Serial Killers

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Philip Simpson

It is undeniable that during the past half-century the United States has been producing more of these sensational criminals than the other Western industrialized nations. Sociologists point to many possible explanations. One of the most compelling is that the American cult of individuality has always prized violence (particularly for males) as a quick response to frustration. The simple outlaw (Jesse James, Billy the Kid) on the lam from the maddening complexities of communal, multicultural existence remains a heroic American icon. For many (if not most), violence is more attractive as a form of immediate gratification than the intangible results of long-term, peaceful political activism. In spite of the public rhetoric condemning violence, Americans have traditionally accepted even extreme levels of group and individual violence alike as appropriate responses to conditions perceived as intolerable. Marvin Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti's hugely influential study, The Subculture of Violence, analyzes how it is possible for people within a culture to embrace some of its general values while denying, de-emphasizing, or inversing others, and yet remain within that culture. For many segments of the American public, violence is regarded as a perfectly legitimate form of social expression and problem solving, dependent upon and framed in terms of prevailing local conditions even as it is decried by the supposedly overriding social discourse.