ABSTRACT
From Jeffrey Dahmer’s “zombie cannibalism” and Charles Manson’s Spahn Movie Ranch exploits to Ivan Milat’s backpacker murders and Snowtown’s “bodies in barrels,” serial killings have spawned media genres and become macabre tourist attractions. While tourism and moviegoing are associated with leisure and entertainment, both activities also have disquieting dimensions including the experience of negative emotions for horror movie fans and “dark tourists” fascinated by suffering and death. This chapter focuses on film-induced dark tourism related to serial killings, analysing the affective qualities of both the screen experience and tourists’ visits to related locations. What role, we ask, do genre conventions and the representation of hunting grounds and gravesites in serial killer film and television play in the construction of audience engagement and touristic behaviour?
We argue that films positioned at varied points on the aesthetic continuum from factual to fictional representations of serial killings make different affective appeals to the audience. Where genre films offer a visceral emotional charge often combining horror with disturbing closeness to the killer and their victims, social realism and true crime provide socio-cultural context and invite the audience to adopt an investigative, evaluative role. Genre and style also influence whether moral emotions such as compassion and contempt are elicited. The inclination to visit the sites of trauma represented on screen and to collect photographs or “murderabilia” is in some ways akin to the killer’s compulsion to revisit crime scenes and keep souvenirs. We contend that this distinguishes dark tourists’ behavioural and affective responses from those who are merely fans of horror or true crime genres.
