ABSTRACT
Serial killers’ perverse charisma might be attributed in part to their function as allegorical embodiments of consumer drives and desires. The violence of consumerism is structural and universal rather than being an incidental and localized side effect of the system. The violence of consumerism is similarly hidden beneath a façade of healthy normality. The glossy phantasmagoria of youth and beauty, freedom and pleasure, obscures widespread devastation and suffering Images of the deconstructed body are everywhere in the infantile fantasies of consumer culture perfect legs, perfect breasts, perfect hair, perfect teeth, bodies endlessly dismembered in the ceaseless strafing of advertising imagery. Mannequins epitomize the ideal of 1980s body fascism: tall, youthful, slim, impervious to wrinkles, scars and blemishes, untouched by illness and aging. Psychological profiles of serial killers typically diagnose the cause of the subject’s compulsive behaviour as a profound sense of incompletion.
