-Richards, Ismene. ‘“Foul monster or Good Saviour”? Reflections on

Ritual Monsters’ in Monsters and Monstrosity in Greek and Roman Culture (ed.

Catherine Atherton). Bari: Levante, 1998.

Libertson, Joseph. Proximity: Levinas, Blanchot, Bataille, and

Communication. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers: The Hague, Boston, and London,

1982.

Lindsey, Daryl. ‘A reader’s guide to the Columbine report.’ Salon, May 17,

2000. http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2000/05/17/guide/index.html.

328

Linedecker, Clifford L. Babyface Killers: Horrifying True Stories of America’s

Youngest Murderers. St. Martin’s Paperbacks: New York, 1999.

Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People

Profit from Identity Politics. Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1998.

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working

Class. Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford, 1993 (a).

–‘White Like Me: Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of American

Whiteness’ in Cultures of United States Imperialism (eds Amy Kaplan and Donald E.

Pease). Duke University Press: Durham, 1993 (b).

Luzadder, Dan. ‘Columbine claims another “victim”.’ Denver Rocky Mountain

News, June 28, 1999. http://www.denver-rmn.com/shooting/0628nate2.shtml.

Lyotard, Jean-François. ‘The Connivances of Desire with the Figural’ in

Driftworks (ed. Roger McKeon). Semiotext(e): New York, 1984.

–‘The Dream-Work Does Not Think’ in The Lyotard Reader (ed. Andrew

Benjamin). Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1989.

McAllister, Margie, and Whaley, Monte. ‘Lafayette’s student drain: White

Flight.’ The Daily Camera, August 30, 1998.

http://www.broomfieldnews.com/extra/flight/flight3.html.

McCarthy, Cameron; Rodriquez, Alicia; Meecham, Shuaib; David, Stephen;

Wilson-Brown, Carrie; Godina, Heriberto; Supryia, K.E.; and Buendia, Ed. ‘Race,

Suburban Resentment, and the Representation of the Inner City in Contemporary Film

and Television’ in Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society (eds Michelle

Fine, Linda C. Powell, Lois Weis, and L. Mun Wong). Routledge: New York and

London, 1997.

MacDonald, Fiona. The Amazing World of Monsters. Lorenz Books: London,

2003.

McDowell, Deborah. ‘Transferences: Black Feminist Discourse: The

“Practice” of “Theory”’ in Feminism Beside Itself (eds Diane Elam and Robyn

Wiegman). Routledge: New York and London, 1995.

329

Marchetti, Gina. Romance and the ‘Yellow Peril’: Race, Sex, and Discursive

Strategies in Hollywood Fiction. University of California Press: Berkeley, Los

Angeles, and London, 1993.

Matsuda, Mari J. Where Is Your Body? And Other Essays on Race, Gender,

and the Law. Beacon Press: Boston, 1996.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick or, The Whale. Penguin: New York and

London, 1992 (first published 1851).

Moncef, Salah el, ‘Lecter Knows Worst: Justice as Marginal Value and the

Law of Series in Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs’ in Genders. Vol. 30, 1999,

http://www.genders.org/g30/g30_moncef.html.

Morrison, Ken. ‘The Technology of Homicide: Constructions of Evidence and

Truth in the American Murder Film’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media

(ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 1999.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.

Picador: London, 1992.

Morse, Jodie. ‘Girlhoods Interrupted.’ Time (Australian edition). No. 11,

March 19, 2001.

Nakayama, Thomas K., and Martin, Judith P. (eds). Whiteness: The

Communication of Social Identity. Sage Publications, Inc.: Thousand Oaks, London,

and New Delhi, 1999.

Newitz, Annalee. ‘White Savagery and Humiliation, Or a New Racial

Consciousness in the Media’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds

Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

–‘Serial Killers, True Crime, and Economic Performance Anxiety’ in

Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne

State University Press: Detroit, 1999.

Newitz, Annalee, and Wray, Matt (eds). ‘Introduction’ to White Trash: Race

and Class in America. Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

Norris, Joel. The Killer Next Door. Arrow Books: London, 1993 (first

published by Bantam Books in 1992).

330

O’Neill, John. ‘Dinosaurs-R-Us: the (Un)Natural History of Jurassic Park’ in

Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of

Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996.

Oulton, Stacie, ‘Tales of Bullying Outlined.’ The Denver Post, 2 December,

2000. http://www.denverpost.com/news/col1202.htm.

Overing, Joanna. ‘Who Is the Mightiest of Them All? Jaguar and Conquistador

in Piaroa Images of Alterity and Identity’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows:

Animal Tales and American Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of

Virginia: Charlottesville and London, 1996.

Palencia-Roth, Michael. ‘Enemies of God: Monsters and the Theology of

Conquest’ in Monsters, Tricksters, and Sacred Cows: Animal Tales and American

Identities (ed. A. James Arnold). University Press of Virginia: Charlottesville and

London, 1996.

Parker, Andrew, and Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky (eds). Performativity and

Performance. Routledge: New York and London, 1995.

Pearson, Patricia. When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of

Innocence. Viking: New York, 1997.

Pelley, Scott. ‘Secret Service Studies Shootings: Agency Is Researching

Causes Of Violence.’ CBS News, August 15, 2000.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/03/14/60II/main171898.shtml.

Penley, Constance. ‘Crackers and Whackers: the White Trashing of Porn’ in

White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee Newitz and Matt Wray).

Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

Penley, Constance, and Ross, Andrew. ‘Cyborgs at Large: Interview with

Donna Haraway’ in Technoculture (eds Constance Penley and Andrew Ross).

University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and Oxford, 1991.

Petraitis, Vicky, and Gardiner, Terrence. ‘Serial Killers are Losers’ in On

Murder 2: True Crime Writing in Australia (ed. Kerry Greenwood). Black Inc:

Melbourne, 2002.

331

Pettigrew, Thomas F. ‘Preface’ in Impacts of Racism on White Americans

(second edition) (eds Benjamin P. Bowser, and Raymond G. Hunt). Thousand Oaks

Press: Sage Publications, 1996.

Pfeil, Fred. White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference.

Verso: London and New York, 1991.

Pierre, DBC. Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of

Death. Faber and Faber: London, 2003.

Pinedo, Isobel. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasure of Horror Film

Viewing. State University of New York Press: New York, 1997.

Pizzato, Mark. ‘Jeffrey Dahmer and Media Cannibalism: The Lure and Failure

of Sacrifice’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher

Sharrett). Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 1999.

Pooley, Eric. ‘Portrait of a Deadly Bond’ in Time (Australian edition). No. 19,

May 10, 1999.

Popyk, Lisa. ‘All-American family: “I killed ’em all.”’ Cincinnati Post.

November 7, 1998 (a). http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/claysd110798.html.

–‘Blood in the School Yard.’ Cincinnati Post, November 7, 1998 (b).

http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/1kill110798.html.

–‘Violence is seductive to new breed of killers.’ Cincinnati Post, November 9,

1998 (c). http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/2kill110998.html.

–‘Killers gave plenty of warning signs.’ Cincinnati Post, November 10, 1998

(d). http://www.cincypost.com/news/1998/3kill111098.html.

Porras, Ileana M. ‘On Terrorism: Reflections of Violence and the Outlaw’ in

After Identity: A Reader in Law and Culture (eds Dan Danielsen and Karen Engle).

Routledge: New York and London, 1995.

Prendergast, Alan. ‘The Enemy Within: the lessons – and lies – of the

Columbine Massacre.’ Newtimes, Broward–Palm Beach.

http://www.newtimesbpb.com/extra/columbine1-6.html.

Prescott, Anne Lake. ‘Rabelaisian (Non)Wonders and Renaissance Polemics’

in Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture (ed. Peter G. Platt).

University of Delaware Press: Delaware, 1999.

332

Prose, Francine. After. Joanna Cotler Books: New York, 2003.

Rapping, Elayne. ‘Aliens, Nomads, Mad Dogs, and Road Warriors: Tabloid

TV and the New Face of Criminal Violence’ in Mythologies of Violence in

Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press:

Detroit, 1999.

Razack, Sherene H. Looking White People in the Eye: Gender, Race, and

Culture in Courtrooms and Classrooms. University of Toronto Press: Toronto,

Buffalo, and London, 1998.

Readings, Bill. Introducing Lyotard: Art and Politics. Routledge: New York

and London, 1991.

Redman, Peter. ‘Invasion of the Monstrous Others: Heterosexual

Masculinities, the “AIDS Carrier”, and the Horror Genre’ in Border Patrols: Policing

the Boundaries of Heterosexuality (eds Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Debbie Epstein, and

Richard Johnson). Cassell: London, 1997.

Ressler, Robert K., and Schachtman, Tom. Whoever Fights Monsters. St.

Martin’s Paperbacks: New York, 1992.

–I Have Lived In The Monster. St. Martin’s Paperbacks: New York, 1997.

Riley, Mark. ‘The Agony of Unstoppable School Violence’ in The Sydney

Morning Herald. April 22, 1999.

Roediger, David R. Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race,

Politics, and Working Class History. Verso: London and New York, 1994.

–‘Introduction’ to Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to be White

(ed. David R. Roediger). Schocken Books: New York, 1998.

–The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working

Class (revised edition). Verso: London and New York, 1999 (first published 1991).

Rooney, Andy. Online transcript of 60 Minutes, April 25, 1999.

http://sobek.colorado.edu/~glenn/media/60min/425b.html.

Roth Pierpont, Claudia. Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World.

Scribe Publications: Melbourne, 2000.

333

Rubin, Martin. ‘The Grayness of Darkness: The Honeymoon Killers and Its

Impact on Psychokiller Cinema’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media

(ed. Christopher Sharrett). Wayne State University Press: Detroit. 1999.

Russell, David J. ‘Monster Roundup: Reintegrating the Horror Genre’ in

Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory (ed. Nick Browne).

University of California Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1998.

Russell, Jennifer M. ‘On Being a Gorilla in Your Midst, or, The Life of One

Blackwoman in the Legal Academy’ in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge

(ed. Richard Delgado). Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1995.

Russell, Margaret M. ‘Race and the Dominant Gaze: Narratives of Law and

Inequality in Popular Film’ in Critical Race Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror

(eds Richard Delgado and Jean Stefanic). Temple University Press: Philadelphia,

1997.

Russo, Mary. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity.

Routledge: New York and London, 1994.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Vintage Books: New York, 1979.

Saunders, Michael William. Imps of the Perverse: Gay Monsters in Film.

Praeger: Westport, Connecticut and London, 1998.

Savran, David. Taking It Like a Man: White Masculinity, Masochism, and

Contemporary American Culture. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New

Jersey, 1998.

Saxton, Alexander. The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics

and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. Verso: London and New York,

1990.

Sayers, William. ‘The Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the

Icelanders’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen).

University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996.

Schechter, Harold, and Everitt, David. The A – Z Encyclopedia of Serial

Killers. New York: Pocket Books, 1996.

334

Schneider, Steven. ‘Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the

Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror’ in Other Voices. Vol. 1, No. 3,

January 1999.

Sconce, Jeffrey. ‘Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity, and

Contemporary Horror’ in Film Theory Goes to the Movies (eds Jim Collins, Hilary

Radner, and Ava Preacher). Routledge: New York and London, 1993.

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California

Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1990.

–Tendencies. Routledge: New York and London, 1994.

Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture.

Routledge: New York and London, 1998.

Sherman, Lee. ‘Emotional Lessons: Out on the Tundra, Kids Learn to Better

Understand Their Own and Others’ Feelings’ in The Northwest Education Magazine.

Spring 1998. http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/spring_99/article4.html

Shriver, Lionel. We Need to Talk about Kevin. Counterpoint: New York,

2003.

Siegel, Robert (ed.). Dispatches From the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion.

Three Rivers Press: New York, 2001.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Penguin Books: New York, 1986 (first

published 1977).

–‘Introduction’ in Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native

American Life Today. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996.

–‘Books: Notes on Mixtec and Maya Screenfolds, Picture Books of

Preconquest Mexico’ in Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit: Essays on Native

American Life Today. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996.

Silva, Marc L., and Melkonian, Martin ‘Introduction’ to Contested Terrain:

Power, Politics, and Participation in Suburbia (eds Marc L. Silva and Martin

Melkonian). Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, and London, 1995.

Simpson, Brian. ‘Murder, Prostitution, and Patriarchy: Why Serial Killing is a

Feminist Issue’ in Alternative Law Journal. Vol. 26, No. 6, December 2001.

335

Simpson, Lindsay, and Harvey, Sandra. The Killer Next Door. Random House:

Sydney, 1994.

Simpson, Philip L. ‘The Politics of Apocalypse in the Cinema of Serial

Murder’ in Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media (ed. Christopher Sharrett).

Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 1999.

Smith, Barbara. The Truth that Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and

Freedom. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London,

1998.

Smith, Barbara, and Smith, Beverly. ‘Across the Kitchen Table: A

Sister-to-Sister Dialogue’ in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical

Women of Color (eds Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa). Kitchen Table: Women

of Color Press: New York, 1983 (first published in 1981).

Smith, Valerie (ed.). Representing Blackness: Issues in Film and Video. The

Athlone Press: London, 1997.

–Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings. Routledge: New

York and London, 1998.

Snead, James A. White Screens, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side

(eds Colin McCabe and Cornel West). Routledge: New York and London, 1994.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. ‘Introduction’ to Of Grammatology (translated by

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak). The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and

London, 1976 (first published 1967).

–‘Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism’ in ‘Race,’ Writing, and

Difference (ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.). The University of Chicago Press: Chicago

and London, 1986.

–In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. Methuen: New York and

London, 1987.

–‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture

(eds Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg). The University of Illinois Press:

Urbana, 1988.

336

–The Post-Colonial Subject: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues (ed. Sarah

Harasym). Routledge: New York and London, 1990.

–‘Theory in the Margin: Coetzee’s Foe Reading DeFoe’s Crusoe/Roxana’ in

Consequences of Theory: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1987–88

(eds Jonathon Arac and Barbara Johnson). The John Hopkins University Press:

Baltimore and London, 1991.

–‘In a Word: Interview’ with Ellen Rooney in Outside in the Teaching

Machine. Routledge: New York and London, 1993.

–‘Responsibility’ in Boundary. Vol. 2, Fall, 1994.

Steel, Fiona. ‘Calm Before The Storm: The Littleton School Massacre.’

The Crime Library.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/littleton/index_1.html.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the

Souvenir, the Collection. Duke University Press: Durham and London, 1993.

Sweeney, Gael. ‘The King of White Trash Culture: Elvis Presley and the

Aesthetics of Excess’ in White Trash: Race and Class in America (eds Annalee

Newitz and Matt Wray). Routledge: New York and London, 1997.

Tatar, Maria. Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany. Princeton

University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 1995.

Taylor, Chris. ‘We’re Goths and Not Monsters’ in Time (Australian edition).

No. 18, May 3, 1999.

Taylor, Clyde R. ‘The Master Text and the Jeddi Doctrine’ in Screen. Vol. 29,

No. 4, Autumn 1988.

–The Mask of Art: Breaking the Aesthetic Contract – Film and Literature.

Indiana University Press: Bloomington and Indiana, 1998.

Thomson, Rosemary Garland. ‘Introduction: From Wonder to Error – A

Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the

Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland Thomson). New York University Press:

New York and London, 1996.

337

Tithecott, Richard. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the

Construction of the Serial Killer. The University of Wisconsin Press: Wisconsin,

1997.

Torres, Rodolfo D., Mirón, Louis F., and Inda, Jonathon Xavier (eds).

‘Introduction’ to Race, Identity, and Citizenship: A Reader. Blackwell Publishers:

Massachusetts and Oxford, 1999.

Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the

Horror Movie. Basil Blackwell: Oxford and Massachusetts, 1989.

Tyrrell, Kimberley. ‘The Serial Killer in Cinema’ in Alternative Law Journal.

Vol. 26, No. 6, December 2001.

Uebel, Michael. ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Response to

Saracen Alterity’ in Monster Theory: Reading Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen).

University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 1996.

Vargas, Jose Antonio. ‘Shock, Anger over Columbine Video Game.’ The

Washington Post, May 20, 2006.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR20060519019

79.html.

Warner, Marina. Managing Monsters: Six Myths of Our Time. Vintage:

London, 1994.

Waterhouse, Ruth. ‘Beowulf as Palimpsest’ in Monster Theory: Reading

Culture (ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen). University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and

London, 1996.

Weinstock, Jeffrey A. ‘Freaks in Space: “Extraterrestrialism” and

“Deep-Space Multiculturalism”’ in Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the

Extraordinary Body (ed. Rosemary Garland Thomson). New York University Press:

New York and London, 1996.

West, Cornel. Race Matters. Beacon Press: Boston, 1993.

Westphal, David. ‘Predicted teen-age crime wave failed to occur, numbers

show.’ The Fresno Bee, December 13, 1999.

http://www.fresnobee.com/localnews/story/0,1724,121127,00.html.

338

White, Eric. ‘“Once They Were Men, Now They’re Land Crabs”: Monstrous

Becomings in Evolutionist Cinema’ in Post Human Bodies (eds Judith Halberstam

and Ira Livingston), 1995.

Wiegman, Robyn. ‘Black Bodies/American Commodities: Gender, Race, and

the Bourgeois Ideal in Contemporary Film’ in Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and

the American Cinema (ed. Lester D. Friedman). University of Illinois Press: Urbana

and Chicago, 1991.

–American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Duke University Press:

Durham and London, 1995.

Wiese, Andrew. ‘Racial Cleansing in the Suburbs: Suburban Government,

Urban Renewal, and Segregation on Long Island, 1945-1960’ in Contested Terrain:

Power, Politics, and Participation in Suburbia (eds Marc L. Silva and Martin

Melkonian). Greenwood Press: Westport, Connecticut, and London, 1995.

Wildman, Stephanie M., and Davis, Adrienne D. ‘Language and Silence:

Making Systems of Privilege Visible’ in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed.

Richard Delgado). Temple University Press: Philadelphia, 1995.

Williams, David. Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in

Mediaeval Thought and Literature. McGill-Queen’s University Press: Montreal,

1996.

Williams, Patricia J. The Alchemy of Race and Rights. Harvard University

Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1991.

–Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race: the 1997 BBC Reith

Lectures. The Noonday Press: New York, 1997.

–The Rooster’s Egg. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and

London, England, 1995.

–‘Smart Bombs.’ The Nation, June 7, 1999.

Williams, Robert A. Jr. ‘Documents of Barbarism: The Contemporary Legacy

of European Racism and Colonialism in the Narrative Traditions of Federal Indian

Law’ in Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge (ed. Richard Delgado). Temple

University Press: Philadelphia, 1995.

339

Wise, Tim. ‘Color-Conscious, White-Blind: Race, Crime and Pathology in

America’ at Znet. http://www.zmag.org/racewatch/colcons.htm.

Wypijewski, JoAnn. ‘Blaming the Messenger,’ in Ms. Vol. XI, No. 1,

December 2000/January 2001.

Young, Elizabeth. ‘The Silence of the Lambs and the Flaying of Feminist

Theory’ in Camera Obscura. No. 27, September 1991.

–‘Here Comes the Bride: Wedding Gender and Race in Bride of Frankenstein’

in The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (ed. Barry Keith Grant).

University of Texas Press: Austin, Texas, 1996.

Young, Lola. Fear of the Dark: ‘Race,’ Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema.

Routledge: New York and London, 1996.

Zoba, Wendy Murray. ‘Do You Believe in God?: Columbine and the Stirring

of America’s soul.’ Christianity Today Magazine, October 4, 1999.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/9tb/9tb032.html.

340

FILMOGRAPHY

Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)

American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000)

Blackenstein (William A. Levey, 1973)

Blacula (William Crain, 1972)

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)

Blink (Michael Apted, 1994)

Bone Collector, The (Phillip Noyce, 1999)

Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)

Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935)

Bringing Down the House (Adam Shankman, 2003)

Brother from Another Planet, The (John Sayles, 1984)

Butterfly Kiss (Michael Winterbottom, 1994)

Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)

Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)

Cell, The (Tarsem Singh, 2000)

Chocolate War, The (Keith Gordon, 1988)

Clay Pigeons (David Dobkin, 1998)

Color Purple, The (Steven Spielberg, 1985)

Confessions of a Serial Killer (Mark Blair, 1985)

Copycat (Jon Amiel, 1995)

Crime Time (George Sluizer, 1995)

Crimson Rivers, The a.k.a. Les Rivières Pourpres (Mathieu Kassovitz, 2001)

Cruising (William Friedkin, 1980)

Curdled (Reb Braddock, 1996)

Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1997)

Diary of a Serial Killer (Frederic Malgras, 1997)

E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)

Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)

Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn (Sam Raimi, 1987)

341

Fallen (Gregory Hoblit, 1998)

Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993)

Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974)

Freeway (Matthew Bright, 1996)

Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby (Matthew Bright, 1999)

Friday the 13th (Sean Cunningham, 1980)

Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 1997)

Gojira a.k.a. Godzilla (Ishirô Honda, 1954)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Joe Dante, 1992)

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

Happiness (Todd Solondz, 1998)

Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989)

Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987)

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (John McNaughton, 1990)

Home Room (Paul F. Ryan, 2002)

Honeymoon Killers, The (Leonard Kastle, 1969)

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)

Jennifer 8 (Bruce Robinson, 1992)

Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)

Kalifornia (Dominic Sena, 1993)

Killer: A Journal of Murder (Tim Metcalfe, 1995)

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

Kiss the Girls (Gary Fleder, 1997)

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (Peter Jackson, 2001)

Love and Human Remains (Denys Arcand, 1993)

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel, 1992)

Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)

Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003)

Monsters Inc. (Pete Docter and David Silverman, 2001)

Mortal Fusion (Rob Iscove, 1997)

Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994)

Nightmare on Elm Street, A (Wes Craven, 1984)

Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 1979)

342

Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)

Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffer, 1968)

Post Mortem (Albert Pyun, 1997)

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Red Dragon (Brett Ratner, 2002)

Resurrection (Russell Mulcahy, 1999)

Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)

Scream (Wes Craven, 1996)

Se7en (David Fincher, 1996)

Serial Mom (John Waters, 1993)

Shocker (Wes Craven, 1989)

Shrek (Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, 2001)

Silence of the Lambs, The (Jonathon Demme, 1991)

Single White Female (Barbet Schroder, 1992)

Spoorloos a.k.a. The Vanishing (George Sluizer, 1988)

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999)

Stars Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (George Lucas, 2002)

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (George Lucas, 2005)

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (George Lucas, 1977)

Stars Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)

Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983)

Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)

Stepfather, The (Joseph Ruben, 1987)

Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)

Striking Distance (Rowdy Herrington, 1993)

Summer of Sam (Spike Lee, 1999)

Switchback (Jeb Stuart, 1997)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

Thing, The (John Carpenter, 1982)

To Catch a Killer (Richard O. Lowry, 1991)

Trail of a Serial Killer, a.k.a. Papertrail (Damien Lee, 1997)

Vanishing, The (George Sluizer, 1993)

Welcome to the Dollhouse (Todd Solondz, 1995)

White Chicks (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2004)