Bloody Sacrifices
40 years ago, Jane Caputi wrote a brilliant book about serial sex killers - The Age of Sex Crime - which is as relevant today as it was in 1987. In the book, Jane analyzes the histories of well-known, individual serial sex killers, from Jack The Ripper to The Boston Strangler to Son of Sam to Ted Bundy and many more - and answers fundamental questions about how and why they came to be - and how they fit into our cultural narratives. Jane argues that far from being monstrous aberrations, serial sex murderers occupy a role in our patriarchal culture that is both accommodated and endorsed.
In this hour Elle talks with Jane about all aspects of serial sex killing; the folk hero appeal of serial sex killers, how sexual terror is used to preserve male power, how the serial killers, police and media co-create “monster genius mastermind" narratives and how these narratives fit hand in glove with a common collective male fantasy of hurting women.
We also talk about the real silencing of victims and how women everywhere are invited to identify with the serial killer’s victims, both in the real-life cases, then in the true crime media that retells the gruesome details, and then finally in the fictional movies, books and television that serves up an endless buffet of dead women, bloody sacrifices to male power.
EPISODE LINKS
Are Women Human? by Catharine MacKinnon
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Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies & Author
Jane Caputi is Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She loves teaching and learning, and as part of that has written four books, most recently Call Your Mutha’: A Deliberately Dirty-Minded Manifesto for the Earth Mother in the Anthropocene (Oxford University Press, 2020). She also has made two educational documentaries, The Pornography of Everyday Life (2006) distributed by Berkeley Media and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth (2016), distributed by Women Make Movies. In 2016, she was named Eminent Scholar of the Year by the American Culture/Popular Culture Association and in 2020 the Association for the Study of Women in Mythology gave her their annual Saga Award for contributions to women’s history and culture.