Abstract
This chapter focuses on murderabilia and is based on 10 interviews with collectors. The first question relates to commodification: can we buy evil? It emerges that collectors perceive murderabilia simply as a kind of rarer memorabilia and are interested in its investment value, viewing the objects for their symbolic and emotional qualities. Murderabilia can take on the characteristic of a commodity amongst commodities which gives people the sensation of buying and enjoying evil.
We can also ask ourselves if, in the case of murderabilia, commodification can coexist with a social bond (the two sides of the carnival of crime coin). In this case, collectors experience a kind of proximity, especially to what Bataille called the ‘sacred left’ which does not appear to be compatible with social bonds. Whilst a number of exceptions are considered and analysed, murderabilia collectors refuse ‘feeling rules’ and criticise attempts to limit their enjoyment and it is partly for this reason that attempts have been made to use the law to limit the phenomenon.
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Notes
- 1.
The term murderabilia would seem to have been coined by Andy Kahan, one of its first convinced critics. For this reason it was not appreciated by collectors who believe it has negative associations (see Marty Graham, Making a “Murderabilia” Killing, Wired Mag, December 8, 2006). There are, however, no alternative words for this market and both the academic community and the collectors themselves use the word murderabilia.
- 2.
Other similar sites are www.redrumautographs.com, specialising in autographs, and www.charlesmansonfanclub.com, devoted to Charles Manson.
- 3.
This 12-question questionnaire was created using the Google form application.
- 4.
Facebook is an excellent research tool and its use for such purposes is increasingly common (Deegan, 2012). Its advantages for this project were twofold: it enabled me to reach a highly specific population segment with a specific interest and enabled me to gather opinions from people from a range of countries.
- 5.
My role as researcher, as an outsider (Salmons, 2011) was clear to the members of the group and was, with the exception of one minor altercation, accepted because one of the group’s administrators introduced me to it in his capacity as gatekeeper.
- 6.
For this scholar, one of the first writers to express a disapproval of a love of things was Augustine, who distinguished the objects as tools from those according a form of enjoyment, highlighting the need to keep away from the latter as the sole object of enjoyment, for him, was to be the Trinity, thus Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- 7.
The Jewish and Christian ban on idolatry behind Augustine’s fears was supplemented, over time, by Marx’s thought, which returned to concepts of fetishism formulated by De Brosses in 1760. For Marx, too, goods had a symbolic value which was not comparable with those of a talisman—with its transcendent meaning feared by religion—but represented social inequality in their ability to embody exchange relationships.
- 8.
2nd January 2003 episode.
- 9.
The site would appear no longer to sell this type of object.
- 10.
Consultable on this address: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/19/casey-anthony-clothing-for-sale_n_4627769.html. Consulted 3 April 2019.
- 11.
Later expert reports determined that Berkowitz was capable of standing trial and he was sentenced to six life sentences. Furthermore Berkowitz himself voluntarily donated his earnings from a book written about his story to his victims (see Hurley, 2009).
- 12.
The text of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America reads thus: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
- 13.
Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. New York State Crime Victims Bd. 112 S. Ct. 501 (1991).
- 14.
For laws not to violate the First Amendment these had to be content-neutral rather than content-based. This means that they must not block the expression of certain ideas or certain people. A content-neutral law is one that is not limited to the contents of a subject. For example, a law adopted by New York city to regulate sound volume in the Central Park area is content-neutral in the sense that it amplifies the volume of all concerts taking place in the area and reduces those in the areas around it in response to complaints from residents (Pyenson, 2008).
- 15.
This was supplemented, according to the Court, by the question of the balancing of interests. The Crime Victims Board did not seem to be capable of giving its reasons why this specific story and these specific earnings were to be the subject of their interest and consequently that of the State, whilst others weren’t.
- 16.
This constrains the potential to write memoirs testifying to rehabilitation from crime, for example, or discussing other themes relating to crime. In fact, the sentence argued that the Son of Sam Law would have blocked the publication of an autobiography of Malcolm X, for example, and Thoreau’s civil disobedience, the Confessions of St Augustine and also the memoirs of Martin Luther King (see Wagner, 2012).
- 17.
Keenan v. Superior Court, 27 Cal. 4th 413, 417 (2002).
- 18.
The senator was supported by Andy Kahan, one of the most strenuous opponents of the murderabilia market and the man responsible for the petition which led to the Ebay ban.
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Binik, O. (2020). This Is a Taboo Business: The Murderabilia Market from Sacred to Profane. In: The Fascination with Violence in Contemporary Society . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26744-5_7
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