Using Actual Killers As A Theme: Going Too Far

I know this won't be the popular opinion, but personally I am sick of violent themes. Seriously sick of them. I know...'art and creativity and personal expression..blah blah blah'.. And yes, I am an artist. But, there is just simply too much violence already in the world ~ every time I turn on the TV or read a paper and that doesn't even count the ugliness that has touched my life.
It's sad that it creeps in everywhere like toxic air.

I know there will be those who like it, buy it, and revel in it. Just count me out.

 

FrankieCat. U !!!!

Gustav Klimt...interesting how he never depicted viloence, death yes...but yet his art is still appreciated and respected in this modern world of in your face violence...

I love your avatar...something I think will always be reveared as one of the most beautiful images ever done "mother & child". ;-)

 

I love Klimt!!! And, yes ~ this particular work is spectacular. Thank you!

Peace!

 

Albert Fish now there's one I have honestly avoided thinking of and easily goes on the "f-ed up list" *shudder*
Probably one hell of a double standard since his crimes and Lizzie Borden's living/taking place around the same time (he lived 1870-1936 and she lived 1860-1927)

The difference certainly lives in some key factors
- He was unquestionably admittedly guilty she was not
- The age of the victims, children vs 2 grown adults
- The public reaction AT THE TIME Lizzie was a sensation....Fish was/is just some sicko

Also I discused this topic with some other doll collector's recently who were happy to point out there are BJD's that are EXTREMELY popular..and are named after mass murderers. I can not remember which ones to save my life though because they were Asia. The irony of this is the owner (so i have been told would be the first to condemn something like a Lizzie Borden Doll...but rush to defend that their doll is nowhere near 'THAT bad'

 

Last night some friends where talking about serial killers and they where surprised how much i knew about them. Absolutely EVERYTHING i know about serial killers comes from reading the wiki entries about the people named in this thread.

 

Frankie-cat: Despite the fact that I have defended an artist's need to confront the darker side of life I totally agree with you. I was tired last night and just wanted some mindless entertainment on TV and what was I presented with? CSI on 4 different channels reveling in the usual gore porn, Law & Order Special Victims Unit revelling in sex crimes against women and children they can look sanctimonious about and a film about a serial killer who filmed his victims dying through live streaming on the internet and the more hits he got the quicker they died. The only comedy on offer was reruns of Big Bang Theory I have seen enough times to act out myself (thank the lord for Sheldon Cooper!!!). I wound up reading!

 

My theory is this: no matter what I do, no matter what anyone else does, there will always be someone somewhere who is offended by it. So I just do what I like (obviously within reason and the law ) and don't worry about other people's opinions too much. In the end if having a serial killer doll makes you happy then good for you

On a related note, is it bad to have a doll related to murder but okay to have a doll related to heavy drug use i.e. band members, Sherlock Holmes etc. Is glorifying murder significantly worse than glorifying addiction or self harm or <insert another 1001 bad things>? I don't think so. What one person may find tasteful or artistic another may find extremely offensive - take the doll that was released one halloween (I don't remember the name of it or the company) that caused a massive uproar about the fact that it was bloody and (I think) had a gunshot wound in the head or something like that. I thought it was quite a fun and apt release for the season but it really upset some people.

To be honest though, there's very little that offends me these days in terms of BJDs, so my opinion can probably be ignored because I'm weird

 

I will say (in case anybody missed it) that those fall into the category of novelty items for adults rather than children's toys -- those are two very very different things. They don't appeal to me personally, but I wouldn't condemn someone for collecting them either. I can think of a number of reasons someone might choose to do so that are pretty harmless when it comes down to it. I think it's easy to get into the mindset where if it's icky to us it must and should be icky to everyone else!!! However, because we handle themes in different ways and read different things into them, the reality is that it's much more complex. Here is a very good example:

Here you assume an either/or situation. Either the person in question collects figurines of serial killers or they work to protect children. I would hazard a guess that most people buying that line do not believe it is in anyway ok to actually harm a child, and are operating on the fact that we are talking about historical crimes where there is some distance now. I think you could make the case that the discussion was in poor taste, but there's a difference between bad taste and bad actions. We'll end up in big trouble as a society if we can't tell the difference between the two.

Whether or not violence in the media (I don't mean actual real immediate events) bothers me depends on what mood I'm in and what it is specifically. Like most people, I have things that I find very uncomfortable, and things that I'm ok with. Just because someone can sit and watch something I can't doesn't mean that they are wrong in some way. People just draw their own personal lines in different places. Part of what seems to get you worked up is the fact that you attach other motives or emotions to people who's lines fall in different places than your own. For a lot of people there is a difference between fiction and reality, history and the present that cause them to be bothered by some things and not others. Just because you don't make those distinctions doesn't mean that other people can't. Liking a figurine of a serial killer or watching a violent movie does not mean a person in anyway condones violent behavior in the here and now.

I don't think it's a matter of it becoming worse because someone didn't have an issue the first time. Depictions of violence have always ALWAYS been around from the earliest writings to both ancient and modern day entertainment. That's because it's part and parcel of life here on earth, and always has been. Having it never show up in art or in the media is just ignoring the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it's there, and it isn't just going to go away. There are people that will push the boundaries of taste (which is nothing really new either), but when you look at things as a whole, I'm not so sure things are worse than they ever have been. Different perhaps, but definitely not worse. I can actually think of some very real improvements over the ages

The reason why I keep arguing about these points is not because I revel in violent imagery, but because I find it worrying when people don't make the distinction between what someone is reading or watching or what toys they play with and their actual real life actions -- the things that really do have an impact. Aside from public safety/basic lawfulness I also don't like to hear calls for restrictions on certain themes either. Restricting freedom of expression in it's myriad of forms, even when you or I may not like it, is also a dangerous thing to do. Protecting freedom of speech also means protecting people doing and saying things you don't like, but without it we would be very much at the mercy of our governing bodies with no way to lawfully dissent. That is a lot more horrifying than a plastic figurine.

 

But thats the thing...we think Lizzie Borden isn't bad because they were adults...but still someones children. I am 33 and if i were murdered now my mother would be devistated. I just cannot tolerate these ideas and themes...I feel it leads to further acceptance of even greater horrific crimes.

In my signature is a link to a BJD data base that allows this form of expression (gore, drugs, sex, etc. etc.) and this website hardly gets traffic. I think there is a reasson why.

 

The way you're going on, you would think the figure company was actually murdering children, dismembering them, and then shellacing the parts to be included in the packaging. Your line between fantasy and reality seems to be malfunctioning. Do you feel that all authors who write crime novels also must commit crime, or that people who do enjoy horror movies must also kill people in real life? It's a very slippery slope full of logical fallacies to assume that someone's tastes, even if they are in incredibly poor taste, reflect their actions or actual feelings on a subject.

It's also a shame you seem to feel that some of the greatest artistic works the world has ever known aren't art because they deal with themes and depict things that you don't like. You must think Guernica or the Rape of Lucretia shouldn't exist.

I agree wholeheartedly with Taco. Censorship is a much more horrifying thing to me than plastic figures of dead children. You can always choose to not buy the figure and therefore not support the artist, but censorship strips all of us of our voices and our ability to exercise our free will.

 

michaelmichael is thankfully on my ignore list so I no longer have to deal directly with his bleating, but the snippets that other people have quoted here have been enough to make me pity those who do. I would just like to add to what Kim said:

Never mind just Guernica or the Rape of Lucrece. According to this poor fellow's myopic and ultimately simple-minded belief, there would be no Shakespeare, no Milton, no Homer, no Chaucer, no Tolstoy, no Dante, no Ibsen and a hundred others- and that's just literature! They're all just a bit too dark and scary for the likes of those who think it's healthy to be fed sugared water for the rest of their lives. I literally can't think of one decent artist, writer, musician etc who would survive the bizarre purge he seems to be advocating. We'd be left with Justin Bieber. Imagine that, if you will.

 

I don't mind dark themes normally. When I was much younger I was fascinated by stories of serial killers and Bubonic plague. I guess it was me coming to grips with the idea of mortality. Now a days I find those themes more or less interesting depending on the execution and subject matter. For example, I have a small collection of Living Dead Dolls that I keep around my desk at work. I often tell co workers that I prefer these dolls because they are not too perfect. All their faults are there on the outside for everyone to see. It's the perfectly pretty dolls that SMILE all the time that scare me. Also, I like laughing in the face of life's tragedies instead of fearing them so I find LDDoll's silly over the top deaths amusing. I think these themes fascinate people in movies, books, games etc... because you are facing your fears through a safe medium.

In the end if you don't care for it just click somewhere else.

 

I wonder if you would tell this to the parents of the child...

Don't put words in my mouth! I did not insinuate that they themselves where murdering children...but they are glorifying it. and they are making childrens body parts into toy form...

As far as cencorship goes if I told you what I really thought...I'd most undoubtedly be censored on this forum. ;-)

Another person to ignore on DOA...peace!

Perhaps people find these things okay because they are a reflection of there own self image?? Sad sad...

 

Or perhaps we realise that the world isn't all sunshine and puppies, pretending otherwise is disingenuous at best, and finding ways to explore and deal with that can be good? Bad things happen. Making sacred cows of everything would leave the world terribly boring. So what if people are doing things that you find to be in bad taste? Ignore them. No-one's actually being hurt, and people are allowed to be as tasteless and disgusting as they like so long as they aren't actually breaking any laws. 'S not their fault if someone's delicate sensibilities can't handle it. (Of course, I'm from Baltimore, and we have John Waters, so I think my tolerance for the tasteless is inherently fairly high. XD)

Seriously, liking or creating things related to serial killers and other badness is not always or even usually indicative of someone's "self-image" or mental state, or anything else. It's deeply, deeply offensive to suggest that there is something wrong with someone or that they are some how a bad or defective human being for liking or creating such things. Ignoring the bad things in the world and pretending they don't exist doesn't sound healthy. Finding a safe way to explore those things and maybe express a fascination with some of them (and possibly figuring out the reason for said fascination)? That doesn't actually seem terribly harmful to me.

 

^Yes to everything here.

How are we, as a society, supposed to learn, grow, and improve if we don't look at and study the past? Knowing that these things did happen is how we implement new regulations to stop the past from repeating itself. The laws get created, the DSM gets revised. Ignoring it, or living in denial gives whoever is a serial killer the idea that what they did was OK, gives no closure to those who have been hurt, and keeps everyone living in ignorance.

Until relatively recently, I bet there was no such thing as conduct disorder; I'm sure kid's mental states weren't even considered. A kid or teen diagnosed with Conduct Disorder can become an adult with antisocial personality disorder. That's probably where we get most serial killers. How do we find this information out? We look at the histories and behaviors of these people and we study them. We acknowledge what they did as a bad thing, and we develop tools and identifiers so the world doesn't get to experience another Zodiac Killer.

 

I grew up singing the Lizzie Borden rhyme:

"Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her father forty whacks,
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her mother forty-one."

*shrugs*

Personally, I think the rhyme may be more offensive then an outfit ... but to each their own ...

 

It doesn't really seem as though this should cause much alarm or even be a surprise. murder is disturbing ,yes. But we can also remember how we learned of such things as children. We make up songs and rhymes about them such as "Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her daddy forty blah blah..." Even songs like "Ring around the Rosie" is about a plague that killed thousands of people. And we teach them to our children! But macabre has that sort of appeal to many and the Hobby appeals to plenty of people. However, your concern about political correctness is understandable as if they began a doll line headlining Osama Bin Laden or Hitler, I'd definitely be taken back.

 

Funny you go on this topic of songs that meant terrible things; I was actually thinking about nursery rhymes today, and "Rock-a-Bye, Baby" came to mind. I never liked that song when I was little, and I never saw the value of it now. From what I get, it's about a baby in a cradle falling from a tree. I wonder where that song came from?

 

Even if they can look away or press the back button, one can still be offended. I think there are only rare instances when it's called for, but I see a lot of comments suggesting one can only be offended if something is being shoved into your face, which is not so.

On to the topic:

I can't understand why someone would be offended by something as benign as a macabre nursery rhyme to go with macabre line of doll clothing, though. I don't see it as glorification of murderers--she was acquitted anyways (But granted, so was O.J.).
If Volks released a 'John Wayne Gacy and Friends' line of dolls, I could see people getting riled up. This isn't what we're dealing with, thankfully!

Just because something relates to an unpleasant thought (like zombie tinies and dead children) doesn't mean it's gone too far. Uncomfortable doesn't need to equal offensive!

 

Personally, I don't find it offensive but then again I am of the general oppinion that any- and everything must be viewed as something that can be joked about. Of course some topics are more sensitive than others, but I find that if I take things too seriously I'd just wind up depressed.

The first type of doll I fell for before I discovered BJDs was the Living Dead Dolls series, so as far as macabre infuences go I think it can be kind of intriguing as long as you don't take it too far... I don't think there's really a difference between historical and fictional influences, at least not when it comes to historical figures from such a long time ago as the case with Lizzie Borden.

Also, the fact that there is an air of legend surrounding some of the old murder cases makes them sort of half historical, half fictional which might serve to make them less real to some people. I think this might be why Dollheart (in this case) didn't think a line of clothes like this would be offensive.