Graduate Student, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies
Thesis Title: Cinematic Constructions of the Female Serial Killer: A Psychosocial Audience Study
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Dr. Matt Hills
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About
The media representation of violent female criminality has become a popular topic of academic study, and the figure of the female serial killer has attracted particular fascination.
It is argued - especially from a feminist perspective - that female killers are routinely denied agency and/or blame for their criminal actions within such representations. Focusing upon the story of Aileen Wuornos, my research explores the ways in which viewers are psychosocially motivated to respond to the cinematic portrayals depicted in three key films: Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003), Aileen: The Selling of A Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 1992) and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 2003).
By conducting a series of free-association narrative interviews (Hollway and Jefferson 2000), and taking a psychoanalytic approach to the interpretation and analysis of my interview data, I argue that my participants “invest” in the film texts on both conscious and unconscious levels. Using a psychosocial framework, then, I theorise these investments not only in terms of cultural ideologies of self, but also - drawing upon object-relations psychoanalysis (and Kleinian theory, in particular) - as being powerfully motivated by participants’ unconscious anxieties, conflicts and phantasies.
I therefore seek to build upon existing screen theory and cultural studies accounts of the film/viewer relationship, arguing that a more nuanced approach is required in order to better understand the complex psychodynamics of the spectatorial experience.
