Ugly World: Three
Destroying the Universe, Serial Killers and Pop Culture
This week you have a homework assignment, and I’ll know if you’ve done it or not because if not the universe will still be in existence for my next column. According to Scientific American, one individual has the ability to instantaneously destroy the entire universe, the entire space-time continuum. A massive explosion shoots through the universe at the speed of light destroying everything, even nothingness. No life, no light, no space, no time, no existence.
Hopefully if you are a reader of this column you are eagerly awaiting instructions on how to destroy the entire universe and all life as we know it. So, how do you do it? Harness energy from a vacuum. A vacuum has the lowest energy level of any state in the universe. If someone figured out how to use the energy in a vacuum, the vacuum would no longer be at the lowest energy level, which would cause it to release energy. This energy would travel at the speed of light throughout the universe, releasing enough energy to tear down the fabric of existence and what we naively refer to as life.
Before I write my next column, I fully expect one of my readers to engage in some scientific research and blow this fucking world to Kingdom Cum. Feel free to contact me with questions at dltamarin@hotmail.com.
Enough with the science for now, let’s talk about two of my favorite subjects, movies and murder. In a previous column I mentioned the California rapist who dressed in a Michael Meyers Halloween mask. A lot of people may take offense that I am writing about this (fuck you by the way) because it implies that film, writing and the arts can cause violent crime. I don’t see it as cause and effect — the evil thing in a killer’s head that allows him to orgasm from biting off someone’s penis or garroting a victim is the same thing that makes the killer interested in violent films. In other words the Columbine killers weren’t bright eyed innocent young kids who watched Natural Born Killers 100 times and became killers. They were sick fucks, they watched Natural Born Killers and played violent video games to appease the bloodthirsty demons within them, and when watching fake deaths wasn’t enough they started to kill. Perhaps if there were no violent entertainment they would have started killing at an even younger age. Luckily, with the state of technology as it is, there is enough violent entertainment for lifetimes. Maybe some semi-psychotics will be able to watch ultra-violent films and suppress their murderous rage that way.
People may say that listening to Ozzy Osbourne will make you suicidal and homicidal, but how many murders occur every year in America with some shitty country song on the radio playing in the background? How many people commit suicide after watching the antics of Larry the Cable Guy? Have I ever written anything that caused one person to hurt another, and if so, how bad-ass would that be?
My point is that I don’t care if entertainment causes violence. I won’t take the easy way out and say there is no correlation (although I explained that the correlation is based on a miscalculation of cause and effect). I just don’t care if something that entertains me is used as a model for a killing spree.
For those who think there is no correlation between books and violence need to study the history of the Bible and the Crusades, the Koran and violence. Manson got his Helter Skelter ideas from The Beatles and the Revelations section of the Bible. Murderous doomsday prophecy cults commit murder and other violent crimes based on their twisted interpretations of Biblical passages. The Branch Davidians at Waco were just one of many religious groups who lived and died by the Bible. Perhaps the homophobes who murdered Matthew Shepherd had just come from a Bible discussion group where the topic is the Bible’s lines about putting male homosexuals to death. I don’t want to bash the Bible of course, but it has as much violence and perversion to make Marquis de Sade jealous. From child-killing to genocide, from incest to the orgies of Sodom, from deaths of the first born to the other noxious plagues, the Bible is one of the great chronicles of violence, sex and sin. I personally prefer 120 Days of Sodom but there’s always a soft spot in my heart for Lucifer, Baphomet and other Biblical figures. For some reason people think that children shouldn’t read Marquis de Sade, Naked Lunch, or Torture Killers volume 2 but think that the Bible is a peaceful, nonviolent, child-appropriate piece of literature.
What is my point? Why am I talking about literature, film, and real-life violence?
I want to give some context to my discussion of the film Exorcist III: Legion and its relation to real life crime and murder. Exorcist III is one of the most terrifying films ever made, perhaps more terrifying than the original. William Peter Blatty, who wrote the novel and screenplay for The Exorcist directed two films, The Ninth Configuration (a mind-fuck, inmates running the asylum film featuring Stacy Keach and Scott Wilson) and Exorcist III. The film is based on the Zodiac killer. In the first draft of the screenplay the killer is actually called the Zodiac, although in the final film his name is Gemini.
The Zodiac himself was very influenced by several books and films, particularly The Most Dangerous Game, a story of a madman who hunts humans on his small island. In one of history’s great ironies, Zodiac wrote a letter to a San Francisco newspaper claiming that The Exorcist was inappropriately violent.
The Exorcist III is not the only film based on the Zodiac. Dirty Harry, the first of the Clint Eastwood reactionary cop series, is also based on the Zodiac. The killer threatens to kill random citizens for no reason, just as the real Zodiac did. He wrote letters to newspapers describing an elaborate system he created that would allow him to blow up a school bus. For months all school buses in the area were accompanied by cops as terrified parents worried what to do. The Zodiac just watched it all on the television and enjoyed the enormous power he held.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite movie was Exorcist III: Legion. He would get drunk and stoned with his victims, shackle them to the couch, and put on his favorite flick. It is easy to see why he loved the film. One victim is killed by having all the blood removed from her body. She is found bloodless next to 33 vials of her blood, something that would have fascinated a cannibal with a bloodlust like JD. The Exorcist III is about a mentally ill serial killer, something to which JD could relate. He also related to a priest possessed by evil.
The film starts out with a particularly brutal torture/murder of a young boy. Years after the release of the film, someone killed a 12 year old boy in Japan in the same manner as the murder at the beginning of the film. A copy-cat murder.
To confuse matters, the Zodiac had a copycat killer. Due to lack of imagination, this Zodiac copycat was referred to as the Zodiac. The copycat killer was influenced by the actual Zodiac killer, and not the films based on his crimes, but does that really matter?
So, to summarize: The Most Dangerous Game influenced the Zodiac, whose actions led to a copycat killer, and influenced Dirty Harry and The Exorcist III, which was the favorite film of a cannibal serial killer and inspired a copycat killing. Did Dahmer know the influence Zodiac had on him? Joyce Carol Oates’ novel Zombie, Macabre’s album Dahmer (featuring over 20 songs about JD), and the TAD song Particle Accelerator (“Battery Acid in the brain/ Jeffrey Dahmer’s cure for pain”) show the continuing influence Dahmer has on American culture. His influence is also seen in the many darkly humorous jokes about him. Example: What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to John Wayne Bobbitt? Answer: Are you going to eat that?
Zodiac was never caught and his murders are classified as unsolved. In fact, Zodiac was Arthur Leigh Allen, and he was a serial killer who killed dozens and dozens of people, not the 6 or 7 usually attributed to him. Both of the Zodiac films that came out in the last five years completely ignored his other murders and lifetime of crimes to focus on a brief time when all of California was in fear after several executions at lover’s lane type locations. Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist and reporter, discovered the identity of the Zodiac and wrote about him in two books. Allen finally fell under suspicion as an elderly man but he died before anything happened.
Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death with a two-by-four block of wood by a mentally ill inmate who believed he was Jesus Christ (an investigation revealed that he was not, in fact, Jesus).
See you next week unless one of you is able to destroy the universe- good luck!!!
