David Fincher's serial killer chat 'em up MINDHUNTER

I think I relate hard to Holden's curiosity, and w/ his impatience w/ ppl who are reticent and find some of that curiosity prurient. I asked Michelle McNamara (RIP) in a Reddit AMA once if she thought that there was a prurient or titillation aspect to interest in True Crime and she gave an answer I really liked:

I absolutely think about this and struggle with this. But I think it's wrong to conflate interest in crime with the creepiness of the criminal. Crime stories shed light on so many aspects of our culture --- what victims get priority, how our criminal justice system works, what certain crimes say about us as a society. They're important questions, and just because lurid shows like Wives with Knives exist doesn't mean people talking and discussing real-life crime stories in a thoughtful, meaningful way can be lumped in with the prurient rubber-neckers. I also always go back to what one detective told me when I asked him about working on GSK: "I love puzzles." He had no shame or regret when he said that. It's been helpful for me to think about it that way.

I’ve talked abt this in the true crime thread but there is also an element of naming your fear, esp given the prevalence of women interested in true crime

we (women) account for a large portion of the victims of these crimes. true crime for me is being afraid of the monster under the bed but leaning down with a flashlight & looking underneath anyway.
because i would rather know what i should be afraid of

for me a little bit is fear but i think it's mostly a part of a general interest in extreme human behavior. looking at stuff like this (as well as other extreme crimes, affiliation with radical groups/ideologies, other sorts of extreme psychological afflictions) brings up important questions for me about what normal people are capable of (and what is required to be capable of things beyond reasonable ken), how radical fringes of society reflect inner pathologies of that society, etc. i really like this show bc i think it's also v interested in these questions.

the Tickled documentary pairs well with this show

my wife fears true crime stuff to a degree, i think she finds home invasion stuff nightmarish, for example she doesn't even want to hear about BTK. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley during the time of the Night Stalker murders and it was a pretty formative experience. she had a ground floor bedroom window that she always kept shut, and it was a bit further out from the site of his killings but he was still stalking around, and she would have sleepless nights and get awakened by every little rustle outside her window.

i guess i didn't even mention when talking about formative crimes in my upbringing about how an acquaintance of my mom's was convicted and sentenced to die for the double murder of his parents. he claimed it was a motorcycle gang. and, well, he wasn't lying! they overturned his conviction years later. this gang stormed in and killed his parents and framed him. he was stoned on the couch and didn't remember a thing.

that's crazy

this is the case

i maybe misremembered the detail about him being there but i thought that was part of it.

do you mean that he didn't remember any details? because he remembered that a motorcycle gang murdered his parents.

Realizing it's a gay actor playing a straight FBI agent puts an interesting lens on the whole thing when you view the show as a whole. I don't think the character necessarily is masking something about his sexuality, but the two plot threads, where we're judging what signs could be indicative of someone having tendencies toward being a serial killer, while perpetually explaining what is within the bounds of normal sexual and social behavior (homosexuality, fetishes, crossdressing, transgender people) really sets up the groundwork for that sea change in social attitudes that backfired in a handful of ways.

The tickling principal plot thread goes overboard in the interest of adhering to shifting social norms -- he should have quit what he was doing because it was inappropriate, but I don't think it was worth him losing his job and being shamed by the community. There's a hint of the overzealousness that led to the satanic abuse panic of the 80s.

Meanwhile, Holden is perpetually teased about how he has a background of moving around, he doesn't have a very deep relationship history ("I've dated some women but none of the relationships lasted very long") and no one legitimately thinks he's a serial killer but he has these seeds of self-doubt. The most jarring moments, where he sees the shoes on his girlfriend and is completely wrenched from the moment, and the end when Kemper hugs him... just great moments poking holes in the self-confidence he's acting out.

And yeah, I think building a rapport with suspects is useful, but he's just crossing the line wherever he feels it's useful without any basic plan. We also have that juxtaposition with the agents he's training in hostage negotiation who genuinely wonder why they're supposed to learn these deescalation tactics when it'd be safer to just shoot people!

McHenry County State's Atty. Gary Pack, whose office convicted Gary Gauger in 1993, could not be reached for comment. Even after the federal indictment and Schneider's confession, Pack said he was keeping Gauger's case open and contemplating a retrial. During the trial, Pack claimed Gauger confessed to the crimes after 21 hours of questioning.

also holy shit at nomar's story

do you mean that he didn't remember any details? because he remembered that a motorcycle gang murdered his parents.

― you are juror number 144 and we will excuse you (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, October 20, 2017 9:52 PM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i can't find specifics right now, i thought for some reason he had claimed it at the time but maybe he just later claimed someone else did it and didn't know who. it was a really odd story -- ultimately a couple he was friends with helped defend him, and then the wife left her husband for him.

I went to school with and grew up with the Republic of Ireland's most prolific serial killer, and knew him from the age of 6 as "Nashy". He fled to Ireland in the 90's because he had pissed off the wrong people. He is also a suspect in an unsolved UK murder, as well as killing 4 people in Ireland. I didn't think of him once when I was watching this!

In fact, Google reveals Kieran Patrick Kelly was much worse than him. This Nashy being "Republic of Ireland's most prolific serial killer" is just a local misconception, probably.

you should give your name as "Mindhunter" at Starbucks, regardless

first couple of episodes down and this feels weirdly like masters of sex

both are ongoing narratives about people coming up with new fields of research with case studies, so that kind of follows!

I thought the tuna bit was clever - illustrated a woman's consciousness of being vulnerable (stealth pantless), whilst keeping Torv hard, cool and collected. Kinda like the bit at the end of Alien. The cat meowing was a great choice - cats are mimicking human babies when they do that, also was it someone mimicking a cat to get her attention, small window to dark outside, etc, etc.

the best thing in the show was the conversations with the serial killers and the analyses of the interviews afterwards.

Especially Speck, I thought, because a) it illustrated the unplanned killing type and b) sort of threw a number on the idea of the serial killer as almost a cool super-villain, running rings around everyone (Kemper). Like Speck is just as they say 'a walking middle finger' who seems to live in a haze of anger and violence and so ends up being barely aware of just how far he's gone.

i'm guessing holden's /illness/ at the end is just a combination of the sublimated stress from over the season that he hasn't been addressing and the extreme stress over the encounter w/ kemper? his breakup w/ debbie was predictable. i was surprised they never really addressed her sidled up to her research partner during that lab experiment. and holden never tells debbie about why her lingerie/high heels get-up turned him off. presumably that was intentional - if you don't talk about your problems they fester and ruin relationships and ruin your health, etc.

Loved this bit too

the interrogation in the final episode was amazing. extremely intense and unsettling. the moment when he revealed the rock to the rapist was bone chilling.

Yeah when the long-haired guy starts breaking down

This show his half really good Zodiac stuff and half kinda lame Law & Order SVU stuff and I’m conflicted.

i dont understand where the conflict is :D

Only part I wasnt into, as someone else said, was the whole Holden/Debbie relationship subplot. It felt a little gratuitous, though I suppose there was meant to be the conflict of "what is deviancy, really?" thread of things.

yeah i agree

Also I'm p damn sure they did not have self-stay-up stockings in the 70s.

All these anachronistic music cues and other things weren't really bothering me, but a serial killer in the 70s saying "yada, yada, yada" is a step too far.

finished this yesterday, really enjoyed it - they did a fantastic job of finding great but mostly unfamilar actors for the supporting roles. the guy playing ed kemper was fantastic, such a potent combination of naiveté, manipulation and menace

great to see anna torv again after losing track of her after fringe - she's kind of a unique screen presence. shame she's probably not going to get a chance to use her astonishing leonard nimoy impersonation this time around tho :(

i've obviously been listening to too much last podcast on the left because i ended up saying to my wife 'oh hey i think that's btk' as soon as he showed up and then annoying her with facts about ed kemper as i remembered them during episodes

luv2kempersplain i guess

did anyone mention the Cynics gig poster in the apartment kitchen yet? totally an 80's band. waiting to read thread when i've seen every episode...

catching the 21st century speech is actually kinda fun. it's like where's waldo. "fuckedupness"...

i still have a little of the last episode left. i find this show really frustrating. there's so much about it that's excellent - the look, the sound design, almost all of the acting - but the acting and characterization of holden is super annoying. it's hard to watch a character who just consistently makes the wrong decisions and is overconfident in his abilities and lack of knowledge. at the beginning of the series he feels like an alien who's gradually learning about human beings and their emotions, and then suddenly he's a grizzled jaded fbi agent. some of this might have been intentional but it did not work for me. but i'm still watching the whole thing bc the interview scenes are great and the guy who plays bill is amazing and it's nice seeing all these beat-up looking rust belt cities on tv.

does he consistently make the wrong decisions? he's basically responsible for the program getting off the ground, he frequently cracks open the interview subjects, his profiling instincts on active cases appear to be excellent...

he's play-acting imo, and I keep hammering on it, but I think the facade cracks by the end

hammering on the point, that is, not a fictional character's facade :)

he has some skills but he also seems to take credit, at least in his mind, for stuff that bill does. like in the last episode he's talking about how his gross sex talk helped catch the rapist/murderer, and bill points out rightly that it was him noticing the cut tree limbs that led to the guy being brought in in the first place. they wouldn't have caught the brother/sister/brother-in-law team unless the cop had identified the sister's baby as a weak point and used it to get her to confess. etc. etc. he credits everything to their very basic analysis knowledge when basic police work is still getting most of the work done. ugh. he's annoying.

holden is good at interviewing but he would never actually catch any bad guys on his own. also his interview techniques are built on leading and coercing suspects who they go in assuming are guilty, as debbie points out. he doesn't have any actual investigative skills.

you're right that noticing the cut trees found the rapist but if you remember he aced the polygraph and was going to go free unless they convinced him to confess. staging the interrogation and some of the gross talk was 100% essential to actually getting a confession out of the guy. it's not /just/ the profiling work - there's real detective work as well. but these local police stations don't really need the FBI to teach them how to follow basic leads. they need them for the experimental profiling stuff. and imo it has been essential.

and like the brother/sister/brother-in-law team the local cops weren't investigating them at all bc they found the crying sincere and felt bad for the fiancee. it wasn't until the fbi came in and really followed their hunch (that the crying was bogus) that they were really able to drill into the case.

holden just sucks

he's trying too hard, working a little bit above his skill level

he never takes off the fbi man pants, even when he's off the job. that's how hard he's trying.

booo

I love stuff like this

https://t.co/MU7U33DK05

— Rob Savage (@DirRobSavage) October 24, 2017

^ Breakdown reel showcasing David Fincher's invisible visual effects in the Netflix Original Series Mindhunter.

huh, that's great - i did find myself wondering where they'd found so many pristine vintage tvs!

cats are mimicking human babies when they do that

my favorite Groff-ism

I CAN SEE THAT YOU’RE NAKED

I CAN SEE THAT YOU’RE .. cold

i enjoy his comedic timing

i keep thinking about the comment that one of the killers makes that the urge to kill is like the urge to sneeze - creepy as fuck and distressingly relatable

cats mimick their own kitten vocalizations for life if they're raised by people, but afaik it has nothing to do with human babies. feral cats tend to not vocalize a lot.

cats mimick their own kitten vocalizations for life if they're raised by people, but afaik it has nothing to do with human babies. feral cats tend to not vocalize a lot.

― mh, Wednesday, October 25, 2017

no argument with that

we finally knocked out S1 so I'm ready for this thread

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<3 kristoff