ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the cultural fascination with Karla Homolka flows not only from discussions about her agency, responsibility or victimism as Morrissey and Pearson have suggested, but also from the sex and death taboos she violated with Paul Bernardo and the subsequent disgust these taboo violations elicited amongst a riveted public audience. It examines the role death taboos played in the manifestation of the cultural fixation on and social construction of Karla Homolka as a cunning femme fatale. The chapter demonstrates how disgust the audience felt in response to the violence found in this case is linked to a series of taboos related to sisterhood and feminism, sex and death, and mortality. Of course the perceived injustice of the plea bargain adds to the concentrated gaze maintain on Homolka. But it is also her transgression of the hetero-normative and patriarchal boundaries of hegemonic femininity and womanhood that demand sexual passivity and nurturance that mark her as dangerous.
