Word: seriality
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There is one other element recognizable from our own time: a serial killer is at work. He (she, perhaps?) is a slasher who abducts and mutilates boy prostitutes and escapes over rooftops. One observer proposes the startling notion that a misty swirl of radical, unsettling new theories about the workings of the human mind could be used by detectives to create a / psychological profile of the murderer. The man who offers this theory is an alienist (people who commit bizarre acts are said to be alienated from their right minds), Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, once a student of William James...
Really now, America, your fondness for intimate atrocity is getting out of hand. Aren't there fewer cases of serial killers in the U.S. than there are books, movies and TV shows about them? It's sick but true: a statistically minute aristocracy of psychotics has commandeered pop culture...
Waters' spiffy new farce, Serial Mom, mocks this frenzy. It's about a suburban matron (Kathleen Turner, nicely balancing agitation with propriety) who has a caring dentist husband (Sam Waterston), two fairly normal teenage kids -- and an urge to kill anyone who affronts her notion of decency. If someone should chastise her children or date a fast girl or refuse to recycle, Mom goes maniacal...
...insults that civilization can forcefully address. The mannerly middle class may not be able to outlaw assault weapons or rap music or violent movies, but it can shove smokers (usually the working class, the minorities and the young) into the pariah class, right next to the serial killers...
...SIDS. He bolstered his thesis with detailed accounts of the death of five babies in one unidentified family. Medical examiner Linda Norton, who passed the paper along to Fitzpatrick, ! offered an intriguing remark: "She said, 'By the way, when you read the article, you may decide you have a serial killer here...