Mindhunter, Manhunt: Unabomber and the Themes of the Serial Killer Profiling Drama
Warning SPOILERS and EXPLICIT LANGUAGE ahead!
I won’t be the first to point out that there has been a recent surge in true crime drama and documentaries recently added on Netflix. Within the recently added list, one can find Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019), The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann (2019), Dirty John (2018) and the accompanying new documentary Dirty John: The Dirty Truth (2019), Evil Genius: The True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist (2018), Abducted in Plain Sight (2017), and of course Making a Murderer (2015-present) to name a few highlights. Why true crime has had a particularly prominent moment could be explained by the #MeToo movement and Western culture’s need to break the silence about sexual abuse and assault. This has fueled documentaries such as Surviving R. Kelly (2019), which looks into the artist R. Kelly’s sex abuse allegations which have now lead to real court convictions and Leaving Neverland (2019), which focuses on late pop icon Michael Jackson’s child sex abuse allegations. However, our cultural obsession with true crime goes back further than the 2010s. Another reason for this recent surge also could be explained by the way that Netflix can easily monitor viewing habits and therefore create more content based on this information. Our preexisting attraction to crime narratives is probably the main reason why more narratives of this kind continue to be churned out. We can trace our cultural obsession with the crime drama back to the nineteenth century through the consumption of Penny Dreadfuls; Execution Broadsides; Sensation novels, including the subgenre of Newgate novels; detective fiction (which has been traced back to the 1700’s) and, later in the twentieth century, puzzle novels. Our continuing interest in crime drama, especially true crime, has only fuelled producers and directors to create even more content. The way we consume media has fundamentally changed as our interests are continually personalised through online data collection. This creates such phenomena as social media echo chambers, but this logic certainly affects our streaming services. Whether or not this is creating great content or narrowing creative possibilities on one of the most popular ways to consume media is not the topic of this article, but it has been partly the inspiration for it. This article aims to analyse some of the trends that exist in the true crime sub-genre: the serial killer drama and its recent development of the profiling drama. I have chosen to mainly focus on Discovery Channel’s Manhunt: Unabomber (2017), now on Netflix, and Netflix’s own Mindhunter (2017). I have chosen these two texts due to their popularity and because they represent real historical crime narratives. Despite their true crime inspiration, they still share themes and plot points with fictional serial killer narratives. I aim to investigate these prevailing themes to understand this cultural obsession with true crime in general by investigating the serial killer profiling narrative in particular.
Whilst at first these narratives appear fresh additions to a long tradition of serial killer narratives, they actually retain long used themes. Manhunt: Unabomber traces the development of forensic linguistics within the FBI to catch the Unabomber, an anonymous killer who sent bombs through the U.S mail service and evaded capture for seventeen years. Set in the 1990s, the plot focuses on Jim Fitzgerald, known as Fitz, a new FBI profiler who develops his own methods to catch Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. We also learn insights about Ted, his history and his motives. The series invites the viewer to develop empathy and understanding for Ted, can be met with both critical acclaim and disturbance as Ted killed three and seriously injured twenty-three innocent people. The series juxtaposes an episode dedicated to Ted’s tragic history and his desire for human companionship with an episode covering his trial where we meet the victim's families and the victims themselves who have experienced excruciating pain and have sustained life long injuries. The series itself creates a moral riddle as we understand Ted as a human, but repulse him as a murderer.
Mindhunter also follows the real historical developments within the FBI during the 1970s. This series focuses predominantly on Holden Ford, a young agent with aspirations to develop the Behavioural Sciences Unit by incorporating the new research developed by psychologists of the time. Bill Tench of the Behavioural Sciences Unit sees the merit in his ideas and recruits him, but it is not long before Holden has more controversial ideas about how to study the psychology of violent criminals. Holden argues that to understand the behaviour of these individuals, the FBI needs to interview violent criminals and understand their thoughts, their feelings, their family history, and create a psychological profile which can be used in future cases, leading to faster capture of violent criminals. At first, Holden is met only with resistance, until Tench eventually gives in and joins Holden in an interview with Edmund Kemper, a serial killer already behind bars. Tench realises that, once again, Holden is right and both manage to establish this project as a legitimate study that will revolutionise criminal psychology, even developing the phrase ‘serial killer’ as we understand it today.
The focus on historical developments within the FBI is an interesting take on the serial killer narrative, as it shifts the focus away from the actual murders and towards the psychology of the criminal. It has signalled the development of the profiling drama, the action taking place within the FBI rather than with the killer. Consider films such as Psycho (1960), Se7en (1995), American Psycho (2000), Monster (2004), or generally any mainstream film about a serial killer. The film may show the chase to catch the killer, try to explain why the killer is a killer, make an account of the shocking nature of the mind of a killer, or a combination of the above. However, the kind of genealogical narrative about the developments within the FBI and criminal psychology is generally quite new. We see a few precursors in films such as Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Zodiac (2007), both famous examples of the serial killer narrative. Silence of the Lambs is just as much about the profiler, Clarice Sterling, then it is about the killer she is hunting. Zodiac, too, is more about the historical processes of trying to find the ‘Zodiac killer’ than the killer himself, probably because he never was caught. However, because of their length, it is not possible to base so much of the narrative on the processes of criminal psychology, but we do witness Clarice interviewing the cannibal killer, Hannibal Lector; a plot point based off of the interviews the FBI was conducting at that time with real serial killers, now represented in Mindhunter.
Becca Rothfeld, in Murder on the Installment Plan (2018), published in the Hedgehog Review, points out this new trend in the serial killer drama, or the profiling drama, that
‘we know who did it, but the mystery of motive remains. It recurs in the spate of serial killer dramas that have proliferated in recent years, multiplying as fast as the gruesome murders we watch raptly each week’.
Rothfeld examines the reasons why we ‘watch raptly each week’, and traces the origin of the mystery novel back to the 19th century and Edgar Allan Poe. This developed into puzzle and mystery novels of the 1920s and 30s, which had a ‘fixed template’ for easy ‘reproduction’. Rothfeld links this to the serial television drama to argue that we enjoy the predictability of these series. However, Rothfeld points out that it is
‘wrong to assume that we relish the domestic comforts of our certainty. For if we enjoyed the predictability that attends repetition, why would we let anything end? Why wouldn’t we serialize indefinitely? Why aren’t we still repeating the very first story’?
She argues that whilst we enjoy the repeated puzzle narrative, we have reached a stage where we crave puzzles that cannot be solved. The unsolvable puzzle can then be reproduced, creating a new template of predictability to enjoy. This is the birth of the mystery of motive. We have serial killer dramas that investigate not so much who, but why. And whilst the why that is investigated comes up with some great answers, we can never truly know why serial killers do what they do.
This is what is at the centre of these two narratives: the search for a motive.
Holden’s mission in life is to get to the motive of all those who kill seemingly without motive. When he interviews serial killers, he wants to know why. When he assists with active cases, he starts from the why and quickly finds the who. The who is never the driver of the plot, it is always the why. Fitz, on the other hand, seems only interested in Ted’s motive rather than the motive of murderers in general, but it is a motive centred plot none the less. Ted requires a little less digging than some of the killers in Mindhunter because the Unabomber publishes a manifesto explaining his motive.
In a voiceover throughout certain episodes, we hear the Unabomber read out segments of his manifesto. He blames industrial society, or technology, for the enslavement of mankind, for poverty, pollution and war. His manifesto is not the ravings of a mad man, it is a well argued and, by all means, correct analysis of contemporary society. The manifesto is written in a PhD dissertation style, we learn he has an IQ of 160 and attended Harvard University at sixteen. Fitz has to convince his bosses that their previous profile of the Unabomber, that he is a jaded, uneducated ex-pilot, is wrong and that they have a mastermind on their hands. Fitz uses linguistic analysis to create a new profile, but his developments are met with much backlash.
Fitz appears as an equal mastermind to the Unabomber. He puts his career on the line because he knows he is right. The viewer, with the benefit of hindsight — we know Kaczynski is in jail both in real life and through flash-forwards in the series — know that Fitz is right.
Fitz manages, often single-handedly, to solve mysteries and, through sheer determination, gains the respect of his superiors. A similar narrative appears in Mindhunter. Holden’s idea of interviewing violent criminals to create a psychological profile is met with much hesitation by his boss.
Holden’s ideas are adopted much faster than Fitz’ due to his experienced partner, Tench. Tench acts as the straight-talking side-kick, a Watson to Holden as Sherlock Holmes. Whilst Holden is young and eager to experiment with his new ideas, he needs an older guide who can help with communication.
Both protagonists, Fitz and Holden, are met with resistance by authority figures who do not want to give up their traditional methods of operation. Especially as these methods involve academic studies of psychology and linguistics, viewed by old timers of the FBI as, in their words;
The protagonists have to push against old prejudices to get their ideas heard. This is the first theme that the serial killer narrative uses time and time again: the lone genius. Scott McLemee compares the on-screen Fitz to the real-life James Fitgerald, commenting that:
Later in this article, McLemee points out that the tension between Fitz and the FBI staff that is presented in the plot was non-existent in real life. In the real case, the team were supportive and interested in Fitzgerald’s research. Fitzgerald has also ‘acknowledge[d] that the first forensic-linguistic analysis of the Unabomber’s prose was conducted by Roger Shuy, a professor of linguistics he consulted at Georgetown University, where Fitzgerald later wrote a master’s thesis on language and gender differences’. Whilst the fidelity of the text is not on trial here, what is interesting is that the creators of Manhunt: Unabomber have chosen to highlight Fitz as a lone genius who has invented a new profiling method. The same theme prevails in Mindhunter as Holden is highlighted as having the idea of interviewing criminals and being the inventor of using psychology to create a profile. Mindhunter is based on the non-fiction book, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit (1996) by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker which describes the development of criminal profiling. Douglas did not invent the concept of psychological profiling however:
Douglas and partner, Howard Teten, developed Brussel’s ideas to create a profiling method which is used to catch violent criminals. Again, what is interesting is that these on-screen narratives have hyped up the figure of the lone genius hero when we compare Fitz and Holden to their real-life inspirations. Even in real-life cases, although these historical developments were often group efforts, usually figures such as Douglas and Fitzgerald are held above the rest as the true lone genius pioneer. Both figures are depicted in documentaries and articles as a lone genius. In one article by the Telegraph, Douglas is named the ‘serial killer whisperer’ whilst another article names Fitzgerald the ‘mastermind’ of the Unabomber investigation, even though Fitzgerald himself states that ‘the person on TV didn’t do everything I did in real life. I didn’t do everything the character did’. The intention of this article is not to downplay the role that Douglas and Fitzgerald played within criminal psychology, and there is no denying that without their developments in this field, our ability to understand and catch violent criminals would be drastically altered. I am also not suggesting these men are not intelligent and dedicated people. However, this article does aim to point out our cultural need for lone superheroes. Think of any classic superhero, from Superman to Batman, and then consider our modern heroic figures, such as BBC’s Luther (2010-present), who fits perfectly into this analysis of the lone hero. Consider Jason Bourne, James Bond, Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes, Rick Deckard from Blade Runner (1982), or even Dexter Morgan from Dexter (2006–2013). Whilst some may have their sidekicks, there is always only one lone hero or genius. I would argue that Fitz and Holden both exemplify this cultural demand for the lone genius.
This ‘psychic connection’ is another major theme that prevails throughout Mindhunter and Manhunt: Unabomber, a theme which dates back to Clarice and Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs, a film which consolidated the status of the serial killer as ‘downright mystical’ [Toronto Star, December 5, 1998, Saturday Second Edition]. In fact, consider the figure of Sherlock Holmes. His portrayal throughout the years has varied from Robert Downey Jr’s action hero to Benedict Cumberbatch’s antisocial, loveable narcissist. However, the almost-mind reading genius Sherlock is a figure which has prevailed.
I would argue that this Sherlock figure has been reconfigured and repackaged, with figures such as Will Graham in any rendition of Hannibal Lector narratives such as Red Dragon (2002) or the stylish television series Hannibal (2013–2015).
Will Graham, in both of the above versions, has the ability to see through the killer’s eyes in a borderline psychic fashion. The Graham in Hannibal has to view the crime scene alone and slip into the mind of the killer, acting out the murder in his mind and stating ‘this is my design’. Graham’s ability, however, takes its toll, and he slowly begins to dissociate and lose his grip on reality. Like Sherlock, Graham’s ability is suggested to be the result of some ability to access greater parts of his brain, or as a psychic ability. Fitz equally has some kind of psychic ability to understand Ted’s mind through the words Ted writes. In episode five, Fitz states quite clearly that ‘I know him like I know myself’ and expresses his admiration for Ted because ‘he has the courage to live by his ideals. I respect that’. Holden is equally able to get into the minds of criminals through this kind of empathy similar to Graham and in the psychic fashion of Sherlock. Holden is able to create a dialogue with various criminals by reflecting their own beliefs back to them, exemplified best in episode nine when Holden asks misogynistic rapist and murderer Richard Speck:
No matter who the killer is, Holden extracts information out of them with slick ease which baffles Tench and all those around him. This ability to get into the minds of these murderers is shown through the slipping boundaries between the hero and the villain. Holden and the murderers he interviews are just two sides of one coin, and Fitz is the mirror image of Ted.
This mirror image theme is connected to the theme of the psychic profiler. The profiler can only become the psychic profiler if he is connected to the killer. In the BBC rendition of Sherlock (2010–2017), one of the main villains of the series is Sherlock’s own brother. Graham and Hannibal’s relationship is that of two friends, whilst Hannibal also becomes Graham’s therapist. This is obviously borrowed from the infamous Silence of the Lambs, where Hannibal becomes, in some ways, Clarice’s therapist. However, in the television version, Hannibal is able to influence Graham into his own doubt about whether or not he might be guilty of murder. Hannibal is able to transform the hero into a possible villain, into Hannibal himself. In Luther, Alice, the villain who turns into a kind of anti-hero is both sidekick and flirtatious lover to the hero John Luther. In episode two of season two, Luther even quotes Alice that black holes are ‘evil at its most pure’, a quote from Alice in season one. Alice becomes Luther’s anarchist version of himself, an extreme extension on his own value system which the means are justified by the ends — a similar theme found in the Batman. This theme is used heavily in Mindhunter and Manhunt: Unabomber.
The first episode of Manhunt: Unabomber opens on a tranquil scene in the middle of a forest. We meet Fitz in this flashforward after Ted has been arrested.
Fitz is living in a cabin in the woods and is dragged back by the FBI to help get Ted to plead guilty at his trial.
We already know Ted has been caught and, already, the series establishes that this will be a narrative about psychology and the mystery of motive. It is also suggested at this stage that Ted and Fitz have some kind of a psychic connection, that they understand each other in a way that no one else can. Fitz can ‘speak his language’ and ‘connect’ with him. Fitz also embodies a physical mirror image to Ted.
Both live in the woods, eat what they hunt and facially resemble each other. Fitz has been so affected by this case that he has become Ted and, from episode one, the series establishes that this story will be about Fitz’ transformation from clean-shaven family man to this bearded loner in the woods.
Firstly, the most obvious connection which is established is that Fitz constantly agrees with Ted’s arguments detailed in his manifesto.
In episode two, Fitz is openly empathetic to Ted’s ideas. Here, he rejects obedience and even references Ted as a defence. Fitz, in a flashforward in episode two, speaks with Ted and explains that driving a car was the moment he realised the truth in Ted’s manifesto. He explains that when he was driving home one night, he was alone on the roads but still stopped at a red light.
He states that he felt his freedom was being sucked out of him. In the final episode, Fitz returns to the theme of obedience and the image of the red light whilst speaking with Ted:
‘I know you’re not insane. Every time I stop at a red light or I follow the arrows in IKEA or I sit and I wait and listen for the modem to dial up, I can see the systems that control our lives, and I feel my freedom being hemmed in, and I hate it. What you have to say about the world, it matters to the future’.
Through revelations such as these, we see the transformation of Fitz and the mirror imaging being formed. The viewer themselves are intended to question the validity of Ted’s arguments and presents us with ‘a variant of the more familiar question of whether he should be understood as evil or sick’; we are asked if we sympathise with this villain as Fitz does.
The ending image of the series is a glaring red light, a symbol of societal obedience. The red light stares at us, questioning us. Are we, like Fitz, a mirror image of Ted too? In episode six, after the manifesto has publicly been published, The Times writes that ‘there’s a little bit of the Unabomber in most of us’.
Another parallel between Fitz and Ted is that of their family connections. Fitz begins his journey with a family. As he becomes more deeply immersed in the Unabomber case, he loses that family. By the end, we know Fitz lives alone in a cabin in the woods. On the other side of that coin, Ted has no family. We learn that his lack of family is his greatest regret in life, through episode six.
Ted longs for human connection and fantasies about a family that he never had. We see him struggle to make friendships with people and how he feels he is not good enough for those around him.
Ted has befriended a single mother and her child, and we watch as Ted helps with homework and gives out long-needed fatherly advice. He is invited to a birthday party and makes a handcrafted gift. However, when he arrives at the party he sees all the people and the gifts and he instantly feels isolated and not worthy of their companionship.
Just as Ted looks through the window, isolated, Ted casts himself from society due to his loneliness and his inability to establish meaningful connections. This is then directly mirrored with Fitz in the next episode where he too leaves a party. He sees on television that his methods were being claimed as his bosses idea and leaves the celebration because of his feeling of unappreciation.
After this scene, Fitz takes to the woods and to his own company, isolated from humanity just like Ted. Fitz becomes just as emotionally cut off as Ted, he rejects the advances of a woman not because of his wife but because of his own lack of emotion, and he loses his children because of this psychic affiliation with Ted. Both become as isolated as the other.
The final connection between them that we can identify is that both have a need to be right. Fitz constantly battles against his bosses because of his own conviction that he is right. Equally, Ted believes he is right.
Ted is convinced that his argument that technology and modern living is enslaving humanity is correct, so much so that the law must prove that he is insane to hold this belief which in turns proves that we, the majority, are correct. This need to be right drives the two of them. It even puts them in competition with each other. During the final episode, Fitz is able to convince Ted to admit his guilt. Ted believes he will win when he attempts to discredit Fitz’ warrant. However, Ted loses this case. Ted loses when Fitz is right. Fitz explains how Ted has ‘already lost’ and will be made to look insane to the jury:
‘but before those experts come in, the whole world is gonna hear the diagnosis a million times on the TV, in the newspapers, from David, from your own mother. So, the trial is just gonna be a foregone conclusion’.
Fitz threatens that Ted
‘will be corrected […] will be normal. And you will re-join society. You’ll get a credit card, an apartment, business casual wardrobe, you know, some of those tops with the penguins on them. And you’ll get a job behind a desk where you’ll work obediently 9–5, and your first paycheck, you get a cellphone. Next one, you get a TV. You know, if you splurge, you can get yourself a Nintendo. And every night, you fall asleep watching that TV. And every weekend you’re gonna go to the mall. You’re gonna walk around Circuit City. You’re gonna look at the big-screen TVs and think, “should I get myself a 20-incher?” […] You won’t even remember that you wanted anything more than this’.
Fitz threatens Ted whilst circling him around the cabin in a dizzying way whilst Ted holds his cabin, grasping on to his old life as it slips away. This argument is key to beating Ted as his integrity is all he has left. This scene also illustrates that Fitz empathises with Ted’s critiques of modern society and disagrees with modern living. It shows their connection and their need to win over the other. When Ted loses, the viewer is invited to feel bad for him. Fitz clearly doesn’t seem to feel satisfied, and both characters remain isolated and alone.
The three main points that arise in this series are the representation of Fitz as the lone genius who invented forensic linguistics, Fitz being connected to Ted by some psychic force which affects him so profoundly that he comes to embody Ted, and whether or not the audience can sympathise with a murderer. The series chooses to highlight Fitz as the lone genius hero fighting against bureaucracy to get his creative ideas heard. The series chooses to represent Fitz and Ted as two sides of the same coin. The series chooses to represent Ted as a sympathetic character. Fitz is represented as a traditional hero. He is a minority within an institution who wants to make the world a better place. His belief systems are grounded in a conventional moral code but it is his extreme sympathy to the killer and his paralleling personality with Ted eclipses the difference between good self and evil other. The series ends conventionally, the bad guy behind bars and the good guy triumphing, but that red light exists as a twist on that conventional end. We are Fitz, all questioning our world around us. Ted exists as the unsolvable puzzle that Western culture is addicted to trying to solve. This series offers a psychological history of Ted to explain his behaviour, but we never truly can know the mind of a murderer.
If we compare this to Mindhunter, both series use the same themes of the profiling drama. The series similarly represents Holden as the lone genius who invents criminal profiling, has the ability to connect with the criminals and comes to embody aspects of these criminals. First, as mentioned before, Holden is represented as a young genius fighting against old ideas. The unorthodox hero fighting against the system is a classic theme in the crime drama. Mindhunter is no different. Episode one, as mentioned previously, displays how the FBI is reluctant to discourse with academia. When Holden manages to convince the FBI to fund him to attend lectures in psychology at a university, he experiences resistance from the academic world who do not want to converse with the FBI. Holden’s girlfriend Debbie points out the resistance is ‘mutual’. This nicely establishes Holden as a traditional hero going against authority figures to try to do good. Holden is established as having groundbreaking ideas and he himself obtains the idea to interview violent criminals. Only after sharing this idea with others such as Shephard, his boss, Tench and Dr Wendy Carr, the consultant psychologist, does the gravity of this idea come to terms with Holden. When Holden is proved right, gets funding and recognition, this fuels the beginning of Holden's self-centred narcissism.
Holden, the more he delves into the psychology of psychopaths, the more he becomes one himself. He develops a grandiose sense of self-importance, begins to mimic the killers that he interviews in both speech and the treatment of his girlfriend and develops questionable relationships with such criminals. The series achieves this representation through mirroring Holden with the serial killers he interviews in a similar way to Fitz and Ted. Holden develops empathy with the misogynistic views that the killers hold, he feels he is above authority figures and the law, and the series juxtaposes Holden’s personal life with the crimes he investigates to create this mirror image.
First of all, Holden is often a misogynist, just like the serial killers he interviews. For instance, in episode three we meet Dr Wendy Carr and initially, Holden assumes this person must be a man as we notice his surprise upon meeting her. He later comments that there is something sexual about Carr, which is met with some derision from Tench. Holden is often insecure about his girlfriend, Debbie, and also feels the need to control her. When Holden meets Debbie for the first time, he comments on her humour that she is ‘hard work’ and asks her to ‘please stop? You’re relentless’. He also comments that he has ‘been warned to watch out for women like you’ and his naivety and subsequent insecurity about women is displayed in this show as a prominent plot point as this behaviour toward Debbie escalates continually. In episode four, Debbie is not able to drive across the country to pick him and Tench up and he asks ‘why am I so upset?’ to which Tench responds ‘maybe because she can’t drop everything when you call’. Holden disregards this and comments ‘because she doesn’t want to’. His insecurity and need for dominance begin to mirror those of the murderers they study, such as in episode five there are parallels between the local case they are studying in Pennsylvania and Holden’s personal life. During discussions about a boyfriend feeling impotent with a more sexually experienced girlfriend, causing rape and murder, Holden then goes home to Debbie and has a paranoid argument about how many people she’s slept with. During episode eight, Holden rubs Debbie’s feet after investigating a child foot tickler, again, paralleling the cases he investigates and his own behaviour.
Later in the conversation, he once again asserts his dominance by saying ‘if you need a ride home from school again, call me’ after being jealous of one of Debbie’s classmates driving her home. He reveals that, like the killers, he himself has a compulsion to dominate Debbie. In episode ten, Holden is praising himself for using his profiling techniques to catch a child rapist and murderer and Debbie points out that the interrogation was unfair as they presupposed his guilt. Debbie states that Holden ‘gets off’ on catching murderers causing Holden to get defensive. Debbie points out that when she doesn’t agree with him, he ignores her point of view to which Holden says ‘could you just be my girlfriend. Could you just listen’ to which Debbie dryly responds ‘you mean, shut up and adore you’? Holden lashes back with ‘well, you could try it. Once’. Whilst we can put these comments down to him arguing with his girlfriend and his inexperience with women, we see this continual dismissal of Debbie’s thoughts and opinions, the narrative paralleling between his personal life and his case studies, and his increased misogynistic language use go hand in hand.
Holden has no problem getting into the mind of misogynistic killers and it begins to affect him. In episode three, Holden states he doesn’t want these criminals to ‘rub off’ on him, but despite stating this worry, they do. The episode with Speck, where he asks him what gave him the ‘right’ to take ‘eight ripe c*nts out of this world’ is a poignant moment of the series where we no longer know if Holden is doing this for the benefit of the research, if he really means it or both.
This is the second major point of this series: the uncomfortably thin boundary between Holden personality and those he interviews. Whilst Tench struggles to get into the mind of the killers, Holden enjoys his ability to understand and empathise with murderers. Tench experiences a kind of breakdown in front of his wife due to the immense pressure from work and his home life. Carr consoles him and suggests therapy whilst Tench points to Holden remarking ‘he’s f*cking immune. How do I tap into that?’ Holden’s psychic connection to the killers, however beneficial to their research, turns Holden into a mirror image of one. In episode seven, Holden tells Jerry Brudos, a serial killer, a personal story to get him comfortable talking to them. After, Tench asks whether Holden was telling the truth, and he replies that it was a true story. Holden seems completely unfazed at telling Brudos a personal story, to which Tench tells Holden that it bothers him. Tench says, angrily ‘if what we’re doing doesn’t get under your skin, you’re either more screwed up than I thought, or you’re kidding yourself’. This episode eloquently captures how Holden gets too close to his subjects, even though they get results. He is both a traditional hero, in that he is unorthodox but for the greater good, but still blurring the line between his own personality and those of the killers he speaks to. After an interview with Brudos where he confides in Holden and Tench that he had sexual fantasies involving shoes and dead women, Holden is depicted drawing a dead woman with her shoes off.
In this same episode, we are even shown a scene where he and Debbie are out buying shoes, establishing that link between Holden and the killers. Later, in episode ten, we discover Kemper sends Holden cards which Holden tapes to the wall.
Tench points out that if the Office of Professional Responsibility sees this display it looks extremely inappropriate, to which Holden responds ‘f*ck em’. Holden enjoys the attention of Kemper and values their connection. In another episode, Holden walks this line between personal belief and connecting with the killer very narrowly during an interrogation with a murder and rape suspect. He even quotes Edmund Kemper to the interrogated suspect.
Holden uses this quote against another suspect who may hold misogynistic belief systems similar to Kemper. However, Holden uses insulting terms like ‘p*ssy’ in his personal life, which blurs the line between his own attitudes and the attitudes of the murderers he investigates. Even his boss, Shephard, reacts to Holden’s conversation with Speck with disgust at this blurred line:
‘I never again want to listen to a tape where I can’t tell the difference between my agent and some incarcerated lowlife’.
This scene is important, as Holden justifies his behaviour as:
Holden, however, seems to enjoy getting ‘in the dirt with the pigs’, and his colleagues are uncomfortable with how close Holden is to his subjects. Carr responds that Holden is just impatient and was barely in the room ‘three minutes with Speck before you got him going with the c*nt speak’. Holden then defends his approach by referencing the murders that have been solved using their research when Wendy points out that their research is based on background information ‘not priceless gems you seem to think you’re mining’. Whilst Holden believes he is this lone genius and that he has done nothing wrong, the rest of his research group is left uncomfortable.
At this stage, Holden is extremely arrogant and believes he is above the law. He constantly undermines his colleagues, suggesting that, when their interviews end up in a newspaper, Holden believes Tench can only be angry because he isn’t mentioned in the article. This article is directly Holden’s fault after he drunkenly brags to local police officers. At a disciplinary hearing concerning the interview with Speck, Holden undermines his interrogators: ‘you think I don’t know what you’re doing with this principal’s office bullsh*t? This is what I do with violent offenders, only much better’. Then he walks out, believing ‘the only mistake I made was ever doubting myself’. Just as Holden seems to have hit an all-time high for his narcissistic behaviour, the final episode ends with a reality check. Holden visits Kemper in hospital after he attempts suicide to get Holden’s attention. Holden states that he and Kemper are friends in the context of ‘their work together’ and Kemper retells his murderous motivations to Holden, stating the women he killed are his ‘spirit wives’ and that the could easily kill Holden so that he too could be with him ‘in spirit’. Kemper then asks Holden about his motivations:
The suspense of the scene reaches its height when Kemper hugs Holden, and Holden breaks free and sprints for freedom.
Holden collapses and in voiceovers recalls all the warnings he has received from Tench and his colleagues about his behaviour. The disorientating sequence ends with Kemper asking Holden if they are friends. The physical closeness of Kemper, even being able to call him a friend, caused a mental breakdown of sorts for Holden. He became too close to his subject, and it is suggested that in the next season, Holden will need to distance himself emotionally from his subjects. In some ways, this is similar to Fitz coming to embody Ted. Whilst it is unclear whether we can consider Fitz’ moving to the woods and leaving his family as a breakdown, it certainly balances on the line between a breakdown and breaking free of societal constraints, the latter still being influenced by Ted. Both Holden and Fitz experience the dangers of being the lone genius able to tap into a psychic connection with their respective murderer subjects, and, as a consequence, begin to become their mirror image.
The tropes of the lone genius, the psychic profiler and the mirror image are dominant themes we can see throughout the crime drama genre. Like the puzzle novels of the 1920s and 30s, there is an existing template that can be used over and over to create a reliable structure that will interest fans of the crime genre. The mystery of the motive drives these narratives, why does Ted choose to disseminate his arguments by bombing people, why do serial killers enjoy killing, and other questions such as: are these people sick or made, and is there a clear boundary between good and evil. There is an interesting sub-plot in Mindhunter which acts as a parallel between Tench’s adopted son who can’t speak and the question of whether criminals are born or developed into one. Tench’s wife questions whether the child was ‘like this before’ or if she and Tench are ‘failing him somehow’. We see this question projected onto the serial killers they investigate, and Manhunt: Unabomber equally asks this question. Ted, arguably, was made a killer through the abuse he experienced at Harvard, shown in episode six, but he was possibly born with difficulties establishing meaningful connections to people. Holden, when discussing Charles Manson with police officers who label him as evil, argue ‘that’s a little Old Testament, don’t you think? Good, evil, black, white, it’s easy. But who in this room has a life that’s easy? Circumstances affect behaviour’. Holden argues that ‘locking him up his young life helped make him what he was’, which is met with much derision and disgust. Mindhunter attempts to break down that barrier between black and white by highlighting the abusive childhoods that affected the serial killers they interview, whilst Manhunt: Unabomber argues that Ted experienced his own fair share of abuse. This black and white boundary is equally explored through Holden and Fitz, whose personalities begin to merge with the murderous subjects they study. We are welcomed to question their morality, along with the morality of a character such as Ted.
This disintegration of moral divides is the product of postmodern scepticism about the rational need for categorisation driven by old Enlightenment ideals. Modern audiences also possess a postmodern understanding of the fluidity of human identity which is perhaps why the hero now is more similar to the villain. I recommend watching Wisecrack’s video on Why Our Villains are Different Now as they eloquently describe the ways that the hero and villain are often two sides of one coin, like Ted and Fitz or Holden and his subjects, often the means of their aims being the only difference between them — whilst Fitz and Holden develop similar views to their murderous counterparts, they do not murder themselves which concretely separates the hero from the villain. Thus, this postmodernist scepticism allows for the disintegration of moral boundaries, which produces shows such as Mindhunter and Manhunt: Unabomber which can explore this disintegration within the boundaries set by the prevailing themes of the genre.
These prevailing themes can be applied to other popular shows of the moment, such as The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann or Casting JonBenet (2017) as these series tap into the obsession with the unsolvable puzzle and the unsolvable why. Series like Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes equally tap into the need for an unsolvable puzzle and provides a mystery of motive which all we can ever do is guess and ponder at. These narratives are made for the modern audience who is well versed in the true crime drama, and these series are well aware of the knowledge the audience can bring to the text. In this way, they are self-referential and recall themes and plots from other true crime texts. Like the puzzle novels of the 20s and 30s, these texts have their own template which can be used to reproduce more and more crime narratives which we can never solve and can consume on repeat. To conclude, this article aims to show the prevailing themes of the profiler drama: the lone genius, the psychic profiler and the mirror image. The overall theme that these texts carry is the mystery of motive and the unsolvable puzzle. We are invited to question our own moral codes and consider the breakdown of traditional boundaries. Whilst texts such as these market themselves as fresh and new additions to a long-standing tradition of true crime narratives, but really they use the same templates and themes. This is not to say that these texts are not interesting or worth watching, they question the moral fabrics of the human psyche, but this article aims to point out that streaming platforms such as Netflix churn out these narratives and use templates that will guarantee viewership. They are connected and use the same themes and templates. Even when watching content that we enjoy, one should always question what messages they send to the viewer and what they contribute to cultural understanding.
