Tithecott's Serial Killer Vs Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer

In Richard Tithecott's "Of Men and Monsters" he writes many different theories about the construction of serial killers in society and specifically how they become fascinating figures due to their mystique, aura and mythology. Tithecott's book constructs an idea of a specific kind of serial killer, one that is intelligent, resourceful and cultured. He writes "Because we often associate intelligence with rationality, the inscription of serial killers with intelligence can shield us from meaninglessness, from a disruption of our models of cause and effect, from the behavioral non-sequitur." Later he writes "When we construct the serial killer as someone who struggles violently with society in order to assert his individuality, intelligence is presumed. Our construction of the "high-IQ killer" is a sign of our desire to figure the serial killer as being above and beyond society, as someone who attempts to assert his freedom." Tithecott's concept of the "high-IQ killer" is the antithesis of the killer in the film Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

The killer in the film is not an intelligent person. His killing isn't particularly rational and doesn't seem to exist as a means of asserting his individuality. Henry seems to kill as a result of deep psychological trauma he suffered as a child. There is a common belief that most serial killers turn out the way they did because of some kind of serious emotional trauma but Tithecott doesn't particularly delve into that. His main focus is the idea of serial killers being individuals who act rationally but who kill as a radical, self-serving gesture. He writes "Killing is intellectualized as a demonstration of one's disregard for social norms, as a radical gesture, that which is figured as sexual freedom can be a sign of the intellectual elite, a sign of power."
The general filmic elements of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer construct the character of Henry as going against all of the norms of serial killers that Tithecott suggests. Henry's environment is a drab, dirty, cold suburb of Chicago. He occupies a dingy apartment that has a generally dirty look about it. He drinks cheap beer, he dresses shabbily and he works low rent jobs. The art direction and mise-en-scene of the film place Henry in an intentionally low-class, Midwest environment. His roommate Otis displays perverse sexual tendencies and eventually begins killing people alongside Henry.

The character himself isn't written or acted as though he's particularly bright. He understands enough to know that there shouldn't be a pattern to his killings because he doesn't want to get caught, but that's his deepest intellectual thought. He is unable to read, as displayed in a scene where a female character puts on a new shirt she bought and Henry asks her what the shirt says. It is referenced early in the film that Henry has already been in prison for the murder of his mother, showing that he's already been caught once and it could very well happen again.

As he explains, Henry killed his mother because she was a whore who frequently brought men home and made Henry watch her make love to them while she dressed him up as a girl. This is the main rationality for Henry's behavior. He grew up in a hostile, abusive, traumatic situation, murdered his own mother because of it, spent time in jail and as the movie begins he is living in a drab, unpleasant environment with unstable people surrounding him. Henry kills not as a means of "asserting his individuality" but because it's the only way he knows how to react to the world around him. His kills aren't well-planned. He doesn't kill based on gender, or actions of the person he kills or even out of need. He simply goes out to find any random person and acts out violently against them. Henry kills as an outlet over the aggression and anger over the unhappy life he has had to lead.

Tithecott does tap into one potential element of Henry's psyche. In discussing the physical need of serial killers to continue killing he writes:
"It is the desire for ultimate control over others which propels the serial killer towards another killing. For the serial killer, like a premodern caught up in a postmodern world, murder is closure without final closure, an ending which signals the end by directing him to new beginnings. His desire can never be fully satisfied; it apparently brings only the need to kill again in order to gain another fleeting sense of control (163)".

This helps describe why Henry needs to continue killing. Whatever perverse psychological need a kill performs for him, it will only have the effect of an addictive drug. Soon he'll have to kill again to once again release his aggression in the only way he knows how to.

There are some other concepts and ideas about serial killers that Tithecott discusses which seem more geared to Henry's nature. He writes:
"The sex beast or serial killer is either someone outwardly repulsive or else he is a latter-day Jekyll and Hyde, concealing his depravity beneath a façade of respectability or even charm. Serial killers can appear to be examples of this second kind of stereotyping but the "gentleman rapist" is not concealing depravity by the gentlemanliness, but is presumably gentlemanly during the rape (153)".

When Henry kills women in the film, he does it in vicious, gory, unpleasant ways but he is done after the killing. Henry expresses no interest in sex throughout the film and in several instances when he sees men acting inappropriately in a sexual way towards women he becomes angry. In the scene where he takes his roommate Otis along to kill a family, Otis begins to sexually assault a woman after he has already killed her, only to be met with a stern warning from Henry. When Otis tries to make sexual advances towards his sister Henry grabs him by the hair and yells at him to stop. This is evidence of the "Jekyll and Hyde" theory as presented by Tithecott. Henry is a violent man who murders women but in terms of sex he believes that women should be treated properly, all of which probably stems from the sexual molestation he suffered at the hands of his mother.

There is validity to Tithecott's idea of serial killers being intelligent, sophisticated, motive-driven individuals. The need by society to rationalize the outrageous illegal actions of these men as a means of maintaining a social norm is a reasonable concept. The main problem with his argument is that he's only looking at the "upper class" serial killers (he frequently mentions the notoriously smart Jeffrey Dahmer and the fictional yet sophisticated Hannibal Lecter) but he ignores the middle class serial killer like Henry. Henry is an uneducated man with a traumatic childhood who unleashes his aggression not out of motivation or sophisticated reasoning, but out of his need to sooth his psychological trauma in the most raw, animalistic means possible.

Works Cited:

Tithecott, Richard. "Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer."
University of Wisconsin Press. Pgs 143-178