Why do Americans idolize serial killers?

• Position: Law & Justice

If you log on to eBay, you will find a variety of "murderabilia" on sale for anywhere from five dollars (for a lock of Charles Manson's hair) to $10,000 (for one of John Wayne Gacy's clown paintings). If you are broke but still stuck on Gacy, it is possible to pick up a bag of dirt from his infamous crawl space for a mere $10. This might seem ghoulishly commercial, but it is just one manifestation of America's century-long obsession with serial killers, as are the plethora of books, films, and television shows that examine who these people are and why they kill--and how.

"The answers to those questions are deeply colored by the psychosocial needs of both author and audience, and often tell us more about those needs than about the subject in question," surmises David Schmid, associate professor of English at the University at Buffalo (N.Y.) and author of Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture. He feels that our construction and lionization of the serial killer as a cultural figure reflects Americans' unconscious--but deeply held--fears about human nature, power, and sexuality.

Schmid points out that, despite the fact that the U.S. produces 85% of the world's serial killers, Americans consistently represent them as "other" than themselves--as loathsome, monstrous, utterly alien creatures. At the same time, these murderers are treated as icons, celebrity performers, and fetish figures. Entire industries revolve around them; they entertain us in a variety of ways while providing a handsome living for the FBI, true-crime writers, novelists, filmmakers, and television producers.

"We can hardly deny it," Schmid maintains. "We collect their nail clippings, photos, and dirty clothes. We watch their trials and listen to their victims on the morning news. We compete online for serial killer board games and action figures, gobble up endless hours of cable programming and films featuring their lives and deeds, and read hundreds of best-selling books about one serial killer after another, even though we know the outcome before we open them. We do it all because we are compelled to resist the idea that these characters, so familiar, so endemic to America, are at all like the rest of us."

By emphasizing their "creepiness," Schmid indicates, we can deny that they share many of our values and obsessions and, except for the fact that they act out the worst of them, frequently live unremarkable lives...