Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?
First time I saw the trailer for Netflix’s “Mindhunter” I thought: “Well, about damn time.” The perfect TV series, something to fuel my rather unhealthy obsession with criminology, is finally coming. Based on a 1995 book by John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker “Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Units”, the plot follows two FBI agents interviewing inmates convicted of incredibly violent crimes. Their research leads to creating a new term we all know today: serial killer.
Most crime freaks would be familiar with the unsettling, menacing vibes of David Fincher’s movies such as “Zodiac”, “Se7en”, “The Girl with the Dragon tattoo” or “Gone Girl”. Therefore, I couldn’t think of a better person to be trusted with directing “Mindhunter”. Eerie music, shadows, cold colours and overall suspense give a perfect background for a psychological thriller. It’s worth adding that Charlize Theron, who has some crime portraying background herself after her Oscar-winning performance as Aileen Wuornos in “Monster”, has joined the team as one of the producers.
The main characters Holden Ford (Johnathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) are fictional, but based on real life people. It looks like behind every great idea there is a person like Holden: young, curious, stubborn and underestimated by their seniors. Unfortunately so, creative minds are usually hushed down by people trying to persuade them that their ideas are stupid or, in some cases, plainly insane. Now think about it for a second. Let’s go back to the 70s, when the FBI was an institution responsible for hunting the most wanted of the most wanted. Behavioural Science Unit (BSU) has only just been established and psychology was regarded as an unnecessary theory, inapplicable to the law enforcement. Every crime was investigated methodically: who, what, when, where and, most importantly, why. Investigation can hardly go on unless the motive is known. For most crimes this strategy works, as people are usually pushed into violent acts because of certain circumstances, such as money problems, infidelity, drugs etc. However, what happens when the motive is elusive or non-existent? When the motive behind a violent, repulsive, barbaric crime is nothing more but the need for violence itself? That is why psychology can come handy to investigators, both the middle-aged white men of the FBI and small town detectives. It is in the time when the show’s plot is thickening that the FBI takes up a new objective: preventing crime. The key to prevention turns out to be criminal profiling, which after being invented led to the finding and arresting of Dennis Rader, known as the notorious BTK (bind, torture, kill) killer.
It has been known since Freud’s time that a person’s childhood has a major influence on their adult life. However, if everyone whose childhood wasn’t all fun and games was to become a murderer, rapist or display any kind of deviancy in the future, then our world would hardly be a liveable place. So what makes the “recipe” for a psychopath? Holden’s first serial killer encounter is in Vacaville State Prison in California, when without permission of the FBI’s big boss, he sets off alone to talk to Edmund Emil Kemper III, known as the Co-ed killer, responsible for a total of ten murders in the 60s and the 70s, including the slaughtering of his paternal grandparents and mother. As much as I’d love to elaborate on the real life Ed Kemper and the outrageous fact that after being committed to a psychiatric facility because he shot his grandparents at the age of 16, he was released five years later (!!!) and went on to kill eight more people. Let’s focus on what the show tells us about Kemper’s background. Can we possibly sympathize with a person who murdered women and had sex with their corpses? Ed is very tall, quite fat, with nerdy glasses, neatly groomed moustache and dark brown hair, combed tidily to one side. He looks like a lonely, clumsy weirdo from an IT department. Or like a paedophile, but that’s entirely up to viewers’ interpretation. Regardless of his looks, Ed seems to be a nice guy. Offering sandwiches, beverages, being nice to the guards and to this random FBI agent who appeares out of nowhere, speaking clearly and wisely, yet carefully, using sophisticated words and phrases. He hardly resembles the “monster” he’s being described as. He is the only one that we can develop a slight sympathy for while watching the show. Amongst the infamous criminals who are interviewed by Ford and Tench, who despite his lack of enthusiasm at the beginning eventually joins Holden in the experiment, are Richard Speck and Jerry Brudos (the Shoe Fetish Slayer). It is the character of Kemper that is central to the story however, as he develops an unexpected “friendship” with Holden.
It’s not hard to guess who is being blamed for seeding the violence and hatred towards women in psychopaths at the early stages of their life: the mother. In their second interview, Kemper opens up about his mother and their “rocky” relationship. He recalls that after he murdered an 18-year-old Cynthia Ann “Cindy” Shall, he chopped off her head and buried it in his mother’s garden, just under her bedroom’s window, facing up.
“She always wanted people to look up to her.”, he said.
It’s particularly disturbing seeing how articulate Kemper is and how casually he talks about his crimes. The show makers are playing a trick on viewers’ mind — on one hand you feel naturally repulsed and disgusted by what Kemper did, but on the other you may feel a little sympathetic, when you think about him as an outgrown, bullied teenager, whose mother regarded him as her greatest failure and disappointment. In that case, should the mothers take responsibility for their sons’ outrageous acts? How could we possibly prevent mothers from being cruel to their sons? In many cases it is that the killer uses his victims as “surrogates”, because he’s overwhelmed with the urge to hurt his mother. It seems like an easy explanation, though, blaming everything on “mommy issues” or “daddy issues”. However, how often it happens that the easy explanations turn out to be the most accurate ones?
Holden Ford and Bill Tench are very different people. Ford is a “good boy” in his late twenties, working hard as a hostage negotiator for the Bureau; we hardly ever see him wearing anything else but a suit. He develops an interest in murderers after listening to a lecture conducted by one of his senior colleagues at the Academy, who for the first time has pointed out the elusiveness of motive in some crimes. He eventually meets special agent Bill Tench, a struggling family man, who’s having troubles in marriage because of their adopted son. Bill is unsure about his opinion on Ford. He definitely admires his ideas, creativity, courage and energy and that’s why he decides to team up with him in the first place. On the other hand, after their research becomes official, supported by the renowned doctor Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), who specialises in studying trauma and abuse’s impact on victims of violent crimes, the effects of long talks with psychopaths start to reflect on Bill’s life and he is unsettled by how immune Holden seems to be to these people. Is Holden truly immune however? Can it possibly be that encounters with these individuals can have no impact on someone? It seems essential in this field to be able to control your emotions but while being involved in such scenario it seems almost inhumane.
The previously mentioned “friendship” between Holden and Ed Kemper is the indicator of Holden’s change from episode one to episode ten. The ending makes you ask yourself if insanity is contagious and question the price there is to pay for human lives being saved in the future. Or even question the whole process itself. After all, these criminals are highly intelligent and smart, but most of them are pathological liars. Is there any point in creating a profile if it might plainly be a pile of bullshit, created by a psychopath to possibly lead the investigators off the right track while going after his murderous colleagues? Well, thank God most of them are loners. Criminal profiling sounds like a great idea but at the same time it makes the law enforcement realise how many potential “dangers” are there. Also, how many “dangers” don’t seem to show any sings of deviancy or violence before, taking the infamous Ted Bundy as the prime example.
The show is definitely in my taste, as I swallowed the whole season in a total of 17 hours. Still, it is not for those with weak nerves. The portrayal of criminals in the show is very accurate, for a second I even thought they got to talk with real Ed Kemper, because the actor looks so much like him. Every episode starts off with a cold opening, where we follow an individual clearly plotting something and we know that he’s up to no good. Crime lovers will realise soon enough that the individual is the previously mentioned BTK killer, just before his murderous spree. “Mindhunter” portrays what so many other shows portray as well: the impact of working in law enforcement on people. How it tends to ruin their personal lives, how impossible it is to separate work from family and friends.
What mainly makes “Mindhunter” a treat for real crime lovers is the fact that even though most of the characters in the show are fictional, the killers are as real as they were in real life. The book the show is based on tells how real life counterparts of Holden Ford and Bill Tench, John E. Douglas and Robert K. Ressler, go on to interview famed inmates such as David Berkovitz aka The Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and the ultimate killer rock star: Charles Manson. The show has already been renewed for a new season so we can expect to dive into another psycho’s mind quite soon. After all, isn’t it comforting in a way, knowing that there are people more messed up than you are?
