'The Great Good Place' No More? Integrating and Dismantling Oppositional Discourse in Some Recent Examples of Serial Killer Fiction

• Autores: Isabel Santaulària i Capdevila
• Localización: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, ISSN 0210-6124, Vol. 29, Nº 1, 2007, págs. 55-67
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Serial killer narratives delight in portraying a gothic social landscape of pervasive and endemic crime, violence and evil in a postmodern context of apathy, indifference and institutional incompetence. In this paper I analyse the extent of the critique of contemporary society in this popular genre. Using some recent examples of serial killer narratives - both novels and films - as case studies, I argue that, even though they accommodate a discourse that jeopardises the comfortable imagining in detective fictions of an innocent society threatened by occasional crime, serial killer narratives ultimately endorse the status quo and the state apparatuses that regulate it and guarantee its preservation.