damsel
ABOUT THE PROJECT
The first true crime documentary I watched was about Jeffrey Dahmer, a man who was responsible for a series of gruesome murders (and cannibalistic acts) of 17 young men starting in 1988 ‘til he was caught three years later in his Milwaukee apartment.
Dahmer stuck out to me in the midst of the true crime stories I was starting to read (Ann Rule was a regular in my household.) On camera, he appeared calm and mild mannered, but on paper (and an ill-advised, safety-off web search,) he was violent, disturbed, and murderous.
“When I was a little kid I was just like anybody else,” said Dahmer during an interview, and it was true. All of my true crime books said so (although, if you read into Dahmer’s past, you can make your own judgment of the definition of ‘normal’.)
So I began to read extensively about Dahmer.
Not because I sympathized with the man (who poured acid in people’s skulls while they were still alive,)
and not because I felt he was some ‘damaged, misunderstood, sweet-baby-angel’ like many’a serial killer groupie,
but because I was intrigued that someone could do such horrible things to innocent people, yet seem so... Regular.
Like you or me.
It surprised me even more when I realized that these people–these monsters–did not only take the shape of men, but women too.
I mean, I went to an all-girl’s school my whole life, but not once during my readings about Nellie McClung, Dr. Maude Abbott, or any other powerful woman did I come across the likes of Karla Homolka or Genene Jones.
I was confused as to why more people knew the horrific details of Ted Bundy‘s crimes than about the existence of unrelated Carol Bundy and the atrocities she committed. In fact, as I began to move from reading true crime to horror literature, I noticed that there were typically two types of women being written into existence:
SUBJECT A: The badass, hardcore, take-no-shit female
who knows how to destroy with a gun/blade/chainsaw-arm
/blow-darts, and has no absolutely fear,
and SUBJECT B: The damsel, doll-eyed, pouty-lipped
beauty who gets kidnapped/emotionally destroyed
/abandoned, and has no means of saving herself.
I wrote Damsel because horror is typically seen by most as gruesome and morbid; scary for the sake of being scary without much more substance. The same stories are used over and over, repeated in another tale of blood and gore.
When people think about horror (especially film,) the first thing to pop into mind is usually a bleach blonde babe with giant boobs, stumbling naked through a forest as some masked dude with a machete lumbers after her. People don’t tend to think of poetic short stories.
“Hello?” the tiny stereotype squeaks as she opens the door to the oddly super isolated cabin, her razor-sharp high beams visible from under her tight white tank top.
Though recent horror has taken a more creative turn with film (The Cabin in the Woods), and television (American Horror Story), I wanted Damsel to write its fictional female characters on paper as more than just cut- and-paste horror stereotypes.
I wanted to be able to tell their stories of violence and blood in a creative way. I wanted to make their rage beautiful.
Peter Vronsky, author of Female Serial Killers, speculates that female murderers often kill for the same reason males do:
as a means of expressing rage and control.
For some, this fact is shocking. But most people tend to forget that women can be as scary as men.
FEMALE SERIAL KILLER CLASSIFICATION: BLACK WIDOW
"There are a variety of female serial killer types, the most notorious being the aptly termed Black Widows, whose nickname recalls the toxic spiders who destroy their mates when their usefulness is over.
They are typically unsuspecting women who hide behind the facade of a wife or mother to hide their murderous instincts.
Three-quarters of the time, they kill strictly for profit. They live off life insurance policies, pensions, and other assets gained from 'sudden' deaths of husbands, children, grandchildren, stepchildren, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers."
Model: Lindsey Dorie (@DorieLindsey)
Makeup Artist: Josh Stark
Shot/Lit/Edited: Cella Lao Rousseau
FEMALE SERIAL KILLER CLASSIFICATION: REVENGE KILLER
“According to Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, Ph.D., a criminal profiler and leading expert on female serial killers, ‘Female murderers can actually be more lethal than their male counterparts because they use covert murder methods. That is, often there is little to no evidence that a homicide has been committed.’
However, one type of female killer that successfully strays from this pattern is the revenge killer.
Though rare, what makes revenge serial killers different is their drive to inflict pain and their lack of control. They typically lash out with overwhelming anger that borders upon pathological.
These women have little or no cooling-off period, implying a certain kind of obsessive attachment to the darker qualities of revenge that go beyond what most normally mean by ‘motivated by revenge'.”
Model: Reena Hubatka (@rhubatka)
Makeup Artist: Josh Stark
Shot/Lit/Edited: Cella Lao Rousseau
FEMALE SERIAL KILLER CLASSIFICATION: ANGEL OF DEATH
“An Angel of Death thinks of herself as God– she preys on those who she believes are already marked for death. Sick people in hospitals, aging relatives, and other vulnerable, weak targets typically fall victim to these women.
Angels of Death fall into a larger community of serial killers. They are normally power and control killers, although sometimes there may be a comfort, profit or other motive to their killings.
These killers can be broken down into three murderous categories:
1. Mercy killers, who believe their victims are suffering immensely
2. Sadistic killers, who use their position of power as a way of controlling and torturing helpless victims.
3. Malignant heroes, where a pattern in which the subject endangers the victim's life in some way, then proceeds to ‘save’ them. Some feign attempting resuscitation, all the while knowing their victim is already dead and beyond help.
Though motive varies, all types of Angel have a strong compulsion to kill that drives them. They tend to murder their victims where they can easily access them, crave all attention that comes afterwards, and kill all of their vulnerable prey without remorse."
Model: Megan Dudeck (@megandudeck)
Makeup Artist: Josh Stark
Shot/Lit/Edited: Cella Lao Rousseau